"You are my witnesses..."

Visiting the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum is fun. Visiting the National Gallery of Art is relaxing. Okay, maybe not for everyone... but it is for a lot of people! Visiting the International Spy Museum is intriguing. Visiting a Holocaust museum is none of those things. And yet, we spent an afternoon last weekend at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Why?

In recent years it has become fashionable in some circles to deny the Holocaust ever occurred. Some so- called "revisionist historians" (labeled "fiction writers" and "deniers" by the American Historical Association, the nation's oldest and largest organization for professional historians) promote their ideas, namely that the Jews made up the Holocaust to gain international sympathy and raise funds for Israel, by placing ads and invitations to "honest debate" in college and city newspapers. In 2009, the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, publicly called the Holocaust "a lie and pretext for occupying Palestinian lands" while much of the Middle East privately agreed. Public figures/celebrities (Louis Farrakhan and, to a lesser degree, Patrick Buchanan, for example) have jumped on the Holocaust denial train. Some US and European (mainly England) school districts and even individual teachers, in an effort to be "tolerant," are not teaching the Holocaust in their history classes because it might offend some of their Muslim students who are taught in their mosques that the Holocaust is a lie. 

But it wasn't always that way...

General Dwight D. Eisenhower inspected Ohrdruf concentration camp located near the town of Gotha, Germany after it was liberated by the US Army in 1945. In a cable to General George C. Marshall, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington, he wrote, "The things I saw beggar description... The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering as to leave me a bit sick... I made the visit deliberately in order to be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to 'propaganda'." Eisenhower, a man that was no stranger to the ugliness of war  and combat, described Ohrdruf as "one of the most appalling sights I have ever seen." Just a week after his visit, he again cabled Gen. Marshall requesting members of Congress and journalists to be brought to the newly liberated camps so that the American public would know the horrible truths about Nazi atrocities. That same day Eisenhower received word from the Secretary of War and President Truman that the delegations would be sent. Their reports and photographs shocked the world.

That was 66 years ago. All our WWII veterans and the Holocaust survivors will soon be dead... and with them, the first-hand testimony.

"You are my witnesses"  Isaiah 43:10

As we went through the museum, I realized how easy it is to forget the extent of the horror, depravity and evilness of the events of the Holocaust. As a society, we have become desensitized by "shock and awe" media stories and Hollywood movies. When the national debt is over $14 TRILLION, 6 million people don't seem like that many. Murder has become common-place, even expected. 

Reading the exhibits, listening to survivors tell their stories, seeing real photographs was heartbreaking and sad. It made me angry... and ashamed. But most of all, it made me think. We must not let the world forget. We must not be "tolerant" of those who claim it never happened. There are 25 Holocaust museums in the United States... I urge you to visit one... and remember.

To fear the LORD is to hate evil.  Proverbs 8:13