A Moment of Silence, PLEASE

Peter Nichols

Today, January 27, 2005, marks the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, a part of the most monstrous killing machine ever devised by mankind. I visited this camp when I was 14 years old. My father, who was/is a survivor of Bergen Belson, another Nazi death camp, took me there to show me one of the consequences of being Jewish in a Christian world. It was one of ― if not the ― most unholy places on Earth that I have ever visited. I could feel the anguish of the million plus victims who died in that monstrous place; in gas chambers, by starvation, firing squad and a myriad of other ways that a person could meet their end there.

The memory of my visit to Auschwitz haunts me to this day and I am now 60 years old. Yes I know that six million people other than Jews perished in the Holocaust, and I mourn those people as well. But never in the whole of human history has a nation set out to completely exterminate a group of people whose only crime was to have been born Jewish. “whe final solution” was the complete extermination of the Jewish people.

Elie Weisel, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who was a survivor of Auschwitz, said something to the effect that while it was true that not all the victims were Jewish, the real tragedy was that all the perpetrators were Christian. [I cannot quote the exact source, but I saw an interview on television where he makes this statement.] Now I know that most [Christians] will claim that the Nazi's were not “real Christians.” However, that is not true; Nazis attended both Catholic and Protestant churches. My father used to tell me how the guards in the camp where he was held, would sing “Christmas Carols” while executing Jews. They did not even let up on Christmas day.

Sorry, but this is a really emotional event for me. I will not engage in dialog over the “real Christian” issue. History testifies to the simple fact that the Christian world turned its back on ALL the victims. I have never ceased to wonder how a religion that teaches peace and good will to men everywhere would resort to such horror. Regardless of how you view it, Christianity’s hands are stained with the blood of millions of Holocaust victims ― either through direct action or worse still, through inaction. Christianity let it happen in the first place.

© 2005, Peter Nichols.

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