Beauty as Truth
Of all the shocks from Hitler’s Germany of 1933, the one that cut Agatha the deepest was Germany’s withdrawal from the League of Nations. She was packing and sorting when she heard. The announcement on the radio took her breath away. She had to sit down.
The League of Nations was a guarantee of peace. Hitler’s exit could only mean that he planned another war. That realization sent Agatha spinning. She could not breathe. She was falling. It was as if she was shot and the ground spiraled toward her limp body.
What of all the men who died in the War to End all Wars? Were their sacrifices in vain? Was Earnst’s sacrifice in vain, was hers?
Agatha raged. Hitler is evil. The men who follow his lead and persecute the weak, the minority, the Jew are evil. How can a man put aside his humanity because of the cost of an egg? The panic Agatha felt increased as she realized the past would repeat itself, giving the pain she lived – that killed Frau Bleich– to a whole other generation of sisters, mothers, wives. Would her son die in a field of red poppies, too?
And then, God remembered Sarah. With the gentlest of hands, with the softest of touch, he reached down from heaven and whispered in Agatha’s ear. “There is no good or evil. There is only truth and untruth.
“Man bares the mark of Cain, from the murder of his brother, Able. But, the truth is that man was made in the image of G-d. From G-d’s love, he will erase that mark, and there will be peace on Earth.”
And, the room stopped spinning, and the panic subsided, and Agatha knew peace.