Reflections on the Holocaust.

By Raf.

Often when confronted with stories of evil I feel powerless, senselessly mad and overcome by fury. But at then end the question always remains, every single time: Why? And how do we prevent it from happening again?

Team Germany had our first day off yesterday, and after sleeping in and buying groceries (which, by the way, judging by their price must be made of pure gold), we went downtown Berlin to see some of the sights, such as the Bundestag (before WWII it was called the Reichstag) and the Brandenburg Gate. Among our visits was the Jewish Monument, erected in rememberance of the Holocaust. It consists of rectangular cement blocks of different hights that stretch over a a whole city block. At night as by day it is kind of creepy and rightly so. After much searching we found a museum/exhibition located underground, beneath said monument. Right at the entrance we were told to shut off our cellphones and to take pictures only without flash. The atmosphere down there was quite and somber and the exhibition tasteful, powerful and very artistic. Once again, I was personally confronted by the extent of the evil thats was perpretated by a nation against a certain group of people. This was no accidental murder, or even another casualty to the Nazi thirst for power, but rather it was premeditated murder against a very specific group of people. And what once more became clear to me was that the Nazis went OUT OF THEIR WAY to find a Jewish solution.


In one of the exhibitions I sat down to read this:

"We would so love to live, but they won't let us and we will die" This is an excerpt from a letter that a 12 year old sent to his father before being pushed into that pit he describes. He was a Jewish boy.

I sat there for a while and then I decided to move. I entered another room that was dark. Against all four walls a name was projected, with the respective years of birth/death. I sat down as the name changed, and a voice first read a short story of that persons life in German, then in English, ending invariably with death by the hand of the Nazis: "Reading out the names and biographies of all the victims in the form presented [there] would take approximately six years, seven months and 27 days."(Information Brochure)

How do you deal with this? How do you deal with the fact that this was done by people like you and me, by people with thousands of years of history backing up their civilization? Done by a nation who has for centuries proclaimed to be a Christian nation (man how I agree with Bonhoeffer). I wish I had an answer, I wish I could give some practical idea, some glimmer of hope that this won't happen again, some remedy for the situation, but I am forced to sit there and here and stare...

Yet, I want to remind myself and all of you, that there is hope. Not, because somehow WE can make a difference. It won't happen through better diplomacy, or through inspiring U2 songs (as much as I like U2), or even through the Bill Gates Foundation and the millions of dollars its spends every year. Do not get me wrong, these are good things at times. But they are not what our hope is built on. Remember that song: "Our hope is built on nothing less, then Jesus blood and righteousness." One of my professors once asked us the question where God was in the Holocaust. And I confess my answer is limited, but I believe that the God of the Bible was with those people who were suffering comforting them, welcoming them, waiting for the; just as he was also waiting on the people of Germany and on the Nazi leadership. The God who in his son suffered on the cross was present there at the Holocaust.

You might ask, why did he not prevent it. I do not presume to be God and I will not answer that question. Maybe this is hard for us to hear: we do not know why this happened, we do not know why God did not act in a different way. But rest assured, God was at work through his love, confronting evil with good found in the tiny little riples of this society, in the cracks of this world, seeping in here and there: moments of light in darkness. And ultimately that is the hope we have. The hope and faith in a powerful God who is at work in little things AND in big things, but most importantly in the unexpected.

"Why war still? Why hunger still? Why a world still?" Candi took these pictures and she commented on the fact that we still ask these questions today. I don't have an answer. But I do not have hopelessness because then this whole TREK thing would be worthless would it not?

We proclaim a God who brings hope there where we do not really see it. My Bible reading from today gave me a little glimpse of that hope.

Romans 12:19-21

Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord" No, "if your eneimies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads." Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

We are here at TREK proclaiming a God who overcomes evil with good, a God who in weakness makes powerful and who ultimately reigns, even though he often does not work in ways that we understand, that we consider fair or most sensible. Is that not the beauty of peace: "Our hope is built on nothing less, but Jesus blood and righteousness... On Christ, the solid rock, WE stand; all other ground is sinking sand." I will continue to sit and feel powerless when I read about genocides and other kinds of evil. But I will also always remember the Rock that I am sitting on and that God does not sit in powerlessness, but he is always already at work and he is always already waiting for us ready to tell us what to do and to use us in his work. What a privilege, and with that we start a new week.