'To love where others hate': Peacemakers lauded

Via St. Paul Minnesota Pioneer Press | 02/03/2003 |

As the U.S. prepares for war, a group gathered Sunday afternoon at Hamline University to note a lesson of compassion and selflessness from last century's bloodiest war.

Sixty years ago today, the U.S. Army troopship Dorchester sank off the coast of Greenland after being torpedoed by a German U-boat, killing 672 men. In the tragedy, four chaplains of different faiths gave up their life preservers so that others might live, an act that emerged as one of World War II's enduring stories.

On Sunday, the Immortal Chaplains Foundation awarded its fifth-annual Immortal Chaplains Prize for Humanity for those who risked their lives to protect others of a different faith or ethnic origin.

In a showing of reconciliation, among those attending was the first officer of the U-boat that sank the Dorchester.

"We the sailors of U-223 regret the deep sorrow and pain caused by the torpedo. Wives lost their husbands and parents lost their sons,'' said Gerhard Buske. "I ask for forgiveness. We had to fight for our country, as your soldiers had to do.''

Buske, who spent two years in a Canadian prisoner of war camp, also said it was important to apply what happened in 1943 to today's world.

"We all should try to live in the sense of these immortal chaplains. We ought to learn to love where others hate,'' Buske said.

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