Saints also come out of hell!

Reflections on life, fear and mercy, through the analysis of the film "Musíme si pomáhat"

The birthplace is the place of memories and spiritual consolations where one returns even in dreams. There are friends, identity, shelter and salvation. The birthplace is like a myth of kindness, interpersonal closeness and humanity, which offers security in the most difficult moments of life. Because, the birthplace is the place of the hearth of magics that are born and keep dreams alive.

The destruction of this myth is a wound that makes you lose faith in people and humanity. Well, the chances of this disappointment are not small, because under the guise of puritanism and morality, of a life led by fear and obedience, people often hide other faces. They can be like the characters of the movie "American Beauty" (Bukuria americana, 1999), who in the end - for worse or for better - differ from the initial perception.

The Jew David - one of the main characters of the Czech film "Musíme si pomhat" ("Separated we fail", according to the American translation), directed by Jan Hrebejk - faced such people and fate.

Death as salvation

After the German invasion of Czechoslovakia, David and his family are forced to leave the city in which they had invested material and human capital. The former friends accompany the Jews, dropping some words here and there, such as: "terrible", "we must be optimistic"...

On the faces of the Czechs, you can see a bewilderment, while on the faces of the Jews, pain and disappointment: former employers - the hope and economic salvation of a country in times of crisis - are leaving and no one dared to come to them.

In those moments, no one knew what would be the course of an invasion that would later plunge the whole world into war. Fear for existence made the Czechs act according to the laws and orders of the conqueror!? This fear and this conviction abstracts morality and love, reducing social interest to family or individual interest.

David and his family are deported to the Terezin (Theresienstadt) camp, which was only a transit point to the later concentration camps in Poland, from which no one would have to leave alive. David witnesses mass murders (what would later be known as genocide), torture, denigration and moments when even death was seen as salvation.

There he also learned the misfortune faced by the individual who disobeys the regime: the Germans offer his sister Kaje the "post" of camp capo, but first she would have to beat her parents to death!

For his parents this would probably be death by order, even though their faith and every other monotheistic faith agrees with death coming from God and not from the slave!

"I can see my mother and my father ... on their knees, begging her to do this," David recalled.

Disobedience in criminal regimes means death, while obedience means salvation – at least for a while. Time - in such cases - is wealth, because it feeds the hope for better days.

"My sister was able to escape, at least for a while..." David said.

Time as salvation and poison

In such a case, when survival is perceived as obedience to the executioner's orders, time was an ally which is best defined by quoting the Spanish proverb: "Time and I against any two." But, in fact, the reality was different, similar to the definition of the American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson, that "time is the surest poison".

The differences between two such concepts, submission and opposition - that is, illusion and reality for the time - are best encountered in the film "Defiance" (Mosbindja, 2008), directed by Edward Zwick. When the Bielski partisans decide to save the Jews from the Baranović camp (former Polish territory, now Belarus) from liquidation, they encounter resistance.

"Time is our only weapon. If we can buy more (time), we can win," was the reasoning of the camp's rabbi.

In all this horror of Nazi rule, David's "destiny" was to engage in the sorting sector of valuable goods confiscated from Jewish captives, which enabled him to "buy" some time to prolong his death. After eight months in "service", he manages to bribe two German SS officers and escape from Poland.

David returns to his hometown to retrieve the jewels hidden in the family home, and then meets a friend with whose help he hopes to escape Nazi-occupied Europe. But things don't go as he thought: the former neighbors had changed even more!

Were they like that, or did the war make them look different?

Franta - one of the neighbors - begs him to leave, on the grounds that in that neighborhood people live with families and children. For him the Jews now posed an existential threat, and the struggle for existence made him avoid the golden Christian maxim with which the Czechs had once been educated: do unto others what you would not have them do unto you. So, when a motorcycle with two German soldiers passes by at the end of the road, Franta shouts: "Jew... a Jew is here"!

What (not) to do!

This time too luck is on David's side, as the Germans don't listen! He looks stunned. The questions and dilemmas for people were probably in his head: what prompted the neighbor to denounce his former friend to the executioners? Fear, or hidden hatred of Jews? Was he always morally unstable, or did the war make him so? Or, in the struggle for survival, the neighbor simply had to be persuasive to what the German regime wanted?

A typical example illustrating the consequences of obedience to a criminal regime is the Nazi Adolf Eichmann. During World War II, he was responsible for killing and persecuting millions of Jews in concentration camps. His trial in Israel showed that he was a conformist in a dictatorial state, and this is mostly based on a statement that he (Eichmann) had given to the interrogator: "If they told me that my father is a traitor and that I should kill - I would do that. At that time I obeyed orders without thinking. I did what I was told (to do)"!

This statement later led the American psychologist Stanley Milgram to research the damage caused by obedience to authority. The results of his electroshock experiments were so shocking that one of his colleagues (psychologist Hans Askenasy) asked: are we all Nazis?

In Milgram's experiment, it turns out that 65 percent of people who blindly obey orders - in this case inhumane - cause innocent victims pain, even death.

"Musíme si pomáhat" indirectly made you think about this conviction, and especially about dilemmas about morality. But, this film made you appreciate the courage to deal with historical problems that have been silent and continue to be silent in the consciousness of the Czech people and many other peoples conquered classically or ideologically.

Cause and effect

So, the history of the Sudetenland shows that every consequence has a cause, and since people are not infallible, then lessons should be learned from the past, so that mistakes are not repeated. The director Hrebejk took such a step, offering a different account of the Second World War, which contradicts the former cinematic clichés, as well as the political and historical perceptions of the peoples of Eastern Europe.

The event in "Musíme si pomáhat" is elaborated on the Josef-David-Horst triangle. Josef is Czech, David is Jewish, while Horst is German. Once upon a time, David's family was what turned Josef into a successful manager, while Horst's family was kept alive during the great economic crisis of the 20s and 30s.

Now things had changed. For Horst, the Jewish Wiener family (David's family) was simply a "superior" family, just like the Nazi Kepke is now. Josefi wants to lead a peaceful life through neutrality and survive the end of the war. Meanwhile, David is unable to take his life in hand, as it depends on the mercy or sacrifice of others.

In the Bible, in the Gospel of Luke, there is talk about the Good Samaritan. The Samaritans originated from the Israelite tribes, but the Assyrian invasion made them separate from the blood people. Throughout history, the Samaritans are despised by the Jews, and the Jews by them.

The David-Josef-Horst triangle is in a similar situation. They belong to three peoples who were connected by a city, a past and a friendship, while today these peoples were united only by hatred. However, many good things also arise in this strange relationship. Each of them is transformed in an instant into a Good Samaritan - in the concept in which today's scholars of Christianity see compassion for others, thus also an allegory for non-discrimination and inter-ethnic harmony.

The triad (the triangle formed by the union of two identical circles), according to the concepts of the ancient Pythagoreans – the supporters of the philosophical and mathematical concepts of Pythagoras – was about wisdom, faith, prudence, friendship, peace and harmony. With this number they also identified unity, balance and the Creator himself, which will later become the symbol of the divine in the Christian faith (trinity from three-unity).

21 grams…

The David-Horst-Josef triangle became a sacred relationship because it saved lives! Well, is there anything more precious than life, and is life worth living?

"This is a question about the embryo, not about the man", the English novelist Samuel Butler would best answer.

Life is not discussed, it is not measured and there is no wealth that buys it. Life is not the 21 gram measure of the urban legend that psychiatrist Duncan MacDougall started at the beginning of the 21th century, according to which in the moments when a person dies, the weight of the body drops by 2003 grams. This claim (which is not based on the application of scientific methods, so it is not accepted by the scientific community) takes an important place only in 21, with the film "21 grams" (21 grams) by the director Alejandro González Inárritu, and with the dilemmas that at the end relate this hypothesis to life: "They say that all of us lose 21 grams at the moment of our death... What is the loss?... How much do we gain?... 21 grams. The weight of a stack of five nickels. The weight of a hummingbird. What is the weight of XNUMX grams”?

When it comes to life, the holy book of the Talmud – of Jewish laws, customs and morals – says that “whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed the whole world; whoever saves a life is considered as if he saved a whole world". In an abbreviated version, this proverb is mentioned in director Steven Spielberg's 1993 film Schindler's List to portray the work of humanist Oscar Schindler.

The Second World War and German-Jewish relations resemble the dyad, the pair that - again according to the Pythagoreans - represents illusion and polarity; the division that avoids us from unity. The German industrialist Oscar Schindler enters this duo, to form the special triangle. He cheats the German system, risking his life; exhausts all wealth by spending millions and millions of marks to save the lives of Jews. In the end, he managed to save one thousand two hundred of them, of whom today there are over seven thousand heirs.

Oscar Schindler is a Good Samaritan, a holy man for the Jewish people, but also a paradox that no psychological theory could correctly unravel: he was a profiteer who earned millions during the war, he carried Nazi symbols that identified evil, he was fun, he drank alcohol, he was corrupt, he was not at all faithful to his wife, while in an instant he decided to spend all the money on the cause he had set for himself: saving the lives of Jewish workers, whom he called " my children".

The good - the bad!

Faith, like history, tends to see things in black and white. Psychological studies carried out in many parts of the world have failed to provide accurate definitions of morality. What may be moral for one people may not be for another (and vice versa). So was Oscar Schindler: a traitor to the German Nazi ideology - the saint of the Jewish people. In the hell that his German people had created under Hitler, Schindler emerged as a savior.

Why did money no longer mean anything to him, and what drove Schindler to become the guardian angel of 1300 Jews?

Schindler has given many explanations to his friends about his humanity. But his biographer Thomas Keneally – although he fails to explain his sacrifice – mentions his Catholic upbringing and very religious parents.

So his humanity can be explained in his strong character and morality, which is also related to divine justice and love, because God is love itself. And, the fear of losing this love, in moments of hopelessness, can be greater than the fear of legal, canonical, dictatorial, lynch law or any other system. This religious belief – whether based on fear or free will – is like a burning candle. And, as the English musician Roger Waters says, "if billions of candles are lit, every dark human mind will be illuminated."

The humanism in the film "Musíme si pomáhat" is based on compassion and moral and religious codes, but it is strengthened by fear. Josef shelters David because he has an empathy for his past, but he regrets it. The initial humanism turns into the burden that Josef is forced to carry for fear that the free David could fall into the hands of the Nazis to whom he would denounce the hosts - him and his beautiful wife Marie. This fear and inability to get out of the situation in which he puts himself, forces Josef to strengthen his friendship with Horst, and even to work for the new "lord" of the city (the Nazi Kepke), transforming himself into one of the most hated people in the Czech neighborhood.

Moments and transformations...

Director Hřebejk does not portray Josef like the former heroes of Eastern European cinema who liquidate an entire German battalion with a single machine gun. He even presents the German occupation of Czechoslovakia - while the great battles were fought on other fronts far away from this country - as a fragile peace filled with many comic situations, where classical heroism is simply a utopian dream.

For the director of this film, there are no good and bad peoples, no precise definitions of patriots and traitors, and no strict models of describing and characterizing people. Thus, the neutral Joseph takes sides as soon as he shelters David; Horst says he is helping Josef out of gratitude for the help he once gave him (hiring him to the Wiener family), but he actually has affection for his wife; Kepke is the father of the hero who had fallen in the battle of Kharkov, Ukraine, but suddenly – when the infant son deserts and is executed by the Germans themselves – turns into a traitor; Deserted David feels good when he is near Joseph's wife; The soft and fragile Maria knows how to be a master of herself; while the evil France that denounces David to the Germans, turns out to be a hero of the Czech resistance!

Such transformations become apparent the moment Marie rejects Horst with the lie that she is pregnant. But, this lie is born at the wrong moment, when the German doctor Fischer (who had "proved" himself by sterilizing hundreds of Roma) informed Josef that he is the cause of why Marie cannot have children. To avoid the revenge of Horst who wanted to house Kepke in their house, Josef asks David and his wife to have sex.

Marie becomes pregnant.

The end of the war is followed by revenge, transformations, washing of sins and repentance, but also by humanity that is based on genuine moral and religious codes. Horst saves Josef and his pregnant wife from the vengeance of the losing German army; Josef saves Horst from the revenge of the Czech and Soviet partisans; while Franta – who when confronted with David is also forced to confront his dubious past – saves himself and the Josef-David-Horst triangle from the new political order of Eastern Europe.

At the end of the film, Josef wanders the war-torn streets with the little baby. Images of murdered Jewish neighbors appear before him. He lifts the baby up, as if to say that the blood does not stop. This scene is accompanied by the aria "God have mercy on our sins" by JS Bach.

The miracle happened: with the help of a German (Horst), Marie gave birth to the child of a Jew (David), whom a Czech (Josef) raises and accepts as his own.

Hallelujah.