Inherent Worth
A Forgotten History of Polish People’s Forgiveness After Auschwitz
This is a guest blog post from Edward Reid, who runs the “Polish History” site on Facebook. The essay, copied in full here with Mr. Reid’s permission, shows the forgiving nature of the Polish people after Rudolf Höss brutalized so many in Auschwitz.
Facebook page – April 16, 2025
The essay is as follows:
Image by Karolina Grabowska, Pexels.com
In 1947, Rudolf Höss, commandant of German KL Auschwitz in the years 1940-1943, was sentenced to death by the Supreme National Tribunal in Poland. Two weeks later, on 16 April, he was hanged next to the crematorium of the former concentration camp.
Rudolf Höss did not fear death. What he feared was torture, which he believed was inevitable at the hands of his Polish captors. After all, Auschwitz had been located in German-occupied Poland, and it was the Polish people who had suffered so terribly under his command.
What he encountered instead left him stunned.
He was not met with hatred or violence, but with decency and restraint. “I have to confess that I never would have expected to be treated so decently and so kindly in a Polish prison,” he later wrote. That unexpected mercy opened something within him. Several of the Polish guards, themselves former prisoners of Auschwitz, quietly showed him the tattoos burned into their arms. Rather than seek revenge, they treated him with dignity.
It was an act that brought him shame. If those he had helped torment could offer him humanity, then perhaps, he began to wonder, God might offer him mercy as well. Apathy gave way to guilt. Recognition replaced denial. He began to grasp the weight of what he had done.
For the first time, his soul responded to a flicker of love. The ideology he had once followed so blindly had taught him that Poles were inferior, little more than cattle. But now, through their compassion, he saw clearly the humanity of those he had dehumanized. And in that realization, he began to understand the true gravity of his crimes.“In the solitude of my prison cell, I have come to the bitter recognition that I have sinned gravely against humanity,” he wrote. “I caused unspeakable suffering for the Polish people in particular. I am to pay for this with my life. May the Lord God forgive one day what I have done. I ask the Polish people for forgiveness.”
By all accounts, his repentance appeared genuine. On April 4, 1947, which was Good Friday that year, Höss asked to make a confession. The prison guards struggled to find a priest who spoke fluent German. That is when Höss remembered Father Władysław Lohn, a Jesuit he had once saved from execution. The guards located him in Łagiewniki, Poland, where he was then serving as chaplain at the Shrine of Divine Mercy. Father Lohn heard his confession on the Thursday of Easter week. The next day, he gave him Holy Communion and Viaticum.
Witnesses said that as Höss knelt in his prison cell, he appeared like a small boy.
The man who had once been trained to suppress all weakness now wept openly.
Five days later, on April 16, 1947, as the noose was placed around his neck at Auschwitz, Father Tadeusz Zaremba stood beside him and recited the prayers for the dying.
Whether or not he deserved forgiveness is something each person must decide for themselves. But the crimes committed against the Polish people must never be forgotten.
And neither should the quiet strength of those who, even in the face of unimaginable suffering, chose mercy. This is also why the Polish people, despite their profound heroism and the scale of their suffering were left behind in the telling of history. They did not turn their pain into politics or profit. They did not build monuments to themselves and demand all the world bow to their wounds. They endured in silence behind the Iron Curtain. Many showed mercy when they had every right to hate. And in doing so, they were forgotten by a world that rewards those who shout the loudest, not those who suffer with dignity.
But the truth remains. It was not only the victims who showed humanity – it was the forgotten Polish guards, the priests, the villagers, the mothers, the resistance fighters. They gave the world a quiet, sacred kind of courage.
The kind that history has yet to fully honor…
Are You a Person of Worth?
Who are you?
In Chapter 6 of the book, The Forgiving Life, Inez said,
“I am a person who has been emotionally wounded; who has stood up to injustice; who is a person worthy of respect and mercy; and who is special, unique, and irreplaceable and therefore cannot be and must not be shunned, disrespected, or thrown away.”
At the very core of your being, do you believe this about yourself? Are you a person of worth? Why or why not? Do you have to earn your worth or is it inherent in you—unearned, absolute, and unconditional? Are you a person who loves, even if imperfectly?
Even if you have a long way to go in developing agape love, you are on your way when you forgive others. As you love them (as best you can under the circumstances), please continue to see yourself more and more accurately—as someone who is capable of giving and receiving love and therefore someone who can do much good in this world.
You are a person of great worth.
There are more chapters for you to write with the help of others as you continue “My Unfolding Love Story.” Forgiveness is not finished with you yet. How will you lead your life from this point forward? It is your choice. When that story is finally written, what will the final chapters say about you?
The beauty of this story is that you are one of the contributing authors. You do not write it alone, of course, but with the help of those who encourage you, instruct and guide you, and even those who hurt you. You are never alone when it comes to your love story. It does not matter one little bit how the story was turning out before you embraced the virtue of forgiveness. What matters now is how you finish that story, how you start to live your life from this point forward.
Enright, Robert D. The Forgiving Life (APA LifeTools, 2012). American Psychological Association. Kindle Edition.
WORTH-LESS OR WORTH-MORE?
“As we continually live with love withdrawn from us and a resulting resentment (with the short-term consequences of thinking with a negative pattern, thinking specific condemning thoughts, and acting poorly), we can settle into a kind of long-term distortion of who the love-withdrawing person is, who we ourselves are, and who people are in general. The basic issue here is that once love is withdrawn from us, we can begin to withdraw a sense of worth toward the one who hurt us. The conclusion is that he or she is worth-less. Over time, we can drift into the dangerous conclusion, ‘I, too, am worthless. ’After all, others have withdrawn love from me and have concluded that I lack worth, therefore I do lack worth. Even later, we can drift into the unhealthy conclusion that there is no love in the world and so no one really has any worth, thus everyone is worth-less.”
Excerpt from the book, The Forgiving Life, Chapter 1.
Robert
Fragile People on a Fragile Planet: A Reflection on the Coronavirus, COVID-19, Challenge
As I write this, the world is shut down. People are at home. I just talked by email with a student in Iran. He referred to what is happening as “chaos.” I have communicated with a professor in Israel and much of that country is now having the people work from home. I was going to present a series of lectures in Southeast Asia, but the people are prohibited from gathering in an auditorium. The doors to my own office building at the university in the United States now are locked.
The coronavirus has altered everyday life……all across the globe.
So many are wondering: How did this happen? When will this end? Will there be a mutated resurgence of this virus, as happened with the flu pandemic of 1918-1919? Will people continue to die? Will the economy die?
Prior to this pandemic, people were gathering, going about their lives, thinking that all they have to do to get the next cheeseburger is drive or walk to the nearest fast-food chain and there it will be. Now I hear that gun sales are skyrocketing and it is difficult to buy ammunition because people are awaiting food shortages and so others may break into their homes looking for sustenance.
The world is fragile, more fragile than we had thought. In reflecting on this, I think the collective ideas in so many areas of the world were centered on a logical fallacy that I will call modern-protection-through-science. Here is what I mean: As we look back on some of the pandemics throughout history, we see them occurring in the pre-scientific, pre-technological age. For example, consider:
- The Plague of Justinian which occurred between 541 and 542 AD. The claim is that about 100 million people died in China, parts of Africa, and Europe.
- The Leprosy pandemic of the 11th century spread throughout Europe.
- The Black Plague emerged between 1346 and 1351. An estimated 50 – 200 million people perished, wiping out about 60% of the European population.
- The First Cholera Pandemic of 1817 started in Russia, killing 100 million people, and spread to Great Britain, Spain, India, Africa, Asia, and the United States.
We now know through science that leprosy is a bacterial infection treated with antibiotics. Cholera, we know through science, is treated with rehydration and electrolytes. We are protected for the most part because of scientific knowledge. Yet, I wonder……have people become so reliant on science that they overdo it, thinking that pandemics are tragedies of the past and could never, ever visit us now?
It is this kind of thinking that I am calling the modern-protection-through-science logical fallacy. We go about our business as if the world is a rock-steady, protected place and we are the ones in control. If anything, this new pandemic, which continues to intensify as I write this, may be sufficient to teach us that, indeed, this planet is fragile, perhaps more fragile than we had thought. “Chaos” as the student from Iran put it in the email to me, is now present and throughout the world.
I further wonder if this modern-protection-through-science fallacy has led to yet another fallacy which is this: the-all-people-are-fine fallacy. If we break an arm, science and technology have a way of mending it. Yet, what about the broken heart? Does science have a cure-all for that? Have we been walking around not seeing the inner wounds in others? Have we ignored these wounds, thinking that all is fine and even if someone is not doing so well emotionally, well then, at least we have the science of medicines to assist. Perhaps, as is the case with Mother Earth, we might begin to see that people are fragile. People can break; people might be walking around with big wounds in them and they need more than science to aid them. Maybe they need real human contact, love, forgiving and being forgiven to be healed and to then aid others in their healing.
The COVID-19 pandemic, if anything, might be our teacher: The world is more fragile than we thought. People are more fragile than we thought. Our scientific age does not offer protection, at least in the short-term, from mutated viruses. Our scientific age does not offer protection from betrayals, insensitivities and insults, and bullying from others……that can break our heart. Yet, our knowing this just might motivate many of us to see with new eyes, as the late Lewis Smedes used to put it, and to see how precious each person is.
Science itself will not lead the way to this conclusion of how delicate and worthwhile each person is, but perhaps the pain caused by the most recent pandemic might lead the way to such a conclusion.
Robert
A Reflection on Forgiveness and the Forgotten People
As I look out the window of the hotel in downtown London, awaiting a flight soon to the Middle East, I see a bustling populace moving quickly……except for one man who is shuffling along slowly, quite in contrast to the others. As I watch, he stops, faces a passerby, and obviously is asking for funds. He is ignored. He shuffles a few more steps, approaches another, and is met with the same non-response.
His pattern is repeated over and over. I counted at least 15 approaches and 15 rejections. He then disappeared from view. I think he was invisible to many that day, even to those who were within view of him.
How we bristle when rejected by a co-worker who is not showing respect today or by others who do not share our goals. The man, refused by others over and over, probably felt wounded by the rejections.
The dear man in London was continuously rebuffed, and he kept trying……until after awhile he simply stopped asking. This sequence of approach-and-avoidance reminds me of Ralph McTell’s now classic song, Streets of London (originally released in 1969 and re-released in 2017):
Have you seen the old man
In the closed-down market
Kicking up the paper,
With his worn out shoes?
In his eyes you see no pride
Hand held loosely at his side
Yesterday’s paper telling
yesterday’s news…..
In the all-night cafe
At a quarter past eleven,
Same old man sitting there on his own
Looking at the world
Over the rim of his teacup,
Each tea lasts an hour
Then he wanders home alone……
In our winter city,
The rain cries a little pity
For one more forgotten hero
And a world that doesn’t care.
The word “forgotten” catches my attention. That was the exact word used by imprisoned people serving life sentences with whom we spoke over a month ago. “Once you are here [in a maximum-security prison],” one gentleman explained to me, “you are forgotten.”
The forgotten people……
Yet, our forgiveness studies have taught me this: All people, regardless of circumstance, have inherent or built-in worth. The man, so continually rejected today on the street in London, has as much worth as the royalty in the palace. The one in maximum security prison for life has as much worth as the warden.
And in all likelihood, many of “the forgotten people” have stories to tell us of how they, themselves, were mistreated prior to their current plight. They have stories that include their own particular kind of pain, heartache, feelings that are part of the human condition. We need to hear those stories, to acknowledge their unique pain, their responses to that pain, and offer those suffering injustices from the past a chance to forgive. The forgiveness, for some, might be life changing as our science over the past three decades has shown for others.
We must not let forgiveness be the forgotten virtue.
We must not let the homeless and the imprisoned be the forgotten people.
Robert
