april 26 , 2006

The Holocaust Remembered

On Tuesday, April 25, 2006 at 10:00am the nation of Israel stood silent.  The lonely wail of the siren pierced the air from its northern border with Lebanon to its southern border at the Sinai.  Busses, cars, trucks and pedestrians came to a halt.  Students stood in silence in their classrooms.  Taxi drivers stood besides their cabs.  For two minutes the siren brought the nation to a standstill in memory of the darkest period in its modern history, the Holocaust.  

It takes a monumental event to bring a nation to a standstill once a year, and the Holocaust casts its shadow over the Jewish people like no other event.  It affects almost every family in this tiny nation or around the world.  Almost everyone knows a family member, a brother, a mother, a grandfather, an uncle, or aunt who perished in one of the horrific events in human history. 

We went to a nearby intersection to witness this national display of respect.  It’s a moving sight.  Normal traffic and everyday life pauses to reflect on what happened less than two generations ago.

About one year ago, CBN News had the opportunity to document first hand the legacy of the Holocaust.  We reported on “The March of the Living,” an annual effort to educate a new generation of Jews around the world about the Holocaust.  Thousands of Jews (and many Christians) gather at Auschwitz-the extermination camp synonymous with the depths of the Holocaust- to learn more about this horrific time in history.  In some of the barracks, pictures line the halls of many of those doomed to die in the gas chambers or at the whim of a guard.  What struck me was the hollow, yet terrified look that each one seemed to convey.  Their eyes seemed like a looking glass into the horrors of everyday life in Auschwitz.  At one point, the expected life span of those arriving there was less than three hours.  They went directly from the trains to the gas chambers.  This was institutionalized murder on a scale hard to imagine.    

This year, the Holocaust Remembrance Day took on a special significance since the threat of a Holocaust casts its shadow once more over the Jewish people like it did in the 1930s in Nazi Germany.  Israeli President Moshe Katsav referred to this when he addressed a crowd at Yad Vashem, Israel’s National Holocaust Museum:  “Once again there are statements like those we heard in the 1930s. I call on the free world not to stand complacently and not to accept the calls of countries striving to obtain nuclear weapons and advocating the destruction of the state of Israel. The disgraceful voices heard in the Muslim world from totalitarian regimes are a horrifying reminder of dark times and regimes, in the heart of Europe, only 70 years ago.’

Katsav referred to the statements from Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who called for “Israel to be wiped off the map.”  This and other statements echo the menacing diatribes of Hitler, but one major difference is that Ahmadinejad speaks on behalf of a regime racing to develop nuclear weapons and one that’s expressed a willingness to use them against Israel. 

But Ahmadinejad is not alone in his fury against Israel or his desire to wipe it off the map.  Over the weekend in New York City, the “Islamic Thinkers Society” gathered outside the Israeli consulate.  Their shouts included the following:  “The mushroom cloud is on its way!  The real Holocaust is on its way!”  “Israel won’t last long ... Indeed, Allah will repeat the holocaust right on the soil of Israel!”

It’s as if the spirit that once ruled part of the world in the 1930s has resurfaced and once more raged against the Jewish people.  But despite the threats of today or the memory of the holocaust, one Israeli told me the lesson of the Holocaust is that the Jews will survive.  It’s a promise reflected in the scriptures: 

This is what the LORD says, He who appoints the sun to shine by day, who  decrees the moon and stars to shine by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar— the LORD Almighty is his name: "Only if these decrees vanish from my sight,” declares the LORD, "will the descendants of Israel ever cease to be a nation before me." Jeremiah 31:35-36 (New International Version)

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