I've always been very sensitive to human suffering, but there's something about the second world war that affects me more than other events.
When I was a teenager I read the Anne Frank Diary and later when I visited the house in Amsterdam, I cried all the way through and the house is empty. I saw the Schindler's List when it came out and I was in such shock I could never see it again, even though it's a fantastic movie and I tell everyone to watch it at least once in their lives. When I was in Poland some of my friends went to Auschwitz; I couldn't even think about it. There's no way I would have made it past the front gate without a panic attack.
More recently, I was reading a novel - beautiful story - from that period, but because the story happens in Morocco, I didn't connect the dots straight away and I was half way through the book when I realized it was about WWII. I finished it but it gave me anxiety.
Humans have been doing horrible things to each other since Cain murdered his brother, so I don't know what it is about WWII that triggers me, but I can't seem to find a way to deal with it, other than avoiding the subject, but I wouldn't call that a coping mechanism.
Do any of you have any similar issues? Not necessarily about the war, but something that makes you react so badly?
Seeing something on film or reading about something horrific from history can be unsettling, to be sure. I remember reading some of my dad's books on WW2, although they were strictly from a US point of view. One of the first war movies I was was
To Hell and Back with Audie Murphy. But it didn't really touch upon the Holocaust or even cover much about
why they were fighting the war or who the Germans were. The Germans were just some unknown, unnamed enemy.
I also saw Hogan's Heroes a lot when I was a kid, but that was more of a comedy than anything else. In that show, Germans and Nazis were just portrayed as silly buffoons, though the show did get criticism for making light of WW2.
In later years, I studied the history in greater detail - although I was focused on current geopolitics as well.
The TV adaptations of Herman Wouk's "Winds of War" and "War and Remembrance" were quite good. Herman Wouk also wrote "The Caine Mutiny," which was more about the ship and crew than about the war itself.
I guess there are lots of things about the world, both historically and in the present, which do bother and disturb me. Humans are a strange species - capable of great achievements and works of great beauty, along with utter barbarity and atrocity. We're both good and evil. Makes no sense.
All I can really say is that if I had to make a choice, I'd rather die on dry land than on or in water. Some movies I've seen about submarine crews on board a sinking sub...that's definitely not the way I want to go. At least on dry land, if someone is going to shoot me, I might be able to run away. If captured, I might be able to escape. If I'm a plane, I might be able to parachute out. But if on a submarine 500 feet below the surface - where ya gonna go? That thought really does frighten me. I'll never get inside a submarine.
