Thoughts on the Holocaust

So, how's that for a downer of a title, eh? Yuppers.

I don't really know why I am so struck by the Holocaust. Specifically, I think, because I don't really see it impacting many other people the way it seems to impact me. It's not that it affects me as much as it doesn't seem to be affecting others. An event that happened well outside of my lifespan is shaping me. And I'm not German or Jewish. I'm Polish. Which I know is part of it, because I know that my mother's side came from a part of Poland that was very close to Germany, most likely annexed back into Germany during the war--land Germany had lost during the first world war. So I am connected to Poland, which is where some of the worst ghettos and most of the concentration camps were located.

The two most powerful influences on me have been the film The Pianist and more recently the graphic novel Maus. You owe it to yourself to experience both, regardless of your thoughts or feelings or impressions of the Holocaust or the war. They are incredible, sadly beautiful works of passionate realism and history, telling the real stories of four real people. The Pianist is less about the Holocaust and more about what life was like for Jews in Warsaw, Poland during the war. Maus is the story of an artist born after the war talking with his father, a Jew who survived Auschwitz. They bring pictures to life. They tell me that real people did these things and real people experienced them. I'm reminded that such evil has happened many times before this, and will certainly happen (is already happening?) again. I'm reminded of the potential for evil in the heart of all humanity. The power of fear. Our desperate need for love, forgiveness, and grace on an individual, personal level and on a social, cultural level. Thank you, Yeshua, Jesus, savior and deliverer. Help us not to do this to each other.