I took the photograph in this post in 2008 when I traveled to Poland and visited Auschwitz, where Nazi Germany murdered around a million Jews during the Second World War. Visiting the concentration camp is an emotional experience. Personally, the most dramatic part of the tour was a series of long rooms with a display along each wall. These displays held personal items that the Germans took from the victims before sending them into the gas chambers. The displays included luggage, shoes, combs, and so forth. One display was full of hair shaved from the victims, and this hair would have been used for soldiers’ uniforms and other clothing. Many people know about this display before going, but it is still a shocking experience. I could smell the hair before walking into the room, and this sensation can be revolting. These displays gave a bit of perspective to the crimes that took place here, but the displays only showed one trainload’s worth of victims’ items. There were many more trainloads that had already gone through the camp before the Russians overran the Germans here.
Most people cannot grasp how much carnage took place in Auschwitz and other German concentration camps. Even when exposed to the pure tragedy, the human mind often tries to minimize the events so that it can understand what happened. The brain simply shuts down and turns tragedies into statistics. Whenever movies or plays portray the Holocaust, they often try to put a positive spin onto something that has few positive stories. Sometimes, there is a group of Jews trying to fight against the Germans so that their deaths have meaning. The public will usually not respond to a play or movie about the Holocaust unless there is this type of positive spin. For instance, those screenplays about Anne Frank which were successful were mostly the ones which emphasized her more uplifting passages and ignored the more depressing ones. One successful 1950s play ended with a line about how man was essentially good, but the screenwriter omitted the rest of the dairy entry, which had a grimmer outlook. The public has chosen to ignore the darker side of the Holocaust, perhaps because the senselessness and tragedy is too great for us to understand. It’s like looking into the sun; the Holocaust’s darkness blinds us.
Skeptics of Christianity and other monotheistic religions with a ‘good’ deity use the Holocaust as an example of why a good God cannot exist. Either God is not good or doesn’t care about humans because the Holocaust happened. The point is fair enough, but it comes at the topic with a certain angle that ignores the Judeo-Christian response. Believers in an omnipotent and good deity are not ignorant of tragedy, even if many of them cannot eloquently explain their position. The debate is not new. The first and oldest piece of Judeo-Christian literature, the Book of Job, directly addresses this issue. Yet tragedy, whether it is the death of a loved one or the murder of millions of Jews, still strains faith to a breaking point for many people, which is more than understandable. These events should make us pause and consider our position in the world order. Anyone who sees the stark darkness of war and does not reevaluate life will probably have other problems later. Though the skeptic insists that the Holocaust and other manmade tragedies show God’s lack of power, one Christian response would insist that the Holocaust shows mankind’s deep sinfulness when God has granted mankind the ability to turn against Him. Though there is much more to say on this point, the Christian confesses that we are miserable wrecks. Our mistakes, regardless of size, have a multitude of consequences. These consequences may not affect us as much as it affects others. Ergo, there is war and tragedy.
Yet much of modernity has taught us to think differently. Mankind is inherently or mostly good if only given a proper opportunity to be good. If a man commits a crime or sins, then the structures around his life must have put him into a situation which made him more prone to make these mistakes. Thus, when we see a tragedy like Auschwitz, we’re not seeing the mistakes of man as much as we’re seeing a dysfunctional structure or a broken international system. If only there had been a healthy dialogue, mutual respect, better understanding, fair economics, et cetera, then the Holocaust and wars would not have occurred. Many of my former professors at St Andrews made similar arguments in their works: they argued that the absence of certain factors, such as unjust societal structures, would have prevented various wars. In order to prevent future war, we must change society’s structures so that the mass goodness of mankind will prevent future tragedy. My perspective is a bit different. Even if certain factors did not exist before a war, the war may have still occurred, albeit with some logistical and practical differences. As an illustration, instead of using religion or economics to rally the people for war, the leaders may have used geography and strategic interests. The problem is not with society’s structures before war. The problem is the sins or mistakes of individuals, sometimes millions of individuals or just a few, that lead a society closer or further to war. For instance, many analysts believed that South Africa was doomed to civil war because of the societal structures there, but individuals made wise decisions that led to a peaceful transition of power. Alternatively, many analysts believed that Yugoslavia would remain a peaceful country after the Cold War because the ethnic groups there had become well integrated with many interethnic marriages, but then genocide occurred. Was it nationalism, religion, poverty, the fall of the Soviet Union, or some other force that caused the siege of Sarajevo? I would say ‘no’ because I believe it was the sins and mistakes of individuals that led Yugoslavia into war. Even if nationalism or religion had been different in the Balkans, war would have probably still occurred because the same individuals would have still made mistakes that moved them closer to war.
When faced with manmade tragedies like those in Sarajevo or Auschwitz or now in Libya, we face not so much the ineptitude of our society but the consequences of our own sin and mistakes. Just as the human brain has trouble understanding the darkness of the Holocaust, we often do not understand the darkness of our own sins. A simple lie only hurts a small number of people, or maybe no one at all as far as we can see. Perhaps, but when a large number of people tell small lies or commit other ‘small’ sins, the consequences can multiply and grow beyond our control. Therefore, when I say that the mistakes and sins of individuals may lead to wars, I do not simply mean the mistakes of politicians or rich businessmen. A German father may have heard a anti-Semitic joke from his son without correcting him. This joke and ignoring it may have been a small sin, but given the circumstances, it contributed to a genocide. Even today, a father may hear his son make a lewd joke about blonde women, but permitting this sin and behavior could perhaps lead to future disrespect towards women. It is my belief that everyday, individuals who are not politicians can plant seeds of peace that will someday prevent future wars and crimes. My own hope is that understanding and admitting to my sin and mistakes will create a pocket of peace around me that may spread to others. It’s better than creating a pocket of turmoil. Perhaps it is a naïve hope, but according to my Christian faith, God can take what is an imperfect attempt to bring His Kingdom to Earth and amplify it because nothing done in the name of God is ever done in vain.
When I started writing this post, I wanted to touch on other tragedies, such as natural disasters, but I’ll have to save those thoughts for another day because I don’t want to discuss too many topics in only one post.
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