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doberbutts · 9 months ago

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Recently Youtube's algorithm really wants me to watch Schindler's List and I never had so the other night I sat down and actually watched it.

Having a lot of thoughts about it but a major one I keep coming back to is how even an immensely and deeply flawed human being can go against "just following orders" and instead put in the work to actually help.

It may never be fully enough. It may never save as many as you'd hoped. But when you have a choice to either follow orders or save your fellow humans in front of you, I hope you choose the latter.

Schindler died in poverty. He was not a renown war hero nor was he at all famous or widely beloved. But he saw that he could help, even in some small way, and so he helped.

He was a Nazi who saw what the Nazis were doing to Jews and said no more. Enough. If I can even spare those under my charge, maybe a few extras, then at least I will have tried to do something about this.

I think a lot of people do not fancy this type of activism. It is messy, dangerous, and often completely thankless. Schindler survived as long as he did after the war due to those he saved helping him with donations. He was not popular in his hometown due to his association with Nazis, he was not popular in Germany, he was not popular in Argentina. His businesses all failed. His wife left him. A movie about his deeds was released several years after his death, where he would receive none of the benefits. He went to prison multiple times for simply refusing to hate Jews.

I think a lot of people like to think they're activists, but are sorely unprepared for doing this type of work, and then in truth become activists in name only. This is hard work. But without him, another thousand or so people would be on that death toll.

He took his position of extreme power- a Nazi owning a factory almost entirely operated by Jews, making oodles of money off that cheap slave labor- and said you know what? No. I'm not doing that. I can't save everyone, but as long as they are within my factory, you will not kill my workers. As long as I'm here you aren't harming one hair on the head of any Jew under my care. You're not sending or keeping them in Auschwitz. You're not randomly executing them for entertainment. They're people. You're not murdering them.

"Just following orders" they say. But they didn't have to. They could have helped. They could have did what he did, look around and say "what the fuck am I doing here", and stop. He did. They could have. They didn't.

#I think it's also intereating that he did not do it out of compassion at first #he did it because it was smart capitalism #jewish labor was super cheap and they were desperate to be considered fit to work because otherwise execution was waiting for them #only after the cleansing of the ghetto did he say whoa okay holy shit yeah no I'm not doing this anymore #that's also true of the real man the movie is about #I also think it's interesting that not everyone he saved thinks he was a good person #but even still despite his flaws they respect and admire what he did for them #his motives were not always pure #but the fact of the matter is that when he saw what was happening he chose to act against it #he did not shrug and saw welp orders are orders #nor did he succumb to hopelessness when it became difficult to keep up what he was doing

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rainintheevening · 1 month ago

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Part I - Part II ... Part XVIII - Part XIX

It hurts to see Peter hurting.

More than the state of their city (still theirs), more than the shattered buildings (he imagines the inferno of Christmas with a little shiver), even more than the dark smudges under their mother's eyes (he and Susan make all the meals during the holidays), it's Peter who wrenches at his heart, ache welling behind Ed's sternum.

He sees how Peter yearns for a sword, an enemy, a way to make all the brokenness around them right. More than sees, though, Edmund knows.

Knows the hunger that eats at the back of the throat, the way a single page in the newspaper swamps security like a tidal wave, the helplessness that weighs shoulders and hands till falling to fury or despair seem the only choices available. Hunger and helplessness had been his old play-fellows, back Before, and now he finds their heads reared again, but he also finds himself too taken up with watching over his brother to pay much attention to them. He forgets himself in his concern for Peter.

Peter does not cry again, not that Edmund sees or hears at least. He sleeps little, laughs less.

The girls too are shaken by the alterations to what had once been their world, but Lucy laughs more than she cries, and Susan steps easily into the motherly role.

Peter does all the shopping. In the span of their three weeks holidays, he also fixes all the bicycles in the garden shed, digs up the whole bed of the Victory garden, mends two broken chairs and a chest of drawers, takes a broken clock to pieces (Ed is the one who finds the problem), and fights four different boys, two of them more than once.

Many of the children who had stayed through the whole of the bombing are quick to sneer at those who did not.

“As if we chose to go!” Edmund complains.

“Cowards,” hisses Daisy Moore as she passes them in the churchyard, and her brother laughs.

“Got scared by a few rockets, and left your poor mother all alone in her shelter, listening to us all burn?”

Ed does not relax his grip on Peter's arm until Daisy and Danny have disappeared, until the tremble of taught muscles under his hand has melted away, until the growl has died in Peter's throat.

“Look,” Ed says with forced lightness, guiding Peter toward the street where Lucy leans against a small tree, singing to herself. “I know it was terrible, but there's no call for talking like that. It might make you feel better for a moment, but it makes someone else feel horrid for awhile, so it's definitely a sum-total loss.”

Peter does not answer.

The next day he and Susan come home from a walk, and his sleeve is torn and there is blood on his knuckles.

“They insulted Susan,” is all he says to Edmund in the mirror, bent over, washing wounded hands.

Edmund is glad when they go back to school.

At St. Maurice’s, Peter's responsibilities are clear, he's respected, he has the wide open sky and the wild moors to ride over.

They step off the train at the village station, and Ed sees him breathing deep, smiling at Colin's enthusiastic greeting, leaping to catch a stolen cap and prolong a wild chase along the platform.

Ed joins Peter very early for a ride the next morning, slapped awake by the cold wet May air, but he sees the light in Peter's eyes, the way he greets each horse in turn, and Ed strokes Rose's neck, tickles under her chin as he smiles himself.

“Perhaps he'll be alright.”

But then this term Wollers is gone, graduated, good, steady old boy off to the war, and the new Head Boy ticks Peter off twice in the first week for ‘interfering’, slaps Alexander Morrow in Ed's form with a hundred lines (in French!) for cheeking him in the hall, and generally does his best to let everyone know he's in charge, while also making everyone hate him for it.

Ed hates it, especially for Peter's sake, when Peter's only a year younger and also named head of the Sixth Form. A few weeks in, Peter joins Ed on the way in to lunch, and his brow is drawn low over still-smouldering eyes, jaw set in a hard line.

“Beaumont”, he says, without preamble. “Trying to tell me what to do about Gilly when it's a Sixth Form matter. Now who’s interfering?”

“Not you,” Ed says mildly, watches Peter's shoulders drop, watches him exhale. “Just don't give him the satisfaction of marking you up for anything,” he adds.

“I know, I know,” Peter sighs. “Jolly well wish I could box him, but I can't unless he starts it. I don't know why they chose him.”

At least Pete has rugger to shine at, Ed thinks. Peter had sat his Junior Cert at the end of last term (and passed with Credit or Distinction in all subjects, which Ed is very proud of him for) so he's more relaxed with his own studies, making time for more tutoring of the young ones, and making the rugby team.

Edmund tries out for the Junior team, gets named a spare. He knows he's not strong, but he is fast, and slippery.

A letter from Dad comes, forwarded from Mum, and it is cheerful, telling them things they already know about the successes in North Africa, expounding on his work learning Arabic, giving a brief written sketch of the desert sunset that strikes up vividly at them like heat from the sand till Edmund can see it as clearly as the view west from Tashbaan.

Peter is quiet though, broody for days after. Ed watches, wonders, worries.

Three months and Peter will be 17, a year off of signing up. Sometimes Edmund is certain Peter would have already gone, fudged his age and signed his name; he doesn't doubt they would take a strapping youth like Peter with very few questions. But he'd promised Mum, and Peter Pevensie is not a promise-breaker.

He's also not the only one hurting, not the only one missing Dad, missing Narnia, but Ed doesn't like to worry his brother, doesn't want to add to the concerns Peter carries.

There are questions sitting somewhere in his stomach, and he tries to ignore them, but they've grown heavier over the days, weeks, months. Time ticking by, another spring, and something about the sunrises, the green flush racing across the quad, rising in the victory garden, the apple trees by the stables bursting into bloom, it makes the longing flare bright in him.

As always the memories stay hazy, sometimes fearfully so, only brought back in sharp relief, a cleared streak in fogged up glass, in odd moments. Ed thinks there's a pattern in it—when a lie hovers on the tip of his tongue, he hears Oreius's voice; when Peter turns with an angry word, he remembers tense council rooms; when an apology fails to melt Edmund's own shame, he sees Tumnus's face. But there are smaller, less specific flashes too, and one day, hard at work with the violin in one of the practice rooms, he gets lost in the music, notes dancing under his fingers, spinning, swooping, diving, soaring, and he plays and plays and plays until he coasts to a halt, stands breathless and a little dizzy, feeling exactly as he had after his first real flight on the back of a gryphon, and his hand on the bow grips involuntarily tighter, as if feathers and fur are slipping through his fingers.

“Oh, don't stop.”

A hoarse whisper making Ed spin round, but it is only Peter leaning in the doorway, yearning writ large across his face, until their eyes meet and it twists into sorrow.

Only then does Edmund realise his cheeks are wet, and he pivots quickly back, lays the violin down gentle, deliberate.

Peter says nothing, but he comes across the room, stands close behind, close enough that Ed decides he doesn't care, and turns, falls into Peter's chest.

Arms wrap strong around him, smile bunches the cheek that presses against his head, but still Peter says nothing, and Edmund is glad. Just for a minute he hides his face in his big brother's shoulder, and lets himself cry. Peter holds him, safe and tight, and he stays, sniffling into Peter’s vest, until Peter says, “It sounded like Narnia. What was it?”

Ed sighs, pulls away to scrub a sleeve across his nose. “I don't know. It just sort of… came over me. Or out of me. Or to me– I don't know.”

Slow grinning pride breaks across Peter's face. “So you're a composer now too!”

And Ed must needs shove him away, rolling his eyes. “I didn't exactly write it down, so I'll probably never be able to play it again.”

“That doesn't change how beautiful it was,” Peter says, hopeful and true like Edmund needs him to be.

He fingers the violin strings, plucking them gently, tick tock tick tock tick, and he says it quiet.

“It's been about ten years. In Narnia. Without us. If the time difference between the professor's visit and ours is consistent.”

“Corin will be a man,” Peter murmurs in the surprised tone of grown-ups talking about nieces or nephews they haven't seen in ages. “And what would you bet Aravis and Cor are married?”

“Peridan and Anna must have several children by now.” Ed’s voice catches in his throat at the thought of his friend, who had sworn he would make Edmund godfather of all his sons, as well as letting him teach them all how to fight. And oh, Ed had stood up at his wedding as best man, hadn't he? While Peter had given Anna away, in lieu of long-lost father or brothers.

“Erah and Pearl–” Peter starts, but can't finish.

“We weren't trying to leave,” Edmund says. “I wish they knew that.”

“We were only following Lucy into another adventure.” Peter has a little half-smile on his lips, and then his arm around Ed’s shoulders is warm.

“The professor said it wouldn't all be easy.” Edmund rests his head on Peter's shoulder.

“Do you ever wish-?” Peter starts, but cuts himself off with a decided “No, I don't.”

Edmund knows, he's wondered himself, once or twice on difficult days, but he always answers the same as Peter. He'll always be grateful they had been brought to Narnia.

But there's one question he does hesitate over, as the seasons change, and the clock ticks on, and he voices it now, barely above a whisper: “Are you so sure we'll go back?”

“Of course,” Peter says at once. “Aslan said we would always be kings and queens of Narnia. We'll get back somehow.”

“You're sure?” Edmund pulls away enough to look hard up into Peter's eyes, searching for a hint of doubt.

“Quite. We have to.” Peter swallows hard, looks away out the window where the rain falls steady in the quad. “We have to,” softer now.

Ed sees the longing in his brother's eyes, and he wishes suddenly that just being here with Edmund and the music and the rain was enough for Peter. But he loves his brother anyway.

“Alright, your majesty,” he says lightly. “Now come on, the supper bell will ring any minute.”

He snaps the clasps on the violin case closed, leads the way out of the room, humming the whisper of wings in a blue sky.

Behind him, Peter is silent.

#hello yes i'm back #what even is this? i don't know #it went in directions i wasn’t planning on #tired of second-guessing how i'm writing peter in the context of the movies. he's struggling okay? sometimes he needs ed to be the stronger #one. that's how siblings are supposed to work. but he still sees ed needs him when it slaps him in the face.#oh and the tune ed plys sounds something lile the how to train your dragon theme #i want to say this isn't very good but it's my fault for trying to wait for the perfect tine to get back to it and nearly waiting too long #anyway #pevensie brothers #peter pevensie #edmund pevensie #my writing #narnia fanfiction #narnia movies #narnia #chronicles of narnia

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