I’m doing something different with this week’s post.
I’m writing the introduction before an experience, and the end of the piece afterwards.
Have you ever had an experience that you were both looking forward to and dreading? At the same time?
That’s where I am today.
In about an hour I’ll be touring Auschwitz.
When I travel, I try to take advantage of any opportunity to visit civil rights museums or holocaust museums.
They are always deeply sobering as I’m reminded of the unspeakable evil that human beings can perpetrate against one another.
I’m expecting that the notorious death camp about which I have only heard and read will be exponentially more so.
When my daughter visited Poland in 2008, she said the worst part of the trip was Auschwitz. She also said that a visitor to Poland who could only visit one place should visit Auschwitz.
We’re on the bus right now and I’m already feeling this sense of dreaded anticipation.
It would be easy to bypass this experience and relegate it to the past—to focus on the positive strides that have been made.
It would be even easier to bypass it because I have no Jewish ancestry—I’m not personally affected.
But neither of those options is viable for me.
I need this experience—perhaps BECAUSE I’m not personally affected.
(Pause for tour)
Back on the bus. How do I reflect on this?
When you see thousands of pounds of human hair … rooms full of shoes, crutches, eye glasses … piles of canisters that held the deadly pesticide that was released into the gas chambers … the crematorium where prisoners carried the corpses from the gas chambers to be burned …
I chose to limit my photography during this tour—partly because I knew I wouldn’t spend a lot of time sharing the photos and partly because I knew how easy it would be to put extra distance between myself and the harsh realities of the full experience. (As if a 6’ 2”, 240 pound man could be shielded by an iPhone).
1.1 million people were exterminated during a 5 year period within the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex because the seed of an evil idea was allowed to germinate and grow—an idea that an identifiable people group should not be allowed to exist because of the supposed threat that their “impurity” posed to the purity of the dominant people group.
I HATE what was done here and in other places in the world where fear has turned to hatred and death.
Here’s what frightens me most: that any dominant group can become fearful enough of losing their dominance that they choose a path of marginalizing, then suppressing, then oppressing a group of people they deem inferior—all in the name of the greater good.
As a person who has lived as a member of the dominant people group, I must maintain an insatiable desire for what is right for all people—a passion for hating and resisting the evil that is possible when we see people as anything less than God’s beloved image-bearers.
I know the evil we’re capable of—Auschwitz reminded me.
And I know the amazing we’re called to—Jesus reminds me.
Be amazing today, my friend.
