“Now it comes down to us, to our compass for good and evil. As if we never do otherwise, we take in refugees and send weapons. Justice must win here. And yet there are the opposing forces. Also in our country. In the name of that right, companies support sanctions against the aggressor, but in the meantime ask the ministry whether they should not be an exception. That ministry also supports the sanctions, but in the meantime succeeds moderately in executing them,” says Goedkoop.
He states that each of us must “remember civilization.” “Now that we are establishing with a new eye what is not allowed, it appears that we are stuck with rules and routines that pretend to be the law, but lack the spirit of it. You don’t even need the banality of evil – Nazism. Is that how we want to proceed? And if not, are we going to do something about it?” he asks.
moral compass
In his lecture, Goedkoop focused mainly on the moral compass that the Jewish lawyer and writer Abel Herzberg displayed in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. He and a number of fellow inmates, including lawyers, opened a court that tried once a week. Herzberg wanted to use this to remind his fellow inmates of civilization. “Even in camp life in 1944 it turned out to be possible not to resign yourself to the circumstances and to give yourself an assignment. Determine what is not allowed and live by it.”
According to Goedkoop, Herzberg saw impressive examples of this in the camp: “A rabbi, for example, who is constantly beaten up by camp guards because of his rabbi’s beard. Shave off anyway, everyone says. It does not work. Or a schoolmaster who, despite hunger, leaves his soup behind, because it is not according to the dietary laws. Eat up, everyone says. He damned it.”
“They are people who will never cross their own boundary between what is allowed and what is not allowed. They know it would make their lives easier and do their bodies good. But not their souls, they would lose it, and you see Herzberg recognize that. He finds a similar principle. Not in God but in the law – and he also absolutely sticks to that, no matter how tough the camp gets,” said Goedkoop.