Righteous among the nations ...

The story of U.S. Army Master Sgt. Roddie Edmonds (1919-1985) has been told many times since 2015 when he was named Righteous Among the Nations, a designation from Israel's Holocaust remembrance and research center, Yad Vashem,  reserved for non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.

But it seems appropriate to share it again near Memorial Day during these contentious times when the flames of hatred are being fanned again by right-wing politicians, evangelical Christians and the mindless souls they manipulate. 

Edmonds, of Knoxville, Tenn., participated in the landing of U.S. forces in Europe and was captured in the Battle of the Bulge. Held at a Nazi POW camp near Ziegenhain, Germany, he was the highest-ranking American soldier there.

When the Germans demanded that all the Jewish POWs in the camp identify themselves, Edmonds ordered all the U.S. soldiers to step forward — hundreds of them.

"We are all Jews," Edmonds reportedly said, citing the Geneva Conventions as he refused to identify any prisoners by religion. Threatened by a German officer with a pistol, Edmonds' response was, "If you shoot, you'll have to shoot us all." The officer backed down.

Four other Americans also have been named Righteous Among the Nations --- Varian Fry, a U.S. journalist who helped refugees escape from France; Waitstill and Martha Sharp, a Unitarian minister and his wife, whose work was in Czechoslovakia and southern Europe; and Louis Gunder, a Mennonite who operated an orphanage in France for the Jewish children she rescued.