On 27 January 1945, the Red Army liberated the Nazi extermination camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The anniversary of that liberation is celebrated every year, and this year is the 65th anniversary. A large number of Members of the European Parliament travelled to Poland to remember the victims on the spot. In the Parliament in Brussels, I attended a remembrance event organised by the European Jewish Community Centre and the European Coalition for Israel.
The event featured testimonies from two Holocaust survivors, now in their 80s. Henri Elberg spoke of how he was transferred around 9 different Nazi camps after being deported from Mechelen in Belgium. The vividness which the horrors he lived through was achingly real even after 65 years, with the passion and hint of tears animating his voice as he spoke.
The Chief Rabbi of Russia, Berel Lazar, spoke of the need to look forward to the world of peace that the Messiah would bring in where "the Lord will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore," (Isaiah 2:4). It was the first time I have heard a rabbi speak of the Messiah with real longing. If only the Messiah had already come .... "He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God."
There were prayers of penitence from Christians, citing the example of Daniel in Daniel 9 is repenting of the sins of their fathers and forefathers, and then a moving recital of the kaddish, the key liturgical prayer in Jewish rituals of mourning.
There was also beautiful music on a flute and violin. One piece was entitled "fantasy on a hymn for violin solo", which tool as its theme the melody to which we in church sing Lamentations 3:22-23. Those verses came to me when I emerged into the sunlight after the exhibition of Yad Vashem. Amid all the horror, let us remember the inhumanity that the heart of man can inflict on fellow men. But let us also remember:
"Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness."
1 comment:
Thanks for this Adam. I'd spent a good deal of time today thinking about what we read in Joshua, the Holocaust and the on-going process looking at the whys and wherefores of invading Iraq.
What do I take from Joshua? 5:11 "The day after the Passover, that very day, they ate some of the produce of the land: unleavened bread and roasted grain. The manna stopped the day after they ate this food from the land; there was no longer any manna for the Israelites, but that year they ate of the produce of Canaan."
In amongst warrior God, the Lord of righteousness, purging sin, putting enemies to the sword, hanging kings from trees, destroying peoples, keeping the sun in the sky with his might, we find a picture of mother God. Here she is carefully weaning her new generation of sons off the manna - but not before they have proven that they can harvest and manage and feed themselves. The timing is beautiful - the day after Passover...God nurtures and cares for her children. Great is her faithfulness...
Post a Comment