A must-read "pundit" piece for anyone tormented/enlightened by history

Known Unto God - Roger Cohen, N YT

Any sentient being who walks the byways of northern Europe, so placid now with their glistening poplar trees and villages clustered around church spires, must occasionally feel the intrusion of the painful thought that beneath the soil lie the corpses of millions, young men sacrificed for the gain of a few meters, and often in Kipling’s phrase only known unto God.

World War I erupted at a time when much of humanity was persuaded that rapid technological development, scientific progress and accelerated communications (connectivity in today’s parlance) had consigned warfare to the past. It was sparked by a single gunshot in Sarajevo, made possible by strategic miscalculation, and ended with the collapse of several empires, the world of yesterday demolished in an unimaginable bloodbath whose unsettled scores would soon produce another cataclysm.

In the very banality of the chain of events that led to slaughter, in its apparent unnecessariness, the Great War (in the British phrase) offers an eternal warning to those inclined to take peace for granted. Peace is hard work. Its alternative is never far beneath the surface.

It being the centennial of the outbreak of the war, numerous commemorations are planned. But memorialization diverges. Germans, when they think about World War I, see nothing “great” in it. Rather they see the seeds of Hitler’s rise, and it is to his war above all that they have devoted their anguished reckonings. The French who, like the British, call it “La Grande Guerre,” have a different view; they stopped the Germans racing to Paris, as in 1871. Glory is a word that surfaces in Paris and London, notwithstanding Wilfred Owen’s dismissal of the “old lie”: That in youth’s prime “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.”

I decided a few weeks ago to bow my head to the dead by visiting the cemetery at St. Symphorien in Belgium, where the first British soldier killed on the Western Front is buried, and also what are thought to be the last Commonwealth soldiers killed. In all 284 German and 230 Commonwealth servicemen find their final resting place here.

The cemetery, watched over by wind turbines, was deserted. I was the only visitor. The German graves are in gray stone, the British in white. I read the names of the conscripts. An “Unteroffizier Rolf Berger” from Hamburg, a “Musketier Otto Finke” from Kiel: German kids cut down. It crossed my mind that perhaps the Finke family, after their loss, would end up fleeing Hitler.

The British and Commonwealth graves are set out in lines: Lt. D.C.C. Sewell, aged 20, with the inscription “Thy Will Be Done.” W.G. Bathgate, Highlanders, 23 August 1914, “Dulce et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori.” And that most devastating of all epitaphs: “A Soldier of the Great War, Known Unto God.”

Among the crosses was a single Star of David, on the grave of Private P. Goldberg of the Middlesex Regiment, died Aug 23, 1914. I was reminded of my great-grandfather’s brother, Michael Adler, a distinguished rabbi who compiled the 1916 Prayer Book for Jewish Sailors and Soldiers at the front during World War I and served as chaplain to Jewish soldiers.

I have a precious copy of the prayer book. It begins with a “prefatory note” signed by my forbear: “It is hoped that this book will meet the wants of the very large number of English Jews who are taking part in the present Great European War.” The first prayer for the 16,000 British Jews on active service includes this line: “Fill our hearts with courage and steadfastness that we may perform our duty to our King and Country for the honor of Israel and the Empire.”

The word order suggests Adler’s attempt to balance loyalties: first King, then Israel (not yet reborn as a modern state), then Empire. Jewish allegiance to the crown had been questioned: Thousands of Yiddish-speaking East European Jews were not yet naturalized and so could not serve. In November 1915, The Jewish Chronicle reported examples of recruiting officers saying, “Lord Kitchener does not want any more Jews in the Army.” But Jews clamored to prove their loyalty.

Adler initially encouraged them. By the end of the war, however, having seen the carnage, he had other thoughts. On July 6, 1918, he wrote, “All this colossal upheaval will have been in vain unless civilized mankind resolves once and for all that every effort should be made that war shall cease henceforth.”

His words went unheeded. Europe would plunge again into horror. And Iron Crosses for valor at the Somme did nothing to keep German Jews from the gas.