The gates to what remains of Dachau Concentration Camp said
“Arbeit Mact Frei” – Work Makes [You] Free. Somehow I suspect those words rang
hollow to the poor souls who found themselves prisoners of this horrific place
during World War II. My sister Miriam and I visited the camp in September of
2014 on a trip to Germany
and Luxembourg .
We were somewhat rushed as our rental car was due at the airport and we needed
to catch a train to our next location, so the approximately hour-and-a-half
that we spent on the grounds was far too short a time to give it justice. But,
at the same time, it was time enough. It was too short in that the reams of
photos, documents, and other material – most of it located in two or three long
and interconnected buildings – would take several hours to read and assimilate,
but it was enough time in that we were able to peruse the grounds and skim the
information while escaping the full brunt of just how much horror this place
brought to its helpless victims. Just a few miles from Munich ,
Dachau was one
of the smaller Nazi concentration camps. The Third Reich undoubtedly preferred
to perform their evil a good bit further from home grounds. Poland , with Auschwitz
and other death camps, was
apparently far enough. Nevertheless, there were at
least a few dozen perfectly ordered rows of long barracks that housed numerous prisoners.
What remains of them today are their foundations. The process and techniques
used to dehumanize the Nazi’s victims, which included everything from the
check-in process through experimentation, torture, and finally incineration, is
all laid out for the public, and walking the grounds really helps to gain
perspective. The perimeter fence, some of it rebuilt, still surrounds much of
the camp, and it’s easy to put oneself in the roll of a camp inmate looking
past the guards to the open land beyond and longing to be free. It made escape
impossible, but some prisoners nevertheless did find freedom when they entered
the prohibited zone and were killed by the SS. Theirs was a freedom from
suffering.
I saw the ovens and walked through some of the rooms housing
them. How could people torture, murder, and incinerate other men (and women and
children)? How could this evil possess so many of them? Many have asked and
continue to ask that question, and I could not help but feel a certain amount
of hopelessness and dread being there. Dachau
was one of the islands where by all appearances Satan had exclusive dominion.
The various monuments to the victims tried in their somber ways to give tribute
to the many who perished there, including the Church of Reconciliation Church
of Reconciliation
On one monument was inscribed in large letters the words “Never
Again” in German, Polish, Russian, Yiddish, and English. It was here that my
cynicism set in. “Never again” is what humanity says after we have failed to
stop horrific events that occur on a massive scale…or at least some of them. We
said it after the horror of World War I, the “war to end all wars”; after the
butchery of WWII - which prompted the words on this monument; after the genocide
in Rwanda , and after the atrocities
in Bosnia .
But the fact is, “never again” ever happens again. Why? Because man is a fallen
creature. Leaders and governments change, ideologies wax and wane, and history
never repeats itself (at least in an identical fashion). “Never again” is happening right
now in Iraq , in Syria , and increasingly in Nigeria , and Western
governments are impotent to stop it. Why? Two reasons, as I see it. The first
is that they lack moral clarity about what is happening and how to confront it
because they refuse to identify and/or acknowledge the enemy and the enemy’s
motivation. The second is that our leaders’ reason is obscured by their own
participation in evil.
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| Little Sisters Of The Poor |
I find it curious - and disturbing - that the U.S. President
can passionately denounce “extremists” if he is referring to TEA Party
activists and conservative politicians and state that he believes in rewarding
his friends and punishing his enemies, when in fact the “enemies” he is referring
to are many millions of Americans who express different political beliefs; but
he becomes mute, has tepid responses, or long delays condemning horrific
atrocities being carried out in the Middle East in the name of Islam. And then
he admits he has no strategy to fight this evil once he finally acknowledges their
barbarism (even if he refuses to say it is actually motivated by their Islamic
faith). Meanwhile, the world is unraveling with jihadist violence. Leadership
is much more than simply engaging in limited air strikes to keep one or more
towns from being overrun: it has an unambiguous moral vision that allows the
leader to have clarity of vision and speak with truth and conviction, even if
it is unpopular. But one cannot speak the truth and engage in rightly ordered
behavior if their ideology clouds their reason. This is the case with the president in which his words and actions make it clear that it is more important
to him that Catholic nuns, like The Little Sisters of the Poor, submit to his
will than violent and murderous Islamic fundamentalists. Unfortunately, the obsession
that this president has with pet social issues, his intellectual formation
under actual card-carrying members of the communist party (e.g. Frank Marshall
Davis) and other harbingers of destructive ideologies (e.g. Saul Alinski), and
a clear sympathy for Islam due to his upbringing, has clearly undermined his
ability to confront the evil propagated by jihadists. This isn’t to say that he
is a covert Muslim (I wouldn’t know), but he has certainly failed to seriously
and unambiguously confront radical Islam on a national or international level.
Instead he tells Americans not to “get on our high horse” because, hey,
Christians also did terrible things during the Crusades, Inquisition, with Jim Crow Laws, etc.
Whatever their differences, the man in the White House has this in
common with other Western leaders: the imposition of their agenda on the rest of the world in the form of Cultural Imperialism, and it is being done in part by linking
acceptance of Western secular values with economic and other aid to developing countries. Ask Hillary Clinton, who indicated as Secretary of State that the U.S.
would help Nigeria
fight Boko Haram if they liberalized their laws on homosexuality. Incidentally,
this radical Islamic group massacred over 2000 people a few months ago and has just declared allegiance to ISIS. Many
people aren't aware of the (mostly) Christian victims they slaughtered because the U.S.
media was too busy covering the murder of 18 people in Paris and the subsequent outpouring of
support for Charlie Hebdo. Apparently, what happens in Africa stays in Africa .
“Never again” will only happen when Western leaders reject
the pernicious cancer of relativism and regain the clear moral vision that is
found deep within their Christian roots. Yes, Christians have not always
behaved admirably in history, but it isn't getting on our "high horse" to point out the current barbarous acts of a group of people motivated by their religious beliefs, and it is not in the competence of the president of the United States to declare what is true Islam and what is not: his role should be to protect this country and call evil for what it is no matter what guise it rears its hideous head. There are no simple answers to the Islamic violence exploding in the world today, but 2000 years have taught Christians a lot about human
nature, and that deep well of knowledge is our lifeline to undoing the great unraveling
that is occurring around the globe.
Because he frequented that well, a German professor named Dietrich Von Hildebrand recognized Hitler and his National Socialism movement for what it was years before the "criminal" even gained control of Germany, and he was resisted for his clarity of vision by many of his intellectual peers who rationalized and justified Hitlers actions in the years leading up to WWII. We know who was proved right.
Western leaders take note.
