Fighting hate

“…He is about my age. His eyes are cold when he looks at me and barks me orders. But sometimes I can see he is tired and sometimes even scared. Who knows what happened to him to make him take the weapons and hit the mountains. Who knows why he is so harsh. I’m praying for all of us. And for my beloved, my only one, Ana. She doesn’t know if I’m dead or alive…”

I was reading my father’s diary from when he was a prisoner of the communists in a concentration camp, talking about one of his guards transporting him and others through the mountains from one camp to another. He was trying to understand his captors, forgiving them and praying for them at the same time all that was taking place!.

My father wouldn’t let us read his diaries when he was alive, so I was reading this when he was already dead and that struck me in so many ways. I found myself thinking on how sensible soul was my dad’s and how far away I was from that level of faith. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us… He really lived  what he prayed every day. He suffered a lot. The killing of two of his brothers, the forced separation from his wife, being imprisoned, almost executed once, forced to leave his homeland, and forgiving, always forgiving.

And that was not easy for him. Several years before in a televised interview about his life the interviewer asked him if he hated someone from those days. He answered:

“from then I lived every day of my life fighting hate”.

He taught me so many things in my life and now that he is gone he is still my guide.

Daily Prompt: In Good Faith.