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A homily delivered
on April 9, 2002, at Yom Ha Shoah--An Interfaith Service
in Commemoration of the Holocaust Day of Remembrance, Calvary
Episcopal Church, Memphis, TN.
Twenty-two
years ago in Jerusalem on the day of commemoration
of the shoa, I stood at the appointed
hour as sirens called people to a time of
silent remembrance. I remembered then, as
I reflect with you now, an unimaginable event.
Nothing can equal genocide in its wickedness.
I did
not have then, nor have I now language adequate to speak of the
unspeakable. Yet
speak I must because it is important NOT
to forget.
It is important
to remember, first, that ordinary people,
children of
God, died needlessly. We are talking
of events now receding into history.
There will soon
be no survivors or witnesses. It would
be easy to lapse into forgetfulness.
This cannot
happen. One
reason this must not happen is that ordinary
people formulated the policy of mass murder,
implemented the policy and let the policy
unfold. Ordinary Men is the title
of a book by Christopher R. Browning, who
undertook a study of the Reserve Police Battalion
101, a unit of the German Order Police.
What
makes the study chilling is that Browning
shows that in certain circumstances, ordinary
people are capable of open and arbitrary
cruelty. In the case of the Holocaust,
mass murder became banal, commonplace, routine. However,
Browning concludes that his story of ordinary
men is not the story of all persons. The
reserve policemen in Browning's story faced
choices. Most committed terrible deeds.
But
those who killed cannot be absolved by
the notion that anyone in the same situation
would have done as they did. For even among
them, some refused to kill. Others stopped
killing.
Ultimately,
human responsibility is an individual matter.
If the men of Reserve
Police Battalion 101 could become killers
under the circumstances of the day, or
choose in some instances to resist, what
individuals
or group of persons could not make the
same choices?
We
must ensure that others and we
do not repeat the past. For this reason,
we remember. There
is a second reason to remember. We need
to confront the religious question posed
by the Holocaust. It is one that even
now gathers weight as the horrors of the
evil that humans do have not ceased.
Martin
Buber used the phrase "eclipse of God" to
frame the question. Picasso, in his painting Guernica,
painted a different image--the eclipse
of the light of Heaven. In Picasso's world
the
heavens are empty, and no ear hears the
prayers of those stricken.
Many
have taken up these images to describe the
historic period through which the world is
passing. They write or speak of the silence,
of the hiddenness, and even of the death
of God. So it seemed to Elie Wiesel, who
wrote in Night,
Never
shall I forget that nocturnal silence
which deprived me, for all eternity,
of the desire to live. Never shall I
forget those moments which murdered my
God and my soul and turned my dreams
to dust.
Yet
from the death camps also came haunting lines
like the now oft quoted "Cologne" fragment:
I
believe in the sun even when it is not
shining.
I believe in love even when feeling is not.
I believe in God even when He is silent.
The
time must come when, with faith, we can all
say, God was not eclipsed, God did not die.
The
survival of Elie Wiesel, and more generally
of the people Israel attests to that reality.
God goes with us as we journey together.
Ultimately,
the perpetrators of the shoa could
not prevent us from remembering the suffering
of the oppressed, nor the remarkable
faith of those who wrote the lines I just
read
or the following prayer. It was found
on a piece of wrapping paper near the body
of a child at Ravensbrück, where 92,000
women and children were killed:
O
Lord, Remember not only men and women
of goodwill but also those of evil will.
But do not remember all the suffering
they have inflicted upon us; remember
the fruits we have borne thanks to this
suffering--our comradeship, our loyalty,
our humility, our courage, our generosity,
the greatness of heart which has grown
out of all this; and when they come to
the judgment, let all the fruits that
we have borne be their forgiveness. Amen.
Copyright
2002 Dr. Paul R. Dekar
Dr.
Paul R. Dekar is Niswonger
Professor of Evangelism and Missions,
Memphis Theological Seminary,
Memphis, TN. |
