Philosophy, Morality, and Fear

But I watched a movie the other night called Irina's Vow, and there was...

And I've seen, I've seen lots of movies about World War II, primarily the Nazis trying to cleanse the earth of everybody Jewish.

Somehow that was gonna make them superior.

But there was a scene in it, sort of a duplex of a scene, that has just stayed with me because of the moral impact, the philosophical impact, and how the philosophical and the moral sort of smashed against each other in the final decision that was made.

So I decided, I gave it great thought whether or not to bring it up on the program, but I decided it was such an important concept of the philosophical and the moral up against each other.

So it takes place in Poland in the '40s when the Germans have taken over most of Poland.

And Irina is a Polish lady who is, like everybody else there at the time, caught up in the middle of all of this.

And with her talents and, you know how smart she is, and she's a very sweet woman, as it turns out, but you could tell early on.

And she's doing work serving food and stuff, living in one of the villas that the Nazis, the German SS, and the rest of them took over.

And one major in particular decides he needs to move to another place, so he asks her to be the housekeeper.

There are 12 Jewish people who are in the basement of this place who are tailors.

Not one of them knows how to sew, which is making a problem.

But they're tailors, ostensibly, and she finds out that in several days that they're gonna take all 12 of these people, two of them are couples, and send them off to camps and kill them and put some Polish people in there.

She's thinking about what to do, because if you help anybody Jewish, you and your family for 16 generations will be murdered.

And they have a scene where they have two families, a mom and dad and some little kids, and they hang them because they helped Jews.

Well, this became a big negative.

But as she's watching that, they're scurrying people about, and this one woman is holding an infant.

And everybody's been shoved through this street, and she's screaming and crying, "Please, you know, don't hurt my baby." And it's just a baby.

And one of the German soldiers, a colonel, I think, takes the baby, pretends he's going goo-goo-goo, raises his arms, and smashes the baby into the cobblestone street, and then with his booted foot smashes down on the baby's head, completely flattening it.

The mother is on her hands and knees.

Her baby's head is just all over the place.

Crying, crying, crying, and then he shoots her.

Now, Irina is watching this and makes a vow to herself that she's going to save as many people from these animals as she can.

So she pretends to be a good housekeeper, gets scurries all these 12 Jewish people one place and then another, and just protects them for the longest time.

Now, the moral philosophical part comes out where these 12 people are living in a sub-basement, and she's protecting them and bringing them food and what have you.