“Knowing how to lose one’s time, not to lose one’s soul”: for Jean Greisch, from the Institut Catholique of Paris – whose report at the meeting going on in Vercelli, about the theologian killed by the Nazi, was read by Claudio Fiorilli (Università del Piemonte Orientale) – that is the synthesis of Bonhoeffer’s meditation in the letter “Ten years after”, sent to his friends and relatives as Christmas present during the climax years 1942-43 (he would die on April 9th, 1945). “The thing that makes a man a good Resistance fighter stated Greisch, in relation to the collection of writings “Resistance and surrender” is a particular kind of optimism, which must not be confused with the superficial and easy belief that things will go the right way, sooner or later”. Bonhoeffer provides a spur “for a different optimism, whose resource is the hope of all the people who dare to believe that the future belongs to them, even if that future will come just after their death. Such optimistic people do not fear death, for they know well that death is not the worst evil”. In this way: “The two words, resistance and surrender, stop being opposite. “Surrender” (ergebung) is no longer a synonym of subjection to the blind fate destroying us; the German word recalls the word “gift”, the gift of consenting to the task we have been given, even if such task seems to be well beyond our strength”. A more correct translation, according to Greisch, would thus be: Keeping steady and consent. In Bonhoeffer’s opinion, the cynical, the people of genius, those who disdain men and the refined strategists cannot be good Resistance fighters. The humble guardians of the human characteristics of the neighbour, the fair (so named in the Hebrew tradition), are the sole good fighters.
