A rhyming storoem addressing the ability of the human mind to allow opposing values to coexist.
The soldier, home on leave, awakes early
to help his wife feed and dress their children.
He places ribbons in his daughter’s curly
hair, which he has brushed until now silken.
He tickles, hugs, and smothers with kisses
all three offspring until they laugh aloud.
He grows sad, thinking how much he misses
them while serving so resolute and proud.
“We’ll be late to church unless we hurry,”
his wife says, as she stops to kiss her man.
The two embrace and leave in a flurry,
the family filling their new sedan.
The wife is justly proud of her husband.
Family and friends comment on how kind
and loving he is, how they’re accustomed
to his nature so gentle and refined.
That evening as he prepares to return
to his unit, his wife says, “How I pray
for us to soon win this war. I so yearn
to have you safely home with us to stay.”
As he dons his Nazi officer’s coat,
“There’s no army we cannot decimate.
As for my safety, my camp is remote,
where trainloads of Jews we exterminate.”
A staff car carries him back straight away.
The man’s heart feels neither guilt nor dismay.
(History will record millions fell prey
to Nazis whose moral compass went astray.)
Beautifully written and strikes home so well. Patriotism takes on all forms. The German people were certainly duped into believing. I worked for a German sailor after the war. He was unapologetic and said that he was part of a great Navy, although he defected to Canada and then the United States after the war because as he said, "I don't like the politics of reconstruction in Germany right now…."
While most of the people, like the "silent majority" in the United States, went along with the Nazi party line, we tend to forget, or not know, that 10 million non-Jewish Germans were killed or imprisoned in concentration camps. Of those that went along, they probably grumbled and complained just like so many do in this country, and left the "powers that be" continue with their strong rhetoric and narrow ideas.
Hard for me to get into a gentle Nazi soldier's persona . . . I guess it happened here and there, but have trouble conjuring such a man in my thoughts.
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While most of the people, like the "silent majority" in the United States, went along with the Nazi party line, we tend to forget, or not know, that 10 million non-Jewish Germans were killed or imprisoned in concentration camps. Of those that went along, they probably grumbled and complained just like so many do in this country, and left the "powers that be" continue with their strong rhetoric and narrow ideas.
Ron