My impression, from my acquaintance, was that if his father had been seated across a table from an SS guard, he would have lunged across the table and strangled him with his bare hands. But that is speculative, of course.
I was, for a few years, a pacifist, and even though I sometimes got angry, I would have denied feeling vengeful, because I was convinced that it was primitive and took pride in being above it. I finally decided, for myself, that I was the victim of a "false conscience", that would rather be pure than react appropriately to evil. So while I do not contradict your account of yourself, I do not think it is likely to just be a matter of your disposition. I think it likely that somewhere along the way, you became convinced that good people were above petty desires for revenge, and therefore deflected any such impulses away from consciousness. But that is speculative too...... |
