In the 1990s we visited the Holocaust Museum in our Nation’s Capitol. Seeing the depth and breadth of inhumanity that was inflicted on the Jews [and others] wherever the Nazi Regime held power, and remembering that much of this happened between my 8th and 15th years of age, the question on my lips was “Did my parents know?” How could all this have happened, including the ship turned away from our Florida ports, and remain so invisible?
It certainly wasn’t because we were an uncaring family. We attended, and were very active in, a German Lutheran Church. We prayed regularly for peace. We grew a Victory Garden. We saved the tinfoil from chewing gum wrappers. We wanted the war to end and we wanted peace restored across Europe.
We did hear of some atrocities from that “other” theatre of war – the South Pacific. We heard of the Bataan Death March and the horrific way our troops were treated. Perhaps that is why we ignored the terrible way we treated Japanese Americans who lived on the west coast!
Then, when we saw the early pictures from Dachau and Auschwitz and the many other camps dedicated to eradicating the Jewish problem, then we knew what terrible people those Nazis had been! Then it was easy to forget the questions: “Did my parents know? How could this have happened in a nation that worshipped the same way we did?”
I don’t know if there will be a museum built to display the terrible things that have been done in Iraq. If there will be some place where my kids and my grandkids will visit – and ask, “Did Dad know? How could these things have happened and we were so silent?”
Of course they will know I opposed the war even before March 2003. They will know the contempt I felt towards the Administration and Congress and Judiciary that had perpetuated this terrible action in our name. They will know I wrote letters and even became involved in supporting candidates who were opposed to the war. And, they will know that my efforts were generally impotent.
Frank Rich, in a New York Times Op-Ed article “The ‘Good Germans’ Among Us” [October 14,2007], categorized many of the atrocities done “in our name” during the Iraq War years. He ended with this paragraph.
Our humanity has been compromised by those who use Gestapo tactics in our war. The longer we stand idly by while they do so, the more we resemble those “good Germans” who professed ignorance of their own Gestapo. It’s up to us to wake up our somnambulant Congress to challenge administration policy every day. “et the war’s last supporters filibuster all night if they want to. There is nothing left to lose except whatever remains our country’s good name.
There is something even worse to lose! In Matthew 25 Jesus is quoted as saying:
Then he will turn to the ‘goats’, the ones on his left, and say, ‘Get out, worthless goats! You’re good for nothing but the fires of hell. And why?
Because—
I was hungry and you gave me no meal,
I was thirsty and you gave me no drink,
I was homeless and you gave me no bed,
I was shivering and you gave me no clothes,
Sick and in prison, and you never visited.
Then those ‘goats’ are going to say, “Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry or thirsty or homeless or shivering or sick or in prison and didn’t help?
He will answer them, “I’m telling the solemn truth: Whenever you failed to do one of these things to someone who was being overlooked or ignored, that was me—you failed to do it to me.
-
