Choosing Forgiveness over Anger
How easy it is to feel great anger and hatred towards the people who have hurt us – and how painful, stressful, and depressing it is to do too.
It’s never easy to forget the wrong they’ve done: the abuses we received, the injustices we suffered from their hands, and other forms of victimizations that we could consider traumatic.
All these have left deep scars into our consciousness. To a certain degree, they affect the way we think and see things, the way we deal with people, and the way we live in the present.
At first glance, it would seem that we will never forgive our tormentors. However, time has a way of healing all wounds, no matter how deep they may be.
At some point in time, we will learn to
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In 1942 Lomax was serving in Singapore when the Allied forces surrendered to the Japanese. He was marched, with fifty or sixty thousand other prisoners of war, to the deadly Changi Prison, and transported to Ban Pong, in Kanchanaburi, Thailand, to work on the “Death Railway”, which portions include the legendary Bridge on the River Kwai.
Lomax started to secretly make escape equipment but he was arrested and forced to stand outside in the blistering heat all day without food and drink.
He, along with five other prisoners, was clubbed unconscious by the Kempeitai or Japanese military police and left lying on the ground attended for days.
Due to the violence and brutality of the torture he received from the Kempeitai, Lomax suffered multiple fractures to his nose, arms, right hip, and several ribs – but it did not just end with the beatings.
At the Outram Road Prison in Singapore where he was imprisoned for the remainder of the war, he was caged in a crippling bamboo ‘coffin’ in the military police headquarter.
Of all his torturers, an interpreter named Takashi Nagase was particularly horrendous. Lomax decided that he would remember Nagase for the rest of his life and that he would take revenge one
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He suffered violent nightmares, was obsessed by terrifying memories, and other serious psychological traumas.
Still damaged forty-five years later, Lomax read a magazine article in the early 1990s about Nagase, who had written a book about his experiences during and after the war. Entitled Crosses and Tigers, the book described Nagase’s remorse at treating the prisoners so badly, especially one man, a British prisoner.
Recognizing himself as the British prisoner, Lomax wrote to Nagase. The two men eventually met at a war museum in Kanchanaburi.
As the former prisoner watched his former torturer approach, he saw that Nagase was trembling and in tears. The two men sat in silence for a while, and then Nagase started to say over and over again while fighting back the tears, “I am sorry. I am sorry. Please forgive me for what I did to you.”
Lomax and Nagase spent several days together and got to know each other better. When Lomax left, he gave Nagase a note which read, “Although I can’t forget the ill-treatment at Kanchanaburi, taking into account your change of heart, your apologies, and the work you are doing, please accept my total forgiveness.”
Know that it takes time to heal all wounds and above all, to learn to forgive our former
Prison Writings, by Leonard Peltier, provides us with a heart-throbbing story of a martyr fighting for the right of his fellow Native Americans. In this book, Peltier explains the events that led to his arrest, and his experience being imprisoned for a crime that he didn’t commit. He starts off with a chilling tale, reminiscing the horror of being imprisoned, and recalling the paranoia of having to always be “on the edge” and of “never [letting] your guard down.” (Peltier, 3) He then tells us, in his point of view, the circumstances that led up to his arrest, revealing his poor upbringing in the Dakotas, and his involvement with the AIM (American Indian Movement). As an American Indian leader, Peltier went to help and protect the people at the siege going on at Pine Ridge, where there has a gun battle and two agents were killed. After the siege, Peltier went to hide in Canada, where he was captured by the RMP. He was then
Forgiveness is a process. You can still feel the pain, see the events behind your eyes, and feel the loss of the people around you but you have to find a way to forgive. People think that if you forgive someone you are forgetting or saying hey I would hang out with this person now because we’re cool but thats not at all what forgiveness is. Forgiveness is righting the wrong for yourself because you want the injustice you feel to leave. It’s acknowledging to that there a wrong that was done to you and you decide how you want to think about it not anyone
Forgiveness is crucial for a clear conscience and peace of mind for the both of them. However, all of this is arguable by the fact that today’s experiences are incomparable to those of Hitler’s times. One cannot begin to place one in each other’s shoes and know exactly how to respond to the events happening. One can only guess how they would respond, but until they are in that moment, all plausible reasoning can change. Nevertheless, forgiveness continues to be an aspect of everyday life in every century.
“The one who forgives never brings up the past to that person's face. When you forgive, it's like it never happened. True forgiveness is complete and total” (Zamperini as qtd. in Goodreads). A person's past does not define who they are in the present. A person can change and transform throughout their life. That person needs to be forgiven for their past mistakes and focus on becoming a better individual. Even though many people view Unbroken as a war story, the real focus is on the transformation of a man through forgiveness.
The second prisoner was a young boy who was being hanged for the fact that he stole weapons during a power failure. The significance of this particular hanging was the young boy’s lack of rebellion, his quiet fear and the unbearable duration of his torment. The boy had lost all hope and was one of the only victims who wept at the knowledge of their demise. What made this case different from the rest was not only his youth, but also his silence, and emotion and the fact that it took a half an hour for him to die, as a result of the lightness of his young body. Even though he was constantly tortured and provoked by the guards before he was hanged, he still said nothing, unlike the two people who joined him, who both shouted in defiance. His quiet courage really stood out as an unspoken and unannounced rebellion not only for the Jews, but it showed the doubts that some of the guards began to have. “This time, the Lagerkapo refused to act as executioner.” Although this quote is one sentence it still shows the effect the boy had on everyone in the camp. Even though the prisoners had been living with the constant presence of death, the execution of this young boy made them feel emotion they believed they had lost forever. This death was an unsaid act of rebellion in the sense that it showed the audience that there was indeed still some sensitivity left no matter how much both the prisoners and the guards were dehumanized: the prisoners as merely a number, and the guards as ruthless
prison camp by the Japanese. Only a year later were they safe in American arms
Forgiveness and justice are very similar than we believe them to be. We believe that justice is
Life as we all know is full of disappointment and filled with disparity. Most of us are able to go through these and learn from and forgive ourselves. Yet, this isn’t always the case. People are faced with traumatic experiences that often take a long time to get over, if they ever do get over it. These experiences brew in our brain popping up at the most random points often bringing our spirits down. Although these experiences may scar us and fill us with regret and guilt, we can’t continue to live in the past and let these regrets haunt us. Self forgiveness is a key to healing and to moving on in life, no matter how hard it is.
In Auschwitz October 9, 1943 Yom Kippur had started. As many prisoners decided whether or not to fast this year one prisoner in particular stood out to reporters.
The moment we learn to forgive and love is when we can begin to recover and move on.
“For the first few months the POWs at Changi were allowed to do as they wished with little interference from the Japanese. There was just enough food and medicine provided and, to begin with, the Japanese seemed indifferent to what the POW’s did at Changi. Concerts were organised, quizzes, sporting events etc. The camp was organised into battalions, regiments etc and meticulous military discipline was maintained. In Easter 1942 the attitude of the Japanese had changed. They organised work parties to repair the damaged docks in Singapore and food and medicine became scarce. More pointedly, the Japanese made it clear that they had not signed the Geneva Convention and that they ran the camp as they saw fit.For this reason, 40,000 men from the surrender of Singapore were marched to the northern tip of the island where they were imprisoned at a military base called Selarang, which was near the village of Changi. The British civilian population of Singapore was imprisoned in Changi jail itself, one mile away from Selarang. Eventually, any reference to the area was simply made to Changi.”(1).”The appalling suffering of these POWs was witnessed by British and Commonwealth prisoners held in separate compounds. At Stalag VIIIB alone, in Lamsdorf, eastern Germany, over 40,000 Russians perished. In total, three million Russian POWs died in German
Louis Zamperini's experience of surviving the horrors of captivity provides important perspectives on the limits of human endurance and the moral challenges. Horrific details are displayed that show the hideous truth of Zamperini's imprisonment. In this book, Zamperini's tragedy ties in with challenging questions of fairness and accountability. Also, the questions ask about the roles played by those in charge of Zamperini's and the other prisoners' abuse, and the best way to hold people accountable for their actions during the captivity. Throughout the book, we get a further explanation of the difficulties involved in seeking fairness in these camps by answering these questions: What do you find most horrifying about Louis Zamperini's captivity?
Ryan Murphy Professor Safronov Faith and Critical Reason 13 March, 2024 Should One Forgive? The Sunflower by Simon Wiesenthal describes a Holocaust survivor’s surprising and thought-provoking study of forgiveness, justice, compassion, and human responsibility. In addition to his synopsis of his story as a Holocaust survivor, Wiesenthal includes excerpts from many famous interlocutors, who share their opinions on his story, and add their own religious and moral beliefs as defenses for their particular positions. Two interlocutors whose views are informed by religious and moral beliefs are Matthew Fox and Desmond Tutu. Wiesenthal, Fox, and Tutu discuss the topic of forgiveness, and leave the reader with the question: Should one forgive?
Each prisoner had a transformative moment throughout their time at Sobibor that would push them to their ultimate decision to escape. Usually such moments represented a realization that death was almost certain if they were to stay, others, that letting the world know was necessary. But the common thread through them all was that to live was an act of defiance.
Most men transported to this Unit were sentenced to death upon arrival. ("World War Two - Japanese Prisoner of War