Righteous Gentile

One of the great tragedies of the human condition is that we so easily forget. There is a reason why that old truism about man simply recycling his atrocities keeps getting repeated. When we forget, we repeat.

Here is the story of one priest who refuses to let his brethren forget:

Father Patrick Desbois is a French Catholic priest who, virtually single-handedly, has undertaken the task of excavating the history of previously undocumented Jewish victims of the Holocaust in the former Soviet Union, including an estimated 1.5 million people who were murdered in Ukraine. Father Desbois was born 10 years after the end of World War II -- and yet, through his tireless actions, he exemplifies the "righteous gentile." The term is generally used to recognize non-Jews who, during the Holocaust, risked their lives to save Jews from the Nazis. Father Desbois is a generation too late to save lives. Instead, he has saved memory and history.

How long has it been since Auschwitz? And, how long will it be until the next one?

If men like this priest have their way, it would be a very long time off.

"These were young children who were forced, in the course of one day, to fill the grave and to witness," Father Desbois said. "They heard the last words of the dead. They want to speak."

We must never forget what monsters we can be....

We must never forget that at the dawn of the age of progress, the first thing our progressive forefathers did was baptize the new age with blood. And now that blood will remain with us and our children.

But, if we are to lose our faith in monsters, where can we look? The priest has an answer.

Even so, I ask him: How can you bear to listen to a woman talk about when she was 14 years old and was forced to walk on corpses, between shootings, in order to pack them down in a mass grave? "I keep my faith in God," Father Desbois responds, "not in humanity."