War and Peace

Yesterday was a long and kind of emotionally exhausting day, and I needed to have a little bit of time to process it all. But yesterday's experience provoked some deep reflection and perhaps some of the most important lessons I've learned here to date. And thus, this may be the most substantive and reflective post I  have done on this blog.

Yesterday we spent all morning in the Imperial War Museum and then saw the West End production of War Horse in the evening. In the Imperial War Museum I spent the most time in the exhibits for World Wars I and II and the very extensive Holocaust exhibit.

The whole time I was walking through, I felt a tightening in my throat and chest, like someone was squeezing them in a vise. It was

overwhelming

sobering

fascinating

horrifying

...

A lot of things that war is, I suppose. It kind of defies explanation. I apologize for the lack of pictures, but if you went through this, especially the Holocaust exhibit, it's not really something you can take pictures of. It just didn't seem right. I hope you can understand.

I walked around by myself, without talking much to anyone. I think it was appropriate. Some things should be experienced in silence. They had a World War I trench experience, where you could walk through a "trench" where still models of soldiers in uniform stood at their posts in the gloom. A dank smell permeated the air, and voices of soldiers murmuring to each other and officers barking orders gave you a taste of what trench life was like. Of course, if it were to be really accurate, there would be about five inches of water in the bottom of the trench and a coating of slime over everything. Conditions would be absolutely miserable. I tiptoed through, feeling a sense of eeriness looking at these people through the past.

I didn't belong there in the trenches, and neither did they.

I wondered to myself how people coped with all this, this overwhelming and horrifying thing called war, seeing things that no one should ever have to see. In their letters, in their conversations that I read and listened to, there were a lot of positive phrases uttered. It's okay. We're going to be all right. Everything is going to be okay, you'll see. I'll be home soon. This will be over before we know it. And one of the most heartbreaking things, in a letter thrown from a train that was on its way to one of the German death camps (paraphrased): I'll be all right, dear. I'll be home in a year at most. Give my love to the children. I don't know that these people truly believed their reassurances to each other. I don't think they were entirely delusional. I think they had to keep telling themselves these things to just make it through each day, to help them keep their spirits up, to retain their will to live through the living hell they were going through both on the war front and the home front. That was strange to think about--that the "home front" was literally home over here, with the bombing raids screaming over Europe and London, sometimes for twelve hours at a time. That never happened in America. It was a sobering thought.

I listened to an audio recording of a woman from London describing people's reactions during the Blitz--the intense bombing of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in 1940 during the war. She describes one night during a raid when an old woman, who had lost a loved one in the war, looked out from the shelter at the German bomber plane flying overhead and said, "That poor man. He must feel so alone." This woman said that many people who had just lost homes or property were often very bitter, but there was something about losing a loved one that made people more inclined to be kinder and more empathetic. Interesting how that is.

Walking through the Holocaust exhibit and thinking about all the horrible, awful things people have done to each other over the centuries, I thought about how so often violence begins with the dehumanization of another human being. When people first arrived at the concentration camps, their hair was shaved off and all their clothes and personal possessions were taken away. A survivor described the experience as stripping away every ounce of humanity from them. Naked and exposed, he said you no longer felt like a human being--you felt like a worm, helpless and weak.

It occurred to me that perhaps the opposite of war is not necessarily peace--perhaps the opposite of war is humanity. By "humanity," I mean truly seeing each person not as an enemy, not as a force to be conquered, but as an individual, as a human being like ourselves. If you truly see your enemy as human, he or she is no longer an enemy. Perhaps this--refusing to dehumanize other people, refusing to see other people as enemies, in loving your enemies--is the essence of peace. I think I'm beginning to understand that now.

As I walked through the museum, a lot of things ran through my mind.

I'm sorry. I'm so sorry that this happened to you.

If I were my age during one of the world wars, almost all, if not all the young men I knew would be gone or dead. Two, if not three or four, of my five brothers would be in military service.

At least one of them would probably be dead.

I'm sorry.

I'm so sorry.

You see, I have learned in the past couple years that when you have someone you love very dearly in military service, it changes things. It creates a very tender spot in your heart, and seeing things and experiencing things like what I saw yesterday prick that spot very easily.

Yesterday pierced me to the core.

The same thing happened at Dover, looking across the channel to France.

This is my brother, Air Force Cadet Fourth Class Nathanael Szuch, on a trip to West Point in 2010.

When I saw those uniforms

Thought about all the young men who have lost their lives 

Saw their faces in black-and-white photographs and flashes of old film footage

Saw their wounds

Saw their graves

This is the face I saw.

I hope we never lose him.

And right now, he's taking a break from military service for a different kind of service--an LDS mission for two years. And guess where he is?

France.

Now, our hearts are the home front. And history hit home for me yesterday.

I watched a video of an interview with a Holocaust survivor at the very end of the exhibit, just before I left the museum.

She said,

"We keep telling our story. We keep telling our story to our children so our past will not be their future."

This is why we learn of these things. This is why I came here, and what I will carry with me long after I return home. So that their past, and the horrible things that happened then and that happen now, will not be my--and my children's--future.