Hitler, can you forgive yourself?
My first thought was to run, however, as he made no attempt to harm me in my sleep, I assumed it’d be safe. It’s odd. He seems so peaceful and calm while textbooks have always made him appear cruel.
“Hello?” I whisper.
His gaze grazed mine before falling. There was a certain sadness in his eyes, eyes that told of war, regret, and misery.
“Sir, what are you doing here?” I demand, my voice quivering. It’s not everyday the ghost of one of history’s greatest villians visits you.
“I wish to speak to someone of the pain I’ve felt since my death.”
He wishes to vent... An odd concept. Perhaps humanity has been too harsh on others. They’ve painted an image of Hitler so he is nothing but a monster, but he is equally human as I.
“Okay,” I once promised myself should anyone need to vent, I’d allow them, why should I break it now? “Go ahead.”
Surprise fills his eyes. “The world hates me and my soul is forever tormente by the deeds I committed. I wish to be forgiven but the world depicts me as a monster.”
“The first step to having anyone forgive you, is to forgive yourself.” I decided to keep God out of this as I wasn’t sure if Hitler was a believer. “What you did was horrendous, leaving millions scarred, but that doesn’t mean you’re unforgivable. The next thing to do is to apologize to those you’ve harmed, even if they can’t hear your apology, it’s better than nothing.”
“How do I forgive myself?”
“Answer this, why did you do it?”
“I though I was doing the right thing. I thought the world needed to be cleansed.”
I cleared my throat, “Do you regret it?”
“Yes.”
“Completely?”
“Yes.”
“You know it was wrong, you probably knew your methods were wrong before but believed that by cleansing the world via genocide, you were fixing everything. Correct?”
At first, he said nothing. “Yes, you’re right,” He finally says.
I nodded. “Your intention was to do the right thing however your belief of the right thing was way off. This can make it easier to forgive. However, the process of forgiving anyone, let alone yourself, is hard. Sometimes, you may think you’ve finally forgiven them, but the anger surges another day and you realize you haven’t. It’s more intense when you’re angry with yourself and can’t forgive yourself.”
Hitler was considering my words. It was odd that a long deceased murderer was coming to a teenage girl for advice on forgiveness when she struggled so greatly to forgive herself and the one who broke her.
“Do you think the Jews will ever forgive me?”
“I cannot say. However, forgiveness is not unreachable, it never is. Some may never forgive you but if their god is truly the same as mine and they’re true believers in their god’s commandments, they will.”
“How can you be so sure that forgiveness is unreachable?”
“I may be a teenager but sometimes, teenagers know more than the adults. In today’s world, we experience a lot that our parents and grandparents haven’t. It breaks us but builds us. A lot of teenagers are seeking ways to change things, despite being labeled as lazy. I’m one of those teenagers seeking to fix what’s broken in the world. And one of the first steps to fixing what’s broken is to forgive those that broke it.”
“You are too wise for a teenager though, what broke you to make you this wise?”
“Life, life broke me.”
“And what do you seek to fix?”
I looked at him, “Everything. It’s my fatal flaw, the flaw that will be the end of me. I seek to fix everything when I cannot even repair the fractures in my soul.”
“I hope you can one day fix yourself.”
Me too. “Thanks.”
~
When I woke up, the sun was streaming through the curtains of my room. There was no sign of my ghostly intruder from the night before. Perhaps it’d been a dream, Twenty twenty has been a bizarre year. Perhaps I was finally losing it and dreaming of late night talks with dead people.