Recently, I had a spiritual awakening as I watched a well-made movie, based on true events, about a young lawyer who, 15 years after the second World War, decided to pursue the people responsible for Auschwitz. A lot of these people, after the war, had taken all kinds of ordinary jobs: primary school teachers, woodcutters, bakers, businessmen, dentists, etc.

In the process of his investigation, the lawyer found out that a great number of the after-war citizens had been Nazi party members during the war. The task grew into a real labyrinth, accompanied by intense emotional torment. In the course of his efforts, he discovered that his father and his girlfriend’s father had been party members too.

At the end of the 1950s, most of the young people he questioned about Auschwitz had never heard of it. The war was not talked about at all. The post-war country acted as if nothing had happened, sincerely believing this was the right way to heal and go forward.

He went to visit Auschwitz at one point and, whilst there, recited mourning rituals for the twin daughters of a survivor friend of his. When he came back, he said something which touched me deeply: “The only answer to Auschwitz is doing the right thing myself.”

My grandfather and granduncle on my mother’s side were deported to a concentration camp near Hamburg and died there because they were farmers and had given food to the resistance. As a teenager I had no interest in any of this at all. I closed myself off from it. I thought it was just stuff from the past, stuff for old people. I’m me, independent; none of this need concern me, I thought.

However, the more I avoided my past, the colder and harder I became—more remote from my roots, from the world, from reality; I became more remote to my own callousness, cruelty, intolerance, selfishness, and my tendency towards violence. Strange and shameful as it sounds, as a teenager I fantasized being a perpetrator in a camp myself, sexually abusing beautiful women.

Years later, when I talked it over with a spiritual mentor, he said that it is not uncommon for a victim to take the side of the aggressor, in a subconscious way of dealing with fear of the aggressor; he said it was a subconscious way to deal with fear of being abused and feeling unsafe.

This is comparable then with my time in boarding school when I started to bully other boys so as not to be bullied myself. The biggest bullies don’t get bullied. “Hurt people hurt people,” as one of the slogans goes. About 15 years ago, my therapist told me that inside every human being there’s a nazi and an angel, and it’s up to me which one I feed.

In the past number of years I made two visits to the concentration camp where my grandfather and granduncle died. The second visit was with my mother and two brothers. That was a healing experience. I needed to “hug my demons before they bite me in the ass.” I needed to process my past and the past of my ancestors in order to connect with my roots and become whole.

Since then, I have still been asking myself so many questions like, Why is there evil in the world? Why is there evil in my heart? Why was my father so sick and insane towards me that, up to this day, I am still so damaged from him? Why World War II? Why wars, murders, violence, rape? Why sexual abuse, incest, stealing, destroying? Why envy, jealousy, hatred?

The answer came to me from the movie when the young lawyer said: “The only answer to Auschwitz is doing the right thing myself.”

The only answer to the evil in my heart and in the world is doing the right thing myself!! There is no all-satisfying, all-solving intellectual answer, no golden explanation. No intellectual answer or mental reasoning will change these realities. The only answer is DOING THE RIGHT THING MYSELF.

The only answer to all these questions is to give up trying to answer them, to surrender my own good and my bad to God as I understand Him (Step 7), and do the next right thing myself.

And this fits with the spirituality of our program:
– “I can’t think or feel myself into a new way of acting, but I can act myself into a new way of thinking and feeling.”
– “Our program is not a program of thinking but of acting.”
– “I am not in the thinking management anymore.”
– “God is now the manager of my life, the Director, the Principal. My role is to do the Next Right Thing; not to think the next right thought.”
– “It’s Not Them!”
– “If I want to change the world, I have to change me.”
– “Whenever I am disturbed, there’s something wrong with me.”

“Why?” questions make me a prisoner to the problem; they keep me trapped inside my head. They make me blame others, shifting my focus everywhere but to my side of the street. They keep me in the victim role. They keep me in that anti-spiritual division of “they” and “we,” instead of, “We are all into this together. We are all sick.”

So, rather than ask “Why?” questions, I need to ask “How?” questions: How can I feed the angel inside me? How can I improve my conscious contact with a loving HP Who is all-powerful and Who is the ONLY one who has no evil in Him? How can I be helpful? “How can I best serve Thee?” (Step 10 prayer). How can I work my program today? How can I try to carry the message today? How can I practice these principles in all areas of my life today?