Humanity Washed Ashore

Continuing on themes of the 21^st century—has anyone else thought about the irony:

Trainloads of humanity stuffed into railway cars trying desperately to get INTO Germany.

 Let this be a lesson to the 20^th century self who thought people can’t change, that countries are evil, that the world is hopeless. I’m sure it felt that way 100 years ago in the trenches and 70 years ago in the camps.

Forgiveness is never cheap or easy.

But here is a nation leading other nations to open their borders and accept others not like them but like them in so many other ways.

Humanity washed ashore. I don’t need to post the picture of the little 3-yr old boy face down in the surf, on the coast of Turkey to tell you all of our hearts have to change.

After Kristallnacht German Jews were desperate to get out, to flee what might not at first seemed like a crisis. No one ever thought it was going to get too bad. They weren’t at first asylum-seekers, but they knew that something was coming, a dark tide, that would overwhelm them if they stayed. And, that only became so much clearer as the Third Reich continued with their anti-Semitic policies.

And countries such as the US and elsewhere had quotas, only allowing so many Jews to enter. History now tells us, we should have done more.

Will we reach out to those fleeing Syria, who have seen their government turn on them and then radicals overrun their cities. They are fleeing catastrophe. Or will we wait for the pages of time to tell us how late we were, how short-sighted, how we lacked imagination—for the terror that may befall a nation, a generation?