Yad Vashem

Something has ruminated inside me since my return from Washington DC. It has been hard to capture into words. Thinking back over the many patriotic places I visited during that week, my memories have been accompanied by a faint sense of discomfort and unease. I think I finally understand why.

Our nation's capitol is a place of memorials and museums. From Lincoln's marble seat to Washington's towering obelisk and from the Unknowns' tomb to the eternal flame of the Kennedys, every step you take is steeped in history and patriotism. You ponder heavily the weight of that ultimate sacrifice and wonder what it truly means to be a hero.

With these sentiments, it's easy to leave Washington bathed in the solemn glow of nationalistic pride, but if you are paying attention, you are also confronted with the fallibility of our patriots. Take President Washington as an example: though is said to have abhorred slavery, it was only after his death and in the execution of his will that they were set free. Perhaps this does little to dim the star of a man who tirelessly and selflessly served a fledgling nation, but it does remind us that our heroes are human.

Beyond the disquieting revelations of individual flaws, there are times when the monuments as a whole seem strangely hollow. Though each exists to honor sacrifice, they also serve as an indictment and quiet rebuke of our collective inability to realize the dreams of the fallen. In no place is this indictment more powerful than the United States Holocaust Memorial.

The holocaust memorial, in contrast to the other memorials, exists because of what was not done. The museum exists because we failed -- all of humanity failed -- the Jews, the gypsies, the Poles, the infirm, and countless others under the Nazi regime. It was an atrocity of unspeakable magnitude; so terrible, in fact, that some might even deny it's occurrence. Eisenhower, then leader of the US liberating forces, said:

"The things I saw beggar description...the visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering. I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in a position to give first hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations to propaganda."

Similiar to Eisenhower sentiments, I found it hard to walk through the holocaust museum, but you feel like you must, that you owe it to the victims to remember. And with that remembering, to prevent it from ever happening again.

Through four stark floors of history and artifacts, you watch the retelling of the rise of the Nazis to power and the implementation of Hitler's Final Solution. There were hundreds of us in that exhibit, and never have I seen such a large and diverse group of people act so reverently. Doubtless, most of us were shocked, horrified, and deeply saddened. I wondered, how could we have failed so egregiously at protecting our fellow man? For me, this feeling reached its silent crescendo in the "shoe room" -- which contains nothing but an enormous, ghostly pile of empty shoes. There are hundred and hundreds of them -- each worn by a victim of the holocaust. Here, the gravity of the atrocity reaches full force, leaving you with nothing but somber solemnity.

And yet, just when you are so heavily burdened by the darkness, yearning for even the tiniest bit of redemption for humankind, you come to Yad Vashem, a glimmer of hope in a memorial of suffering and sadness. Yad Vashem is the remembrance authority dedicated not only to the many victims of the Shoah, but also to the few who risked standing up to the Nazi regime and saved a life. They are called the "Righteous Among the Nations" -- those people that helped to save a Jew (many saved hundreds) from the holocaust. Their names are inscribed on a white wall, some 5 feet tall and 15 feet long. These names serve as flicker of humanity; proof that even in the darkest of circumstance and risking the harshest of penalties, some people will do the right thing.

The names are organized by country. I wondered if my family name might be on that wall; my grandparents had survived the Nazi occupation of Holland. So, I traced along the wall, passing Belgium, Britain, Denmark ... and kept looking, looking, looking, seeing names but no country marker. I walked around the back of the wall to see more names but no country. Confused, I walked back around and realized that I wasn't finding the country marker because ALL the names in that section were from the Netherlands. Hundreds and hundreds of names -- names that saved someone's shoes from that heart wrenching collection.

And though still heavy from the ghostly images of liberated concentration camps, emaciated bodies and burned corpses, my heart lifted to see that so many people, from this one very tiny nation, had tried and risked so much to make a difference. And though their contribution might have been small compared to the whole that was lost, I've no doubt that it made all the difference to those that were saved.

And yes, the family name is on the wall. Perhaps we're relatives. Even if we're not, I hope that I would have taken the same risks and made the same sacrifice. The message of the holocaust museum should always resonate with people everywhere. Never Again.

Surreal

"From up here, these city lights burn like a thousand miles of fire..."

-Story of the Year, Anthem of Our Dying Day

One can only imagine how harrowing it is when a fire burns like a thousand miles of city lights. That's exactly the view I saw on my flight out of San Diego this evening: ribbons of red flame snaking through the canyons and engulfing mountainsides.

That view punctuated the end to a very short and surreal trip to Southern California. I woke up this morning in my motel room to a surprisingly calm city, given the situation. E-mails from the boss reported that the San Diego office was shut down, and the news reported that that massive evacuations had been ordered. Some freeways were vacant, while others were packed. My car was coated in fine ash.

It's amazing how, in the midst of so much devastation, life keeps going on so quasi-normally. That was the surreal part to me. I ate lunch at a restaurant perhaps 10 miles south of an evacuated area, and it would have been entirely business as usual, if it weren't for the TVs showing nothing but news coverage, and the hostess mentioning that she had just been evacuated and decided to come into work. If it wasn't for the pervasive smoke in the air and the unspoken sense of unease, you'd never know how bad things were.

I hope that the winds calm down soon.

Untitled

One week ago today, on October 4, Army Specialist Vincent Kamka of the 82nd Airborne died while serving in Iraq.

I knew Vincent.

For five years, my father and I home taught the Kamka family. From the time that I was twelve until I left for college, we visited the Kamka's home once a month and knelt in their living room to pray together. In those days, Vincent was a quiet, honorable young man. He is all the more now.

Being touched for the first time in a personal way by the inherent tragedy of this conflict, I have reached two conclusions. First, politics are irrelevant when considering weight of this, the ultimate sacrifice, and second, words seem too blunt and insufficient an instrument to express my gratitude.

All I can think to say is, "Thank you Vincent."

President Faust

I was about to step outside to do some yard work when the breaking news on sltrib.com caught my attention. President James E Faust passed away today. It's a testament to our faith that you can feel so much love for someone you've never met in person. Whenever he spoke in General Conference, I felt like I was being addressed by a grandfather I didn't know I had, with his tender heart and warm demeanor. I'll always remember how he shed tears when recounting a tale of some youthful misdeed that a lesser man would have deemed inconsequential. Were I so humble.

Unrequited Love

A friend and I have been exchanging e-mail lately about our experiences with “unrequited love.” If you don’t know about unrequited love, then you’re not old enough to read this blog. Bookmark this page and come back in a year or two.

Unrequited love stings unexpectedly, well after you thought you had moved on. A scent, a song, or an old friend’s innocuous question can resurrect memories of what might have been. You carry those memories like badges of honor, passport stamps of the places your heart has been. Their dull ache is as comfortable as it is painful, a reminder of how good things can be.

So, as bittersweet as a love unrequited can be, I wouldn’t wish my memories away. How else will I know what I’m looking for? And how else will I recognize when I've found it?

Trolley Square

I just came down to grab something to snack on. (Restless, I guess). That's when I saw the blue-ish glow from my laptop. I have a feeling that it's going to take a while to get to sleep tonight.

I started writing two different e-mails to friends, but I'm not sure that either of them would appreciate my esoteric ramblings at midnight.

You might have heard that there was a random act of violence at Trolley Square in Salt Lake City, Utah, which is essentially the metropolitan area where I live. Apparently an armed man walked into the mall and targeted innocent passers by. He was killed, but only after he killed and wounded several. (check sltrib.com or other SLC media outlets for the specifics)

Like most people, I feel that Salt Lake City is essentially safe. Of course, there are places I wouldn't go at certain times, but for the most part, crime is low and life continues unfettered by the violence which plagues so much of the world.

I'm not sure what it is about these shootings that is so disturbing. Perhaps it's the randomness of it all. At some point in the future, we may learn about motives ... but what happened was essentially an irrational act -- something so reprehensible to most of us that we would never even acknowledge it as possible, as if our brains lack the ability to even comprehend such insanity or such evil, whichever it is that afflicted the attacker.

But strangely enough, we have to acknowledge that part of him that did such despicable things is also part of us. He is human, after all. No matter the extent to which we are "normal" and "balanced", we must recognize that we are also primal and instinctive. Thousands of years of the experiment we call society has, in reality, done little to separate our carnal selves from what we believe are our more elevated sensibilities.

I suppose that is why my first reactions to this random shooting were disbelief and morbid curiosity. Looking at the events, my mind simply cannot process them -- only in the most primitive centers of my brain do I understand ruthless violence. As my mind grapples to comprehend what would drive a young man to do something like this, I must face the reality that his actions cannot be comprehended. There is nothing to understand, no motive sufficient to explain such things -- they exist well beyond the realm of my rational framework. And, when I realize this, I feel pity and sorrow. I grieve for soul of a man that became so lost that he felt his only recourse was to take the lives of others.

This grief is, of course, greatly outweighed by my feelings for the victims. I grieve for the mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, and friends that were lost tonight. Their innocence makes their loss all the more poignant.