Reflection and Resolve

Reflection:The Holocaust. Resolve: Never Again! 

May is the month that Israel remembers the Holocaust -- just prior to celebrating its Independence Day. It's the day when Israelis stop their cars, climb out, and stand at dead attention for two full minutes in the middle of the street when the 10 a.m.siren sounds to memorialize six million victims of Hitler's Third Reich. It's the day when hundreds of Israelis go to Poland and remember the murdered at Auschwitz. It's the time that a resolve to never let it happen again is renewed. Jews are amazed that Christians are now also coming to Auschwitz to stand in solidarity with them. 

My son Michael and I also visited the death camp. The dark tracks that led the trains through the tall red arch are still there. The thoughts that come when walking those tracks are not nice. Why are they so black? Surely they are stained by body fluids, vomit, urine, diarrhea as the trains stopped to unload their cargo? And tears, of course, don't ever forget the tears! 

It's the week that visitors to Jerusalem's Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum again see the photographs of the Islamic Mufti of Jerusalem cordially sitting at coffee with Hitler in Germany plotting the "final solution" of the Jewish race. Hitler may have died, but not before he planted his dark seed of hate in Islamic soil.

It's the day that Israel cries for millions of their children who were sacrificed to Hitler's ovens and cry again as they see Muslims sacrificing their children to bring Israel to her knees. It's not so different from the other fifty-one weeks when Jews all over the world wonder why the world hates them so.