Something for Atheists on Sunday

I have what may be a moral dilemma for some of you. Think carefully before you answer.

It's 1943. A German officer armed with a machine gun has commanded you to get into a bulldozer and drive it forward. In front of you are hundreds of Jewish men, women, and children, who have just been shot and thrown into a mass grave. many of them are still alive. You are to cover them with soil--to bury them alive.

You know that if you refuse, you will be instantly shot by the officer, and tossed into the grave, dead or alive. Then he or someone else will drive the bulldozer. Do you obey him?

If you bury them, are you guilty of any crime? If you say that you would simply be following orders, was any Nazi therefore guilty of a moral crime when six million Jews were slaughtered? After all, they were all just following the orders of one man...Adolf Hitler.