On August 28, 1938 Ilse and Ludwig Boehm were two of the many who entered through Ellis Island to freedom. Among a few lucky ones who escaped the Holocaust of Nazi Germany, my parents passed through these portals and came to Nashville, where a job and a new life were waiting.
They left behind a home, a business, family, friends and many memories. They also left behind my uncle, aunt, cousin, and many lifelong friends who were all put to death in the concentration camps of Europe along with six million other Jews.
Therefore, it is not surprising that forgiveness was often the subject brought up among my parents and their friends and families when they discussed Germany and what it did to their lives and to their people.
These discussions brought varying opinions. I heard some espouse the notion that forgiveness was impossible, that Germany could never be forgiven for its dastardly deed to Jews and non-Jews alike. But mostly I remember my father's view which was quite different. His response was always the same, "We can never forget, but we must find a way to forgive."
He spoke of a need not to forgive those Germans who were responsible for the unbelievable crime against nature, but rather for a need to forgive the Germany that now existed, the Germany that had evolved into a civilized nation and now lived within its borders. "With forgiveness" he would say, "comes good health."
My father believed that anger, rage, resentment and non-forgiveness bred disease of the soul as well as the body. "Forgiveness", he told me, "is good medicine."
Years later, having established my medical practice, my father and I had the opportunity to discuss the art of forgiveness. I told him that I agreed with his philosophy, and had found that anger and non-forgiveness truly can eat away at the body and soul.
I recalled a patient who had told me she was estranged from her two siblings because they had abandoned her in a time of need many years earlier. Although they all lived in the same small community, they were at odds with each other, and so my patient lived daily with anger, frustration, resentment and non-forgiveness.
It was during a non-revealing and totally negative work-up for abdominal pain, headaches and high blood pressure that we talked about her situation. I told her of my father and how he had been able to forgive the unforgivable because he felt that without forgiveness, disease would enter the body.
I felt her ailments were attributed to her estrangement from loved ones and urged my patient to consider reconciling with her family, to forgive them. Whatever it was they had done, it could not compare with what the German nation did to my parents.
Several years later I received a letter from my patient thanking me for my advice. She told me she had resolved the conflict with her sisters, and soon after her pain, headaches and high blood pressure had abated. She had found forgiveness and from this, good health.
I was, therefore, pleased to read a study published in the American Journal of Cardiology in August of 1992 which supported my dad's sage advise. Stanford University researchers found that there was a direct unhealthy change in heart function brought on by anger.
The authors of this study stated their findings seemed to offer a missing link between earlier studies which showed that people who were hostile by nature were five times more likely to die at an early age than those peers who were considered even tempered. The authors recommended people to resolve their anger so as to improve health.
Forgiveness is perhaps the best medicine.
(Frank H. Boehm, MD is a professor of OB/GYN and Director of OB at Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville, TN. He can be reached at his web site http://dr-boehm.com. Dr. Boehm resides in Boca).