Unbroken

Some ruptures can never be mended. Struck by a tree I walk by, I stand at its base and photograph its trunk, broken off at twelve feet, where it roars at the sky. Judging by the condition of the tree's bark, its catastrophe occurred years ago, and it will never recover. Any remaining life in it is receding into the final tips of its roots.

How different this is, from the resilience of the man I listened to this morning, telling his story in a documentary about his life.

Steve Ross suffered nightmarish privations as a Jewish child in the Nazi concentration camps. Liberated at the age of fourteen weighing only 50 pounds, he later recalled that his years of imprisonment had left him possessing no human feelings. Like the tree I saw, his life had drained to his roots.

On the day of his liberation an American GI, seeing young Steve in a crowd, dismounted his vehicle and gave the boy the lunch he himself had been eating. As Mr. Ross now tells the story, at that moment he knew again what love was.

Ross went on to become an amazing man, a revered social worker helping at-risk adolescents in urban Boston, and the driving force behind the creation of the Holocaust Memorial at Faneuil Hall.

What impresses me more than Mr. Ross's accomplishments though, is the disproportionate impact the soldier's casual momentary kindheartedness had on him.

It's as though, were I to gently place my hand on the broken tree, its trunk would magically reassemble, sap would flow from its toes to its topmost tips, and it would shade generations of passersby.

It’s worth remembering, when there's even the smallest opportunity to be kind.