I think I was 14. I'd just read Anne Frank's diary for the first time, and was sitting in my grandmother's kitchen being self-righteous as only a 14-year old can be.

And she rounded on me.

Not physically, of course: that wasn't her way. But she slapped me down verbally, and she slapped me down good.

“You have drawn the wrong conclusion from this,” she told me. “The conclusion here is not 'Oh, the Holocaust,' or 'Oh, the Jews,' or 'Oh, the Germans.' The correct conclusion here is: this is what human beings are capable of. Anyone could do this: I could do it, you could do it. We need to look to our own behavior first, and then do what needs to be done.”

Community tragedies of this sort—and let's be frank, this is a tragedy for our community—must of necessity become times of self-examination.

It certainly sounds as if wrong has been done here, grievous wrong. And if it has been, then let us roundly condemn it.

But Grandma was right: Before we do what needs to be done, let us first each one of us look to our own behavior.

And then let us proceed.