Witness

Millions of dollars.
20 feet below and curing under a dark grey tarp.
The Bureau of Engraving and Printing was fascinating.

The Fort Worth facility, besides the one in Washington DC, prints all the paper currency for our country. Could anyone counterfeit this, the sisters and I thought, as we toured and observed the multiplex machinery. You would if you were a Nazi in the early 1940s.

Or if you were one of their prisoners.
Would you trade your skills as an engraver or printer for survival?
This is the background to the movie, Counterfeiters, a true-life account of how Hitler wanted to destroy the British and American economy by flooding it with counterfeit money.

Not a kind of film to end a magnificent autumn weekend.
However, reality is the surest way of preserving this peace.
These prisoners had limited choice.
Follow orders, which means the war can continue indefinitely.
Defy orders and they will die.

Their limit of choices reminds us that we always have a choice.

"Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair."
Elie Wiesel was a survivor of the Holocaust.
He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986.

Elie Wiesel is a martyr.
Not because he died. (He's 82 this year.)
A martyr, in Greek, means witness.

He is a witness to hope.
Human dignity can triumph over human atrocity.
If one chooses.

ps1. Source of photo http://www.ok.gov/edge/EVENTS/index.html ps2. About Elie Wiesel http://www.eliewieselfoundation.org/ ps3. US BEP in Fort Worth http://www.moneyfactory.gov/tours/fortworthtxtours.html ps4. Movie Review http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1715518,00.html