The women of France under Nazi shadows

There is crime and there is punishment. The crime, full stop. It's a criminal act. A lethal abstract. It cannot be reversed. Spinning out of hate, lust and greed, and all the wrong colors of the soul. Punishment cannot right the wrong. There is hardly any redemption. Punishment is a poor instrument of deterrence, and most often it fails even in that. Going above the man-made instruments of punishments, we have the divine system of justice. For crimes, where man-made system of justice fails to deliver redemption, we expect the divinity to set it right. But what of mass crimes? What of Nazi Holocausts, communist purgings, religious and racial genocides? The equation of right and wrong loses its meaning. These are the black holes. They suck any semblance of justice. It spins in its own gory world of hate and blood. No light of justice escapes. It's just a dark monolith, a crime. A massive wrong. Forget about mankind's justice, even the wildest stretch of faith in divine redemption fails to get even an iota of justice. Does it mean that the mass crime stands unredeemed? Forever. Does it just keep casting its shadows over the present, creeping into the future, almost forever. Just waiting to be redeemed. And forgotten finally. Or forgiven more suitably.

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah. A song of humanity amidst mass crime. A ray of hope for the lost. A redemption for the innocent millions who were wiped out because they attracted the greatest affliction of human mind, someone's hate. A depiction of human hate and lust for power in Nazi occupied France in second world war. France is virtually menless. Men are in prison. Women hold the baton of life. They have to keep love alive in their wombs. It's loss and loss everywhere. And monstrous brutalities. They have to hide fistful of love, of humanity, of forgiveness deep inside their tortured selves. It will be required to rebuild life after the devastation. All major destruction is caused by the criminal acts of men. It's for the women to pick up the scattered pieces and again make a home for man. For a husband, for parents, for children, for brother, for sister.

It's a dark cloud hanging over, taking their smiles away. They are wives, mothers, daughters, sisters and lovers. But only in memory. The males who identify them as such are missing. They have to survive. When they can no longer fight to save their bodies, they fight to save their souls. For future. For the victory of humanity over monstrosity. For their men. To give them fresh lease of life, food, shelter and the strong love of a woman, if at all they return after war. Forget about redemption. The survival of love in a woman's heart for her man, despite all the wrongs to her body in his absence, is still a better right then millions of wrongs by criminal souls. It is here that the question of redemption becomes irrelevant. Like a small lamp drives away millions of particles of darkness with its tiny flicker, The women of France keep the torch alive. Beacon of hope, of love, of a possibility in times to come, an urge to relive the moments that sound farther than wildest dreams, In the backdrop of Nazi holocausts, they move silently, unheroically, carrying love in their eyes, hopes in their laps and seeds of humanity in their womb. Read this masterwork by Kristin Hannah. It might help you in being a still better human being. A more loving person .