Choosing to Remember Corporate Pain: The Holocaust & Me

Back in the early 2000s, my husband and I had the opportunity to take a team of young adults to Auschwitz, one of the Nazi-run concentration camps in Poland.  We were serving in Poland on a mission trip and had asked our Polish pastor friends if we could use one of our “free” days to visit the camp.  I remember one of the pastors incredulously asking us why we would want to visit that place.  I responded that we needed our day to be “ruined” so that we would never forget.

Walking into Auschwitz was surreal, like strolling through a still graveyard, but not a graveyard with beautiful flowers and grass and trees.  We were walking on gravel around sterile and empty, crumbling buildings intersected by an old train track.  In my memory, everything seemed grey and beige, as if all color had been swallowed up by time and desolation.  

Somehow the silence of the grounds was deafening - as if the buildings and very land were screaming of all the atrocities that had been committed there, though imperceptible to my physical ear, my heart could hear the cry.

I remember visiting a room that was filled with human hair; hair that had been shorn from mothers and fathers and children as if they were sheep before they were sent to the gas chamber.  The smell was pungent - all those years later, even separated by a wall of glass, I could smell the hair…..hair that was probably intended to be used to make lamp shades or some other household or clothing items.  I will never forget that smell.  There was another room filled with the leftover suitcases from people that did not know they were never returning home.  And another room with children’s crutches, toys, etc.  Seeing any sort of article once belonging to a child sucker-punched my soul. My feelings were a toxic (but awakening) mixture of anger, disgust, and shock.

My heart was seared with the understanding that this level of hatred is demonic.  To hate someone for any reason is terrible and anti-Christ, but to hate someone and devise a system of torture and mass extermination for the simple reason of the color of their skin or their ethnic or religious background is pure evil.

In May of 2015, I had the honor of visiting Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in Israel.  It was my first visit.  So many things caught my eye - from the beautiful trees that were planted in honor of the “righteous gentiles” to the detailed stories and images of individuals who had died while trying to protect the Jews in Europe.  However, this time I was also encountering the holocaust as a mom, and my experience was completely heart wrenching. I shed tears most of the time I was walking through and at times had to keep myself from sobbing.

The stories of heroism and sacrifice captured my heart.  Yet, none of these people wore a cape or had the ability to fly, like a Marvel or DC Comics superhero.  

It was normal, everyday people that exhibited profound super hero-like resilience, courage, hope, and strength in the face of overwhelming odds.

I was so mesmerized by all of the stories and images, that I did not realize that my tour group had long ago reached the museum cafeteria and had just about finished their scheduled lunch.  I believe it was our tour guide who came and found me and helped me rejoin our group.  Every narrative was powerful and I felt this desire to honor every act of sacrifice and heroism with my full attention.  I just could not rush through, even if it meant I was a little hungry for the rest of the day.

Yad Vashem in 2015

There was one overwhelming feeling that burrowed deep into my spirit that day - I knew that I would do my part, no matter the cost, to protect the Jews from terrible persecution.  A secondary (a bit more random) thought I had was that if I were to ever get a tattoo, I would choose a Jewish star so as to forever align myself with this people group that had experienced such a horrific genocide.

I remember reading Anne Frank’s Diary in 7th grade and deciding I would have been her friend.  But would I have been her friend even if it meant the demise of my own family, just as Corrie ten Boom’s family paid the ultimate price for their courageous resistance against the Nazis in Holland in WWII?  

Would I have been someone who stood up against slavery in the early 1800s, or the Jim Crow laws of the 1900s, even if it brought persecution upon my family?  

Would I have been someone who publicly supported Jesus’ ministry, like Mary and Martha of Bethany, even if we would have become ostracized and blacklisted by the Pharisees?

I hope so.  I truly do.  But I can say without reservation that I choose to stand up and speak out now to the best of my ability with the platform God has granted me.  Today I choose to stand for righteousness and justice.  Today I choose obedience to Jesus over bowing to the fear of man.  Today I choose to love.  Today I choose to be a voice.