GENESIS 4.10 -- And the Lord said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground.
Trying to remember the Holocaust is like trying to count the stars in the sky.
One cannot count the stars in the darkest night sky. Only the Creator can count the stars. And only God can imagine the Holocaust.
The Holocaust is truly unimaginable for any of us. It is LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE for the human mind to imagine the Holocaust. Try it and you'll see. You'll give up within 5 minutes!!
Try to imagine the collection, transportation, documentation, stripping, shaving, humiliation, torture, murder and disposal of 1 person. Try to imagine an entire family you love being torn apart. Children ripped from parents. Parents ripped from children. Now try to imagine it for 10 people you know. Then try it for 100 people. Now for 1000, then for 10,000, 100,000, 1,000,000 human beings.
There is NO WAY for any of us to imagine what happened to 1,000,0000 + 1,000,0000 +1,000,0000 + 1,000,0000 +1,000,0000 +1,000,0000 human BEINGS.
There is NO conceivable way to imagine the incalculabe horrors of SIX MILLION INDIVIDUAL people. There is no way to imagine the futures each them were robbed of and all the lives that would have been.
Six million is the number that is used. Even if the actual number was 6,000,001, that ONE person mattered! What if that ONE PERSON was YOU. Would you want to be rounded off for all of history, never to even be counted?
We are incapable of imagining the 16,438 individual birthdays EVERY day of evey year that took place in concentration camps. We are incapable of imagining each persons cries.
We are incapable of imagining six million personalities. Men, woman and children, each special in their own way, with their own story, hopes and private thoughts --- one by one, being killed. YOU CAN'T DO IT. IT'S UNIMAGINABLE!
The night lasts about 12 hours. Even if we had a hundred dark nights we couldn't count the all the stars.
The Holocaust lasted 2251 of the darkest nights in world history. 321 weeks filled with fear and children being torn from their mother and father's arms.
Incalculable last moments of loved ones looking desperately into each other's eyes until their connection was broken. Horrified faces seared into a mind's eye. An image taken with them into the fire.
Or worse, for the survivor who spent a thousand more nights seeing in their nightmares again and again their dear one being taken from them. Reliving the horror. But needing to bury the memories because they are too painful to recall.
Survivors who are fewer every year. Survivors who soon won't be with us to help us remember so we never forget.
It is UNIMAGINABLE. But I can imagine this . . .
I can picture myself as a young man with a 28 year old beautiful wife. She has long flaming red hair. We have two little children. A 5 year old boy and tiny 3 year old girl with long blond hair.
I can imagine the Nazi soldiers breaking down the doors of our home. Powerful scary men with guns swooping up our little ones as they screamed for help. They yelled mommy, mommy, daddy help. My wife was smacked to the floor. And me, shamed and powerless to stop the soldiers. I didn't even have words to say that could help my children. Their daddy couldn't save them and their mother couldn't kiss and hold them. Then, all of us were dragged from our home and taken away.
That is as far as I can imagine. I cannot bear to imagine a moment more. It is UNIMAGINABLE.
WHERE WAS GOD? NO, THE QUESTION IS WHERE WERE YOU??
One cannot count the stars in the darkest night sky. Only the Creator can count the stars. And only God can imagine the Holocaust.
The Holocaust is truly unimaginable for any of us. It is LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE for the human mind to imagine the Holocaust. Try it and you'll see. You'll give up within 5 minutes!!
Try to imagine the collection, transportation, documentation, stripping, shaving, humiliation, torture, murder and disposal of 1 person. Try to imagine an entire family you love being torn apart. Children ripped from parents. Parents ripped from children. Now try to imagine it for 10 people you know. Then try it for 100 people. Now for 1000, then for 10,000, 100,000, 1,000,000 human beings.
There is NO WAY for any of us to imagine what happened to 1,000,0000 + 1,000,0000 +1,000,0000 + 1,000,0000 +1,000,0000 +1,000,0000 human BEINGS.
There is NO conceivable way to imagine the incalculabe horrors of SIX MILLION INDIVIDUAL people. There is no way to imagine the futures each them were robbed of and all the lives that would have been.
Six million is the number that is used. Even if the actual number was 6,000,001, that ONE person mattered! What if that ONE PERSON was YOU. Would you want to be rounded off for all of history, never to even be counted?
We are incapable of imagining the 16,438 individual birthdays EVERY day of evey year that took place in concentration camps. We are incapable of imagining each persons cries.
We are incapable of imagining six million personalities. Men, woman and children, each special in their own way, with their own story, hopes and private thoughts --- one by one, being killed. YOU CAN'T DO IT. IT'S UNIMAGINABLE!
The night lasts about 12 hours. Even if we had a hundred dark nights we couldn't count the all the stars.
The Holocaust lasted 2251 of the darkest nights in world history. 321 weeks filled with fear and children being torn from their mother and father's arms.
Incalculable last moments of loved ones looking desperately into each other's eyes until their connection was broken. Horrified faces seared into a mind's eye. An image taken with them into the fire.
Or worse, for the survivor who spent a thousand more nights seeing in their nightmares again and again their dear one being taken from them. Reliving the horror. But needing to bury the memories because they are too painful to recall.
Survivors who are fewer every year. Survivors who soon won't be with us to help us remember so we never forget.
It is UNIMAGINABLE. But I can imagine this . . .
I can picture myself as a young man with a 28 year old beautiful wife. She has long flaming red hair. We have two little children. A 5 year old boy and tiny 3 year old girl with long blond hair.
I can imagine the Nazi soldiers breaking down the doors of our home. Powerful scary men with guns swooping up our little ones as they screamed for help. They yelled mommy, mommy, daddy help. My wife was smacked to the floor. And me, shamed and powerless to stop the soldiers. I didn't even have words to say that could help my children. Their daddy couldn't save them and their mother couldn't kiss and hold them. Then, all of us were dragged from our home and taken away.
That is as far as I can imagine. I cannot bear to imagine a moment more. It is UNIMAGINABLE.
"Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act." -- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
WHERE WAS GOD? NO, THE QUESTION IS WHERE WERE YOU??
GENESIS 3.9 -- And the Lord God called to man, and He said to him, ל֖וֹ אַיֶּֽכָּה --"Where are you?"