Every Holocaust Museum tells a specific story. For example, the Museum in Washington D.C. tells of the horrors of the death camps, but ends with the American liberation. One way of reading this story is that the Nazis did this horrific thing and we (the American Liberators) ended it. In large part this is true.
Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem tells a different story.
To begin, the facility itself is an amazing structure. The building is shaped like a massive three-dimensional triangle that literally cuts right through a hillside. The top of the triangle is transparent, freeing ambient light to illuminate the main corridor that lies beneath. A massive panoramic window on the far side of the museum draws each guest close: illuminated by light, we walk through the land toward the light.
The curators of Yad Vashem have done an amazing job of helping its visitors understand both the global tragedy and also the personal terror of the Holocaust. For example...
I found myself standing in the middle of the first exhibit before I realized it. I stood in the main corridor gazing toward the panoramic window at the end when I looked to my right and left. As I did, I recognized that I stood between two massive pictures, each a different picture of the same gruesome massacre.
A layer of logs and a layer of Jews...A layer of logs and a layer of Jews...A layer of logs and a layer of Jews...ten to fifteen layers thick...all of them dead and partially burnt.
These pictures were taken by a liberator as smoke continued to rise from the worst bonfire I'd ever seen. You see, just before the camp was liberated, the Nazis laid down a layer of logs and then a layer of Jews, executed them with a bullet in the back of their heads, laid down another layer of logs and did it over and over and over...it was their final attempt to exterminate as many Jews as they possibly could and to destroy the evidence with fire before the liberators arrived. The fire never really caught, so what remained on that day will forever be seared into my memory and the memories of thousands of visitors a day who visit Yad Vashem.
Directly beneath the pictures lay a glass display with the things that the liberators found in the pockets of the people in the pile. Charred pocket watches, wedding rings, ID cards, drawings of "home", maps of the death camp, letters to loved ones. As I processed what it was that I as seeing, I understood that these objects were the very things that individuals had held on to in an effort to remain sane and to hold on to hope for a better day. What's more, I understood unlike I ever had before, that the Holocaust was deeply personal: real people killed real people.
As I began to weave my way through Yad Vashem I quickly understood the story of this particular museum...it was a story that is not often told on this side of the world.
The story goes like this:
In the Holocaust, the whole world tried to kill us.
One display in particular opened my eyes to the global scale of the Holocaust. On a wall in a room was a massive map of Europe and Asia. Red dots marked not tens...not hundreds...but thousands of death camps. On the opposite wall were listed the names of specific countries under which were listed the names of the death camps in each country complete with the number of people who were killed in each camp. Next to each country name was a large number that depicted the total number of people killed in that country during the Holocaust.
As Americans, we hear about the four or five major death camps. We don't necessarily hear about the thousands of them all over Europe and Asia. It wasn't just the Germans who tried to exterminate the Jews...it really was a global effort...and it was nearly successful.
...but the story continues:
In the Holocaust, the whole world tried to kill us.
In the Holocaust, Christians tried to kill us.
The following display emphasized that the majority of the Nazi regime were Lutheran...they were Christians. In their story, the Jews understand that Christians sought to exterminate Jews and that the American Christians stood by silently.
One quote (Christian to Jew) paralyzed me: "We cannot help you...you killed Christ."
From that moment forward, the story becomes incredibly personal. I read post cards scribbled in a panic from a cattle car. One such post card was written by a young mother whose baby boy had just been ripped out of her arms. Finding herself packed into a cattle car, separated from her infant child for the first time in her life, I could hear her screaming out:
"Richard...O my Richard! Has anyone seen my Richard? God save my Richard!"
Yad Vashem unofficially ends in a circular room that is forty feet tall, floor to ceiling. I entered into the space on a platform that suspended me at twenty feet; from my vantage point I could look up and I could look down. The walls of the space, floor to ceiling, are lined with bookshelves on which sit binders containing the names and personal information of the 6 million Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust. To this day, they continue to the search for every last name.
In the Holocaust, the whole world tried to kill us.
In the Holocaust, Christians tried to kill us.
We survived...
From this room, the official end of Yad Vashem drew me: the panoramic window. The view of "the land" was stunning. The story continued:
In the Holocaust, the whole world tried to kill us.
In the Holocaust, Christians tried to kill us.
We survived...and the land is rightfully ours.
As I exited, I watched as a platoon of young Jewish defenders who had just made their way through the museum. As I listened to their impassioned commander, a question grew loud in my mind:
Why is it that I have never heard a contemporary Jew refer to God as the God who delivered them from the Holocaust?
In my understanding of the Hebrew Scriptures, it seems as though Israel always identified God by what He had done. For example, God was not just named "God", He was named "God who rescued us from Egypt." My experience of Yad Vashem concluding with the sight of kids with guns left me wondering if contemporary Jews saw God as the God who had delivered them or if they saw God as the God who had abandoned them.
Kids with guns chanting the national slogan, "Never again!" seemed to answer the question.
It seems as though they believe that God had not delivered them, but that God had abandoned them. And if God had abandoned them, then they weren't rescued from the Holocaust: they survived. And because they survived, the land through which Yad Vashem cuts through was rightfully theirs. What's more, it seems as though they believe that the land is going to stay theirs not because they put their faith and trust in their God but because they put guns in the arms of indoctrinated kids.
In the Holocaust, the whole world tried to kill us.
In the Holocaust, Christians tried to kill us.
We survived...and the land is rightfully ours.
God cannot be trusted so we will trust ourselves.
10 comments:
I took a Judaic studies class in college that mainly focused on what you've written about here. It was fascinating and heart-wrenching and thought-provoking, and most importantly, challenged the way I view the world and that period of history.
Sarah,
See my next post where I'll consider where I hear the Jewish story beginning as they narrate it. But I'm curious what was most fascinating, heart-wrenching, thought-provoking, and challenging to you about what you learned/are learning?
A few thoughts as I read this post...
- Your observation about how Jews view God's role in the Holocaust is very insightful.
- It's very painful, as a Christian, to be reminded that Christian communities perpetrated such atrocities and mass murder.
- It's commonly thought that Nazis were Christians, but in reality, Hitler was an avowed atheist who hated the church and distrusted church goers. Churches were systematically persecuted and shut down in Nazi Europe, with pastors and priests routinely arrested and sent to camps while many practicing Christians hid in fear. In Poland, thousands of Catholic priests were on the lists that invading Germans had written up in advance of people to arrest and execute.
- Nazi spiritual beliefs, or lack thereof, do not change the long and awful history of Christians hating Jews. When I first learned of "anti-Semitism" as a kid, I was shocked and confused. "Why would Christians hate Jews?" I thought. "Most of the Old Testament is about the Jews...Jesus was a Jew." It made, and still makes no sense to me. Jesus would certainly not approve.
- I'm sad that Israel teaches its people that Christians are responsible for the Holocaust. It's just as misleading as some of the nasty stereotypes of Jews.
- I am pro-Israel as a people and as a country. But I am deeply saddened to see how the abused has become an abuser.
Maryann,
Thanks for your thoughts here. While you're correct on Hitler and his persecution of German Christians, perspective creates reality. That is, Germans as largely Lutheran has been translated into "Christians did this to us."
One of my most significant learnings over the past 5 weeks is that language does create reality...regardless of whether the reality created is a truthful reality.
Unfortunately, in the case of the German Nazi participation in the Holocaust, the reality is that while Hitler was athiest, his army was not (generally speaking).
The contemporary take away for me is that I, as a follower of Jesus, must live thoughtfully and with wisdom in the midst of major systemic injustices. It is irresponsible (if not sin) for me to see dehumanizing and not do something about it, even if doing something involves simply telling the stories.
Perhaps the greatest sin of the American Church is that, even when we learn of issues of injustice, we sit by silently wondering when God is going to do something about that.
To answer your question, Jer, the most challenging part was to grapple with the question of where God was/is in the midst of Jewish persecution. Before this class (which was called the history of anti-semitism), as a small town girl from a Mormon community I didn't think much about Judaism at all. Nearly everyone in the class was Jewish but me, including the professor who lost much of his family in the Holocaust. I was challenged to open my eyes to injustices past and present and question. The professor opened and ended the semester by asking us this question: what does it mean to be Jewish? To everyone in the class, it meant something different. It hurt to hear about anti-semitism throughout history and the church's part in it. I often think about the things I discussed and read in that class.
I'm curious. What was his response to his own question? Do you remember?
I thought of something last night that he always said in that class: "above all they are a people who survive." I wish I had held on to my notes from that class.
What a great quote! Thanks Sarah.
The whole collection of issues around anti-Semitism, Israel, and Palestine become more mind boggling and complicated the more I learn about them. It seems that all people groups involved (including the US!) have both legitimate grievances and blood on their hands. I must confess I am often one of those American Christians feeling helpless and wondering when God will step in...
Maryann,
Thanks for your humble posting. I agree wholeheartedly. My impression is that prayer to the God of the impossible...the God who wore blood on His hands for us...is the only way forward.
Post a Comment