Devotion for today: Auschwitz, and beyond…

1 John 2:9: Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness.

When I was a young girl, I remember reading The Diary of Anne Frank”. I felt so scared as I read about Anne and her family, how they hid from the Nazis while in Amsterdam, how they were betrayed and captured, and sent to their deaths in the Nazi concentration camps, and why? Because they were Jewish.  I remember asking my mother how something like this could happen. I wanted to know if it could ever happen to me, because I was an American, or came from Italian heritage, or was Catholic. My mother, who is extremely wise, told me something I never forgot. She said, “Evil is always possible where there is hate, and hate is possible where there is no love. Always try to love.”  

We entered Auschwitz (and Birkenau) on a beautiful Sunday afternoon, fresh from a morning of Mass and fun in the Old Town of Krakow. On the bus, we all tried to prepare ourselves for what was coming. We stayed quiet, prayed, reflected. Our group entered the camp rather quickly and began the tour in surprisingly uncrowded conditions. We had a lovely young girl for a tour guide who grew up in the area around the camp and was passionate about its story. As we passed by huge windows displaying the suitcases, shoes, razor blades, toothbrushes, and hair of the victims, she explained how the Nazis kept everything, everything possible. It was unbounded greed and lust for possessions and the money they would bring. The massive amount of belongings we viewed was all that was found since the Nazis tried to burn everything before the Russian army arrived to liberate the camp. We viewed rooms with burlap sacks on the floor to serve as beds, bunks lined up side by side where two people slept to a bunk, tiny rooms where four prisoners at a time were forced to stand for days as punishment, the shooting wall, the hanging bar, the gas chambers and the crematoriums. We walked the sidewalks in stunned silence, and in great awareness of what man is capable of doing when he lets evil enter into his heart. Soldiers cruelly and sadistically brutalized their fellow human beings, and then went home at night to their wives and children who lived very close to the camp. Unbelievable as it may sound, they did not seem to suffer remorse for the acts they were performing.

Here in Auschwitz we saw the predominantly pointed attack on the Jewish nation, an attempt to eradicate an entire group of people from the face of the earth (if you would like to read a really in-depth account of the wide-spread and all inclusive attacks on the Polish people, mentally and physically handicapped people, Catholics, evangelicals, gypsies, certain protestant ministers, clergy including Bishops, people from the Ukraine and Belarus, and any other group  who was targeted by the Nazis, go to http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=472).

God’s plea for us to choose love, choose forgiveness, choose understanding, and erase evil from men’s hearts cannot be ignored as one walks the very sidewalks which led to the death chambers. This lesson must be learned from this place. When innocent human beings, adults and children, babies born and

 pre-born are killed simply because they exist, we are in the presence of evil. Why did citizens of Germany allow this to exist? Many reasons were given, but it was clear that Hitler had his ducks in a row before he began his attack. He had taken over the Lutheran Church, the media, the health care and the schools. He had promoted a very insidious hate campaign against the Jews by basically blaming them for all that was wrong in society. This train of thought slowly caught on to the point where people felt hatred against those they once loved as friends, business associates, neighbors and family members.

 It was the same idea behind the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. The Hutus (majority) began blaming the Tutsis (minority) for all the problems in Rwanda. This hate campaign resulted in the death of 1 million men, woman and children. Most of us remember the Khmer Rouge’s killing fields in Cambodia in the 1970's, men who set into motion policies which disregarded human life, exterminated the intelligent and educated, basically turned the country into a huge prison, and killed nearly two million people in the process. And who can forget the 40 million deaths under Mao De Zong who, during the “Great Leap Forward", starved, tortured and killed his fellow human beings.

Today we face the great persecution of Christians everywhere, with the death toll rising in the Middle East and in Africa at an alarming rate. You can find stories about these, not too often in our newspapers, but in on-line services such as http://www.fides.org/en/news. The fighting in the Sudan, Darfur and many other African and Middle Eastern countries is leading to the starvation and mass murders of thousands and thousands of people, our fellow brothers and sisters. 

So have we really learned anything from the lesson of Auschwitz? What can we take away from all this horror? 

First of all, man is capable of intense evil. Evil exists in the world, and if we let it, it will exist in our hearts. In order to fight hate, we must always seek to know and understand all sides of an issue, a story, or an idea. Then, we must care infinitely more about the human being than about being right about any cause or platform we have adopted. Never hate, never allow yourself to become filled with hate over anything. Love, and have mercy.

If we are to be remembered for anything in our lives, let us be remembered for our understanding and mercy. We are quickly becoming a polarized society: those who believe this and hate those who believe that; those who condemn anyone who thinks differently, prays differently, acts differently. It is fine to stand for something. In fact, we must stand up for what we believe. But we must not hate those who disagree with us. We must stop the evil penetrating men’s hearts, and bring them the love and mercy Jesus taught on the Mount. Remember one thing from Auschwitz: these were human beings killing human beings because, well, really, just because. How insidious evil is! It slowly creeps into every pore of a human being until he cannot remember why he was created and Who he should be following.  Always keep your eyes on Jesus, live by His example, and keep mercy in your heart for everyone. Everyone. Everyone. Remember the words of my mother: “Evil is always possible where there is hate, and hate is possible where there is no love. Always try to love.”

Prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;

and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen