Wise Up!
Good Deeds
By David Bruce
Athens NEWS Contributor
March 24, 2008
• Even during very bad times, very good things can happen. When Budapest, Hungary, was under siege near the end of World War II, 15-year-old Christine Arnothy, her parents, and a few other families lived in the cellar of a building that was occasionally bombed. These families took in a young man and a young woman who were the only survivors in their group. A Hungarian soldier named Pista helped take care of the families by finding food for them; he also did other good deeds for the families, such as finding a priest to say Mass. In addition to saying Mass for them, the priest heard their confessions and gave them advice.
Christine told him, “I don’t want to die, Father. I am only 15, and I am horribly afraid of death. I want to go on living.” The priest replied, “The fate of our bodies matters very little. The death we fear so much is only a deliverance: the moment when the soul escapes from its bodily prison to enter into eternity. And God loves us so much, my child! He welcomes us with infinite love!”
In addition, the priest married the young man and the young woman, who loved each other very much. Despite the severe hardships and the severe privations — including lack of food — of the families living in the cellar, one person gave the young married couple a glass of wine and another person gave them an orange. The young married couple did not keep the orange but gave it to a mother to feed her child. Pista also searched for food to feed the child. He died when a mine went off, but his sack was taken to the cellar. When the mother opened the sack, she found three cans of condensed milk and exclaimed, “Milk for my baby! He won’t die of hunger!”
• Eva Hecht survived Auschwitz. She entered Auschwitz when she was 16 years old, and she and the other 1,200 female inmates in Barracks #9 were looked after by a red-haired, 20-year-old Slovakian woman named Alice, who warned them not to fall for the tricks of Dr. Josef Mengele. Dr. Mengele would enter the barracks, and he would ask the ill and the pregnant to step forward, saying that he would give them the medical treatment they needed. However, anyone who stepped forward was sent instead to the crematoria, where their ashes escaped Auschwitz by rising with the heat through the chimney. Whenever any girls fell for the tricks of Dr. Mengele, Alice would beat them and tell them, “To you, nothing matters anymore! Tonight, you will escape through the chimney!” Alice was not a sadist. Alice was actually doing a good deed — she beat these girls to impress upon the other girls that they must not fall for the tricks of Dr. Mengele. She frequently told the girls, “Each day you survive this hell, you are one day closer to freedom.”
• During the Holocaust, heroes such as Raoul Wallenberg and Oskar Schindler saved thousands of lives. Other people saved fewer lives; for example, Leonard Glinski saved one life in Poland. He noticed a 14-year-old Jewish girl staying in the apartment of his boss. Having a Jew staying in your apartment was dangerous, as helping a Jew was punishable by death. If the Nazis should learn that a Jewish girl was staying there, both the girl and Mr. Glinski’s boss would have been killed. Mr. Glinski worked in an underground Resistance group, and he was able to get false papers for the girl, whose name was Alina Pottock, and he helped her go to Vienna, where she survived the war. After the war ended, he reunited her with her uncle and her father. When Mr. Glinski met her at her uncle’s home after the war had ended, he says, “She hugged me so hard I almost couldn’t breathe.” In 1985, she petitioned Yad Vashem, which recognizes the Righteous Among the Nations, to give him a medal. The medal bears a quotation from the Talmud: “Whoever saves one life, saves the whole world.”
• Rosemary, one of British columnist Michele Hanson’s friends, noticed a young homeless woman on the street, trembling with cold, and begging for money to buy a hot cup of tea. A kind person, Rosemary bought the young homeless woman tea and food and even took her shopping — until the young homeless woman tried to shoplift meat. Rosemary then took the young homeless woman home so she could sleep in a bed. While the young homeless woman was sleeping, Rosemary tried to find a shelter that would take her — but Rosemary had no luck due to a lack of adequate social services. Eventually, Rosemary had to leave, so she worked very hard to wake up the young homeless woman. Rosemary begged, “Wake up, wake up. Please wake up. Why won’t you wake up?” Finally awake, the young woman replied, “Because it’s a bed.” Later, Rosemary discovered that the young homeless woman had stolen her new camera. Would Rosemary take another person like the young homeless woman home again? The answer is yes. Why? Someone has to.
• Can a hit-man do a good deed? Yes. When Angelina Jolie was a young actress enrolled in film school in New York, she became depressed and decided to hire a hit man to murder her, believing that if she committed suicide directly, it would be hard on her family and friends. However, when she contacted the hit-man, he advised her to wait a month and then call him if she still wanted his services. One month later, Ms. Jolie was no longer depressed and she did not call the hit-man.
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