The Pianist.

I just finished reading Wladyslaw Szpilman's The Pianist.

My father experienced much of what Szpilman describes. He watched the Jews being rounded up, killed at will on the streets. He felt the hopelessness that last Winter, the effects of starvation.
He saw the bombings, heard the constant artillery.
Not much was left standing of the city of Rotterdam after the Germans were finished with it.

The book does not end with the account of Szpilman. It is followed by excerpts from the diary of Wilm Hosenfeld, the German officer who saved Szpilman's life and that of many other jews.
In his diary Hosenfeld speaks of the rumours of the atrocities that went on, unwilling to believe that they were true. He is ashamed to be an officer in the German army. With great insight he writes:

1 September 1942
Why did this war have to happen at all? Because humanity had to be shown where its godlessness was taking it. First of all Bolshevism killed millions, saying it was done to introduce a new world order. But the Bolshevists could act as they did only because they had turned away from God and Christian teaching....This denial of God's commandments leads to all the other immoral manifestations of greed - unjust self-enrichment, hatred, deceit, sexual licence...without [God] we are only animals in conflict, who believe we have to destroy each other....And it is the same today. (From The Pianist.)

Has anything changed?
God and His commandments were taken out of the schools, relative truth was introduced. Are we on our way to another such judgment from God? The news papers today speak of a New World Order. Daily,  people are killed on the basis of race or political party. Threats to annihilate the Jews have not abated.

The players have changed, the uniforms differ, but the war goes on.
Is the peace we experience only an illusion, a temporary lull of the activities in the heavens?

God save us!