"Let's watch this series together"
In the year 2005, the BBC produced a documentary series, "Auschwitz: The Nazis and the Final Solution." I insisted that all my sons (except for the youngest) sit and watch the series with me.
I hadn't done that sort of thing before, nor since.
I wanted to give my sons firsthand proof of what the Bible says about the wickedness of the human heart. And evidence of the existence of an invisible wicked personal evil called the devil.
My sons still talk about the series today...
I have long wanted to visit Auschwitz myself, to see with my own eyes testimony of the holocaust. A desire inspired, in part, by a book written by German-American historian Hannah Arendt with a title that contains the memorable phrase "the banality of evil." Meaning: the men who committed these atrocities seemed to be run of the mill regular guys.
Two weeks ago I went to Auschwitz....
The experience itself
The tour began with a sombre walk through a sort of concrete tunnel from whose bleak walls loudspeakers speak out the names of victims.
No visitor says a word, of course: the purpose is to remove frivolity from visitors.
We were taken into some of the brick barracks (the wooden versions are all gone except for a few reconstructed ones) and then we were shown one display of evidence after another...
...a mountain of shoes, thousands of them - with one small pair of dainty ballet shoes near the front
...a case filled with a sea of human locks of hair.
...a pile of spectacles
...mounds of suitcases in all shapes and sizes.
...the infamous three-tiered sleeping arrangements for the prisoner-workers (and the superior accommodation given to the vicious guards.)
Then on to the gas chambers disguised as shower rooms; once locked they were filled with poisonous gas which took anything up to 20 minutes to asphyxiate every single soul.
And then - how very close by, for the design was highly efficient - the crematoria.
Relentless wearying depravity.
And then to fields where the ashes were thrown; at times the powder was cast into the beautiful Vistula river nearby.
And then to the death wall where some prisoners were shot rather than gassed; and lastly to gallows where one of the commandants, Rudolf Hoss was returned to be hanged.
(The house where Hoss and his wife and kids lived a normal life was pointed out by the guide. "The one with the orangey roof through the trees, just over there?" Every evening Rudolf went home, spent the evening with his kids and wife like a million other dads - oh the banality of evil - and then when he woke the next day...)
Who lives there now? I naively asked. "Oh, the Nazis stole it from a Polish family before the war and it was returned to the plundered family afterwards; they live there happily today."
Purge the evil with amnestic normality.
Two deep impressions
Auschwitz-Birkenau is a harrowing experience.
You would need a heart of granite not to be deeply moved.
We left with two impressions.
One, which we expected, was the sheer wickedness of Hitler and his regime.
And although we know that human beings can stoop to great depths of depravity, one could not but ask what demonic influences were added to the brutal mix.
The other impression, unexpected, was the inexplicable collusion of Jews in the Holocaust. So many Jews were involved in the killing machine as operatives in the gassing and crematoria processes. They knew what was happening and they knew they would eventually be killed to rid the world of evidence. But so strong is the power of self-preservation and the ability to squash human conscience that for the sake of a few more months of life, some were prepared to work against their fellows. We dare not judge.
Only Christian doctrine can explain the Holocaust
I came away asking how the world might go about explaining this terrifying killing machine. Just what one would expect from a universe of pitiless indifference?
Only Christian doctrine has the guts and the hope we need to cope with such a place.
Fallenness and the Devil
Explanation. The falleness of human beings, made in the image of God, now marred and twisted, accounts for the depths to which those men sank. But we must add to human depravity the influence of the evil one whose only desire is to steal, kill and destroy; only with Satan in the mix do you have the abysmal plenitude of wickedness required to design and carry out the final solution.
Judgement to come
Grit. Hitler escaped judgement in this world, but he won't escape it in the world to come. This truth, this fact, is a great comfort as well as a restraint to revenge, for we can leave judgement to the Judge of all the earth.
Only the Gospel Gives Hope in the face of evil
The Americans sent a Christian chaplain (who spoke German) by the name Henry Gerecke to Nuremberg to talk to the evil men who planned and carried out the Holocaust. (For a review of the book, see HERE).
Week after week padre Gerecke spoke to these notgodforsaken men.
Out of the fifteen men in his pastoral care, Henry was convinced that at least 4 of them eventually responded to the Gospel, repenting of their terrible crimes and confessing their sins to God.
Of course these men were all duly punished for their evils, but if their confession, repentance and faith was sincere, then like the thief on the cross next to Jesus, today they are in paradise!
Only the Gospel can give glorious hope in deepest pits men dig for themselves.
Only the Gospel of Jesus Christ gives hope to sinners.
To sinners like Hitler, and sinners like us.
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