Remembering the Fallen

Today was Holocaust Memorial Day here in Israel. At 10 AM the sirens sounded all over the country and everyone stopped what they were doing. For two minutes people stood beside their cars, traffic lights were ignored, meals were left to get cold or to burn, children stopped playing, music was turned off, and the country stood silent except for the wailing of Rocket Sirens. It is a time set aside to remember those who were murdered in the Nazi concentration camps, especially the Jews.

Even as the image settle in your mind, notice that last sentence. "...a time set aside to remember those who were murdered in the Nazi concentration camps, especially the Jews." It is full of truth and political incorrectness.

Rememberance in not something that happens automatically. It is not enough to mark a date on the calendar. If we do nothing specific, then we will remember nothing specific. The occasion will become hollow and meaningless, soon filled by marketing, discount sales, and glutony. I am honored, glad, and amazed to find such active (by stopping everything) rememberance in a country dedicated to never forgeting what their people endured.

The victims of the Holocaust were not casualties of war, they were murder victims. Their lives were stollen from them intentionally, systematically, and with evil intent. I do not believe the excuses about brainwashing through Nazi media. The people who perpitrated these murders are all without excuse for their actions. Each one chose to stand on the side of evil rather than become victims themselves. The Nazi propoganda machine merely provided an excuse for the expression of the evil inherent in each of us. My family has German roots, and I pray that whatever relatives I had in Germany at the time were willing to resist and possibly sacrifice their homeland to foreign forces rather than stand to defend it with the Axis forces.

The Nazi's were the bad guys. There was a specific enemy. Even today, we face specific enemies, but if we do not name them, then we will never defeat them. Today, we're told that we are engaged in a War on Terror, which is just about the most meaningless motivation we can make for what our country (U.S.) is doing. We are not engaged in a War against Terror, as if Terror was a country. We are fighting against radical Islamist, Facists in Central America, and Communists in Asia. Our enemies are very real, and our country's battle is with them, not with their methods only. Until we recognize this and start calling these groups evil, we will never oppose them as we ought to do. It wasn't until the Nazi's were recognized as evil that any real attempt to stop them was made.

These murders were committed on an unbelievable scale. Today, even while you are able to visit the concentration camps, there are those who would tell you that the Holocaust never occurred. Millions were killed, and whole nations are taught that it didn't happen! The camps remind us of our own brutality, and the creativity we can corrupt to destroy each other. "Never Again!" must be our battle cry, especially if we are truly Christians. As a Christian, I am commanded to turn the other cheek when I am persecuted, but I am also given the responsibility of caring for and taking care of others.

Lastly, notice the phase "...especially the Jews." It is true that the great majority of those murdered in the Holocaust were Jewish, but they were not the only victims. Non-Jews (Gypsies, blacks, Christians, the handicapped, and anyone who tried to stand for these groups against the Nazi machine) were also murdered. Hatred knows no bounds. It may start with one group, but soon crimes like these spread like cancer, and no one is safe.

If you have a hard time reading the poem above, it is "They Came First…", a poem attributed to Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) about the inactivity of German intellectuals following the Nazi rise to power and the purging of their chosen targets, group after group. It says,


"They came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up."