History Repeats—A Picture of Hell
"La Vita è Bella"; human nature
Warning: this post contains spoilers for the movie La Vita è Bella/Life is Beautiful.
John and I had a conversation about the Holocaust recently (prompted by a book he had read).1 It got me thinking. The story of the Holocaust has always terrified me in a way that things rarely do. An entire group of human beings hiding in attics and basements, in freezing-cold barns, in back alleys. Families subsisting on the kindness of strangers, often without enough food. Without any security—at any moment, they could be betrayed, or raided by the Nazis. At any point they could be imprisoned, sent to a camp in which they knew they would probably die. And they were a population in mourning. Everyone had someone taken from them. People just like you and I—good people who hadn’t done anything wrong, who lived normal lives—were suddenly on the lam, running and hiding from a governmentally-sanctioned manhunt against their very kind, something they could not control. It is the stuff of nightmares. No, even that is an understatement. None of my nightmares have ever come close to this. We often use the word ‘inhumane’ to describe such atrocities. The word implies that to be ‘humane’ is to be good and kind, that human beings have a nature that separates us from such shocking maltreatment. It implies that when we act in the way that the Nazis did, we are acting against our true nature. We do not deserve such a term of endearment. This horrific genocide was engineered by us. And there have been others like it. Sure, there is a part of us that is appalled by stories of horrific cruelty. But all of these stories tell the actions of humans.
In high school, I watched a movie: La Vita e Bella (or, in English, Life is Beautiful). We watched it over the course of three days in my Italian language class. It was the ideal watching scenario. I had no prior knowledge of the movie, and while I enjoyed watching it, I didn’t have enough interest in it to look it up outside of class. Therefore, I went in blind. If you’ve never seen the film, I suggest you stop reading right now and do the same. Still, its presence in this essay would likely tip you off to the fact that there is something unusual about this movie. I had no such awareness. For the entire first day that we watched the film, I thought that we were watching a fun, heartwarming romantic comedy. The protagonist was an endearing and funny man living a normal life. He pursued and eventually married a beautiful woman who he adored, they got married, had a son. Then, out of nowhere, came the punchline. Our charming protagonist was Jewish, and as his love affair was unfolding, so was World War II. And one day, seemingly out of nowhere, the family was shipped to a concentration camp.
While it is nearly impossible to go into a movie blindly these days, I think that the filmmakers intended for this movie to be watched this way—for the viewer to be completely blindsided, caught up in the minutiae and the joy of daily life, just like the characters onscreen. This fosters a greater attachment. We do not allow ourselves to love the characters in tragedies as fully as we do the ones in comedies. We know they are going to die, so we steel ourselves. But what about a comedy turned tragedy? Such a thing catches you off guard. Perhaps this is why the beginning of this movie is so ‘light.’ To juxtapose, and to deceive. This may even be why the movie is titled Life is Beautiful.
Or is it?
Despite the horrors that it depicts—a family being ripped apart, a country being ripped apart, fear, hatred, violence, murder, starvation—there was a lot of hope and a lot of beauty in this story. A father who would do anything to protect his son, who maintained a brave, lighthearted demeanor when faced with death, all to keep his son calm. He ended up giving his life to save him, a tragic yet beautiful testament to human goodness. There were other things, too. The son was reunited with his mother—as happy an ending as one can hope for in a movie about the Holocaust. There was young love, a loving, happy family. There is profound tragedy. But you cannot argue that the story lacks beauty. Is that the message—that life is both, and that one’s perception of it is dependent on perspective? Or is Life is Beautiful some sick form of irony?
I’ve often heard it said that ‘history repeats.’ I firmly believe in the principle, and consider it to be one of the few certain universal truths. It’s represented extensively in mythology, and the idea makes sense. We will always be what we are: imperfect beings trying our best. How could it be any other way? ‘Human nature’ is what it is. We do not expect other animals to act outside of their nature. We expect bees to pollinate and make honey, spiders to build webs, lions to hunt and cows to graze. Our expectations of these creatures are fixed. How could we be so arrogant as to think that our own nature is somehow malleable?2 We will always be tempted to sin, will always be attracted to things that are bad for us and the people around us. We will always fall in love, make children we would die for. We will always be optimistic, and dream of a better world. And what exemplifies the best in us will often evoke our worst. Our passion can become murderous. Genocides often stem from a corrupt utopian ideal. We cannot change any of this; it is who we are.
What, then, do we make of the Holocaust? We are obviously morally revolted by this event. Comparing someone to Hitler is the worst insult that we have. ‘Evil’ seems too tame a word to describe what he did. But Hitler was a man, no matter how tempting it is to conceptualize him as some preternatural ‘boogeyman.’ And he did not act alone. The Nazi ideology was a contagion that warped everyone it touched. It spread like wildfire, turning peoples’ rational minds to jelly using fear, misguided hope, and false virtue. Those who it influenced were illogical servants, convinced of their own righteousness despite their actions’ objective immorality. It may be tempting for us to place the blame on the ideology, then, and not the men who killed in its name. Indeed, it brought out the worst in everybody, but it provoked only what the individuals themselves were always capable of. The Nazis themselves, of course, were convinced to believe that exterminating Jews3 was the key to German excellence. Many civilians were also complacent, and left their fellow man to die because they did not want to be next in line to the gas chambers. Even the victims themselves, robbed of all camaraderie and generosity by their desperate circumstances, became ruthless.
In our conversation, Will and I acknowledged that there have been other genocides. We questioned why the Holocaust was the only one that we knew anything about. We hypothesized that it was because it was a Western genocide, one we could ‘relate’4 to. My own grandfather fought in World War II. We’re from New York; we share our city with survivors. It hits close to home, reminds us that something like this can happen to us. However, even scarier is the fact this genocide was neither the first nor the last. Even now, I've heard of concentration camps in China. They probably exist other places, too. I hope that it is on a lesser scale, but who knows? I’m sure the American public hoped the same thing about the Nazis at the start of the war, before their country got involved, when they vaguely knew that something bad was happening in Europe but did not care enough to stop it. Why would they? It would mean terror and loss for them, too. It was not their fight. Can you blame them? But if the world hadn’t eventually cared, we’d see Swastikas lining the streets right now. If the world hadn’t eventually cared, there would be no Jewish survivors left to tell their stories. This brings up a slightly more optimistic point. We are heinous, but we are also brave.
Yes, I think history does repeat. Civilizations ebb and flow, from the time they’re born until the time they prosper until the time they burn out and crumble. This fate claimed Ancient Greece and Rome, and is inevitably awaiting us as well, whether we try to slow our demise or whether we speed up, crash, and burn. Isn’t this terrifying? Safety is an illusion. Life is a delicate balance, and we are helplessly trying to find that ‘sweet spot’ between nothingness and atrocity. We cannot avoid evil. We will all see pain in our lives, although some of us are far luckier than others. But this ‘history repeats’ maxim implies that there is always good around the corner, also. After the fall of Rome comes the birth of a new civilization. Such optimism is probably unconvincing to a person in mourning, a victim of such stunningly human depravity. I’m not sure how to reconcile this, especially without sounding callous. Is it sufficient to imply that there is something waiting for us after we die? Something better? And even if a life ends tragically, does that make it any ‘lesser’ of a life? A work of art is not considered ‘lesser’ if it upsets us. Quite the contrary—its beauty lies in its tragedy. Perhaps we can view life in the same way. Maybe ‘La Vita e Bella,’ in spite of its horrors and because of them.
Or maybe ‘history repeats’ really is as claustrophobic and hopeless as the worst of humanity can make it seem. Either way, it doesn’t matter. The world we live in will remain the same. So cross your fingers and be kind. Hell on Earth could happen to anyone, even us. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. The world will keep turning either way. After every nightfall there is a dawn waiting to rise, and sunsets are quite vibrant if you catch them from the right angle.
Let’s start a dialogue. What are your thoughts on this film, this tragic period of history, and the human capacity for evil?
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The graphic novel Maus by Art Spiegelman.
Well, I assume that this is because arrogance is one of our eternal human shortcomings.
I admit my ignorance regarding the vast extent of crazy atrocities that went on during this time. I’ve heard about barbaric medical experiments (which remind me of the worst type of ‘playing God’). I’m unsure how much deeper it goes than this.
As much as is possible, of course, for two people who have never been through anything nearly as terrible.