Atavism and the Lithuanian Holocaust

1941 Nazi propaganda poster in Lithuanian language.
Top: "A Jew is your eternal enemy."
Bottom: "Stalin and Jews -- one big gang of scoundrels!"

I'm excited about our trip to Lithuania this Spring and having been trying to come up with a bucket list for our time in Vilnius. In doing so I read this book: The Hill, by Antanas Jonynas. It is the story of the murder of Dr. Schmidt and his family by his patients and neighbors during the Lithuanian Holocaust. Though he was the only physician in Kraziai and had served the people well, he was a Jew. That was enough.

In June of 1940, the Soviets occupied Lithuania and initiated a redistribution program that seized the land of local farmers, and exiled 36,000 Lithuanians to Siberia and Soviet Central Asia. When the Germans displaced the Soviets in June of 1941 they disbanded the unpopular Soviet programs and won a measure of support from the locals. In place of Soviet programs was a pogrom of ethnic cleansing of Jews in Lithuania.  During the 3 year Nazi occupation 200,000 Jews were murdered with the complicity of the Lithuanians themselves.  This represented 94% of Lithuanian Jews, the highest percentage of any Nazi-occupied country in Europe. When the Red Army returned in 1944, the details of the suffering and injustices heaped upon the Jews were veiled and minimized behind the iron curtain and the Soviet oppression resumed in earnest.*

Antanas Jonynas makes no excuses for the good Christians of Lithuania and the role they played in the murder of their neighbors.  But he did describe the ease with which the nation slipped into complacency and complicity in one of the greatest horrors of the modern era.

Some dark forces were so terribly strong that, once awakened, they created waves that were nearly impossible to resist. If only all people would rise together and say no to violence then everything would stop--the live and burning hearts would restrain and subdue the bloody force all at once. Yet for some reason, the hearts fearfully crouched down and shrank, and people got swept into that wave. A paralysis of conscience, and attack of fear took hold of people and they were unable to resist any longer--and they fell, downed by the wave, or helplessly allowed themselves to be swept away by it. 

This wave of dark violence must have had something devilishly tempting, poisonously attractive, that lured many people and befuddled their minds. What was it? An atavism of the human animal, the revenge of the animal instincts against the centuries-long self-liberation of humanity from their terrible rule? Was it avarice? Was it an orgy of passions that yearned for the most bestial satisfaction and self-defilement?

The Lithuanian Holocaust is hauntingly familiar to the horrible violence that destroyed Nephite civilization at the end of the Book of Mormon. Mormon looked on helplessly as his people were similarly swept away 1500 years earlier:

And it is impossible for the tongue to describe, or for man to write a perfect description of the horrible scene of carnage which was among the people, both of the Nephites and of the Lamanites; and every heart was hardened, so that they delighted in the shedding of blood continually (Mormon 4:11).

It can be very discouraging to look around today and realize that these dark forces still remain strong. The poisons are more attractive than ever. Just as in times past, these forces use the alluring dark arts of fear, intimidation, violence and greed to paralyze conscience. Today people are still being swept away by violence, but also by other atavistic traits of the natural man: lust, idolatry and pride.  King Benjamin's beautiful description of how to halt the degeneration towards godlessness gives me great hope:

For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father (Mosiah 3:19).

Mormon went on to describe how King Benjamin's people succeeded in putting off the natural man and "had no more disposition to do evil, but to do good continually (Mosiah 5:2). Though Mormon's people refused the Balm of Gilead that would heal their wounds, Mormon himself remained optimistic. This unfailing confidence that good will triumph over evil has been fundamental to the message of every prophet that has spoken since. Several years ago when President Hinckley was asked by a Protestant minister about how he felt about things he said:

I feel optimistic--guardedly so, yes, because of the extent of evil in the world. But, on the basis of what I see, goodness is gaining, and the work of the Lord is growing in strength and power.

I hear this optimism burst forth in every General Conference and in every Sacrament Meeting. As we incrementally beat back and subdue the natural man through the atonement, we come to feel this optimism in spite of the carnage all around. It's arguably the only way we can hope to attain peace in a terribly evil world.
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* see an the Preface of this book by it's translator, Yuval Lirov, for an excellent summary of the Lithuanian Holocaust 

Optimism Bias & Hope

I was listening to a radio program on a drive across town a few weeks ago that was about lying (here to listen). The radio hosts interviewed a pair of behavioral science researchers (Harold Sackeim & Ruben Gur) that were studying how people view the world and how honest they were with themselves. Multiple studies have shown that people who see the world exactly as it is--those that are most honest with themselves--tend to be less happy and more depressed. Try as they might, they simply can't see the good in life and are consigned to a existence of half-empty glasses. 

"They see all the pain in the world, how horrible people are with each other and they tell you everything about themselves: what their weakness are, what terrible things they've done to other people. And the problem is, they are right. … We are so vulnerable to being hurt, that we are given the capacity to distort as a gift" (Harold Sackeim).

We've all encountered these pessimists (here and here for related posts), yet fortunately, most people aren't this way. We tend to come into this world with rose-colored glasses.  Humans are instinctively optimistic and hopeful--in spite of the hard reality all around us.  This phenomenon is known as the optimism bias and has been extensively studied by Israeli neuroscientist Tali Sharot at University College London (here for her great TED lecture on this).  

To prove this hypothesis, she asked volunteers to predict their likelihood of having terrible things happen (like getting cancer). The real risk of this is about 30%.  Subjects that guessed their risk to be 50% were pleasantly surprised to learn the truth, and later modified their estimated likelihood of getting cancer to 35% on subsequent questionnaires.  Those that had guessed their risk to be 10% were confronted with the bad news that their estimate was too low. They also changed their answers on subsequent questionnaires, but only from 10% to 11%.  A second example of optimism bias is seen in surveys of divorce lawyers.  Though they know the statistics by heart, they dramatically underestimate their own likelihood of getting divorced (in reality it's 40%--just like everyone else). These kinds of experiments clearly show evidence of the optimism bias. 

In the face of these surprising observations, Dr. Sharot asks a very fascinating question: "Hope isn’t rational, so why are humans wired for it?"  Though Dr. Sharot generally uses the term optimism to describe man's instinctually rosy outlook, it's clear that what she's really describing is an innate sense of hope.* The biologist in me sees it as a product of natural selection--hope that causes us to trudge ahead even when the odds seem awful.** The disciple in me sees it as a necessary gift for us to be happy and develop into the beings God wants us to become.

Sharot goes on to demonstrate two consequences of optimism bias.  Firstly, optimism changes subjective reality: the optimistic person feels better about things. Secondly optimism changes objective reality: things actually go better for the optimistic person.  In her words: "Optimism not only relates to success, it leads to success." These scientific observations rapidly cross over into the realm of things spiritual if we substitute hope for optimism. This is the whole basis of Dieter F. Uchtdorf's talk: The Infinite Power of Hope.

I tend to look at scriptures extolling faith, hope and charity and walk away thinking I need to have stronger faith and be a better example of the pure love of Christ that embodies charity.  Hope becomes the ugly step-sister that is easily forgotten in the company of her companions.  But since we are born with hope, we must truly need it. 

And except ye have charity ye can in nowise be saved in the kingdom of God; neither can ye be saved in the kingdom of God if ye have not faith; neither can ye if ye have no hope.  Moroni 7:21

And if you have not faith, hope, and charity, you can do nothing.  D&C 18:19 

When I see examples neuroscience research uncovering traces of our divine nature, I find it to be incredibly validating. These studies reinforce the gospel doctrine that hope is an essential ingredient for happiness in this life and exaltation in eternity. However, innate hope, like instinctive faith and love, need to be nourished, developed and cultivated. The rudimentary hope we are born with is simply insufficient to form a foundation on which we can stand so as to engage the atonement of Jesus Christ.

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* The contemporary definition of hope is "to desire or to expect with confidence". “Hope” in Scripture means “a strong and confident expectation" that is imbued with a sense of certainty. Scriptural hope is the proverbial "it's in the bag" version of optimism.

**This instinctive optimism was exploited by the Nazis as they used a small number of SS guards to send 800,000 Jews to die in the gas chambers of Treblinka.  Though confronted with evidences of their impending destruction on every side, they passively submitted and died without resistance.  Never have so few murdered so many. It was systematic and scientific exploitation of man's instinctive hope.