What are some of the most famous regrets ever?
A photo that absolutely haunts me is the photo below of Leni Riefenstahl, a famous movie director from Germany. Riefenstahl’s stylistic movie making skills had helped the Nazis make excellent propaganda for a few years, but Riefenstahl had been largely insulated from the brutality of their reign — she just made some nice films, attended red carpet events and dined with the high and mighty at their most charming. Everything changed in September 1939 when Germany invaded Poland and Riefenstahl decided to be a war correspondent… A German officer later relayed the story of the photo above. He said there was a group of Jewish Poles gathered in a square. Riefenstahl was shooting scenes and asked the soldiers to “remove the people from the square” so she could capture the square and the soldiers better… the officer to which Riefenstahl gave the command, relayed it to his men thus: “Riefenstahl says, get rid of the Jews!” And the soldiers nodded, aimed their rifles and opened fire on them. They gunned down the Jews in front of the frightened director…

The moment was captured on camera by an assistent. Leni Riefenstahl, on September 12, 1939, coming to terms with what the Nazis were really all about. She later tried to sanitize the events in her memoirs, in which she pretended she tried to intervene and was threatened with death after. Looking at the photo I don’t see brave intervention — just a woman, frozen in mortal terror as she is forced to watch the consequences of the propaganda she helped make.