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Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor who came from the privileged elite. However, as Hitler rose to power in the 1930s, Bonhoeffer chose to align with the marginalized Jews of Germany and speak out against Nazi rule, eventually even planning an assassination attempt on Hitler. His involvement in resistance campaigns and efforts to assist fleeing Jews ultimately led to his arrest and execution, but his compassion for the suffering was captured in a quote from his posthumously published Letters and Papers from Prison: “We must learn to regard people not in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.”

Even in the midst of his own pain at the hands of his Nazi captors, Bonhoeffer developed an ethos of compassion for the individual that transcended his or her actions. Bonhoeffer believed that he and the Nazi soldiers were suffering from the same cruel and violent system and thus chose not to judge them. Rather, he dedicated his life to ending the violence of Nazism that caused individuals to act in such abhorrent ways. By seeking to fight against systems of violence and discrimination and to have compassion for the victims of such systems, Bonhoeffer left a legacy to be emulated by human rights advocates.

I would have to disagree with Bonhoeffer on "Bonhoeffer believed that he and the Nazi soldiers were suffering from the same cruel and violent system and thus chose not to judge them."

What are you trying to convey? That you've taken a history class on WWII?

JustDuke wrote:I would have to disagree with Bonhoeffer on "Bonhoeffer believed that he and the Nazi soldiers were suffering from the same cruel and violent system and thus chose not to judge them."

Not so fast. We all know what to write in PS and DS, but Yale250 is a special sort of punishment. What to write there? Not enough to write about yourself or anything. So the strategy to show your moral ideas (regardless how pretentious they are) by describing some other individual is not so bad. I mean, do you have better ideas?