In The Tattooist of Auschwitz, Lale Sokolov has the morally excruciating job of tattooing numbers on the arms of fellow prisoners entering Auschwitz-Birkenau. The work grants him marginal privileges and protections. At the same time, it makes him part of a system designed to dehumanize and destroy.
Why begin a holiday message with a reference to horrors of the Holocaust? Partly because the book is, at its core, about love and hope. But more than that, it is about courage, which is something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately.
Lale lives with constant doubt. Am I doing the right thing? What do I owe others? Will I be able to live with my choices? He is not alone. Nearly every significant character in the story is forced to confront decisions that blur boundaries: between survival and sacrifice, selflessness and self-preservation, and caution and bravery. Like Lale, prison kapos were granted special privileges to “supervise” other inmates yet often accepted bribes to help them. And what are we to make of SS guards like Baretski, the one assigned to Lale, who broke ranks to spare some prisoners while coldly murdering others? Or of Cilka, forced to “comfort” the camp commandant and later charged as a Nazi conspirator?
Most of us (though, unforgivably, not all) live far removed from the brutal extremes of Auschwitz. But that doesn’t mean we are free from moral complexities. Our dilemmas may be less visible, but they are no less real. It is always more convenient to look away than to speak up, but at what cost? What risks are we willing to take when confronting injustice, especially when those risks extend beyond ourselves to our families, our colleagues, or the organizations we lead or depend on?
I’m especially interested in situations in which the benefits of taking action are more diffuse and don’t arrive until well into the future, while the risks are more personal and immediate. How much courage does it take for each of us to take bigger steps to fight climate change when the beneficiaries are future generations? Or to protect the rights of people in far-away countries making the products we buy? What steps do we need to take today (how courageous does each one of us need to be) to prevent the atrocities of the Holocaust from ever recurring, anywhere? “Niemals vergessen!” as Germans say.
These shouldn’t be just abstract questions, they should show up in our daily work with business and higher education, in our civic engagement with communities, and in the small decisions we make every day. It’s not easy. One of the difficulties with big challenges, such as protecting our rights and planet for future generations, is understanding how our beliefs translate into specific and meaningful actions and decisions we (ordinary people like me) have the capacity to make.
The holidays are often a time to pause and take stock, not only of what we’ve accomplished, but also of the choices we’ve made and the values behind them. It is also a time to think about what we need to do differently moving forward. For me, The Tattooist of Auschwitz is a reminder that courage is a daily consideration and is rarely simple and straightforward. And it is a reminder about what can happen if we are not courageous enough to step up sooner.
Courage may not be about having all the answers, but it is about not looking away. It is about paying attention when something feels wrong. It is about acting, even imperfectly, in ways we can live with, that consider the future as much as the present and that appreciate and preserve dignity for all.
As this new year approaches, my hope is that each of us takes a moment to reflect on what courage means in our own lives, given our circumstances and our values, and with consideration of our shared future. Let’s each find ways, large or small, to be more courageous in the year ahead—and for the decades that follow.