Anyone standing by?

Day 2 - Jerusalem, Israel. I landed in Tel Aviv around 5:30 AM. The rest of the tour wasn’t getting in until the end of the day so I headed for Yad VeShem. Yad VeShem is a Holocaust museum. I should say it’s the Holocaust Museum. It’s the only one created by the Jewish State in the land of Israel. It is the definitive telling of the Holocaust tragedy by Jews. It is in a word, overwhelming. I think my mind simply has no categories for understanding the methodical, systematic, scientific murder of 6 million souls. Three things just blow me away when I think about the Holocaust. First, of course, is the loss of life. 6 million people. Think about what that number represents. Second, the methodical nature of the killing. The Germans did not simply drive their people into a rage and turn them loose to kill Jews. These were not crimes of passion. The vast majority of the murders were carried out in camps that were set up for no other reason than to contain and kill people; most of them Jews. Those camps were designed specifically for a purpose, the way an engineer might design an assembly line, or a factory, or a workshop. They designed slaughterhouses for human beings! The third thing that just blows my mind is that few people, few Christians, in Germany and other countries, did anything. Now you could say that they didn’t know, or didn’t have any power and I guess that might be true. But it still amazes me that so many people did nothing about what was going on in those camps. The Danes stand out above ther crowd. When Hitler ordered the Jews in Denmark to wear yellow Stars of David, the King ordered everyone in Demark to wear one too. The Germans were forced to rescind the order. When the situtation got worse, the nation as a whole rose up and helped their Jews escape to Sweden. It is true there were many other individual acts that saved Jewish lives, Corrie Ten Boon for example (see the picture of the plaque that commemorates her kindness her on the Way of Righteous Gentiles at Yad VeShem), but on the whole the world stood by and did nothing. I just wonder what tragedies we are standing by and watching. At least we ought to include these situations in our prayers.

Steve