“Surely there is no more wretched sight than a human unloved and uncared for.”
― Corrie ten Boom
When I was a teenager, oh so many years ago, there was an old-fashioned dry cleaning/tailor shop in the neighborhood in which I grew up. I came to know the proprietor, first as a customer, then as a friend. He was a quiet, diminutive old man. The sort of man you’d expect to find in a dimly lit little shop, a shop that somehow felt haunted.
On one of my frequent visits, I noticed two gaunt faces peeking out at me from behind a curtain which separated the shop area from whatever was in the back. The tailor called out two children, introducing them as his son and daughter. They looked to be no more than nine or ten. Though I was just fifteen, I could sense these kids were troubled. They didn’t speak much. They looked like happiness was not a part of their lives, and their expressions and complexions suggested they didn’t do much playing out in the sunlight.
One day, I asked the tailor where their mother was. He looked me square in the eye, sizing me up – was I old enough or bright enough to hear his story. He decided I was.
“She’s dead,” he said. Just like that.
With measuring tape hanging about his neck, and straight pins held between his lips, he described how he and his wife were Polish Jews who were picked up and put on a train straight to one of Hitler’s death camps. When, after interrogation, the camp staff learned he was a tailor, they decided to let him live. They needed tailors to maintain Nazi uniforms. Unfortunately they had no use for his wife. So, he said, they murdered her right in front of him. His eyes weren’t exactly wet, but the look on his face... that story... aged me ten years right on the spot. I don’t think I spoke or even swallowed for a long while after he stopped talking.
I’m not Jewish. But I felt his pain. Their pain. It was the 1950’s. I had only heard about things like this in the grainy, black-and-white movie newsreels of the time. A sense of the individual human toll had never touched me so deeply before.
I asked about the children, but too many years have gone by, I don’t recall what he said. I think they were too young to have been born before their mother was murdered. Perhaps they were adopted children. I do not know. But I do know this: the Holocaust happened, and you better believe it and keep believing it because there are always those who want to convince you it didn’t. And if you think there aren’t people in this world who are crazy enough to try again, you are lying to yourself.
There were almost 50 million people killed in that terrible war – WWII. Can you comprehend that number? 50 million! More than 17 million young men in the military. 18 million civilians. More than 12 million people were killed by the Nazis. The dead were Germans, Poles, Russians, Jews of many nations, Americans, Japanese, Chinese, Brits, Italians, Northern Africans, Arabs and just about every other nationality on the planet. The Nazis attempted to eradicate the Jews – and Christians as well. Oh yes, Christians. When the Russian Army overtook Nazi camps in Poland, they discovered enough Zyklon B crystals to kill 20 million more people. But there were fewer than three million Jews remaining in Europe. Hitler and his crew had already murdered more than 5 million Jews and 7 million Christians, but the devil contemplated killing 20 million more. This is what happens when nations appease psychopathic leaders who have delusions of world domination and the means to that end.
Islamic fundamentalists have delusions of a new world-wide caliphate. Or maybe they just have plain ol’ revenge deeply woven into their subconscious. Revenge for how the Old Testament describes Abraham and Sarah treated Ishmael, half-brother of the younger Isaac. If you have not read this part of The Old Testament, I urge you to, as Ishmael is considered by many to be a seminal figure in their tribes. And as an ancient proverb suggests; “Revenge is a dish best served... cold.”
I can think of another biblical admonishment which applies here. It is sage advice for our next president. “If you learn that a man is planning to sneak into your tent to kill your family, sneak into his and kill him first.”
