One of the most puzzling aspects of the Jewish Holocaust is why over five million Jews—many well aware that they were headed towards a deadly end—allowed themselves to be herded into ghettos, then trains, and ultimately the gas chambers, without ever trying to avoid their fate. Yes, they were facing large numbers and superior weaponry, but they were seldom outnumbered. Trains carrying thousands of Jews, Poles and gypsies disembarked several times a day at Auschwitz-Birkenau, and all of them were directed to the camps or the crematoriums by no more than a few dozen soldiers. It is said that the desire of flight or fight is a universal one. But the evidence falters in the killing fields of Germany and Poland. In the Foreword to Miklos Nyisli's Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account, Bruno Bettelheim addresses this question in regards to a very famous family:
Margo, Otto, Anne and Edith Frank
"Perhaps a remark on the universal success of the Diary of Anne Frank may stress how much we all wish to subscribe to this business-as-usual philosophy, and to forget that it hastens our destruction. It is an onerous task to take apart such a humane, such a moving story that arouses so much compassion for gentle Anne Frank. But I believe that the worldwide acclaim of her story cannot be explained unless we recognize our wish to forget the gas chambers and to glorify the attitude of going on with business-as-usual, even in a holocaust. While the Franks were making their preparations for going passively into hiding, thousands of other Jews in Holland and elsewhere in Europe were trying to escape to the free world, the better to be able to fight their executioners. Others who could not do so went underground—not simply to hide from the SS, waiting passively, without preparation for fight, for the day when they would be caught—but to fight the Germans, and with it for humanity. All the Franks wanted was to go on with life as much as possible in the usual fashion. "Little Anne, too, wanted only to go on with life as usual, and nobody can blame her. But hers was certainly not a necessary fate, much less a heroic one; it was a senseless fate. The Franks could have faced the facts and survived, as did many Jews living in Holland. Anne could have had a good chance to survive, as did many Jewish children in Holland. But for that she would have had to be separated from her parents and gone to live with a Dutch family as their own child. Everybody who recognized the obvious knew that the hardest way to go underground was to do it as a family; that to hide as a family made detection by the SS most likely. The Franks, with their excellent connections among gentile Dutch families should have had an easy time hiding out singly, each with a different family. But instead of planning for this, the main principle of their planning was to continue as much as possible with the kind of family life they were accustomed to. Any other course would have meant not merely giving up the beloved family life as usual, but also accepting as reality man’s inhumanity to man. Most of all it would have forced their acceptance that business-as-usual was not an absolute value, but can sometimes be the most destructive of all attitudes. There is little doubt that the Franks, who were able to provide themselves with so much, could have provided themselves with a gun or two had they wished. They could have shot down at least one or two of the SS men who came for them. There was no surplus of SS men. The loss of an SS with every Jew arrested would have noticeably hindered the functioning of the police state.
Otto Frank
The fate of the Franks wouldn’t have been any different, because they all died anyway except for Anne’s father, though he hardly meant to pay for his survival with the extermination of his whole family. They could have sold their lives dearly instead of walking to their death.
Anne Frank
"There is good reason why the so successful play ends with Anne stating her belief in the good in all men. What is denied is the importance of accepting the gas chambers as real so that never again will they exist. If all men are basically good, if going on with intimate family living no matter what else is what is to be most admired, then indeed we can all go on with life as usual and forget about Auschwitz. Except that Anne Frank died because her parents could not get themselves to believe in Auschwitz. And her story found wide acclaim because for us too, it denies implicitly that Auschwitz ever existed. If all men are good, there can be no Auschwitz."
Last week, I attended a funeral. She was a long-time friend and colleague of my wife, whom I had only met once or twice, long ago. After I parked the car in the long queue that would follow the family to the gravesite, I slipped on my blue blazer. I felt something inside the right vest pocket. Pulling it out, I discovered that it was a program for another funeral, that of the father of a friend, which had occurred eleven months ago. Two things struck me: One, it seems the only time I dress up these days is to go to a funeral. Or, at best, funerals are the only occasion to which I wear my navy blue blazer. And secondly, funerals are the occasion where we bid goodbye to loved ones (or support those who do). And while they are full of sorrow, much effort is made to make these goodbyes full of hope as well. The loved one is, after all, going to a "better place," no? That is the crux of human faith: that there exists, unseen, a better world. And better all around: according to the book about it, there will be no pain, no tears, and no more death. Part of me agrees with Conrad Aiken. The southern poet is buried in my favorite cemetery, Bonaventure, near Savannah, Georgia. His tombstone is a bench, and on it is inscribed a notice he saw in the shipping pages of the Savannah paper. There, among the notices of ships arriving and departing, was this cryptic notice:
Cosmos Mariner
Destination Unknown
(click photo to enlarge)
The poet in me loves that. The mystic in me agrees as well. While I am well aware of the promises of God to his children about the world to come, nevertheless I realize I do not—indeed cannot—begin to imagine what it will be like. My wife's friend knows. And my friend's father knows. And one day, so will I. —Wayne S. (photo credit)
It's one of my favorite movie lines, from the 1964 James Bond movie Goldfinger. It resonates with me because it is so matter-of-fact. And it also has meaning because it sums up an important spiritual truth.
So many Christians live tiresome, defeated lives because of one basic reason: they are trying to live a tireless, victorious life. Yet whether you try for a week, a year, or a lifetime, you'll never do it.
The reason is simple, albeit easily avoidable. No one can please God all the time. Or even most of the time.
But isn't that what God expects? Isn't the whole point of the Bible, from the Ten Commandments to the Beatitudes, that we should behave and operate in a way that will please God? Isn't that why we're punished by God sometimes for doing wrong, and rewarded for doing right? Shouldn't we, like Agent 007, be asking, "Do you expect me to always do good, to be kind to animals, read my Bible and brush my teeth?"
The answer to that question, if properly asked of God, is as jarring and as final as Goldfinger's answer to Mr. Bond. And that's because it is the same answer:
"No, I expect you to die."
For that is the secret to living a life that pleases God. It is exchanging our soiled, pitiful life for that of the spotless, powerful Savior. It is to surrender (something Bond would never do, I agree) in order to win. As Matthew quotes Jesus:
"He who has found his life will lose it, and
he who has lost his life for My sake will find it."
So what does God expect of us? Good choices? Living right? Nope. He expects us to die. Every day. Every moment. To give all we are aware of that is ours to Him.
Why?
To please Him? No. Who is pleased by being given what they deserve?
To get into heaven? No. That ticket requires a different payment, and has already been paid anyway.
To make life easier here? No, although it should make your life more meaningful.
Allow me to offer an answer in the words of the always thoughtful C. S. Lewis:
"Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you know that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of--throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself!"
The fury of the Haitian earthquake, which has taken more than 200,000 lives, teaches us how cruel nature can be to man. The Holocaust, which destroyed a people, teaches us that nature, even in its cruelest moments, is benign in comparison with man when he loses his moral compass and his reason.
—Samuel Pisar, an Auschwitz survivor, in the New York Times.
Sixty-five years ago this week, Russian troops liberated Auschwitz/Birkenau, as American troops were entering Dachau.
It is a simple, unadorned website. On a black background, a list of years, spanning 1979 to 1997, runs down the left side of the page. Click on one of the years, and you will see a Polaroid photo taken every day of that year (beginning March 31, 1979). Most of them are presumably pictures of friends. Most are unremarkable to the casual viewer. Yet it is most remarkable the dedication with which the photographer took to his task. Rarely there will be a photograph of just a slip of paper with the date. This was not because the photographer didn't take a picture. It was because the archivist could not locate the picture for that day, presumably in a pile of daily photographs.
Yes, I said archivist. The pictures abruptly stop on October 25, 1997. In fact, the last few pictures were probably taken by friends. They show a man in a hospital room, dying. Eighteen days earlier, a photo seems to show him getting married. But he had been sick for some time. He had lost his hair to chemotherapy, but then his hair grew back, perhaps signalling that he had abandoned the chemo.
Who was the photographer? The website is called "Jamie Livingston's Photo of the Day." But that only gives us a name, not a person. We are left to wonder.
I can well imagine an athiest's last words: "White, white! L-L-Love! My God!"—and the deathbed leap of faith. Whereas the agnostic, if he stays true to his reasonable self, if he stays beholden to dry, yeastless factuality, might try to explain the warm light bathing him by saying, "Possibly a f-f-failing oxygenation of the b-b-brain," and, to the very end, lack imagination and miss the better story. — Yann Martel, Life of Pi.
You know, it's a funny thing, but when you're old, as I am, there are all sorts of extremely pleasant things that happen to you. One of them is, you realize that history is nonsense, but I won't go into that now. The pleasantest thing of all is that you wake up in the night at about, say, three a.m., and you find that you are half in and half out of your battered old carcass. And it seems quite a toss-up whether you go back and resume full occupancy of your mortal body, or make off toward the bright glow you see in the sky, the lights of the City of God. In this limbo between life and death, you know beyond any shadow of doubt that, as an infinitesimal particle of God's creation, you are a participant in God's purpose for His creation, and that that purpose is loving and not hating, is creative and not destructive, is everlasting and not temporal, is universal and not particular. With this certainty comes an extraordinary sense of comfort and joy. — Malcolm Muggeridge, in an address at Hillsdale College in 1979.
