The day after POTUS again said there were very fine people among the tiki-torch marching white supremacists who chanted “Jews will not replace us”; the day after another shooting in a synagogue in CA—remembering the birthday of Oskar Schindler, born 111 years ago, 4/28/1908.
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Not anyone’s candidate for a hero: an opportunist and profiteer, member of the Nazi party, a gambler, faithless husband, who made a fortune off slave labor. Yet something impelled him to turn his business into a pretext for saving lives: as many as 1200.
He spent his fortune and risked his life in this enterprise. The mystery of Schindler is a reminder of the audacity that distinguishes heroism from conventional virtue and piety—much less rote “denunciations” of anti-semitism or after-the-fact “thoughts and prayers.”
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We've never met, but my late cousin Fr. Steve DeMott gave me his copy of your "All Saints" book before he died and it's been an important part of my daily spiritual life ever since. Thank you.
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Thank you! I write about your blessed cousin in my new book, “A Living Gospel,” our next month. He was a great friend and source of inspiration.
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