Daybreak
For many years, Adolfo Kaminsky forged documents allowing people to assume a false identity. This would hardly seem to be a noble profession, except that he did so in the cause of saving people from certain deportation and death at the hands of the Nazis. According to Joseph Berger’s fascinating obituary in The New York Times, “Mr. Kaminsky estimated that the underground network he was part of helped save 10,000 people, most of them children.”
Kaminsky began his work with the French resistance following his mother’s death while she was on a train returning from Paris. At first, he chose acts of sabotage but soon started using his skills to forge documents. As the Nazis dehumanized others in order to exterminate them, he humanized others in order to save them.
Why did he risk his life to save others? In a column in the Times in 2016, Kaminsky said, “I saved lives because I can’t deal with unnecessary deaths — I just can’t. All humans are equal, whatever their origins, their beliefs, their skin color. There are no superiors, no inferiors. This is not acceptable to me.”
These words resonate with me as we anticipate Martin Luther King Day this coming Monday. They speak to the heart of what the Civil Rights Movement was about, the idea that each of us is fundamentally equal because of our shared humanity. This seems so simple. And yet, as we all know, we live in a nation and a world which is structured to make some superior and others inferior because of race, ethnicity, religion, economic status, gender, sexual orientation, or whatever other categories are used to separate us. Progress has certainly been made, but we still remain a long way from Martin Luther King’s dream.
This past Sunday during the rite of Holy Baptism, we renewed our baptismal promises, including restating our commitment to “strive for justice and peace among all peoples, and respect the dignity of every human being.” We live into this promise by first renouncing the social constructs that separate us so that we can affirm that each and every person is created as a child of God to be accepted, loved, and uplifted.
Our inability — and too often unwillingness — as individuals and communities to achieve true equity and equality can become so discouraging, we want to give up the work. At times such as this, we can find hope in spirit and sacrifice of those who have come before us: Adolfo Kaminsky, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez, and countless others. How might we follow their example?
In an interview several years ago with Margaret Renkl, the late and great Civil Rights leader John Lewis said, “In these days that seems so dark, I think the spirit of history is still leading us and guiding us — I believe in that. Call it what you may, but I believe that somehow, in some way, good is going to prevail. And out of some of the darkest hours, there will be daybreak. There will be light. And we will get there. You have to believe it. You have to believe in your guts that it’s going to be OK.”