War is Ugly

On the train ride from Munich to Clermont-Ferrand, I typed up my thoughts about our visit to Dachau. That's what the second part of this post is. Before I had time to edit a final draft, though, we also visited Normandy. I think it's appropriate to include a few thoughts on that experience, too. Both of these places tell the same story from a different vantage point: war is ugly. It's ugly for the innocent civilians who get caught in the crossfire of waring nations, and it's ugly for the soldiers who are enlisted to fight for their country's interests.

Part I: Normandy

The train ride from Paris to Normandy was about two and a half hours. It was enough time for Jackie and I to watch the better part of Saving Private Ryan. War seemed a little less glamorous after that. The opening scene shows a boat full of soldiers preparing to storm Omaha Beach. They’re shaking. They look absolutely panicked. As soon as the door to the boat opens, they’re sprayed with ammunition. They all die. Their hopes and dreams are cut short… Just like that. For them, there will be no glorious homecoming at the end of the war. No returning to their loved ones. That's it. It's horrible to think about, and it made our visit to the American Cemetery and Omaha Beach later that day a little more meaningful.

Walking around the cemetery was somber. It was emotional. When you think about each one of the crosses representing a human life lost in the war, it moves you. Quinton had a little moment. He told me he started thinking about his wife and how so many soldiers left behind spouses, too. I can’t even imagine. We talked about how grateful we are that we don’t live in a time when there’s a draft. And how war has never been a reality for us. We’re so far removed from it. But at the same time, that’s not true everywhere in the world. In places like Aleppo, the horrors of war are real. It still happens. The Western world is relatively stable, but war is a reality in so many places.

On one of the memorials at Omaha Beach, there was a quote from General Dwight D. Eisenhower just a few days after D-Day:

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can... Yet there is one thing to be said on the credit side. Victory required a mighty manifestation of the most ennobling virtues of man—faith, courage, fortitude, sacrifice.

A world without war would be wonderful, but I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon, unfortunately. And I don't know how to make peace with that. What I do know is that the brave men and women who are willing to make that sacrifice are deserving of the highest honor and respect. In my mind, there is not a more selfless sacrifice than giving up your own life so that others can be free.

Part II: Dachau

Dachau. What an emotional experience. I’m glad I went, but it wasn’t pleasant. There’s nothing nice about seeing a place where thousands of innocent people were stripped of their humanity, slaughtered, and disposed of like useless animals. I think there’s a reason the holocaust is remembered as a particularly dark moment in human history. Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany was a unique brand of evil. It was systematic and sophisticated—more so than any operation we’ve seen since. Donald Trump’s campaign is often compared to Hitler’s, but I don’t think that’s the best comparison. I actually think that gives too much credit to Trump.

Trump is running for president in a country that is pretty well off. The United States is the most powerful economy in the world and has had a stable democracy for more than 200 years. Racism still exists and globalization hasn’t benefited everyone, but overall, things are not that bad. Trump has written a few books about how to make deals and money, but he has never contemplated politics much deeper than that. He’s a celebrity and a businessman. He talks big, but he does not have the conviction or discipline for politics that Hitler had.

When Hitler rose to power, Germany was in trouble. The country had been embarrassed on the international stage by the Treaty of Versailles. Post-WWI reconstruction benefited a few but harmed the majority, and the stock market crash certainly didn’t help. Germans were rightfully frustrated with their nation’s seemingly unsuccessful transition to democracy, and Hitler capitalized on that. Hitler had been a political prisoner and authored his own biography, Mein Kampf, by the time he became Chancellor of Germany in 1933. He was elected in March, and Dachau opened in April. Within a couple years, Hitler had successfully codified anti-semitic laws. Moral character aside, he was a brilliant organizer and strategist.

One of the most disturbing parts of Dachau was actually how well it was organized, packaged, and sold to the public. People in Munich weren’t aware of what was going on in the camp. I think the best comparison is the crazy old man with conspiracy theories about how the government is performing secret tests on human subjects. Nobody believes him, and he usually is just a crazy old man. But in the case of Nazi Germany, the crazy old man was right. Dachau was organized so that no one on the outside knew what was going on and no one on the inside could escape and tell the truth. The fence around the border consisted of a no-entry zone, a ditch, barbed wire, and a four-meter-tall electric fence. Prisoners were shot if they entered the no-entry zone, but if that didn’t stop them, the ditch, barbed wire, or electric fence did the trick. Conditions were so bad that prisoners often threw themselves at the electric fence because death seemed like a better option than trying to survive. That wasn’t the description that was sold to the public, though.

The words “arbeit macht frei” are still written on the gate into Dachau. In English, that means “work makes you free.” As far as the public was concerned, concentration camps were good things for the prisoners. But that was far from the truth. Jews, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Poles, Soviets, and political prisoners were treated like scum. They were starved, ordered around, beaten, or shot, depending on the guard’s mood. Living conditions were rough to begin with, but by the time Dachau was liberated in 1945, more than 30,000 people were crammed into barracks meant for 6,000. Thousands died, and their remains were simply burned in one of the camp’s two crematoriums. No funerals. Just death.

When I was younger, I figured war was something you eventually became comfortable with, but the more I think about the individual lives affected, the less comforting it is. I doubt any of the Jews thrown in concentration camps wanted to be involved with WWII. They were civilians. They had families. Jobs. Hopes. Dreams. But all of those were cut short. It was unsettling to walk around a place that was the end for so many people. For me, Dachau was a memorial. It was a place to visit and pay tribute to those who lost their lives. At the end of the day, I knew I’d be back in a nice, warm bed. But for others—so many others—that wasn’t the case. Dachau was it.

It’s hard to comprehend how the Nazis could have done something so terrible. I think part of it was that they actually didn’t regard the prisoners as members of the same human family. When Dachau was liberated, Nazi leaders were forced to look at the piles of bodies waiting to be cremated. That must have been hard to stomach. It’s easier to be terrible when you can separate yourself emotionally and physically from the situation. That’s exactly what Hitler’s Nazi regime was designed to do.

I think it would be naive to write off the holocaust as something that will never happen again. I certainly don’t think we’re on the verge of something similar happening anytime soon, but we shouldn’t be complacent. We may be more technologically advanced than we were 80 years ago, but the human condition is the same. Every new generation is subject to the same cognitive biases and racist tendencies as previous generations. We need to be cognizant of that. When people say they’re being oppressed, I think we owe it to them to listen. It’s when we stop listening that things get bad. We start blaming others for our misfortunes. We dismiss pleas for help. We become hostile. But when we listen, we remember that everyone else in the world, no matter their ethnicity, is trying to find happiness just like we are. That’s beautiful. And I think that’s the direction we’re moving.

I’m optimistic that it is, anyway.

An RM's Take on the Book of Mormon Musical

My dad, brother, and I were in Chicago about three years ago as a last hurrah before I left on my mission to South Africa. We went to see 311 on their summer tour (since they weren’t going to make it to Utah before I left), but the Book of Mormon musical happened to be in town at the same time. We ended up buying tickets and laughing ourselves silly. It was the bits and pieces of Mormon culture the South Park guys got right that did it for me. We were on the other side of the country, yet the mural of Salt Lake City in the opening scenes had Crown Burger and Zions Bank painted into it. Elder Price dreamt he was in hell, and his idea of hell included dancing cups of Starbucks coffee. Brilliant!

I remember my dad saying it was the aspects of missionary life they got right that did it for him. I thought he was referring to the one-piece garments the elders wore to bed, but after seeing the show again in London as a returned missionary, I think he was actually getting at something deeper. The South Park guys didn’t just check off a bucket list of cultural particularities, they nailed attitudes, emotions, and desires that will resonate with members, returned missionaries, and non-members alike. They covered faith, doubt, and the human experience, and Elder Price offered some wisdom that could really help expand the tent of Mormonism.

Returned missionaries should be able to identify with Elder Price because all of us were Elder Prices at some point on our missions. Some were Elder Prices for longer than others, but none of us were completely immune to the “You and Me (But Mostly Me)” attitude. Parts of us secretly hoped we would personally “do something incredible that [blew] God’s freakin’ mind.” Part of the whole experience, though, was figuring out if we were there for ourselves or for the people we were serving and finding balance between the two.

In the beginning, Elder Price was there for himself. “I’ve always had the hope that on the day I go to heaven,” he sang, “Heavenly Father will shake my hand and say, ‘You’ve done an awesome job, Kevin!’” He saw his mission as a means of earning his celestial reward. It was evident that he didn’t care for his companion or the Ugandans as much as he cared about his own salvation when he knocked on his first door. He asked the woman if she felt there was something missing in her life, and she simply motioned to her run-down shack without saying a word. Rather than offering her something useful, Elder Price followed the “approved dialogue” and was shocked that she and the rest of the villagers were so unresponsive to his message. If he had listened to her, he would have learned that Christian missionaries had visited her village before but had failed to do anything meaningful about their AIDS, poverty, or warlord. I’m not sure there was anything Elder Price could have done, but he could have at least been more empathetic.

The more people I meet and interact with, the more I’m convinced that everyone in the world, regardless of their background, gender, race, or orientation, is searching for the same thing: happiness. We may define it differently, but we all want it. Elder Price understood happiness to be his reward in heaven. His companion, Elder Cunningham, understood it to be friendship and acceptance. The one person that listened to them, Nobalungi, understood it to be an escape from her dreadful village. In one of the most sincere, heartfelt songs in the musical, she sang about a paradise called Sal Tlay Ka Siti (Salt Lake City) and how wonderful it must be:

I can’t imagine what it must be like, 
This perfect, happy place.
I’ll bet the goat meat there is plentiful, 
And they have vitamin injections by the case.
The warlords there are friendly—
They help you cross the street.
And there’s a Red Cross on every corner,
With all the flour you can eat.
Sal Tlay Ka Siti, 
The most perfect place on earth.
Where flies don’t bite your eyeballs,
And human life has worth.
It isn’t a place of fairy tales—
It’s as real as it can be.
A land where evil doesn’t exist.
Sal Tlay Ka Siti.

She felt that if she could only make it to Sal Tlay Ka Siti, she’d find her paradise, similar to Elder Price’s hope that redeeming Uganda would would lead him to his. It’s something we all want, but something we’re not entirely sure how to find.

Toward the end, things were not going as Elder Price had planned. He hadn’t done “something incredible.” The Church wasn't growing in Uganda. He wasn’t serving in his “favorite place, Orlando.” All of this led him to question the faith he grew up with. Things were rough for the villagers, too—especially Nobalungi. When Elder Price left him alone, Elder Cunningham found that more people listened to him when he bent the truth about Mormonism. The villagers ended up learning and adhering to a bastardized version of the faith. When they presented it in musical form to the mission president, he was quick to tell them they were far, far from being Latter-day Saints. This was disheartening. Almost everyone hit rock bottom, but Elder Price learned something important:

We are still Latter-day Saints—all of us.
Even if we change some things,
Or we break the rules,
Or we have complete doubt that God exists.
We can still all work together and make this our paradise planet.

He learned that inclusion trumps exclusion and that helping others to be genuinely happy is often more important than sticking to dogma. That’s something we often forget.

Members who are comfortable with f-bombs and irreverence will appreciate the Book of Mormon. Returned missionaries will relive the excitement of opening their mission calls. They’ll resonate with how demotivating it can be to get called somewhere they don’t want to go or to show up to an area and see straight zeroes as the key indicators. They won’t be surprised to learn that Elder Cunningham never actually read the Book of Mormon before serving his mission, and they will most certainly recognize the assistants to the mission president. Members will appreciate how much attention the South Park guys paid to detail—from using real copies of the Book of Mormon to nailing the year the Priesthood was extended to all worthy male members to referencing Kolob. The only doctrinal inaccuracy I noticed was the timing of Christ’s visit to the Nephites, but that was a minor detail. Everything else was spot-on, and the overarching message was positive:

I am a Latter-day Saint,
Along with all my town.
We always sit together, 
Come what may.
We love to dance and shout,
And let all the feelings out,
And work to make a better Latter-day.

We'll be here for each other every step of the way,
And make a Latter-day tomorrow.

I like to think it’s healthy to laugh at yourself every once in a while, and I think that includes laughing at the things you believe in and hold most dear. Life should be taken seriously, but not so seriously that you miss out on something as beautifully hilarious, touching, and insightful as the Book of Mormon. I may be wrong and I may be destined for the Telestial Kingdom for going to such a crass musical, but if I am, feel free to have dinner with me.

Christ dined with sinners, after all.