There is evil there...

Last night was the conclusion of VBS (Vacation Bible School) at our church, where I had the privilege of being part of the small group that spent part of those four nights telling the kids a (very!) condensed version of the life story of Corrie ten Boom.

It was very intense, and very sobering. On the third night, we covered her time in Ravensbrück. The woman narrating Corrie's account was wearing a simulacrum of the plain prison dress Ms. ten Boom wore in prison. We did six presentations each night, to different groups; and each and every time that particular night, there was a point where the entire room, children and adults alike, became very quiet, and very still.

It was when she revealed the reproduction of the prison tattoo on her arm, and told us, "They assigned them numbers, and tattooed that number on their arms. Like animals."

Six times, and it affected me the same way each time. Sorrow, and anger, and fear. I knew what was coming, even before the first presentation, and it still affected me. I wasn't alone. The lady who narrated the story told me that before she was even halfway through inking the numbers on her arm, she had become physically ill, just thinking of what they represented.

As Gandalf said of Mordor, "There is evil there that does not sleep."

I think I was about 8 or 9 years old when I came home from playing out in our neighborhood one day, and asked my mom why the nice old couple down the road had numbers on their arm. It is, I think, my first memory and my first real understanding that there was something more than meanness in the world; that people were capable of true malevolence.

There is evil there that does not sleep.

Writing about his first encounter with a death camp near Gotha, then general Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote:

I visited every nook and cranny of the camp because I felt it my duty to be in a position from then on to testify at first hand about these things in case there ever grew up at home the belief or assumption that "the stories of Nazi brutality were just propaganda". Some members of the visiting party were unable to go through with the ordeal. I not only did so but as soon as I returned to Patton's headquarters that evening I sent communications to both Washington and London, urging the two governments to send instantly to Germany a random group of newspaper editors and representative groups from the national legislatures. I felt that the evidence should be immediately placed before the American and the British publics in a fashion that would leave no room for cynical doubt.

There is evil there that does not sleep.

There are many things we can learn from the life and story of Corrie ten Boom, and those who survived similar experiences in WWII. Forgiveness, for one; the love, provision and protection of God, for another. While those are certainly important lessons, I find myself today dealing with a strange mix of emotions. Deep sorrow, for the loss and suffering that took place. Abiding anger, that such a thing was even possible.

More than that, though... looking at the world today, at attitudes towards Israel and her people, there is a growing fear within me that we, the people of America, have forgotten one of the most important lessons of the Holocaust. Eisenhower knew that lesson, and knew it well, and did his best to ensure that it would be communicated to the generations that followed. If we fail to hear and understand, it is our fault, not his.

There is evil there that does not sleep.

God help us all.