Dreaming in German

The first night back from my trip I dreamed for the first time entirely in German. The subject of the dream seems to have been responsibility. Details are, of course, fuzzy the morning after.

The dream dealt with witnessing a mugging. I don't recall if it was an actual mugging or a theoretical discussion. A vicious, intimidating mugger beat up someone while one or more people looked on. The ensuing discussion, involving witnesses and other parties, revolved around the witnesses, not the mugger. My recollection of the discussion is that it took place in a legal setting, like a court or in an investigation.

One side of the discussion said that the situation was so fearful for the witnesses, that they were intimidated into inaction, fearing that the mugger would turn on them. The mugger seemed to them to be capable of doing them great harm if they exposed themselves in that fashion.

The other side said that the witnesses had a responsibility to confront the mugger to get him to stop. The proponents of this argument were divided into two groups: One held that the witnesses should have taken direct action to thwart the mugger's designs. The other argued that the witnesses should have used non-violent means – reasoning, deception, whatever – to get the mugger to stop.

I was surprised, thinking back on my dream, that there was nobody who said, “It's not my problem,” or “The victim deserved it,” or “The victim wouldn't have done anything for me, if I had been victimized.” I have no doubt that a separate set of witnesses would have included people with one or more of these points of view.

I recall the nearly unanimous opinion of the participants that intervention would have been appropriate, even among the witnesses. There was an assignment of a measure of guilt to the witnesses, due to their failure to intervene, even in the face of great mortal danger to themselves.

Even in a cloudy state of consciousness when I awoke in the middle of the night, I saw that this dream was an allegory on the Holocaust.