The Last Train

A Train in Winter by Caroline Moorehead is the troubling story of 230 women of the French Resistance who were eventually sent to Auschwitz and of whom only 49 returing -barely alive and to live out their lives in ill health and severe depression. Beginning as a lusty tale of the French Resistance, mainly perpetuated by the Communists who were already well organized and who were used to operating clandestinely, the men were eventually imprisoned, tortured and shot while the women were imprisoned by the French who took to German brutality with a vengeance, then transported east into the camps set up for the Jews. Those who survived did so by sheer will and by taking care of each other, hiding those who were too sick to work and figuring out quickly such survival techniques such as waiting for the last ration of soup, upon which the vegetables and meat sank to the bottom. Their misery is hardly ameliorated by watching the Jewish and Polish women perish by the thousands as they were often caught up in the same round ups. These women emerged not as heroes as the French often failed to recognize the women who "did little more" than spread newsletters about in spite of the great impact these newsletters had on the Resistance. They came home to a country which did not want to talk about a war which had ended a year earlier for them and thus the camaraderie they had built up and which kept them alive died with them.

God Shed His Grace on Thee

I began this day before Memorial Day attending church where my stepson goes, a little white Baptist church in rural Florida. Filled with kind and devout people, all singing "American the Beautiful" and nodding to a sermon on God's grace. We spent the rest of the warm day enjoying holiday sales and napping. Our day ended watching "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas," an experience of the Holocaust seen through the eyes and slowly comprehending mind of an 8-year-old German boy, the son of a Nazi official running the nearby concentration camp. As the movie closes on the suddently quiet doors of a gas chamber, locked shut upon little Bruno and his Jewish friend, holding hands, naked and dying, I remembered visiting Dachau, watching the Germans turn their heads as they walked by, bier= drinking friends silent and grumpy at the subject. I recall Psalms 98:3 which began my sunny, spring morning and indeed I rejoice for there is hope. "He has remembered his steadfast love and faithfulness to the house of Israel. All the ends of the earth have seen the victory of our God." I read back to Psalms 7:10, "The Lord loves those who hate evil..." I thank those who have died fighting evil and continue to give their lives in this battle. For it is Men who must win this war. The Universe won't expel evil for the labor is ours. We must fight for our God to triumph. In writing about the worldwide conflicts where thousands of innocent civilians were killed, Sebastian Junger wrote,"Only military action by Western forces — or the threat of military action — brought those conflicts to a stop.Were those military actions immoral? Were they more immoral than standing by and watching?" (the link won't work, sorry)
http://www.sebastianjunger.com/profiles/blogs/should-we-be-in-afghanistan