All language subtitles for The Story of God with Morgan Freeman s03e04 Deadly Sins.eng

FREEMAN: When I was six years
old we moved to Chicago,

a little country boy
in the big city.

While I was there,
you won't believe the things I saw people do:

theft, vandalism,
sometimes worse.

Things were different in
small town Mississippi,

where everyone knows everyone.

If you were up to no good,
you'd never get away with it.

But the anonymity of a densely
populated city, like Chicago,

seemed to expose a more
primal aspect of human nature.

Religions call it sin.

And faiths around the globe
have their own prescriptions

for preventing,
and punishing, sin.

I wonder, if we put all
those ideas together,

could we actually conquer sin?

I'm traveling to the front
lines of our battle with sin.

From blood-soaked
mass rituals...

So this is where
sin went viral?

To a festival
that conquers evil.

JAYMIN: We light candles
everywhere and remove the evil from us.

FREEMAN: I'll meet
an executioner, tortured by guilt...

JERRY: Why do I have
to continue to sin over and over and over,

when I know it's wrong?

FREEMAN: And the Hanoi
jailer who seems blind to it.

DUYET: John McCain
was my friend.

FREEMAN: I'll learn about
purging sin from a corpse...

DAFYDD: They would lay
this directly on the dead body and then eat it.

FREEMAN: And ask if
the biggest sins...

TOMAS: So your grandfather
was the one in Auschwitz?

RAINER: The Master of Hell.

FREEMAN: Can ever be forgiven.

Every year, on Good Friday
in the Philippines,

the people of the town
of San Pedro reenact

the Passion of Christ.

They parade a man, portraying
Jesus, to a small hill, where they nail him to a cross,

using real nails,
and crucify him.

But that's not the only
aspect of Christ's agony they recreate.

Many villagers
whip themselves,

just as the Bible says
Roman soldiers whipped Jesus.

Sharp pieces of bamboo
make sure the whips draw plenty of blood.

What could drive shopkeepers
and taxi drivers to take up such a bloody ritual?

The answer lies across the
globe in Perugia, Italy.

I'm meeting historian,
Roberto Rusconi, at the Church of San Bevignate.

Inside frescoes from
nearly 800 years ago tell the strange story

of how self-flagellation
went viral.

ROBERTO: You see here,
they made a representation of the Flagellants.

They are scourging
themselves naked to the waist.

The monks in the
monasteries, they used to make this kind of penance,

to wash away every
sin in your soul.

FREEMAN: But what made them
think that flagellation would make them right with God?

ROBERTO: We have to make
expiation for our sins,

and the only way is
scourge ourselves,

and be beaten as
Jesus Christ was beaten.

Our souls, as you know,
have the original sin and

you have to wash away every
part of it in your soul.

FREEMAN: And you have to
wash it with your own blood?

ROBERTO: Yes. It was more
effective than soap.

FREEMAN: The Christian concept
of original sin began when

Adam and Eve ate from
the forbidden tree.

Their defiance of
God corrupted the entire human race,

making sin something
even devout monks must purge through penance.

But the walls of San Bevignate
reveal something more,

how flagellation spread
from the monastery

to the everyday believer.

ROBERTO: So, in the corner,
you see their representation

to be the image
of Raniero Fasani.

FREEMAN: Raniero Fasani.

ROBERTO: Raniero Fasani's a
normal person, a lay person.

He had visions when Our
Lady appeared to him.

FREEMAN: Fasani had
taken up the practice of self-flagellation.

Then, in 1260, he had a
vision of the Virgin Mary.

She told him that the common
people, like him, needed to purge their sins through a

great public flagellation.

Fasani began urging the
Perugians to whip themselves.

The Holy Mother came
to him and said,

"Listen, this is not just for
monks, this is for everybody.

You gotta go back
and tell them,

'Get out there and
start whipping.'"

ROBERTO: Yes. Don't rely
on monks, do it yourself.

FREEMAN: So
Fasani has his vision.

He comes in and he explains
it, and people followed him?

ROBERTO: So, he was
followed by a lot of people in town and countryside,

and they started scourging, as
he suggested, and it became a practice for lay people.

It went out from the
walls of the churches and it entered the square.

And it happened here in
Perugia, in the year 1260.

This place was crowded
with thousands of people.

FREEMAN: All flagellating?

ROBERTO: All flagellating.

FREEMAN: They're
drawing blood?

So, the square would have been
covered with blood, right?

ROBERTO: Yes.

FREEMAN: As catastrophes
like the Black Death swept across Europe,

so did mass flagellations.

Believers thought that bloody
penance would bring salvation in this life and the next.

So, we're literally
standing in the square where sin went viral?

ROBERTO: Yes.

FREEMAN: It just spread out.

FREEMAN: It seems to me there
was a deep human desire to take action against sin,

sometimes by
beating ourselves up.

But to the Catholic faithful,
flagellation was something more than that.

It was a way to share
the burdens of Jesus,

whom they believed
died to wipe away the sins of humanity.

It does what penance
is supposed to do,

bring us closer to God.

But what if a sinner
doesn't do penance?

Is there another
way back to God?

In the misty borderlands
of England and Wales, there once was a way.

Journalist, Sal Masekela,
has come to the village of Ratlinghope,

to learn about the lost
tradition of sin-eating.

Dafydd Mills Daniels
is a religious scholar and theologian.

SAL: Hey.
DAFYDD: Hello.

SAL: How are you? I'm Sal.

DAFYDD: How are you?
Nice to meet you.

SAL: Dafydd?
DAFYDD: Yes, Dafydd. Yeah.

SAL: This is a
beautiful country.

DAFYDD: Yeah.

And we brought you here
because this is the home, or would have been the home,

of the very last sin-eater
in England, a man called Richard Munslow,

who died in 1906.

FREEMAN: Munslow was
a prosperous farmer for much of his life,

but he died performing
bizarre rituals with the dead.

SAL: Sin-eating.
What exactly does that mean?

DAFYDD: Well, sin-eating
was a practice prevalent in this area,

England-Wales border,
about 500 years ago.

It started to die out
in the 19th Century.

And it was a practice that
involved people taking on other people's sins.

SAL: And where does
the eating part come in?

DAFYDD: Ah, right,
it's a good question.

Why don't we go into the barn
and get some things, and I'll show you how that worked?

SAL: Alright, cool.

DAFYDD: Okay, let's
see if this is open.

Yeah, so here we are
in Munslow's barn.

SAL: Wow!

DAFYDD: Why don't
you grab hold of...

SAL: These chairs?

DAFYDD: Yeah.
And I'll take this board.

So why don't you put
those chairs out there.

SAL: Okay.

DAFYDD: So when you
had a sudden death,

and so it hadn't been
possible for a priest to come to the house

for the person who died, and
they'd sort of be considered to die in a state of sin,

then the family may well
have called a sin-eater.

Okay?

SAL: What have you got there?

DAFYDD: Well this is
some of the paraphernalia of a sin-eater.

And what they used
were things like this.

So they would have a wooden
plate, a wooden bowl,

some bread, and some salt.

So, you'd have this process,
usually outside the house.

The body would be laid out.

They would take out the
salt, put it in the plate, put the bread on top of it

and then actually lay this
directly on the dead body.

Where a sin-eater would
lift it up and eat it.

They also consumed
liquid, as well as bread.

So in some places
milk, but also beer.

And we'd pour it
into the bowl.

And again, the sin-eater
would lift it directly from the body.

At the end of the ceremony
of sin-eating, the sin-eater would have said,

"I give easement and rest now
to thee, come not down the lanes or in our meadows,

and for thy peace I
pawn mine own soul."

SAL: Mmmmm.

Translation: ghosts,
please don't hang out here.

DAFYDD: Exactly, yeah.

SAL: Why would they think
then that food, milk, beer

would be a process to absolve
someone of their sins?

DAFYDD: Yeah.

Here we had this idea
of sin being its own entity or substance.

The sin of this
other person has been transferred into the food

and then into the
sin-eater themselves.

When a soul is weighed
down by sin, it's burdened.

It has difficulty in the
afterlife, gets caught between heaven and earth,

and can come back as a ghost.

SAL: Mmmm.

What type of person
would become a sin-eater?

DAFYDD: Well,
usually desperately poor.

So, essentially what you have
here is people selling the only thing they have of value,

which is their own soul.

This person sells his own
soul, but then he stops the community being affected and

disturbed by this dead
person's soul coming back.

FREEMAN: But if sin-eating
was an act of desperation for the destitute,

why did a successful farmer
like Richard Munslow

choose to dine over the dead?

FREEMAN: This rugged
borderland between England and Wales

was the scene of many
battles over the centuries,

and it's a place with a rich
tradition of ghost stories.

Sal Masekela and historian,
Dafydd Mills Daniels,

are on the trail of England's
last known sin-eater,

a man whose job was
to rid the dead of sin and purge the land of ghosts.

DAFYDD: Here we are at
Richard Munslow's tombstone.

SAL: This is his
actual gravesite?

DAFYDD: Yeah. This is it.

SAL: Wow!

DAFYDD: So this is
the final sin-eater.

SAL: And there you see
his family, his children.

DAFYDD: Yeah.

SAL: Four children.

Wow, this gives more of a
sense of him as a person.

DAFYDD: Yeah, it does.

SAL: And you mentioned
earlier that usually it was poor people that chose to

practice this, almost
out of necessity, not necessarily choice.

Munslow was a farmer, a
family man, it seemed like he was fairly successful.

Why would he choose this?

DAFYDD: Yeah, it is a curious
choice, isn't it, particularly for someone like Munslow.

The basic motivation he seems
to have had is that his children died quite suddenly.

FREEMAN: Three of Munslow's
young children took sick and died in a single week in 1870.

Dafydd believes Munslow may
have linked his personal tragedy to the notion that

unforgiven sins were
haunting the village.

DAFYDD: This fear about
the souls from the dead

coming back to haunt
their own society.

What the sin-eater was doing
was saving society from negative consequences of sin.

SAL: So while they were
viewed somewhat as a pariah, within the community,

there's also the
sense of this is a value.

DAFYDD: Right. Yes.

Christ, taking on the sins of
the world, but he has to die for that atonement to happen.

And so Munslow, he's
agreed to be damned.

Munslow seemed to have
viewed it as this act of self-sacrificial love.

FREEMAN: Personal tragedy
led Richard Munslow to become the last sin-eater.

Bereft by the loss
of his children, he sacrificed his soul

to save the soul
of his community.

He provided grieving families
with a sense of peace that he himself would never know.

For someone already so
heavily burdened, it was an incredibly noble act.

Christians believe that
we must reckon with our sins on Judgment Day.

But does that day come in
Heaven, or down here on Earth?

I'm meeting Jerry Givens...

Man, this is a lovely place.

JERRY: It is. Beautiful.

FREEMAN: A man who has always
been a firm believer in God...

JERRY: This is God's
creation, these trees, aw, look at the beauty.

FREEMAN: And who spent 17
years as executioner for the state of Virginia.

I want to understand how a man
can take another man's life

and not believe he's
committed a sin.

How many different
ways of execution did you take part in?

JERRY: It was 25
by electrocution,

and 37 by lethal injection.

FREEMAN: You executed...
JERRY: 62 people.

FREEMAN: Personally?
JERRY: 62 people.

FREEMAN: How did you feel?

I mean, what kind
of adjustments did you have to make,

mentally or emotionally?

JERRY: Well, before each
execution I would pray.

FREEMAN: You would pray?
JERRY: Mm-hm.

I received the condemned
15 days before I kill him.

During that 15 day period,
I'm trying to prepare him for his next destination.

For electrocution, you
had to shave the head.

So I would put my hand
on his head and I would pray silently to him.

And we used to
get on our knees.

"Now I lay me down to sleep, I
pray the Lord my soul to keep.

If I should die before
I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take."

FREEMAN: Yeah.
I know that.

JERRY: So these guys are
gonna die before they wake.

FREEMAN: Did you think what
you were doing was a sin?

JERRY: That's when I
first started, nah, not really, because...

what I used to say,
Morgan, I say, well,

God, these people don't
deserve to live for what they done to other people.

They should have to
suffer for what they done.

I'll give you an example
of one of the crimes that this guy committed.

There was an 86
year old woman.

He nailed her feet to the
wooden floor, and nailed her hands to the chair,

and poured gasoline on her
house and set it on fire.

You know?

And to me, does this guy
deserve to live after doing this to another human being?

FREEMAN: And it's in the
Bible, "eye for an eye."

But it also says,
"Thou shalt not..."

JERRY: Kill.

FREEMAN: How do we
come to terms with two opposites there?

JERRY: Because, Morgan,
inside of each human being lives a thing called 'death'.

You understand?

It can't sentence you to
death, you're already sentenced to death!

God said you're gonna die.

FREEMAN: But Jerry's conviction
that he was doing God's will

was eventually shaken.

JERRY: God brought
Earl Washington to me.

FREEMAN: Who is
Earl Washington?

JERRY: Earl Washington
was a man on Death Row.

He was innocent, but he was
sentenced to death for a crime that he didn't commit.

FREEMAN: In 1993, Earl
Washington became the first man ever exonerated

from Virginia's Death
Row, by DNA evidence.

Back in 1985, Jerry had
come within nine days of carrying out his execution.

JERRY: But when one
man is found innocent...

FREEMAN: It cast doubt
on the whole system.

JERRY: That's right,
on the whole system.

In all of my prayers I will
always ask God to never allow me to execute an innocent man,

'cause I didn't want to
be in the position to take an innocent life.

FREEMAN: So now you're
in serious doubt about what you do.

Am I right about that?

JERRY: Yeah.
It put doubt here.

It put doubt in
the executioner.

FREEMAN: Despite his
growing doubt, Jerry continued his work

as executioner
for several years.

Then, in 1999, Jerry
helped a friend buy a car

with what proved
to be drug money.

He was convicted of
money laundering and lying to a Grand Jury,

and went to prison.

Even though he still claims
innocence, he sees this moment not as a fall from grace,

but as his salvation from sin.

JERRY: When this happened,
God told me afterwards say,

"Well, I brought Earl
Washington to you,

I answered your prayer,
but you didn't leave."

So God said, "Well, if you
wanna do that, I'll bring this here case against you.

I will make sure
that you will leave."

I went to prison, for 57
month, and that's what helped me change my mind.

FREEMAN: If I offered
you the job now?

JERRY: No, I wouldn't do it.

FREEMAN: Why not?

JERRY: Because I've
learned that innocent people be executed.

The court system is
not great, right?

It's not fair.

FREEMAN: You will not tell
me that, because it's a sin?

JERRY: It is a sin.
It is, it's a sin to kill.

FREEMAN: After Jerry
was released in 2004,

he became an anti-death
penalty activist.

He has traveled around the
world trying to educate people

about alternatives to
capital punishment.

JERRY: Why do we have to
kill a person to show that killing is wrong?

If I cut this finger,
do I have to cut this finger to stop the bleeding?

No.

FREEMAN: That's just
compounding the error.

JERRY: Yeah.

You know, we all have
sinned and come short of the glory of God,

we all, as humans.

We live in a simple world.

Why do I continue to sin
over and over and over, if I know it's wrong?

FREEMAN: How can we know
what's right and what's wrong?

You can avoid the
seven deadly sins,

you can follow the
Ten Commandments,

but the Bible rules aren't
clear in every situation.

Jerry found himself caught
between, "an eye for an eye,"

and "thou shalt not kill",

and stuck in a moral
dilemma over life and death.

What he did, maybe that's
what we all need to do,

wrestle with ourselves
and our faith,

to do what we
believe is right.

But this struggle doesn't
have to be morose or solitary.

In fact, it can
be a celebration.

FREEMAN: I'm in London,
home to nearly half a million Hindus,

to experience Diwali,
the Hindu New Year.

This five-day festival
of light celebrates the triumph of good over evil,

and the wiping away of bad
deeds from the previous year.

I'm visiting Tarun and Jaymin
Patel and their family...

JAYMIN: Oh, welcome! Namaste.
FREEMAN: Namaste.

To learn more about
this ancient tradition.

Thank you so much for
inviting us into your home.

Tell me about
your celebration.

TARUN: Diwali is
an annual festival.

JAYMIN: It's the
biggest festival of the year in Hindu calendar.

We do a big family dinner.

It means all our family
get together and we all eat lots of food.

TARUN: But the greatest thing
of all is that during Diwali, it's important that we also

remember God, and
we keep him central.

FREEMAN: Diwali centers
around the story of a beautiful princess

called Sita, an avatar
of the Goddess Lakshmi.

She was kidnapped
and imprisoned, by a many-headed demon king

called Ravana, backed
by an army of demons.

But Sita's husband, Lord
Ram, an avatar of Vishnu,

came to rescue his wife.

Armed with his bow, he
took on Ravana's demon army.

With one final arrow...

he slayed Ravana, and
freed his beloved wife.

Hindu tradition says that
Ram and Sita's subjects

lit oil lamps to guide the
couple back to their kingdom,

representing the triumph of
good over the darkness of evil.

JAYMIN: It is festival of
light, but we're welcoming you, God, come in.

It's like Ram came that time.

We light candles
everywhere, and we believe that the evil from us,

the darkness from us,
we should remove and bring the light,

the good things,
from everybody.

FREEMAN: That's perfect.

TARUN: Ram was a
symbol of righteousness.

He was the ideal father, the
ideal son, the ideal brother, the ideal husband.

So those things over Diwali,
as Hindus we will reflect on, and we will try and be that on

a personal level, as much as
we can, for as long as we can.

JAYMIN: If you reflect back,
you will realize that you committed sin.

That is what Diwali is about.

FREEMAN: Gotcha.

TARUN: It's the opportunity
to forgive and forget.

FREEMAN: Do you manage that?

TARUN: We try.

Forgive, yes;
forget, perhaps not.

FREEMAN: Ah yes, I gotcha.

Okay.

There is sin and karma.

Are they compatible?

Do they sort of
mean the same thing?

TARUN: Karma is the
good things that you do.

You accumulate good karma.

And bad things that
you do in life, you accumulate bad karma.

So the idea is to make
the good karma bigger than the bad karma.

FREEMAN: You really want to
weigh heavily on the good and try your best to...

TARUN: Get to moksha, which
is the salvation of the soul.

And the karma dictates
how fast or slow you go towards moksha.

It's not a sprint,
it's a marathon.

So, we've gotta be patient
and we've gotta persevere.

But with faith as your
light, you will get there.

FREEMAN: You just
explained a lot of stuff with that one sentence.

Thank you.

JAYMIN: You're welcome.

FREEMAN: After celebrating
at home, this third and most important day of

Diwali culminates with
families going to the temple.

The rituals done in
the home are performed again as a community,

on a much grander scale.

The last ritual of the evening
is the ultimate display of light overcoming darkness,

clearing away the bad
karma of the past year,

and lighting the way toward
the liberation of the soul.

Just like the yearly cleansing
of the monsoon rains in India,

Diwali is a time for Hindus
to clean up their karma,

to renew their efforts to avoid
the temptations of selfishness,

to keep working on
moksha, or liberation.

We all make
mistakes in judgment.

Our conscience,
often guided by faith, leads us to correct them.

But faith can also
drive us to commit sins,

and believe we have
done nothing wrong.

FREEMAN: The Christian
idea of sin has shaped how western civilization

grapples with questions
of right and wrong.

But I want to understand sin
from a different perspective.

So I've come to Vietnam,

a country with three overlapping
religious traditions:

Confucianism,
Taoism and Buddhism.

This country was
devastated by war for much of the 20th Century.

Sin is an inevitable
part of war.

American bombing
campaigns killed tens of thousands of civilians.

Vietcong executed tens
of thousands of South Vietnamese villagers,

and were infamous for
torturing captured Americans.

Here, in Hanoi,
the Hoa Lo Prison held hundreds of American POWs,

they knew it as
the Hanoi Hilton.

I'm meeting Tran Trong Duyet,
the former Director,

to understand how he looks
back on those days now.

Mr. Duyet, so
nice to meet you.

DUYET: And you.

FREEMAN: So, this is
the famous Hanoi Hilton?

You worked here?

FREEMAN: I'd like to talk
to you some more about that.

Let's go and sit
down and talk. Okay?

Perhaps the most famous
prisoner at Hoa Lo was a young John McCain,

who was taken there in 1967,
after he was shot down over North Vietnam.

McCain never fully
recovered from the physical and mental

torture he suffered at
the hands of his captors.

Now, that's John McCain,
yeah, and that's you, right?

DUYET: Yeah.

FREEMAN: So, can you
share your memories of John McCain with us?

DUYET: What I remember
the most was, when we come to meet together

after my working time,
and he'd teach me English,

and we talked together,
just like friends,

and we had a very kind of,
like, friendly relationship.

FREEMAN: Interesting.

Well McCain says
that he was tortured.

Does that fit
your recollection?

DUYET: I have to say
there was no torture at all.

John McCain was my friend.

FREEMAN: So you're saying that
there was no torture at all.

He was never tortured?

DUYET: 100%, no torture.
We save him.

He nearly die when he
gone into the lake in Hanoi.

And we actually
rescue him and cure him.

FREEMAN: Okay.

Well let me just ask
you in a general sense.

Do you have any feelings
about that scenario,

where people regret what they
did in prison or during war?

DUYET: In the war, of course,
there's no other choice.

It's a duty of each soldier
to do what they were told.

I am really proud that
I tried my best to do the duty to my country.

FREEMAN: I'm not sure
whether Mr. Duyet simply

doesn't remember what
happened in the war,

whether he's avoiding
the truth, or whether his apparent lack of guilt

stems from a difference
in cultural perspective.

To gain insight, I'm going
to Hanoi's Confucian Temple of Literature to meet

Dr. Duong Ngoc Dung,
a professor of religious studies.

Dr. Dung, I presume?

DUONG: Oh, yeah.
Are you Mr. Freeman?

FREEMAN: I am Mr. Freeman.

DUONG: Okay, please. Please.

FREEMAN: Thank you.
DUONG: Okay.

FREEMAN: Now, I had this
conversation with the Head of the Hanoi Hilton.

DUONG: Oh yeah,
yeah, I know him.

FREEMAN: Were there some
bad things that happened,

and his idea was that if so,
it doesn't really matter.

DUONG: Because yes,
you're a soldier, yes.

FREEMAN: Yeah.

He's say, soldier to
soldier, it's an even deal.

DUONG: Okay.

FREEMAN: Big question is, do
the Vietnamese look at sin the way we in the west do?

DUONG: The dominant religion
in Vietnam is Buddhism, but

the dominant moral education
teachings is Confucianism.

According to Confucian
philosophy, we sin because we are not well educated.

There are five
cardinal laws of morality.

Number one thing is
benevolence, and then righteousness,

trust, wisdom and
then social rituals.

FREEMAN: These five cardinal
rules, if I break one 'em,

I haven't done anything
as far as God is concerned,

I've actually sinned
against society?

DUONG: Yeah.
Against society, yes.

FREEMAN: Yeah.

DUONG: You destroy
your social relationship.

Confucian ethics
is very practical.

It is not metaphysical,
it is not philosophical.

It just asks us
to do something

that we want people to
do the same thing to us.

FREEMAN: Golden rule:
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

DUONG: Exactly.

FREEMAN: So a good,
concise explanation of

Confucian philosophy
would be what?

DUONG: Something like,
we should be personally responsible for social harmony.

FREEMAN: Brings up the
question, however, of a whole society going off the rails,

like Nazi Germany.

The holocaust happened
because the community allowed it to happen.

DUONG: Yes, of course.

One of the weaknesses of
Confucian philosophy is that it has put a lot of power on

the role of the King.

So if the King is a good
guy, people can benefit.

But if the King is a
bad guy, oh my God, everything, you know...

FREEMAN:
Everything goes to pieces.

DUONG: Yes, yes,
exactly like that.

FREEMAN: Confucian ethics
act like glue holding society together.

But under despotic leaders, or
the immense pressure of war,

the Confucian mandate to be
a good member of society

can blind people to
the fundamental morality of their actions,

even in retrospect.

So now let's go back
to the idea of Mr. Duyet at the prison.

Because, his thinking is
that if you're in uniform you're bound to do it,

it doesn't matter what it is.

DUONG: Personally, I
think he's totally wrong.

I can refuse because
I'm human being.

You can think.

Right, Confucius, he
lives in the perfectibility of human nature.

You should think before
you do something, right?

FREEMAN: Nothing in life is
more liberating than to fight

for a cause that is
larger than yourself.

Now that might be a bit
of Confucian wisdom,

but in fact those are the
words of Senator John McCain.

The Confucian tradition of
Vietnam drives its people

to do what society
asks them to do;

but that doesn't mean
that its adherents must blindly follow a leader

down a path towards sin.

Confucius would expect
us to be well-mannered,

to be trustful, to have a
good head and a good heart.

But when society
goes off the rails,

and people commit the
most heinous of sins,

can there ever be forgiveness?

FREEMAN: The town of Terezin,
in the Czech Republic, is a

memorial to one of the most
horrific sins in human history,

The Holocaust.

The Nazis turned the town
into a Jewish prison ghetto.

From here, they sent
nearly 140,000 Jews to extermination camps.

Christianity teaches that
all things can be forgiven.

But how do you forgive a
sin as monstrous as this?

Rainer Hoess is a
German activist who has devoted his life

to reckoning with the
crimes of the Holocaust.

He has come to meet
Dr. Tomas Kraus, a Jewish community leader,

to understand the sins that
were committed at Terezin.

RAINER: Hello.
Nice to meet you.

TOMAS: Nice to
meet you, the same.

RAINER: So, let me know
a little bit more about your history here.

TOMAS: Here, we are
in Terezin, and behind us is the ghetto.

The trains were going
right into the ghetto,

and the gates closed
after the trains.

And then, actually, they took
the people out of the ghetto

and they were sending
them to Auschwitz.

RAINER: So it starts
here in Terezin,

and it ends up in
the way of Auschwitz.

TOMAS: My father was sent
here to Terezin with the very first transport.

It was November 1941.

The family of my
mother was also affected.

She was from a family
with seven children,

and she was the only
one who survived.

So we are very emotionally
attached to this place.

RAINER: Wow!
Oh my goodness.

TOMAS: This is
the main entrance.

And as you can see,
it's black and white.

Very symbolic.

Some people say that
it's swallowing people.

FREEMAN: The prison was
meant to be a holding place

for Jewish and
political prisoners,

but inmates were tortured,
hanged, or shot.

TOMAS: And over there now,
this is the Tunnel of Death,

and nobody who was behind
it would come out alive.

This is the Jewish cell
here, which is for us a very important site,

because it was used for
Jews from the ghetto as a punishment.

And in the cell,
which was built only for a dozen of people,

at one time it had,
like, 90 people.

RAINER: And none
of them survived?

TOMAS: None of them survived.

RAINER: It's sad.

It's a strange
feeling to be here.

Everything shows me exactly
what I saw in Auschwitz,

what I saw in Buchenwald,
in Majdanek, in Treblinka,

in all these different,
disgusting camps.

My grandfather
organized the genocide.

He was a master in it.

FREEMAN: Rainer's
grandfather was Rudolf Hoess,

the commandant of the
Auschwitz Extermination Camp,

and one of the chief architects
of Hitler's final solution.

At his trial, Hoess admitted
his role in the Holocaust and was sentenced to death.

Before his execution in 1947,
Hoess gave confession

and was absolved by
a Catholic priest.

But Hoess's sins
were not eradicated.

They have scarred the lives of
countless Jewish families, generation upon generation.

They've also left their
mark on Rainer Hoess.

TOMAS: What is your feeling?

Do you feel any
responsibility?

RAINER: Well I'm not guilty,
I wasn't even born when things like that happened.

But responsibility, of course.

My family is not
dealing with it.

So they're big deniers, they
glorify more my grandfather.

It never happens.

I'm the black
sheep in my family.

But I'm proud to
be the black sheep.

I'm wearing a cruelty name.

I think it's important
to use the name to change things in life.

TOMAS: So this is
our joint mission;

because I feel also
my responsibility.

I have to give the
witness of my parents to further generations.

Your grandfather was
the one in Auschwitz...

RAINER: The Master of Hell.

TOMAS: And my father
was the prisoner there.

So it's very important that
we not only are admitting, it's very important that

we are sending out the
message to the world.

My father, and my mother, by
miracle, they survived and they came back from the camps.

Their main slogan was,
"Never again. Never again."

It was a mantra for them.

Never again.

It's on us, the second,
third generations continue to take the torch.

It's interesting,
your pin, Zachor.

RAINER: Remember.

TOMAS: Why you have it?

RAINER: It is together
with the survivors.

We deliver it to pupils
and people in the world, 1.6 million times.

And, our idea was that,
if you use that pin,

maybe in the jewelry box
at home, sometimes

one of the grandkids
or kids ask about it.

So it gets delivered over
centuries, over generations.

TOMAS: It's a wonderful idea,
because this is how you fight.

RAINER: If we do nothing,
we learned nothing.

TOMAS: Exactly.

RAINER: I think that's
the message I deliver.

TOMAS: And we have to raise
our warning finger, because it's a never ending story.

FREEMAN: The teachings of
Christianity ask us to hold

two seemingly contradictory
ideas at the same time:

that sin must be
forgiven, but that we inherit original sin.

Well it may not be so
contradictory, 'cause it points to a subtle truth,

that all sin can
ultimately be forgiven, but it takes honesty,

courage, and sometimes
many lifetimes of work.

Religions differ in
how they define sin,

but all faiths strive
to steer us away

from our base of
instincts, our selfishness.

They make us wrestle
with right and wrong.

They keep us honest about our
own failings, and help us to

ask for, and offer, forgiveness.

A poet once wrote,

"To err is human,
to forgive, divine."

Forgiveness, I think
this may be the best of human qualities.

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