The day was dark and had the threat of rain as Ross, Sandy and I entered the line to visit Auschwitz and Birkenau. Kinda fitting given the evil that haunts this place. First there is a security check of your ticket and passport to make sure the names on both are the same. Then they inspect any backpack or bag you might be carrying as you walk through a metal detector. Once past security one is directed to a large unadorned room where you wait for a guide for the specific language you speak. After what seems a long time a person with an English sign walks by collecting about 20 English speaking people. The guide walks the group along a long open roofed cement walled walkway. These are new and meant to be imposing in some way.
The guide talks about Auschwitz which was both a Nazi administration and retention center along with being a place of experimentation on human prisoners. She says that later on the tour we will visit Birkenau which is the place of mass extermination on an industrial scale. At Auschwitz we walked through barracks that housed prisoners in overcrowded bunks. We saw suit cases that the Jews brought with them thinking they could keep something from their previous life, we saw piles of shoes, we saw woven human hair, we saw the place of medical experiments, we saw a firing squad wall, we saw overwhelming evidence of evil. Not once did the guide use the word German, she always used the term Nazi to describe the source of this evil.
At Birkenau we saw what was left of the industry of death. There were long cemented corridors where the Jews were told to strip down for showers. No showers were given, instead of water poisonous gas entered the so called showers. Thousands upon thousands of people were eliminated in this way.
The guide spoke about how the prisoners had just been ordinary people going about their ordinary lives when the Nazis changed everything – attempting to destroy a people. We saw rows of pictures of people being uprooted from their lives and herded to their death.
Was it wrong for the Germans to try to destroy the Jews? Ross asked Sandy. They had their reasons and they had the technology to do so. Said Sandy.
As they walked by the pictures on a wall of Jews that were murdered for no reason other than for being a Jew, Sandy saw other pictures in his mind. He saw pictures of Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites. Who are these people? He thought. Of course, they are the people who were living their own lives on their own land when the Israelites (Jews) came to take their land and destroy them, just as Hitler did to the Jews years later. Was it wrong for Hitler and not wrong for the Jews? Sandy’s mind questioned, so he posed the question to Ross.
The Jews had a directive from God to destroy other people. Ross said quoting the Bible.
Only in the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving to you as an inheritance you shall not leave alive anything that breaths. But you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittites and the Amorite, the Canaanite and the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite , as the Lord your God has commanded you, in order that they may not teach you to do according to all their detestable things which they have done for their gods, so that you would sin against the Lord your God. Deut 20:16-18
Ross continued. Apparently these people did detestable things for their gods and God did not want the Jews influenced by these people hence the order to destroy them. Sandy was not convinced. Certainly these people were not perfect (who is) but they were on their own land and living what they thought were reasonable lives. They were not attacking the Jews, the Jews attacked them for no reason other than they lived on land that somehow God promised to the Jews.
Ross said to Sandy. God’s ways are not our ways, He is far beyond us and we are not to question Him. True, but I can question whether God really gave that commandment. Perhaps the Jews created the commandment as a backstory to justify their committing genocide. Sandy replied.
Ross responded. Hitler committing genocide against the Jews was motivated by Hitler’s own ideas and not a command from God. Turning to Ross, Sandy remarked. On the surface that may be true but the Jews were often punished by God in the Old Testament through other nations who were raised up to attack the Jews. It is unlikely that these other nations knew that God was directing them. Suppose God raised up Hitler to punish the Jews. We don’t know that He didn’t.
Perhaps the discussion between Ross and Sandy was in my mind, nevertheless, my visit to Auschwitz and Birkenau generated questions for which I have no answers this side of eternity. Do I think the Nazi attack on the Jews was wrong/evil? Yes I do. Do I think the Jew’s attack on the people of the promised land was wrong/evil? Maybe.
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