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Here's the rest of the story……
Hitler poured a glass of water and settled back in his chair. “What is it that you wish to discuss with me,” he asked. “I’m not clear why we need to talk. I’m here to join my compatriots in our fight to prove to this world that Germany is a supreme power.” He took a sip of water and waited for God to speak. “That no longer matters, Adolf. What truly matters is the state of your soul, not the state of your country. There are some things I need to clarify about your belief system before I decide on a course of action for you,” God said. “Therefore, I have a couple of questions for you.”
Hitler smiled and leaned back in his chair. “Go ahead, ask,” he said. “I’ve done nothing wrong and everything that I did was because I love Germany and devoted my life to being of service to my country. I’ve no shame for anything I’ve done.”
God shuffled the papers on the table and picked one sheet up. “Can you tell me if this is your Last Will and Testimony, Adolf? Sometimes we have paper mix-ups here in heaven and I just want to make sure that it’s yours. Did you dictate these words to your secretary, Traudl Junge?” God said.
Hitler glanced at the sheet of paper and nodded briskly. “That is my Will and Testament. What of it?” he asked.
“I’d like to read a section of the Political Testament and ask if you truly believe what is written here,” God replied as he put on pair of bi-focal spectacles to read the fine print. He began to read the document. “Centuries will pass away, but out of the ruins of our towns and monuments the hatred against those finally responsible whom we have to thank for everything, International Jewry and its helpers, will grow.” Did you dictate this statement?”
“Of course I did,”Hitler replied. “It is the truth, why would I lie about such a thing? I believe that the Jews were responsible for most of our world’s ills. I don’t understand why you would ask a question when the answer is so obvious.”
“Adolf, Adolf, where do I begin?” God asked. “The Jews are not responsible for the world’s ills, no one religious group is. It is a culmination of years of political decisions, social upheaval and financial chaos, but largely, it speaks to the belief systems of those who are in charge,” he explained. “You are responsible for over 6 million dead. Do you think you should atone at all for the death and destruction that your belief system caused?” God paused and waited for Hitler to answer.
“Atone? For what am I to atone for?” Hitler exclaimed.“ I have done nothing wrong! I acted on what I know to be true. The Jewish problem had to be solved and I was the only one with the strength and courage to carry out the solution to the problem. I repeat – I have done nothing wrong! “
God sighed and shook his head. This fellow was going to be more difficult than most to teach him his soul lessons. Suddenly, God had an epiphany. He knew what he was going to do. He looked at Hitler and said “I know what I’m going to do with you. Come with me.”
Hitler stood up and followed God. He was led through a series of hallways until he and God came to a door marked with the word “Long-Term Care”. God opened the door and ushered Hitler in. There was a table in the room with a single chair. On the table was a large book, a pen and a pile of writing pads. The walls were bare and a single light bulb hung from a string in the ceiling. God motioned for Hitler to sit and said “Here is what you’re going to do. That book in front of you is filled with a list of names of all the people whose deaths you are responsible for. Beside each name you will find their birth dates, their death dates and the cause of death. I want you to write a letter to each person, atoning for your sins and asking humbly for their forgiveness. I ask you to write the name of the person you are writing to on the top of the page and that person will then come to you in the form they had just before death. They will tell you the story of their life so that you will have a personal understanding of who these people are and their lives that you so nonchalantly destroyed. As you had family, so did they. As you had joys and struggles in your life, so did they. There is not much difference separating you from those whose deaths you ordered. “God shook his head sadly. “Adolf,” he said, “Even God has hope. My hope for you is that you learn empathy, for that was something that you sorely lacked in life. Perhaps by seeing and talking to the six million people whose deaths you caused, you will grow in your understanding of what it truly means to be human and the similarities, rather than the differences between you. Once you have empathy for others, you will have truly atoned for your sins.”
“And what if I refuse?” Hitler asked. “What if I just refuse to do what you are asking me to do?”
“That’s fine,” God replied. “Everyone has free will. You just won’t be able to leave the room until you make the choice to start writing. It’s truly up to you,” and God slipped from the room and closed the door.
Hitler ran to the door but the door had disappeared, leaving only a smooth white wall in its place. He sat back down, then stood up and started to walk back and forth, in slow, measured steps. He did this for years. He sat, he walked the dimensions of the small room, at times he paced, but he didn’t write a word. God didn’t come back to check on his progress, Hitler was alone in that tiny room day after day, month after month and year after year. Finally, after seventy-nine years, Hitler had his own epiphany. He could outwit Jews! He’d write to each one of them if he had to in order to get out of this room. He was a master manipulator, he could get God to believe that he empathized with these people. Hitler also believed that he would be unmoved by anything any of these people said – after all, they weren’t really human, most of them were Jews.
He opened the book randomly and put his finger on a name. He pulled one of the writing pads toward him and wrote the name ‘Etty Hillesum’ at the top of the page. Instantly, a young woman appeared before him, smiling. She was thin, unbearably thin and bald from having her hair shorn when she arrived at Auschwitz on September 7, 1943. “How can I help you?” Etty asked. Hitler looked at her silently and after some thought, said, “Why do you ask how you can be of help to me? You are Jewish, yes?”
Etty nodded and said, “Yes, but I can still be of help to you. God tells me that you are to learn empathy and I can help you with that. “
“How?” asked Hitler. His belief system reared its ugly head, “You and I have nothing in common and therefore I fail to see how I would ever be able to empathize with you.”
Etty asked a very simple and yet profound question. “Do you remember your mother,” she asked quietly. “Because I remember mine. My mother, Riva was 62 when she died. She died as soon as she walked through the gates of Auschwitz. She had three children, my two brothers and I. How many children did your mother have?”
Hitler looked at her and was outraged. How dare this young woman compare her mother, a Jew to his own mother, whom he considered to be a saint. “You can’t ask me these questions!” he shouted at Etty. “My mother and your mother have nothing in common, nothing!”
“But they do,” Etty said softly. They both were married, they both gave birth to children, they worried over them, they were frightened for them, they wanted them to be the best they could be in the world. I know that was the truth with my mother. Are you saying it was different for your mother? She didn’t care about her children? She was not concerned about their welfare?”
Hitler clenched his hands and pounded them on the hard wooden table. His mother, Klara was a saint. She had given birth to six children, four of whom did not survive into adulthood. Two had died of diphtheria before either one of them was three years old. One, Otto died shortly after he was born and the only brother Hitler remembered, little Edmund was only six when he died from the measles. His mother had grieved all of her children’s deaths, she mourned them all deeply. When his father died when Adolf was all of fourteen, Klara devoted herself to him and his sister Paula. She worried about him when he struggled in school and always tried to encourage him to do better. He looked at Etty and said, “Perhaps all mothers have some similarities,” he conceded. “But your mother, because she was a Jew, deserved to die the way she did.”
Etty looked at him deeply and asked, “And how did your mother die, Adolf?”
Hitler stared back at her but inside, he was crumbling. “She died an excruciating death from breast cancer,” he said coldly.
“What did she do to deserve that?” Etty asked. My mother died a painful death as well. If you say that she deserved to die like that because she was a Jew, what did your mother do in her life to die in such agony? If my mother’s sin was to be a Jew, what was your mother’s sin?”
Hitler, a man who had been such a great orator in life, had no words. He simply didn’t know what to say. Etty continued by saying, “My mother loved her children, Adolf. My brother Mischa was a brilliant pianist. You didn’t know that, did you? I understand that you love music, Wagner was your favourite, right? My brother was so brilliant at the piano that he was playing Beethoven in public when he was six. His life ended when he was only 24, he was so young to have died so brutally at Auschwitz, so young. She took a deep breath before she continued, “He could have been a concert pianist – perhaps you could have gone to one of his concerts and lost yourself in the beauty of his music. Can you feel the pain of what Mischa had to go through in his short life? He couldn’t play the piano, the only thing he truly felt passionate about. Can you imagine what that would be like – separated from both a family that loves you and a profound passion for music? I tried to ease his pain wherever I could but his pain and grief were so deep that I’m not sure that I really helped him.
Hitler stayed silent as he listened to her talk about her abbreviated life. “My other brother, Jaap was passionate about medicine. He wanted to be a doctor. He wanted to heal people, to help people. He died on a horrible train journey when Bergen-Belsen was evacuated. Bereft of comfort, bereft of family, he died alone. Try to imagine what that was like, Adolf, try to feel my brother’s pain, his desperation, his fear.”
Hitler just sat there, stunned. He had never really considered the personal lives of Jews as being in any way similar to his family life. He loved his mother, he still grieved for little Edmund and he always wanted the best for his sister Paula. Really, was his family that different from Etty’s?
Etty went on to say, “And me, Adolf, what of my life? I burned with the passion to write. I read Rilke, Dostoevsky, the Bible, St.Augustine. I had a passion for learning that was more important to me than anything else. I wrote whenever I could as I tried to navigate the restrictions that your laws placed on me and my family. I tried to write, study and learn about God and my place in God’s world. I tried to be compassionate to others, no matter the circumstances and when I was at Westerbork, I helped everyone that I came across. I loved my life Adolf. I wasn’t ready to die in a crematorium in Auschwitz when I was only 29. I just wasn’t ready.” Tears began to slide down her face and her hands shook with emotion.
Hitler didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t comfort her, he didn’t know how. After a moment of listening to her cry, he said, “What room have you been in since you’ve been here?”
She looked at him and said, “My family and I are in one of the Rooms of Healing, Adolf. We are together, we all love one another like we did in life. We talk, we laugh, we read, I write and none of us feel fear of what might happen. Mischa has his piano and my mother has her children around her. God is giving us time to heal after what we’ve been through. It’s been a profoundly healing time since we’ve been here.”
Hitler was stunned. Jews were allowed to be together to heal and yet here he was, the leader of Germany, adored by millions and yet he was alone. “Please leave, I need time to think,” he said. Etty disappeared and Hitler was alone. He looked at the writing pads that had lain on the table for such along time and set one in front of him. He picked up the pen and poised his hand to write. God appeared and said, “Are you ready to begin?”
Hitler nodded and bent over the table, beginning to atone for his sins. God walked to the table and looked over Hitler’s shoulder as he began to write. “Etty”, Hitler had written and then sat silently, not having any idea of what to say. He looked at God for guidance and God said, “I can’t tell you what to say, Adolf. Only you know what’s in your heart. “Hitler nodded and began to hesitatingly write. God walked toward the door, turned around and said, “Beginning is good. You’ve got a long, long way to go but beginning is good.”
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