The Power Of Extending Dignity
By zevi770 · November 29, 2011
I read a story how a couple and their young daughter forced to flee the Nazi onslaught landed somewhere in Russia
Apportioned as they were an apartment by the communist dictatorial regime, one day they were also informed that the smelly dirty homeless bum was also assigned to their apartment.
As he came in “I wanted to hide” but my mother said “shake hands with Peter.”
The thing she remembered is that her parents forced her to treat the bum with respect.
After a month or two he suddenly started bathing and becoming normal, in fact in turns out he was a tailor / poet and after he reclaimed his dignity he headed off back to Moscow to find some work.
In other words, as we mentioned in the value theory…
People assume their self worth based on how others treat them.
In the holocaust the survivors stated that once a person lost their self worth noticed in stopping to groom themselves, it was a matter of time before they had perished.
We see from this story the power of respecting others.