"A scene from the movie Schindler’s List began to roll
through my mind. The story of Oskar Schindler, a Gentile businessman in Nazi
Germany who saved the lives of more than a thousand Jews by breaking the law to
keep them working in his factories. In a powerful scene at the end of the
movie, Schindler is being thanked for what he has done by a crowd of those he
has rescued—just before he flees for his own life. The grateful Jews present
him with a ring on the inside of which is inscribed a saying from the Talmud:
“Whoever saves one life saves the world entire.”
But, distressed, Schindler says, “I could have got more out.
I could have got more. I don’t know…if I had just…I throw away so much money.
You have no idea. I didn’t do enough.” He looks at his car. “Why did I keep the
car? Ten people right there.” He pulls out a pin from his lapel. “This pin.
This is gold. Two more people…and I didn’t. I didn’t.” And then he collapses
into tears, overcome by the realization not of all that he did do, but that the
pin in his lapel was apparently worth more to him than the lives of two people.
This moment, sitting at that table in Thessaloniki with
those women so recently saved from slavery yet still so devastated, was my
Schindler’s List moment. It was my moment of wondering what, in my life, had
been my golden pin like Schindler’s, the thing so precious to me that it never
occurred to me to use it to ransom the life of someone else. Whoever saves one
life saves the world entire. I would not offer excuses."
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