The Holocaust
A couple thoughts about the Holocaust . .
I still have in my head this image from Band of Brothers, the HBO series produced after the Saving Ryan movie came out several years back. The image is of a man forcefully taking another soldier outside the gate of a concentration camp and telling him, "We can't give them any more food. Their bodies are in such a state of deprivation that if we gave them food, they would die. They have to be given only a small portion of food until they have built up the ability to take more." You see the looks of hunger on these people's faces, you know that the man is doing the right thing, but it is just aching to think of that. They are desiring food more than anything, but they can't be given it because it will kill them. How devastating the effects of their treatment were!
The name of that episode is "Why We Fight." The soliders didn't know that the camps existed. They couldn't have imagined what they would find. But in hindsight, they could now see that they were fighting for the liberation of those people.
As I looked at yahoo! news today, I found that this month marks the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
I think about the term "holocaust" and I remember that the word means "whole burnt sacrifice." It is the offering by fire of the whole of an animal to God (For a good description of the etymology of this word, check out this link.). I find this interesting. Because think about how redemptive a word that actually is, and I don't even think it was intended by man. Let me take an opposite illustration to show this point. Black Plague. There is nothing redemptive about that. It connotes only destruction, affliction, terror. But the very word that we use to describe the holocaust is a pointer to God. Once a sacrifice has been offered to God, something new has taken its place. The Christian and prior to that Judaic belief is that a sacrifice does something for God. He provides something as a result of that sacrifice. A sacrifice is a relational term and thus holocaust is a relational word. It reflects a belief in the Almighty, that this has not been a consumption but a sign of a reality that God is indeed in relationship forever with His people.
I still have in my head this image from Band of Brothers, the HBO series produced after the Saving Ryan movie came out several years back. The image is of a man forcefully taking another soldier outside the gate of a concentration camp and telling him, "We can't give them any more food. Their bodies are in such a state of deprivation that if we gave them food, they would die. They have to be given only a small portion of food until they have built up the ability to take more." You see the looks of hunger on these people's faces, you know that the man is doing the right thing, but it is just aching to think of that. They are desiring food more than anything, but they can't be given it because it will kill them. How devastating the effects of their treatment were!
The name of that episode is "Why We Fight." The soliders didn't know that the camps existed. They couldn't have imagined what they would find. But in hindsight, they could now see that they were fighting for the liberation of those people.
As I looked at yahoo! news today, I found that this month marks the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
I think about the term "holocaust" and I remember that the word means "whole burnt sacrifice." It is the offering by fire of the whole of an animal to God (For a good description of the etymology of this word, check out this link.). I find this interesting. Because think about how redemptive a word that actually is, and I don't even think it was intended by man. Let me take an opposite illustration to show this point. Black Plague. There is nothing redemptive about that. It connotes only destruction, affliction, terror. But the very word that we use to describe the holocaust is a pointer to God. Once a sacrifice has been offered to God, something new has taken its place. The Christian and prior to that Judaic belief is that a sacrifice does something for God. He provides something as a result of that sacrifice. A sacrifice is a relational term and thus holocaust is a relational word. It reflects a belief in the Almighty, that this has not been a consumption but a sign of a reality that God is indeed in relationship forever with His people.
posted by David at 2:05 PM
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