Adolph Hitler

I just finished reading a very powerful book: “The Choice” by Edith Eger. The author was taken captive by Hitler’s forces. She endured unspeakable tortures at too many places including the hellhole called Auschwitz. The book recalls her remarkable survival and how she learned to be psychologically healthy. Her premise is that one must look reality directly in the face. We dare not deny one’s fears, hatred, guilt, shame or terror. Facing them can be a step to affirming one’s survival and making the choice to live a whole life.

When she became a well-known speaker she was invited by the US Army Chaplaincy Corps to come to Berchtesgaden, Germany to address chaplains on how to assist service personnel who had experiences severe trauma. When she arrived at Berchtesgaden she was assigned a sleeping room once occupied by the infamous Nazi Angel of Death, Dr. Joseph Mengele. Imagine being in that bedroom and having her recall that she as a 16-year-old prisoner had been stripped naked in front of him. She was saved from being raped by him only when his phone rang and he decided to answer it she ran away. I cannot imagine what it must have felt like to her to be in Berchtesgaden, in that room and be faced with those memories.

While   her experience was way, way beyond my experience it did help me recall an incident in the life of Jane and me. In the late 1980s Jane and I, too, were invited to Berchtesgaden by the US Chaplaincy corps. We were there to address especially lay people who were active providing Christian education to USA military families stationed in Europe. We, too, slept in a bedroom previously occupied by the top aides to Adolph Hitler. The room decor had been maintained from those days, a very oppressive atmosphere, with black pictures on the wall, dark walls and a foreboding aura that was powerful.

Jane I left Berchtesgaden and went to visit the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau. It was so overwhelming that when Jane got to the entrance she was unable to walk through the door. I entered. I looked to the left where I know a trainload of naked corpses had been found when the allies retook that place. Ahead of me was a vast gas chamber. Just beyond that I could still see the smoke stack from which the smoke of thousands of burned bodies once wafted into the sky.

Once again: my experience was nothing close to what Dr. Eger experienced; yet I came to the same renewed resolve that she experienced. We must resolve to never again let the world experience the torture and damnable activities like those of Hitler against Jews, homosexuals, persons with disabilities, etc. etc.

We live in a day in which fears are being stirred. People who are different from us are being demonized. Jews are in danger of being shot to death when they attend a synagogue. White Supremacists in America are yelling at fellow-American Muslims, “Go back to your own country!” Once again  I make a deep commitment to see all of God’s children as my brothers and sisters. I affirm my solidarity with all who seek the same things in life that I want: freedom, liberty, permission to worship according to the dictates of my conscience and the freedom to wear religious emblems of my own choosing. I ask for the courage to always proclaim “One nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all.”