Not for the weak of stomach. Exit while you can. Written on a sheet of notebook paper and transcribed.
I’m sitting outside of chapel, They’re doing praise and worship inside, and I can’t go in. Not yet.
We just watched a holocaust video. For the first time, I cried over it. The inhumanity. This must have been what YHVH saw when He sent the flood. I can’t go into chapel. I need to process this.
God, You let the human race go on? After such inhumane, abominable atrocities? There are no words, no adjectives, to adequately describe the horror, the revolting… the camera pointed at a corpse on a man’s shoulders… and stayed on him, and so many others. To run the camera, and not point it away because the world needs to see it. Why? I don’t really even know. Because it’s true. Because it’s terrible. You want to cry out “NEVER AGAIN,” but it has ALREADY happened again. And somewhere in the world, it is probably happening now.
Thousands of dead
starved beyond recognition as humanity
tossed – unceremonious – into mass graves
calloused guards, uncaring citizens
bulldozers, and a sign:
“Grave No. 3, No: 5000” on the grave.
Typhus, lice, starvation
Blood crying out from the ground
Am I my brother’s keeper?
Human skin, cut off, and used
as lampshades.
This is what Elie Wiesel saw.Beware of lies that poison the soul
calling any less than human.
Auschwitz’ sign, a stark bleak warning:
“Do not repeat this desolation.”Can God forgive such atrocities?
Is this the sin Yeshua bore
to the cross?
A cross very much the same
as the ones to which
the men with swastikas nailed
The least of these, His brothers?
(And those, in some ways, were
the lucky ones.)
To forgive those cruel butchers, He must be
a great, a powerful, savior, indeed.Why, when seeing atrocities, do men look
to God?
To wonder where He is, how He
could let this
happen?
The cries for justice
to the Judge of all the earth
and the victims’ cries go up to Him,
“Oh Lord, how long?”
“Will not the Judge of all the earth
judge rightly?The camera whirred on
focus unbroken
from the suffering
refusing to turn away
though willing
because the world needed
to know
what happened here.And there was slavery
and Wilberforce
And “Christian” racism
and KingWhat lies are we believing
to carry on our lives
in such a way
as to ignore
the suffering in our world?
How will future generations
look on how we’ve lived?
And then the judge of all the earth
Who for us, His life giv’d?
Will we seek justice
and love mercy
and walk with God?And the earth cries out
the ground weeps
the dirt, the dust from which man was taken
and is
and shall return to
silently lamentsGod hears.
God sees.
And the angels carry
to Abra’ms bosom
the hearts of the innocent.Can anyone escape the guilt?
Even we who were not there?
Who were not even alive to see
this awfulness?Ours is the responsibility
to see
and to tell our children
To warn them, about Buchenwald.Never again.
Lord,
Have mercy.
About David M Schell
I am a doubter and a believer. I have a Master's in Divinity from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, but because faith grows and changes, I don't necessarily stand by everything I've ever written, so if you see something troubling further back, please ask! Read More.
