A comment regarding my blog on the Presbyterian General Assembly asked about the cost of such an event in light of the Gospel. Presbyterians moved to meeting biannually several years ago primairly to save money. But the GA meeting is certainly worth the cost. Democracy requires people gathering and listening and struggling with one another and in this case with our sense of God's will for us and for the church.
Several days ago my wife and I returned from visiting friends in Germany. I was surprised by the crucifixes that visually dominated most of the beautiful Protestant churches we visited. My rusty memory of the Reformation reminded me that the Lutherans took over Catholic churches and used them for their own, so it should be no suprise that crucifies are prevalent.
We attended services in Grailsheim with our wonderful German hosts. We were about an hour west of Nurnberg. The communion service and the singing and the spirit of worship were energetic. We met the pastors and I asked them about what theologians spoke to them and they said Jurgen Moltmann. I resonate with Moltmann and in particluar with a book called The Crucified God. In that book Moltmann retells a story by Elie Wiesel from his book Night. Three men are being hung in a death camp. A young boy is among the three and since he weighed less, he struggled to die for many agonizing minutes as the camp inmates watched in numbed agony. Someone said within Wiesel's hearing--God, where is God now? Weisel replied--God is there. Being in Germany,I thought especially about that terrible tension between those who believe in God as controlling all events and thus a God who controls the crucifixion of Jesus on the one hand and God who is radically and eternally present in Jesus. Is God the crucifier or the crucified.
In college and seminary and in my own reading over the years, I had engaged the experience and issues of the death camps. I had read William Schirer and Alan Bullock and Wiesel and Bonhoeffer. Still, I admit that I wasn't eager to see Dachau, but my wife urged our visiting. So on our last day in Germany, we drove 200 kilometers through gorgeous countryside and beautiful small towns to Dachau.
Dachau opened as a prison/concntration camp in 1933. Tens of thousands died there. Some were tortured. Some shot or hung. Some died in barbaric medical experiments conducted by SS doctors. Many died of hunger and disease. We visited the crematorium and the SS had installed a gas chamber, but is was not heavily used. Dachau was a place of death, but was not an extermination camp, like Auchwitz. Still the old films taken by hte SS, photos and just the feel of the prison barracks evoked the demonic terror that ruled for 12 years in that place. So, yes, Dachau is a horrible place that speaks to us of the demonic evil unleashed on the German people and on the world.
Sometimes, we distance ourselves from that evil and from our own potential for evil. We Americans are tempted to self righteousness as a nation when we remember Nazi Germany's evil, because we are the heores of that story. We are the liberators.(I love the Band of Brothers videos). And yes, we fought a great battle and many of our fathers and grandfathers and some mothers and grandmothers fought, sacrificed and died in this righteous struggle. But we have the log in our own eye. We,like every nation, havve the issue of our own exploitation, brutaliztion, murder of others for our own gain. Yet, still, from slavery to wounded Knee to My Lai to the Phillipine war to Nicaragua and Indonesia, no evil of our nation is as profound and pervasive as the death camps. So what can be inspiring about Dachau?
German school children are requried to visit concentration camps to remember what happened in their country. The phrase Never Again is emblazzoned on a memorial on the parade gound at Dachau. But Never Again demands remembering what once was. Never again means remember the past, your story and the story of others. Don't turn away. Don't gloss over the ugly truth. Face realtiy. Trust the words of Jeuss that the truth will make you free. So within Dachau we saw children visiting with their families. And we saw earnest and attentive groups of German young adults who were being guided through Dachau. The guides for these groups were themselves young adults. Something painful and very hopeful was at work.
At the far end of the camp, Jewish, Catholic and Protestant memorials stood defying the forces of evil that confronted us when we first entered the grounds.
The Protestant Memorial was also, incredibly a church. A small congregation worhsips each Sunday at 11am. Martin Niemoller, a Protestant pastor, who had been interned at Dauchau preached the first sermon when the chapel was dedicated in the sixties. My wife lite a candle and placed it on the communion table with other candles. Pray and worhsip here also in the face of this great evil--don't let evil take your soul. And strengthen yourself for the battle. Evil is not just back in the past, it is not just about the Nazis--it is about us, our world today and the struggle to Never Forget and dedicating ourselves to not allowing evil, however subtle, to triumph.
The Carmelite Sisters built a monastery right outside the walls of Dachau. They pray daily for the soul of the world in the war against demonic evil.
So that is why I find inspiration in Dachau.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Elie Wiesel’s book Night is classified as fiction. Under German law, during the Nazi era, no one under the age of 16 could be executed. Anyone under 16 who committed a capital offense was kept in prison until they were 16 before being executed, and that included prisoners in the camps, who committed a capital office such as sabotage in the factories.
The people who were tortured at Dachau included German POWs who were tortured to make them confess to crimes they had not committed. In July 1945, the Dachau camp was turned into a camp for German “war criminals.” The barbaric medical experiments were done by the German Air Force on subjects who had been sent to Dachau after they were condemned to death. America did similar experiments for the Air Force using subjects that had not been condemned to death.
Between 1965 and 2003, the Dachau Memorial Site had a sign in the gas chamber that said, in five languages, that the gas chamber was never used. Now they have changed their minds, although no new evidence that the gas chamber was ever used has been found.
Dachau was primarily a prison for political prisoners or people who were suspected of trying to overthrow the government of Germany. After the war started, the majority of the prisoners at Dachau were Resistance fighters from Poland, France, Norway, Belgium and the Netherlands who were imprisoned as illegal combatants who were fighting in violation of the Geneva Convention of 1929. There was one American in the OSS who was caught fighting with the French Resistance, wearing civilian clothes. To his credit, he did not tell any lies about Dachau after the camp was liberated.
Martin Niemöller was put on trial for treason, convicted and sentenced to time served for the time he spent in prison awaiting trial. Then he was sent to a concentration camp because he refused to stop his treasonous activity. He could have walked away from Dachau at any time if he had agreed to stop disobeying the laws of Germany.
Dachau was the camp where the Catholic priests from other camps were brought after the Pope complained about the harsh treatment they were receiving. Dachau was chosen as the camp for the priests because it was the mildest camp of all. The priests had a chapel and were allowed to say mass every day and several times on Sunday. The majority of the priests at Dachau had been arrested as Polish Resistance fighters, although at least one of them, Father Peter Roth, was arrested as a pedophile.
Post a Comment