Some stories have an impact on us, others are just nice stories and most stories we hear and forget. This story I first read last year, since then I have gone back to read it several times. Its one of those stories you just think "wow."
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"Some men see things as they are, and say, 'why?' I dream of things that never were, and say, 'Why not?' " - George Bernard Shaw
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They needed no reason they simply came because he was of Jewish descent. The Nazis stormed into his home, arresting him and his entire family. Soon they were herded like cattle packed into a train, and then sent to the infamous death camp Auschwitz. His most disturbing nightmares could never have prepared him for seeing his family shot before his very eyes. How could he live through the horror of seeing his child's clothing on another because his son was now dead because of a shower?
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Somehow he continued. One day he looked at the nightmare around him and confronted an inescapable truth: if stayed there even one more day, he would surely die. He made a decision that he must escape and that escape must happen immediately! He knew not how, he simply knew that he must. For weeks he'd asked the other prisoners, "How can we escape this horrible place?" The answers he received seemed always to be the same: "Don't be a fool", they said, "There is no escape! Asking such questions will only torture your soul. Just work hard and pray you survive." But he couldn't except this - he wouldn't except it. He became obsessed with escape, and even when his answers didn't make any sense, he kept asking over and over again, "How can I do it? There must be a way. How can i get out of here healthy, alive, today?"
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It is said that if you ask, you shall receive. And for some reason on this day he got his answer. Perhaps it was the intensity with which he asked the question, or maybe it was his sense of certainty that "now is the time." For whatever reason the answer came to him through an unlikely source: the sickening smell of decaying human flesh. There, only a few feet from his work, he saw a huge pile of bodies that had been shovelled into the back of a truck-men, women, and children who had been gassed. The gold fillings had been pulled from their teeth; everything that they owned-any jewelry- even their clothing, had been taken. Instead of asking, "How could the Nazis be so despicable, so destructive? How could God make something so evil? Why has God done this to me?," Stanislaw Lec asked a different question. He asked, "How can I use this to escape?" And instantly he got his answer.
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As the end of the day neared and the work party headed back into the barracks, Lec ducked behind the truck. In a heartbeat he ripped off his clothes and dove naked into the pile of bodies while no one was looking. He pretended that he was dead, remaining totally still even though later he was almost crushed as more and more bodies were heaped on top of him.
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The fetid smell of rotting flesh, the rigid remains of the dead surrounded him everywhere. He waited and waited, hoping that no one would notice the one living body in that pile of death, hoping that sooner or later the truck would drive off.
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Finally, he heard the sound of the engine starting. He felt the truck shudder. And in that moment, he felt a stirring of hope as he lay among the dead. Eventually, he felt the truck lurch to a stop, and then it dumped its ghastly cargo-dozens of the dead and one man pretending to be one of them - in a giant open grave outside the camp. Lec remained there for hours until nightfall. When he finally felt certain no one was there, he extracted himself from the mountain of cadavers, and he ran naked forty-five miles to freedom.
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What was the difference between Stanislaw Lec and so many others who perished in the concentration camps?
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There are many factors, one main difference is that he asked a different question. He asked persistently, he asked with expectation of receiving an answer, and he came up with a solution that saved his life!
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You and I could make a real difference with eradicating extreme poverty. Perhaps the most creative solutions haven't been thought up or dreamt up yet.
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The thing that strikes me about this story is that Lec was looking for the solution when every body else had excepted their fate.
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He was asking a different question
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What question are you asking?
