03-04 War

“Sit down, John. I have some sad news. My father has just been informed that over 65 of his mother’s family in Warsaw were gassed in the extermination camp at Treblinka.” It was late 1945, and I was 12 years of age. The death camps had been in the news, but now it was personal.
Mother was referring to my Jewish grandfather, who was a veteran of WW1, and living in and out of the Christie Street hospital for war vets. I was given the impression by this news that wars were about religion.
Then a few years later, as I got to know Uncle Lou Lifschultz, who married my mother’s sister, I got a different picture of the war. He and his two brothers were born in Germany, and their family came to the US in 1932 when Hitler rose to power. They all spoke German in their home. And more importantly, the three brothers all served in US Army intelligence and worked in Germany after the war rounding up members of the German SS.
He told me that their efforts were not very successful because an organization called the Odessa got most of the senior officers out of the country to places like Argentina and Egypt. He called them “psychopaths” and the ones responsible for operating the extermination camps.
So, at age 16, I was not sure whether it was a case of bad people doing bad things or religion that caused wars.
More educational experiences came from a trip to Belfast in 1947 and hearing my Aunt ask my father if it was OK to take me to see the Catholic area on the Falls Road and the Protestant area on the Shankill Road. Apparently, there were huge signs showing fighters with guns painted on the buildings. He said that I was too young to understand. I hated it when someone said I was too young.
But Northern Ireland, as I discovered as an adult, was a war zone with religious overtones. It was Catholic this and Protestant that. And I am talking about people’s names, where they lived, where they went for holidays, what pubs they frequented, and even the whiskey they drank.
On the other hand, none of this religious animosity seemed to exist amongst the better educated cousins, who explained that much of underlying causes of this religious animosity, was the result of years of Protestant discrimination against Catholics in housing and jobs.
So, I developed a rather healthy attitude growing into adulthood and trying to understand all the various war zones around the world. Like the slaughter of Christian Armenians by the Muslim Turks in 1915; or the struggle between Hindus and Muslims in Kashmir; or the conflict in Gaza between the Jews and Muslims. It became obvious to me that religion was and still is used as a tool to achieve political and economic objectives.
And I remember my grandfather telling me that in the trenches in WW1, how they were given prayers and encouragement by Rabbis, Catholic Priests and Protestant Ministers. It was a blend of comfort and salesmanship.
I loved the movie Gladiator, and listening to the address of General Maximus, played by Russel Crowe, to his Roman troops going into battle. “What we do in life echoes in eternity.” And I love the photo above.
My favourite story came from a colleague, Bob Morrow, who was a seaman in the Canadian navy, picking up survivors of a German submarine that had been successfully damaged by depth charges. They were mostly young men like himself, and he spent time in sick bay with one that spoke English.
The German sailor said that the day they were hit, the captain and the crew all prayed to God that they would be given a great victory at sea over their enemies. Bob said he was astounded. Because, on that same day, the crew of their ship were given a prayer that they might be victorious in the defeat of their enemies.
So here we have two groups praying to the same God to help them kill one another. Atheism would make a lot of sense to those two sailors.
That’s the way I see it anyways.