On this day....tragic irony

Louis Dembitz Brandeis made history as being the first Jewish American to be confirmed to the United State Supreme Court. The nomination came from then President Wilson who wrote:

I cannot speak too highly of his impartial, impersonal, orderly, and constructive mind, his rare analytical powers, his deep human sympathy, his profound acquaintance with the historical roots of our institutions and insight into their spirit, or of the many evidences he has given of being imbued, to the very heart, with our American ideals of justice and equality of opportunity; of his knowledge of modern economic conditions and of the way they bear upon the masses of the people, or of his genius in getting persons to unite in common and harmonious action and look with frank and kindly eyes into each other's minds, who had before been heated antagonists.

In the same year, 1916, a man who would become the world's foe penned the following piece of poetry:

In a Thicket of the Forest at Artois

 English translation

It was in a thicket in the Artois Wood.
Deep in the trees, on blood-soaked ground,
A wounded German warrior lay stretched
And his cries rang out in the night.
In vain ... no echo answered his plea ...
Will he bleed to death like a beast
Shot in the gut, that dies alone?

Then suddenly ...
Heavy steps approach from right and left
He hears them stamp on the forest floor ...
And new hope springs in his soul.
And now from the left ...
And now from both sides ...
Two men approach his dark resting place
A German, and a Frenchman.
And each watches the other with distrustful glance,
And threateningly they aim their weapons.
The German warrior asks: "What are you doing here?"
"I was touched by his desperate calls for help."

"He's your enemy!"
"He’s a man who is suffering."

And both lowered their weapons without a word.
Then entwined their hands together
And with muscles tensed, carefully lifted
The wounded warrior, as if on a stretcher,
And carried him through the woods
Till they came to the German outposts.
"Now it’s done. He’ll get good care."
And the Frenchman turns back toward the woods.
But the German grasps for his hand,
Looks, moved, into sorrow-dimmed eyes
And says to him with earnest foreboding:

"I don’t know what fate holds for us,
Which inscrutably rules in the stars.
Perhaps I shall fall, a victim of your bullet.
Perhaps mine will fell you on the sand —
For the fortune of battle is unpredictable.
But however it may be, and whatever may come:
We lived these sacred hours,
When human found himself in human ...
And now, farewell! And God be with you!"
                                                    Adolf Hitler 1916

Fast forward to the year of 1942 - June 1st of that year - the 26th anniversary of Louis Dembitz Brandeis being confirmed to the Supreme Court - 26 years after the above piece of poetry was written - An underground newspaper in Warsaw exposed a truth that many had rumored about - The Liberty Brigade documented in their report about the gassing....the murder...the extermination... of tens of thousands of Jews at Chelmno - a death camp. 

The story was more than a report on rumors that many knew were actually fact - it came to the world's attention via the voice of a young Jewish male -, Emanuel Ringelblum. Emmanuel had escaped from the Chelmno death camp - an escape that happened  after he was  forced to bury the bodies of others Jews and after those lifeless remains had been thrown out of the gas vans. 

**one other little tidbit - it is rumored that in 1916 ...the same year he wrote that poem, Hitler lost a testicle due to an injury suffered from war.