Almost two decades ago, during a combined Holy Thursday/Good Friday worship service, I told a true story from the Holocaust. The story involved a Polish army sergeant named Franciszek Gajowniczek and a Franciscan priest named Maximilian Kolbe. The Saint of…
This week is the 80th anniversary of the day my great-grandparents died
The reality is that my great-grandparents didn’t just die, they were murdered. They were two of 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis and their willing accomplices throughout Europe. And it wasn’t just the two of them, but their children…
The original sin of the church
Last week we observed Shoah, or Holocaust, Remembrance Day. It is well, then, to consider the original sin of the church. If America’s original sin is slavery, the original sin of the church is anti-Judaism and antisemitism. Before the New…
‘Yes, they are children of Nazis, but we are Christians, and we will stand with those who suffer’
When the Nazis invaded Holland in 1940, Gerrit tenZythoff was 17 years old and leading the sort of life that was common for teenage boys even then — a life filled with schoolwork and sports and good friends. And then…
The Maus saga: A case study of our present crises
In Maus I: A Survivor’s Tale: My Father Bleeds History, the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel, writer and illustrator Art Spiegelman inquires of his Polish Jewish father: “When did you first hear about Auschwitz?” His father, a Holocaust survivor, replies: “Right…
The personal story of an Israeli Jew’s longing for peace
In the contemporary mix of international politics, media reports of distant battles and casualties, or impassioned diatribe from armchair analysts, it is easy to forget that war, terrorism and injustice are written in the personal stories of real people. To…
‘While there is still time’: American churches, violence and conspiracy theories
In his classic book Night, the late Boston University professor Elie Wiesel described how the first warnings of what became the Holocaust found their way into his family’s village of Sighet, Transylvania, in 1942. The messenger was an “outsider” called…
History shows the view is best from the margins
Sometimes an obscure social science dissertation about historical events tells you exactly what you need to know about what is going on right now. I have just read a little-noticed 2019 book called Protectors of Pluralism: Religious Minorities and the…
Delegate up, deflect away and deny: lessons from Nazi Germany about responses to atrocities today
It’s easy to condemn the moral evasion of a past generation and people. The challenge is to see ourselves in them – and to do today the just deeds that will bring no regrets tomorrow.