There are some things that humanity should never forget no matter how strong the desire is to forget them. The 69th annual Holocaust Memorial, which was held this week in many countries, is one of these things. The Third Reich’s genocide of Jews living within their territories cost the lives of 5,500,000 and should never be forgotten.
Of course there will always be “Holocaust Deniers”. People who are so anti-Semitic that they support the fiction, it never happened. It was a myth, they say, perpetrated by the Jews themselves to gain sympathy! Others point out that Hitler’s death camps, in addition to Jews, slaughtered millions of Romani, Polish and Russian civilians, homosexuals, people with disabilities and Soviet prisoners of war.
This year’s Memorial in Ireland had four survivors present. Those are people whose eyes had witnessed indescribable evil. In fact General Eisenhower, who saw the aftermath of the camps with all their horrors, had the foresight to request Press Reporters and Photographers be sent to these places to record for posterity the dreadfulness of the slaughter and secure the evidence of the inhumanity of those who ordered and those who carried out the killings.
Their aspiration had been to breed a master race drawn from Nordic races led by Hitler’s Germany who were to exterminate from Europe any who would spoil purity of these Aryan supermen.
The motivation of the Holocaust was purely ideological, rooted in an illusionary world of Nazi imagination, where an imaginary “Jewish conspiracy to control the world” was opposed to a parallel Aryan quest. No genocide has been based so completely on myths, on hallucinations, on stupid ideology—which was then executed by very rational, hardheaded Aryans.
Hitler saw the church as a conservative influence on society which suited him during the duration of the war. In his speeches he would praise Christian culture when it suited him. He viewed Jesus as an Aryan who fought against the Jews! His goal was to eventually eliminate Christianity.
Hitler shot himself to avoid capture and people said “Hitler is finished”. But for Hitler there was an appointment which he must keep, “just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment”. The one thing about this judgement is that it will be perfectly just. Not one of us will have a word to say in our defence. All will be revealed. “No creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.” (Hebrews chapter 4 verse 13)
So whether our sins are obvious or concealed we need one to represent us and this God has provided in Jesus, St John writes “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world”. (1John Chapter 2 verse 1)
Our Advocate is Jesus – but you have to repent and believe the gospel.