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Reflections Forgiveness With difficult, at times horrible experiences finally behind them, the former prisoners faced many challenges as they attempted to put their lives back together . One of the more complex challenges was to deal with their feelings toward those who had been their captors—individual guards or prison camp officials, as well as German and Japanese people in general. Men grappled with the question: what about forgiveness? More than a few ex-prisoners, sixty years later, still harbor bad feelings toward their former captors. As one former POW of the Germans put it, “I guess I still hate them. . . . It’s still there [inside me].” For others, the question is more complex—and the answers, too. Arnold Sprong says he has negative feelings only about some Germans. He makes a careful distinction between those on the other side. I have a bad feeling about Nazis, and so on and so forth. But the German people, they got caught up in something. A lot of it wasn’t really their fault, I think. They just . . . they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and they were in trouble, and some guy [Hitler] was going to give them what they thought they needed, and it ended up being a bad thing. Reuben Weber relied on his faith to deal with residual anger he felt for an especially abusive guard at his camp, II-A Neubrandenburg. One day, not long after his return, he was working the fields on the family farm in Hillsboro , North Dakota. I was out cultivating corn with a single-row cultivator, team of horses. I was out there in the field all by myself, and I got to thinking about this guy, and it made me so angry that I started slapping the horses. Then I 260 H H H H H H H H H H H H H realized, hey, those poor horses are working hard. That’s no way to treat them. Then I thought, what am I going to do? Am I going to go over to Germany and see if I can prosecute this clown, or what? I thought that wouldn’t sound like a very smart idea either. Then I realized I’d have to do something to get him off my mind. So I forgave him. I got to the end of the row, and I said the Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” And that did it. After that, didn’t bother me then. For some men, this theme of forgiveness was more nuanced, with evidence of conflicting emotions. As Dick Carroll explores his feelings, it’s clear the matter still is a complex one. Bitterness . . . at first I hated them. But I soon found out that that was really not helping me at all. I then began to hate the system that would provide that sort of treatment. But as far as the people are concerned, do you condemn them all? How guilty is this one versus this one versus this one? We know the SS were completely . . . real bad, right? But then how about the Wehrmacht [German Army]? Some of them treated us very decently . They protected us. Kept us from being killed. Literally. Each day the hatred dies down. You realize that it’s wasteful to hate and that it’s more constructive to do something about it. But you can hate the system that provides for that sort of treatment. For example, I don’t hate the Germans or the Japanese, because I know the Japanese treated us worse as POWs than the Germans did. But I know that if I were a Russian, the Germans would have treated me quite different than the way they treated me. So, you know, you have all these relationships and . . . that’s why I say, before you get into hatred, my attitude is no, I don’t hate them. But would I buy a German or a Japanese car? Why should I? Because, did the Germans or the Japanese ever apologize for their treatment of POWs? I haven’t heard it. For Pacific POW Al Kopp, his view of the Japanese is also more than a black and white issue. On the one hand, there is bitterness. I disliked them very intensely [when we were liberated]. I had the feeling you should never trust them ever again because they were just not trustworthy . They lied and cheated...

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