Monday 15 April 2024
“Professor, how much longer can you teach this war class? After today’s lesson, I feel… I feel… depressed. If you teach this stuff all the time, how could you not also feel depressed? You must feel worse depression than I do. You must. Now I understand what you told us at the beginning of the semester when you said your wife worries about you teaching this topic. I now worry, too. About you. During our class discussion on Nazi war criminals, I just shut down. What you taught today was horrible… what I mean is… what those Nazi war criminals did and how thought about themselves… and how they excused themselves… and how were they able to say those things they said? At times, I stopped listening to you. I feel bad. I mean… those Nazis committed terrible things, and I had enough of hearing about them. What about you? You’ve had enough, right? Please, Professor, teach another theme next semester. You need to take care of yourself,” a current Spring semester student recently beseeched.
That day’s class presentation consisted of passages from Sönke Neitzel and Harald Welzer’s book, Soldaten: German POWs on Fighting, Killing, and Dying and Rudolf Höss’ Commandant of Auschwitz: The Autobiography of Rudolf Hoess. Soldaten is a collection of transcripts from the eavesdropping recordings of Nazi POWs speaking amongst themselves while being held by the British; they spoke about Hitler, the war, Holocaust, and other topics. Before being executed for his war crimes (Höss was hanged on specially constructed gallows at Auschwitz Camp I) Höss wrote his memoir, in which he both evades and confronts responsibility for his crimes against humanity.
The war criminals in both books emerge from the deepest, most frightening level of the abyss, and their appalling immorality silenced most of my students. For some of my students, these war criminals’ all too real evildoing demonstrated something that their history books only objectively reported, or their previous teachers understandably shied away from informing them. And especially the bluntness of Höss’ disclosures of his antisemitism, of his victimhood and innocence, and of various other shocking revelations unsettled my inquiring student; Höss’ gall depressed her. “Professor, how much longer can you teach this war class,” she repeated.
Speechless, I didn’t know what to say to my student. Her question stupefied me, but it also bedazzled me. As she continued to express her concern, I felt disconnected; my mind shut down. I heard the student’s words, but simultaneously I heard nothing. I wanted to offer a counterargument; however, no thoughts came to mind. I just stood there. Other students witnessed this scene, eager to hear what I would say. Still nothing. She continued, trying to persuade me more emphatically to teach something else; nonetheless, I only heard certain words: “stop,” “no more war,” and “please.”
As I tried to regain consciousness, I looked over the student’s shoulder, and thought I had seen that familiar Nietzschean symbolic figure that haunted me in the past. Somehow [really, how did it?] it emerged from the abyss, again, and taunted me, saying: “She stared right into me, but I’m not staring back at her. I’m staring at you.” My Adversary had returned.
My student’s worry over my mental health was forthright and poignant. In past semesters, other compassionate students similarly counseled me to reconsider teaching this intellectually important but emotionally challenging course on war; however, this current semester student was more insistent and eloquent than previous ones. Her empathy was remarkable. And unlike those past semester students, this current one wasn’t accepting my trite rebuttal.
“Who else is going to teach this topic?” I asserted, ignoring for the moment the Nietzschean menace my unconscious conjured up. The student had none of it. “Why does it always have to be you? Think of yourself,” she advocated. “Absolutely stunning!” I remarked to myself. She continued to make her argument, but I was distracted by the murmurings of that Nietzschean presence. Was it gurgling? Noticing the other professor who teaches in the same classroom I do standing by the room’s doorway, I quickly said, “I know I didn’t answer your question. I will but the next class is waiting for us to leave. We must resume this talk. I mean it.” The student nodded and left the room.
I needed time to compose a suitable reply. She wasn’t going to accept a rhetorically convincing but emotionally deficient rejoinder. I wasn’t going to calculate right there a convincing answer that would persuade this empathetic student. My mind was swimming; I couldn’t think. I was disappointed, too. Her question bewildered but intrigued me. “What an argument she offered, wow,” I muttered. There were other students waiting to speak to me. I led them into the hallway and conducted “office hours.” The Nietzschean figure, too, waited to speak with me.
Leaving the classroom building and walking toward the train station, I still sensed that Nietzschean figure trying to menace me. Dazed, I entered the train car, silently talking to myself. “I didn’t expect that level of sympathy from the student. I didn’t know what to tell her. I just listened. I couldn’t think of anything to say. She’s probably right. Maybe it is time to teach something else. Yes, this stuff is ‘depressing,’ to use her words. Thank God she said what she said because her words demonstrated that her humanity hasn’t been soured by the world’s cynicism. She has empathy,” I mused.
As I sought a stronger counterargument to my student’s petition to find new course themes, thereby discontinuing the war class, that Nietzschean phantom followed me onto the train, and, of course, he became my travel companion. He gurgled again. The abyss wasn’t finished with me.
I stared across the train car and saw my reflection in the window. I looked worn out. Was the abyss staring back more intently? I began to worry. “What’s happening? Why now?” I panicked. The student’s anxiety clearly affected me. “Why didn’t I immediately ease her worry? Why did my thoughts suddenly evaporate?” I cross-examined myself. “And right now, why am I not soothing my own unease about myself?” I added.
For some time, I haven’t battled with the menace I sensed standing near me while talking with the student; after all, I completed writing the Katyn manuscript, and so those philosophical and existential battles were fought while drafting the book last summer, and I thought I had silenced my Adversary. This still murmuring opponent had simply laid dormant. An insight flashed before me: I couldn’t vanquish him; no one can. He returned. It always will be there. I can only sedate him. Another revelation stunned me. My current and ongoing preparation for the manuscript’s revision… could it have awakened him?
Was this Nietzschean behemoth who was still with me on that train car inadvertently unleashed by my student’s existential question? Emerging from its slumber, did it snicker at me as I floundered with no real answer to my student’s inquiry? I felt as though I were a bobfloat, waiting to be pulled under. Naturally I felt my existential lifeline being tugged by that menace and felt a Romantic-poet kind of melancholy darkening my mood; however, I resisted. This metaphysical force wasn’t one I hadn’t encountered before. I knew how to buffer it. Ah, experience!
Another message from my intuition broadcasted itself to my consciousness… a reminder of a mighty safeguard which always protected me and will save me this time. “Before I go home, I will stop by the bakery. And get my favorite hazelnut mousse cake. To enjoy! I will ask the attendant to write something on the cake…. What should I tell them to write? The message from my intuition? Wait… oh, yes,” I said to myself. I repeated what was to be written on the cake. It became my mantra. The thing that lurked deep within the metaphysical abyssal waters warily and slowly swam away, diving into the depths. I chanted my phrase until I reached the bakery. I refused to stop saying it. I didn’t hear that menace’s gurgle. “It’s working,” I said to myself. When I arrived at the bakery, I chose my favorite dessert. “Any writing on it?” the attendant inquired. “Yes,” I replied. I told him my mantra, adding, “In red, please.” The attendant smiled. Soon after, I paid for the cake, and headed home.
I found my wife waiting by the house door. “You’re late. What happened?” she asked. “A student asked a question after class,” I quickly explained. Then I shared the exchange I had with the student, emphasizing that I had no answer to give her. “But why did you go to the bakery,” my wife said, noticing the cake box. “Open it. I thought of an answer to my worried student’s question,” I declared.
“Let’s take a selfie together, and you hold the cake so that the message can be read. We’ll send the photo to the kids. They need to be reminded, too” I proposed. She needed no convincing because she already knew it was the right thing to do. She was happy, too.