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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=459944" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>A Good Man in an Evil Time</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=459944" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">This is the story I was told – I’ve omitted<br>the details which might identify <br>and narrow down the nation, <br>the place, the family, the man…</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=459944" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">It was in his teens, at school, <br>when the national leader arose<br>to bring the nation to its future, <br>its fulfilment, its destiny; so, like<br>his fellows, he joined the youth corps, <br>their eyes shining with ideals.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=459944" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">When the war inevitably came, <br>the time to show the world, <br>he was conscripted as a soldier.<br>He was not easy with this; killing for any noble cause<br>was not in his beliefs; he sought advice<br>in every holy book of every faith, <br>and knew within himself that he was right: <br>life is in the gift of the gods, and not of men.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=459944" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">One against the many, what could he do? <br>Should he commit suicide, there and then, <br>or its equivalent, disobey until he was shot, <br>unrecorded, unpublicised? That too, <br>he felt was wrong, life denied.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=459944" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">He decided to do just what he was told; <br>but at night, alone, to lay all this in prayer<br>at the feet of God; to sleep then and awake<br>with a conscience washed by that same God<br>who, it seemed, allowed wars just and unjust<br>for reasons which few men may unravel.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=459944" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">As war continued, this model soldier<br>rose within the ranks; and by an irony of fate<br>was chosen to be on the staff<br>of the death camps now being secretly set up.<br>How intense his prayer now became; <br>how testing was this time.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=459944" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The details of this now are all known<br>(more than even those involved then knew) : <br>after the war, when the trials of war criminals<br>attempted human justice, some leaders<br>felt that suicide was the honourable death; <br>some lived in hope, were tried and hanged; <br>some committed to life imprisonment<br>to repent their life; or not.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=459944" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">For him (and some camp victims who survived<br>even spoke for him; ‘unyielding, <br>but never wantonly cruel’ said one) <br>and truth to tell, at that sorry time, <br>those not involved<br>sneered at ‘I was only obeying orders’, and<br>to his fellow countrymen, he was an uneasy figure<br>to represent their national conscience<br>-for him, the ten year sentence<br>was much the same as a (conscript's) monastic cell; <br>adequate sustenance, housing, humble clothes, <br>and prayer.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=459944" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Here the story told to me<br>breaks off; I cannot say<br>whether as a model prisoner<br>he won the admiration of his guards, <br>even the love; whether he wrote this down<br>and it was lost, or may one day make a book; <br>whether, if you met him, he would shine out<br>with love and truth and wisdom, <br>even saintliness; so that<br>you'd be proud to have met him; some say<br>that when he came out of prison, aged around 38, <br>he became a schoolteacher; some say, a priest; <br>others say, a doctor in a hospital..</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=459944" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I can only say, here was a good man; <br>and wonder how I would have behaved<br>had I been in his place; and whether, <br>as his life drew to a close, <br>he was even grateful in his soul<br>to have been so tested; and<br>to have known life whole.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><a href="http://poems.citatepedia.com/">poem</a> by <strong><a rel="author" href="http://authors.citatepedia.com/by.php?a=Michael+Shepherd">Michael Shepherd</a></strong></div>