More than 1,300 veterans have been laid to rest in the Fort Douglas Post Cemetery in Salt Lake City since it was established in 1862. Each of these graves, of course, tells a story. But one of them, on its own, complicates the entire narrative. The headstone belongs to Paul Eilert—a German prisoner of war who died in Utah in 1944. It is marked with more than the average epitaph. Eilert’s headstone, in an American military cemetery, is inscribed with a finely carved swastika. It’s small but unmistakable, and until…
