Godtalk

My grandfather – my mother’s father – was killed at the hands of a Nazi. He was a private first class in the US Army, and went missing in action on February 28, 1945, just outside of Germany during the Battle of the Bulge.

His name was Lyle Munger; he was an expert horseman; he trained polo ponies for the Hollywood stars. He was not very tall, but he had a gorgeous smile; he was known to be quiet but with a quick sense of humor. He was the adored younger brother of a whole gaggle of sisters. I never knew him.

A family member heard the story from a member of his unit: Lyle was shot by a sniper while standing guard at night, during a moment of calm in the action. It felt personal. He did not need to die that day; no tactical advantage was gained by his death.

I do not know if the person who shot him was a Nazi, or merely an everyday German who was swept into the hysteria of war. It does not really matter. That German soldier put on his uniform that day, and he loaded his gun. Both of those actions are choices.

I mention that point because it’s important. If you are willing to commit violence on behalf of a racist ideology, you no longer have the option of claiming that you were an unwilling victim of fate.

My grandfather met his daughter, his only child, just once, on a break between tours of duty. We have a picture of him holding her, when she was nearly two, and squinting into the sun, looking a little overstuffed in his uniform after weeks of home-cooked food.

My grandfather is buried in the Netherlands, in one of the enormous graveyards that hold the US servicemen and women who died in action but whose remains were not shipped back to the US. We visited his grave – my mother, my father, my brother, and I – while I was in college; it was the first time she had seen it. Among those who have lost family in the war, we are lucky in that regard: too many do not have a grave to visit, or a date of death to remember.

Finding the grave of an American serviceman in that cemetery takes some patient hunting; there are thousands buried there. You must use a map. It would take you days to find it blindly. It is simply overwhelming to see the acres of grave markers stretching out in all directions.

On that day, I felt, for the very first time, that keen stab of loss. My grandfather had always been just a name to me, but here was a physical reminder of all that could have been. He could have been someone I knew and loved. He could have been someone who taught me to ride or showed me how to fish. He could have been my grandpa, rather than a name.

It seems to me, however, in light of the events of the past weekend, we should be clear on this point: never once has it been said in my family that his sacrifice was in vain. Never once have we thought he should have done something other than answer the call to arms.

Nazism is evil. It was the right thing to do. We should always resist the call to suppress and destroy another group: a race, a religion, a people, a gender, an orientation, a way of being. To accept the negation of another person’s life is to engage in violence.

One of the difficult facts of the Holocaust is that even a nation as cultured a history as Germany can descend into brutality, and even a people as acculturated as the German Jews can be targeted for genocide. The veneer of civilization does not change that basic fact.

In confronting the Holocaust, we find that we have to let go of the sense that culture will serve as a brake against the worst in human nature. It can happen here.

Cruel words, flyers, and acts of hate can escalate – but they are not inevitable. An environment of hate can be resisted. It is not necessary to go down that path.

We are the ones who decide which model we will follow: will our society follow pre-war Germany’s example, listening to demagogues? Or will our society follow wartime Denmark’s example, deciding that we have a responsibility to engage in rescuing the oppressed?

We should keep in mind that this decision-making is not a singular event, like an election every four years. It is, rather, a choice we make daily. Do we allow brutality? Do we support slavery? Are we sure that our hands are clean?

We should never be casual about human suffering.

We now live with the awareness that our narrow range of experience does not predict the full range of what is possible. Humans are infinitely clever.

In the negative sense, that awareness means that we must acknowledge that the world can slip into unimaginable brutality in the course of a generation.

Let me say that again: the world can slip into unimaginable brutality in the course of a generation. Do not for a moment doubt that this statement is true.

In the positive sense, however, the reverse is also true. The power to transform the world is within our grasp.

The power to transform the world is within our grasp.

What is needed, therefore, is a cautious yet tenacious idealism: we should not let what ‘is’ eclipse the view of what ‘ought’ to be. We can be better than this.

We must be.

Blessed is the Lord, our God, who gives us the power to transcend ourselves.