In southern Poland in 1942, Samuel Oliner, then age 12,
hid in an attic while the Nazis took away his family, drove them to a nearby
woods and killed them, along with 1,000 other Jews. Oliner wandered around in a
grief stricken stupor for several days before he made his way to the home of a non-Jewish
family he had known before the war.
The woman of the house took in the young Oliner and fed
and comforted him. Then she let him stay in their attic for some time and
taught him how to pass for Catholic. He learned the catechism and the Lord’s
Prayer and how to genuflect and say the rosary. Oliner then found work at a
farm where he spent the rest of the war after having changed his name and
identity.
When he grew up, Oliner became a sociologist and started
studying why some people were capable of great acts of kindness like that
which he had experienced at the hands of the remarkably caring woman who saved his
life. When he interviewed other people from this era who had aided the Jews to determine why they did what they did,
he got responses like these:
- “Our religion says we are our brother’s keeper.”
- “I sensed I had in front of me human beings that were hunted down like wild animals. This aroused a feeling of brotherhood and a desire to help.”
- “I was always filled with love for everyone, for every creature, for things. I am fused into every object. For me everything is alive.”
- “[My parents] taught me to respect all human beings.”
These replies are based in profoundly religious
sentiments that speak to a deeply felt sense of interconnection with others,
even those different in significant ways from oneself. This sense of
interconnection coupled with moral commitment motivated many people to do
things for others at a time when providing such help was extremely risky and
sometimes fatal.
Compassion of this sort is both instinctive and learned.
In other words, we each have the capacity for great compassion and for acting
on this compassion, but such altruism must be cultivated and nurtured. In fact,
Oliner found that the strongest predictor for determining which Germans helped rescue Jews
during World War II was having memories of growing up in a family that placed a
high priority on altruism and compassion.
Without such compassion, people are much less likely to
take meaningful moral action in the world. Without such compassion, transformation
of self and others is impossible.
We do well to remember that compassion is the engine that
drives transformation. For the sake of ourselves and our children and the
world, we must nurture and cultivate and teach compassion in all that we do.
When we are faithful to this task, we are on the path of religious
transformation.
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