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CORT WAREHOUSE/DRIVER Construction Komatsu Equipment Co Mechanic Health Care Rio Salado College PA's/Online Instructors General CORT Warehouse Supervisor Education Assessment Technology, Inc Social Studies Content Writer Tucson RegionSHOULD WE EVER FORGIVE 9/11 ATTACKERS?
What our faiths tell usHarboring hate hurts victim, but 'pure evil' makes forgiveness hard
Arizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 09.11.2007
Rosa Freund has moved on since her imprisonment in Auschwitz-Birkenau, where her mother, sister and aunt all died.
But the 80-year-old Tucsonan hasn't forgiven.
Nor has Maggie Dyet, whose beloved brother-in-law, 42-year-old Jeff Coombs, was on Flight 11 on Sept. 11, 2001 — the first plane to crash into the World Trade Center.
"Mass murder with pure evil, I don't think forgiveness is possible or even expected," said Dyet, 50, a registered nurse in Tucson. "These people were evil personified. I have never considered forgiving them."
The sixth anniversary of the terrorist attacks this year nearly coincides with Wednesday's start of the Jewish High Holy Days, a time of year when atonement and forgiveness are of utmost importance. And while leaders of all faiths typically will say forgiveness for wrongdoing is ideal, the reality is much different for people like Freund and Dyet, who have been affected by profound acts of murder.
"I do think the process of coming to wholeness requires forgiveness. Retaining anger on a permanent basis is a recipe for continued sadness and frustration," said Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon of Temple Emanu-El, a Reform Jewish congregation. "The key, I think, is to understand that harboring a permanent hate is more destructive to the victim than it is to the perpetrator."
But Cohon said he can't judge others' reactions to trauma. As the Talmud and other religious tradition teach, he said, don't judge a person until you've walked in his sandals.
Saturday marked the Jewish holiday of Selichot — forgiveness — a day when Cohon's synagogue screened a film titled "Forgiving Dr. Mengele," a documentary that features Holocaust survivor Eva Mozes Kor. Kor decided to forgive the Nazis who killed her family, including Dr. Josef Mengele and his staff, who experimented on her and her twin sister. Kor believes Mengele's experiments caused her sister's early death.
Kor has critics, among them many fellow Holocaust survivors who have cast her act of forgiveness as shallow and insincere. Some say forgiveness requires atonement on the part of the perpetrator, or an act more measurable than words.
Three local Auschwitz survivors who watched the film at Temple Emanu-El were similarly critical — Kor's actions disturbed them. They felt she had forgotten the horrors of what happened. Others watching the film also were upset.
"Some acts are unforgivable," said Pam Treiber Opper, a social worker who started the Tucson's Holocaust Survivors group. "In this movie, it was like forgiveness was the wrong word. She was relinquishing responsibility for acts that are unacceptable. She was divorcing herself from the experience."
The Wisconsin-based International Forgiveness Institute classifies forgiveness as a moral response to a wrongdoing, and merciful restraint from pursuing resentment or revenge. Forgiveness is not forgetting, denying, excusing, condemning or forgiving with a sense of moral superiority, the institute says.
A well-publicized act of forgiveness occurred last year, when members of the pacifist Amish community of Nickel Mines, Pa., not only forgave the man who shot 10 schoolgirls in their community, leaving five of them dead, but also offered support in the form of money and food to the killer's wife and children.
In another famous act of forgiveness, Peter J. Biehl and his wife, Linda Biehl, forgave the young men who killed their daughter, Amy, in 1993 when she was a Fulbright scholar studying in South Africa. The Biehls advocated political amnesty for the murderers and devoted themselves to working for racial reconciliation.
Bert Dover, a local bishop with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, recalls a young woman in Tucson who recently sat at the bedside of her dying husband, who suffered fatal injuries in a road rage incident.
"This woman had everything she loved taken away from her in an instant. She had every reason to let bitterness, anger and hatred take over. Instead, she chose to forgive," Dover said. "In her heart she knew that a loving God would apply perfect justice. Her spirit was freed from anger and despair when she chose the peace that forgiveness brings. In place of resentment and soul-cankering anger, she chose love, charity and hope."
Harminder Phull, a 60-year-old retiree, says he and his family forgive the killer of his second cousin, Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh who was gunned down on Sept. 15, 2001, while working at the Mesa gas station he owned. Singh Sodi wore a turban, and his killer, Frank S. Roque, mistakenly believed him to be Muslim, explaining that the shooting was retaliation for 9/11.
Roque was punished by the criminal justice system with life in prison.
"In God's eyes he did something wrong. He's been punished for it, and as far as we are concerned it's over with," Phull said. "We have no desire to get back at him, so you could say we forgive him. It is more difficult for me to forgive the people who committed Sept. 11, however. That wasn't called for. They could have been brave and said, 'OK, we want to fight you.' But they didn't."
But forgiving for 9/11 may mean letting go of the pieces we can't control, said Rabbi Shafir Lobb of Congregation Ner Tamid, a Reform Jewish congregation.
"Forgiveness is about moving on, but it does not mean forget," Lobb said. "Criminals are expected to make restitution, and obviously that's difficult when they commit suicide. It's difficult. Part of the process of forgiving is to recognize what it is that you're angry about."
Lobb has spoken with congregants who are angry because their parents went to the gas chambers during the Holocaust. Many times, they are angry at themselves for not being able to stop it. And Lobb says in those cases, people need to forgive themselves.
"People will say we should have stopped the terrorists and prevented Sept. 11. But until they flew those planes into the buildings, it was not in our realm of thought," she said. "You have to look at what you are angry about. There are lots of decisions to make in life that are wrong. Some might have disastrous results."
In day-to-day life, it's hurtful and energy-draining to harbor grudges and anger, Lobb said. And since humans make mistakes just about every day, it's important to remember to ask for forgiveness when we err, she added.
"If you go to someone and ask them for forgiveness, you are penitent. If they say no, you try more than once. You try three times and then you have to ask God to do it," she said. "Then it's about putting positive energy into doing what you can to make sure you don't make the same mistake again. It's not easy. Most people would rather sit there and be right rather than effective. We're challenged by our tradition to rebuke with love."
But sometimes there is no perpetrator seeking forgiveness. And in the case of 9/11 and the Holocaust, the magnitude of sin can make forgiveness difficult if not impossible.
Maggie Dyet, whose sister, Christie Coombs, was widowed on 9/11, says since the terrorist attacks she's only recently started going back to Catholic church. Her sister has three children who are now 19, 17 and 13 — all profoundly affected by the loss of their father, who was on a business trip when he died.
"They'd been married for 17 years. It was right before their anniversary, before her birthday, everything was coming up," Dyet said. "The kids and my sister are still afraid to fly."
Dyet has spent a lot of time thinking about God since her brother-in-law died.
"I've read a lot about the Holocaust. The Germans prayed, too. They were praying to the same God, convinced they are right. It's so confusing," Dyet said. "I still have so much confusion about who is responsible. Did God do this? I'm an adult, I'm supposed to know the answers. But there are still no answers. I do have disgust for all the people responsible."
Rosa Freund cannot forgive Nazi Germany. "All together, I lost 47 in my family, with aunts, uncles and cousins," Freund said. "I can't forgive for that."
● Contact Stephanie Innes at 573-4134 or at sinnes@azstarnet.com.
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