I have had the opportunity over the years to meet several men who participated in the liberation of the concentration and death camps created by Germany’s National Socialist Workers’ Party. The horror of what they and their colleagues found defies words – yet simultaneously demands we try to find the words so it can be remembered and fought.
Adolf Hitler’s personal antisemitism and racism only begin to explain the systematic murder of six million people by the Nazi regime. The reality is even worse.
The Holocaust was the natural result of the worldview embraced by the Nazis and socialist movements everywhere. When one abandons God and His precepts, when one looks to government as present-day savior, a cult of death and destruction is but a step away.
The God-rejecting systems of socialism and communism enabled the murder of more than 100 million people around the world throughout the 20th century at the hands of their own governments.
As governing systems, socialism and communism demand—like the ancient Romans before them—that government be placed over the God of Abraham. The dignity of man collapses before the needs of the state.
Yes, there are some who try to put a Christian spin on government-enforced socialism. But that is a lie straight from the pit of hell. Government compulsion is the opposite of Scripture’s call for voluntary charity. Government always operates through coercion and force, and force lodged in the hands of men is always a tool to be abused for power.
Always.
The ugly, horrible truth of the Holocaust is that all of us are capable of participating in such atrocities, left to our devices and separated from God. Yet, thankfully, God provides us glimpses of the beauty possible when people love Him and serve others.
For example, honored outside Israel’s Yad Vashem are more than 26,000 Gentiles who placed themselves in danger to rescue Jews from the clutches of the Holocaust; a tree was planted in memory of each.
Among those honored is Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds, a Baptist from Knoxville, TN. While himself a prisoner of war, Edmonds watched in January 1945 as Nazi guards began gathering up Jewish POWs for persecution or murder. He wasn’t going to allow it.
Edmonds demanded that the German officer count each American POW as Jewish, to be gathered up and executed. Of course, that would be in direct contradiction to international treaties governing the conduct of war, thus making the individual German soldier personally subject to prosecution for war crimes. The German officer already knew the war wasn’t going well for his country, so he holstered his weapon and walked away. Hundreds of lives were saved that day.
But hundreds, out of six million lost? It might seem inconsequential. Except for those who were saved, and except for the example it set.
If we are to reject the tyranny of socialism, if we are to live in a self-governing republic, we must individually be willing to fight against systems of horror. We must be like Roddie Edmonds, willing to stand up and raise our voices to defend and improve the lives of those around us. It can be risky, but we are called to be faithful.
Such acts of personal courage are like the scent of a rose, reminding us just how beautiful God’s world can be.
