This week has commemorated the 80th anniversary of the liberation of one of the most notorious concentration camps, Auschwitz-Birkenau, of the second World War. The 27th January 1945 is a date that should never be forgotten. Eighty years ago, soldiers from Russia’s Red Army, a contingent from the first Ukrainian front, entered the gates of Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland and were the first to discover the horrors of the concentration camp where more than 1.1 million people, most of them Jews, had been murdered. The Red Army had stumbled upon this site by chance as going into Auschwitz was not a war goal. The Germans had isolated all the camps and sub-camps from the outside world and surrounded them with barbed wire fencing. All contact with the outside world was forbidden. However, the area administered by the commandant and patrolled by the SS camp garrison went beyond the grounds enclosed by barbed wire. It included an additional area of approximately 40 square kilometres, the so-called zone of interest, which lay around the Auschwitz-Birkenau camps. It kept prying eyes away from the area and controlled all movement about it. So, you can imagine these soldiers’ astonishment as they discovered one concentration camp after another, a Holocaust specialist said. These soldiers were confronted with 7000 – 8000 people who were mainly men, but a few women and children had also survived. These people had been deemed too incapacitated to be moved, however, they were more like skeletons than alive humans. Their faces were sunken into their heads and their skin barely covered their bones, it was pulled so thin. These starving people were all that was left of over a million who had died. As they moved through the camp the soldiers found the gas chambers with their mounds of discarded clothes and sacks of hair that had been shaved off were stored. Shoes, suitcases and glasses from all those who had went before discarded at the side before they were led into the chambers to be poisoned to death. These Soviet soldiers witnessed the unimaginable depravity of mankind. The Germans had discovered a way to deal with all the prisoners of war and civilians they deemed unworthy to live. Since then, Auschwitz has become a symbol of terror, genocide, and the Holocaust.
How is it possible that such evil was allowed to flourish? How is it possible that so many people turned a blind eye to what was mass murder and genocide of particular religious groups? The prophet Jeremiah tells us some startling news about the heart of man. He says Jeremiah chapter 17 verse 9 ‘The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?’ He is warning us about our heart and what it is capable of. I am sure that many German soldiers never imagined how far they would go. The evil started small then it grew and grew, each time worse than before because once they had opened the door to evil it just kept pushing the boundaries of moral justice further and further apart. This can happen to any of us, if we ignore the wickedness of our hearts and refuse to turn to God for salvation. They evil in our heart will grow and become more depraved. It will lead us down paths of moral perverseness that we cannot control, instead the wickedness will control us. Jeremiah warns us that God sees the heart, he knows what you harbour in yours. I plead with you to come to the living God for salvation and let him lead and guide your heart in the ways of truth and peace.
P. Pilgrim pilgrimway101@yahoo.com
