"Do you understand and forgive?"

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Recently I was talking with a World War II veteran. He served in the European theater, in Germany, during the final days of Hitler’s retreat. He told me about walking down dirt roads and seeing German bodies lying in ditches and fields. He told me how some of his fellow soldiers kicked and spat on those German bodies.

He also told me how his fellow soldiers kicked and spat on German prisoners being escorted to camps. They called the Germans names and beat them.

But this veteran told me that when he looked at the German bodies lying in fields and ditches, and when he walked by the German prisoners going to camps, that he didn’t see “Germans”; he didn’t see “the enemy,” but instead he saw young men his own age who left behind wives and families to follow orders to shoot to kill; young men just like himself. My friend, in the midst of the horrors we call war, understood and forgave.

Do you understand and forgive?

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