Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

The name Olivia Dabrowska is, quite probably, unfamiliar to you. It certainly was to me.

You see, as a child stress some years ago, she had a very small role in a movie. It was, however, painful poignant.

Perhaps you saw and remember Steven Spielberg’s classic “Schindler’s List.” The scene I refer to was the very young girl being herded along with many, many people being guarded and led away, ultimately headed for a concentration camp. This child wore a red coat.

She managed to slip away from those being forced to leave, without being seen by the captors. One of the victims managed to see to this for her.

If you recall the movie or read the book, you know that Oskar Schindler was a manufacturer who had a business relationship with the Nazis. However, he was doing all he could to save as many as possible from being taken away. He would claim they were needed in essential parts of the manufacturing process, even when they weren’t. He was taking risks, courageously so, to save lives. His name is listed as a “Righteous Gentile” in Israel.

The little child that was saved managed to survive the war. She lived a very long life.

The child actress was Olivia Dabrowska. She is a relatively young woman today. Both she and her mother are helping Ukrainian refuges now, during the continuing tragedy. That, friends, is a beautiful thing. May they be protected and blessed in their endeavors.

So many times, often not even known by many, there are positive examples of people doing very special things. Selfless and altruistic. Believers in brother-and-sisterhood.

Yet here we are now, seventy-seven years after the end of the worst war in the history of humankind, in yet another war. And there have been so many in-between.

Of course the tragedy of Ukraine is not comparable to WWII, but doesn’t it seem like this world might have moved beyond war to settle differences?

Would that it had.

APROPOS-“For what are the triumphs of war, planned by ambition, executed by violence, and consummated by devastation? The means are the sacrifice of many, the end, the bloated aggrandizement of the few.”

                                                      -Charles C. Colton (1825)