I’m Jewish, and my dad- a goy- was watching it with me.
one of the scenes that really got to me was
because you can see the way Erik’s face changes because Charles just doesn’t understand what he was doing when he said that.
Think back to the bar scene in the beginning. What does the Nazi say to excuse his actions?
So when Erik heard that? It just reminded him of what he knew and has been saying up until that very moment. Nothing’s changed.
I identified so much with Erik’s plight and I felt a physical ache in my chest when he spoke the next lines
Because growing up, all Jewish kids have heard or seen that in remembrance of the Shoah. Never Again.
My father made it clear that he didn’t understand; “So he’s gonna kill them all for following orders?”
“Dad, following orders blindly, without even questioning them set us up in some really dark times.”
“Whatever, the guy’s just blood thirsty and ready to blame anyone.”
And the thing is, Erik isn’t bloodthirsty, and never really has been. He’s logical and see’s the world based on his experiences of human actions. He’s seen the worst of them and refuses to be lulled into the false sense of security that working with the government had given some of them. Or the never-ending optimism Charles seems to have for the human race.
Because the fact is, Charles didn’t go through what Erik did and that’s one of the biggest causes of their thought differentiation.
It just showed me how much Erik’s backstory impacted me more than it did goyim. Sure we didn’t experience it like our grand and great-grandparents did. We weren’t actually in the Shoah; But it’s left such an intense impression and stain on our history that we are still triggered by it, threatened by it as ‘jokes’ and forced to see it used as a rhetorical device in arguments with no relation to it.
We didn’t experience it but it is part of us in ways others can’t understand. And I think Erik-an actual survivor- really truly realized that when Charles spoke that line.
I’ve had similar conversations with many goyim. They mostly just can’t grasp this dynamic…like, Charles couldn’t have said a WORSE thing if his goal was to calm Erik down.
“They were following orders” directly translates as “they commited genocide, but that’s okay, someone told them to do it.” Yeah, that’s not good enough. You’re responsible for your own actions and the harm you cause, and the people you murder.
And there’s no way that Never Again wasn’t deliberate.
