A Weak Heart

If your heart is weak, it doesn’t matter if it’s in the right place.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a good or bad hearted person, if you don’t have the courage and strength to act on it. Your intentions are just a direction. Your actions are the distance.

Rudolf Hoess was the commandant of Auschwitz. He oversaw more than 3 million men, women, and children being killed by gas, starvation, and disease.

He claimed until his execution that he never did wrong.

He insisted that he was as a soldier, simply following Hitler’s orders — or he and his family would be executed.

He wrote that not a single one of Hitler’s commandants or SS officers would refuse to kill the Jewish people. Therefore, if he refused, someone would take his place, and identical atrocities would be committed. He would be killed for nothing.

He said it was unfair for people to see him as a monster, because he is a person with a good heart.

Maybe he wasn’t a monster. Maybe he simply became an extension of Hitler’s stronger, evil heart. He was a part of a monster then. In my opinion that precludes him from asking us to remember him kindly.

His heart wasn’t stronger than the fear Hitler instilled in him.

Makes me wonder: How much fear could my heart take?