Guilt – History of Sorts

I love to walk to work, even though it is a 45 minutes walk, often in bad weather, I don’t mind it. It clears my mind and gives me the chance to listen to music.

Yesterday on my way to work, I listened to the song “Help Me Make it Through the Night,” by Sammi Smith. One line in it kept coming back to me throughout the day. The line was “Yesterday is dead and gone.” I couldn’t help but think of those who survived the Holocaust.

For some of them, their yesterdays are still alive. Their yesterdays come back to haunt them during the night in their dreams, and the horrors they were subjected to and witnessed—are forever etched in their minds.

In their nightmares, they relive every moment vividly, even after 7+ decades. Aside from the memories of the camps and ghettos, they are haunted by a sense of guilt. They ask themselves ” Why did I survive?” They question the validity of their survival, why them and not their siblings or parents.

This guilt sometimes transferred to their children and grandchildren. For them, the Holocaust is far from over.

Dear souls, I know you must have heard this before, but you have nothing to be guilty about. You have nothing to feel guilty about. You did nothing wrong.

The guilt belongs to those who put you in an awful situation. It belongs to the evil men and women who tortured and murdered your loved ones. The guilt belongs to those who helped those evil men and women. The guilt belongs to those who stood by and did nothing. Absolutely no guilt belongs to you.

I hope you are able to recognize this because I know all of you are coming close to the end of your lives. I want you to live a time that remains in peace, and hopefully, you wake up one day without the nightmares.

All I want and can give you is my love and my undying commitment that your loved ones will not be forgotten, I will continue to tell their stories, let that be your comfort.

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Survivor guilt is a particular type of guilt that may develop in people who have survived a life-threatening situation. Individuals who believe it is unfair that they survived when others died and/or believe they did not do enough to save the lives of others may come to experience survivor guilt after trauma or a catastrophic event.

Waylon Jennings was a guitarist for Buddy Holly’s band and initially had a seat on the ill-fated aircraft on The Day the Music Died on February 3 1959.

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But Jennings gave up his seat to the sick J.P. “Big Bopper” Richardson, only to learn later of the plane’s demise. When Holly learned that Jennings was not going to fly, he said, “Well, I hope your ol’ bus freezes up.” Jennings responded, “Well, I hope your ol’ plane crashes.” This exchange of words, though made in jest at the time, haunted Jennings for the rest of his life. Jennings, who later became a country music star, expressed survivor’s guilt about Richardson’s death.

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The Day the Music died

In 1945, the USS Indianapolis was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine and sank in the Philippine Sea. Most of the crew survived the sinking but were left adrift for days. Only 317 survived the whole ordeal. The Captain of the USS Indianapolis, Charles B. McVay III was court-martialed for hazarding his ship. Despite the captain of the Japanese sub standing up for McVay, he was convicted of gross negligence. Living with survivor’s guilt and hate mail for years, McVay killed himself in 1968.

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In an interview on Lifetime TV’s Unsolved Mysteries, Lawrence “Larry” Geller, one of Elvis Presley’s closest friends, reported that Elvis, as a “twinless twin”, was plagued by guilt over the death of his infant brother, Jesse Garon, who was stillborn.

Elvis had confided to Geller about his concerns that maybe he had absorbed more than his share of the nutrients while he was developing inside his mother’s womb, causing his twin brother to starve to death before he was born. Elvis had also related to Geller about how his mother had tried to comfort her son by assuring him that “they would all meet in Heaven” after their lives on Earth were completed.

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