| October 14, 2008 |
Vol 9, Issue 31
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 Get Ready to Lead!
"It's simple. We're just changing the world."
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| Truth still needs to be defended. Injustice must still be remedied. Evil must still be opposed. A special report from the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. |
 The shiny silver Mercedes van screeched to a halt in front of our hotel. My son Graham and I hopped in, joining a handful of other tourists for a journey through the pretty countryside surrounding Krakow, Poland. The sunny, temperate weather was utterly at odds with the shock we knew we would endure that day.
Within an hour we arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the infamous concentration camp established by the the Schutzstaffel, the dreaded SS paramilitary organization established by Adolph Hitler to terrify Europe into submission to his insane vision.
It's quiet and peaceful now, with well-organized groups of tourists speaking in reverent tones. Looking at Auschwitz today it's hard to imagine the horror of the place 65 years ago, where Poles and Jews from all over Europe were systematically tortured and killed by poison gas, hanging, firing squads, suffocation, torture, sickening medical experiments and starvation.
"More than one million people died in this place," our tour guide told us. The evidence is all around--from the menacing electrified barbed wire to the torture chambers to room after room of photographic evidence, rolls of "cloth" made from human hair of those who were killed, enormous piles of shoes removed from unsuspecting Jews just before their deaths.
 Birkenau, the neighboring camp, is even more horrifying. By the time it was established the SS had become brutally proficient at mass murder, running a train line right up to the gas chambers to speed the execution of thousands of prisoners per day. We viewed one of four gas chamber/crematorium complexes that was blown up by the Nazis in a futile attempt to hide the evidence of their crimes. At its peak, this facility was capable of murdering 2,000 people at a time.
On the return trip I could hear some British tourists laughing and playing card games in the back of the van. My son and I rode along in silence, trying to absorb what we had seen. I could only think of Psalm 10:8--"He waits in ambush near the villages; he kills the innocent in secret places; his eyes are on the lookout for the helpless."
What kind of monsters could do such things?
After the war Rudolph Hoess, the first commandant of Auschwitz-Birkenau, was captured, tried and executed. Just before his death, he said:
My conscience compels me to make the following declaration. In the solitude of my prison cell I have come to the bitter recognition that I have sinned gravely against humanity. As Commandant of Auschwitz I was responsible for carrying out part of the cruel plans of the "Third Reich" for human destruction. In so doing I have inflicted terrible wounds on humanity. I caused unspeakable suffering for the Polish people in particular. I am to pay for this with my life. May the Lord God forgive one day what I have done.
 But even this seemingly repentant statement cannot explain Hoess' indifference to the suffering of others. During his three and a half years at Auschwitz, he lived in a picturesque villa just across the street from the barracks where prisoners were daily dying from disease, starvation and murder, and no more than 150 meters from Auschwitz's first gas chamber. Sickeningly, his wife and children lived there with him.
The people of the allied nations were not ignorant of what was happening. By 1942 the whole world knew the facts. German manufacturers participated enthusiastically. We saw one gas chamber with the name of its design firm proudly emblazoned on the wall. German companies gladly used Auschwitz-Birkenau prisoners as slave labor, and recommended their deaths when they became too weak to work.
These crimes were not committed by primitive warriors or south seas cannibals. The perpetrators were people very much like those who walk the streets of Western nations today.
In her coverage of the trial of holocaust architect Adolph Eichmann in 1961, Hannah Arendt coined the term "banality of evil." She described Eichmann simply as a bureaucrat--neither brilliant nor a sociopath. The court psychiatrist called him a "completely normal man, more normal, at any rate, than I am after examining him."
Never underestimate the capacity of ordinary people--under the sway of extraordinary evil--to become the perpetrators of unspeakable acts.
Surely people like us would never do something like that, right?
Thanks to six decades of books, movies and museums, most people in the West see the Nazis as monsters and unreservedly condemn their crimes. But some aspects of the Nazi scheme are things that people would recognize currently in many countries of the world.
 The National Socialist party was a strange assemblage of back-to-nature advocates, anti-communists, anti-religionists, social welfare advocates, anti-business activists and ardent nationalists.
The vast majority of Nazis were members of Germany's intellectual elite. According to an exhibit at the Yad Vashim in Jerusalem, over half of of the members of the dreaded SS them had doctorates in law, political science, history and philosophy.
The German people found the Nazi party compelling because they were bitter about economic hardship and wanted immediate change. They cried out for it in trance-inducing rallies led by an appealing, gifted orator who possessed an almost magical self-assurance.
Nazism was not a spontaneous rampage by a horde of ignorant peasants. It was a well-organized intellectual movement composed of people from all walks of life brought together by a vision of a socialist utopia.
Standing for truth: more important now than ever
I know this is a sobering report, and it completely omits the exciting things God is doing in the countries we visited on our recent tour. But I felt burdened to write about our experiences at Auschwitz-Birkenau for this reason:
Just because God's people are confused about how to build His kingdom does not mean that God's enemies are confused about how to destroy it. The battle for the hearts and minds of the next generation is still raging, and it doesn't stop just because we've been lulled into complacency and distracted into irrelevance.
Truth still needs to be defended. Injustice must still be remedied. Evil must still be opposed.
All those around you may have dissolved into irrational panic. Those whose god is money will continue to call for extreme measures to protect their wealth, even at the cost of freedom. But keep the faith: "The Lord is King forever and ever...You have heard the desire of the humble; You will strengthen their hearts" (Psalm 10:15-17).
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