Life, love and literature

I had a couple of sophomore classes for several years as well as juniors and seniors. The literature textbook was set up to teach literature units by types of lit-short stories, poetry, novels, etc. The novel section included a novel set in France during the occupation by Germany! A young German soldier becomes friendly with a boy who loves soccer. The soldier had been a pro soccer player before the war, and the young boy recognized the athlete. To shorten the story, an incident occurs that involves the boy’s father who is arrested by the Germans in retaliation for some resistance by some of the French men who secretly carry out sabotage.The young German is ordered to kill the boy’s father and several innocents because no one will confess. After the war, when Germany has rebuilt itself and life begins to normalize again, the young French boy is now playing professional soccer and finds himself in a play off game against Germany where he sees that the German soldier is still playing soccer even though he is older. They play the game, the two shake hands and there is no evidence that the young boy has hatred in his heart for the soldier who had tried very hard to avoid killing the French people. As they are standing together in the kind of friendship that exists in spite of their being enemies in war but friends with common goals, a shot rings out and the German soccer player lies dead at the feet of his enemy, his friend. An old man from the village had remembered the soldier and had killed him for what he had been ordered to do in war. The novel was poignant and gave the class many opportunities for discussion about forgiveness and reconciliation. We discovered that we felt sorry for all of the characters who had had to live through war and the way it affected lives forever. I was angry at the older man who had used a peace time game to kill an enemy, but I also realized that I had never had to survive such deliberate evil as what anyone who was overthrown by Hitler and his willing puppets imposed!