January 27th is Holocaust Remembrance day. It is set on the day in 1945 that the concentration camp, Auschwitz, was liberated. The Holocaust is a lesson in what happens when people give up hope, faith, trust and love and give in to fear, uncertainty, anger and power.
A while ago the Auschwitz Memorial posted this on their social media: 'One of the biggest challenges when we study the tragedy of Auschwitz is to understand that the perpetrators were not monsters. They were people - fathers, husbands and dog owners - who accepted the ideology of hatred and evil and were able to do monstrous things on its behalf.'
This was hard to read. Many of the people who commented disagreed with what the Memorial had posted. It is easier to think of the people who carried out those acts of evil as monsters. It is easier to think of them as something less than human, but they were people - scared people, angry people, and hopeless people. We all have darkness in us, but we also have light and when you feed one you starve the other.
'I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall.
I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me. yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail.
