Unfortunately, they <u>charged</u> a high interest rate on the loan.
To Charge is a regular verb, therefore it is preterite tense ends with "ed" as all other regular verbs in the preterite tense. Since it is a regular verb, <em><u>"Charged"</u></em> is also used in <em><u>"To Charge"</u></em>'s participle tense.
I believe what he meant was that his belief in god was dead and that god to him was dead. Just like how many Jews were dying so was their hopes and beliefs due to their circumstances they were facing at the time.
