Assimilation

Does G-d love even you,
	Herr Hitler?
Your war helped time my birth
	so that I was too young for Vietnam and too old for Beirut.
A family of refugees from you
	taught me your language.
And your ruined land drove a young girl's family to America
	where I married her.
In fear of you my country made secret weapons, which kept the next war cold long enough
	to give me a job
	making more of them.

So much I, a Jew-boy, have from you,
	who shamed the Western World into letting
Israel
	be reborn.

Once mother found steamy swastikas wet-fingered on the bathroom mirror. I just wanted to see how to make them,
but
	there you were.

There you were
	when a man in a black shirt was picked up by the SS.
Shouting slogans, he shoved his sisterbrothers into the van, and in the confusion,
	ran
	from himself
	forever.

We see ourselves disfigured, damaged by our sins,
	black-shirted, in swastika-covered mirrors.

But God’s Love through Christ, some say in my church — the church that helped your people butcher my people — can redeem all people of all times and places.

	Even you?

	Even your victims,
	even me.

Dude, you creep me out sometimes.