Sermon for Sunday - April 27, 2014: Is there no one left to speak out?

Martin Niemoller (1947)

Als die Nazis die Kommunisten holten,

habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Kommunist.

Als sie die Sozialdemokraten einsperrten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Sozialdemokrat.

Als sie die Gewerkschafter holten,
habe ich nicht protestiert;
ich war ja kein Gewerkschafter.

Als sie die Juden holten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Jude.

Als sie mich holten,
gab es keinen mehr,
der protestieren konnte.

When the Nazis came for the communists,

I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn't a Jew.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

--  Martin Niemoller

I'm still not so sure there's anything more you can add to this to understand the dangers we still face today.  We, all of us, have learned nothing from World War II except how to ignore the lesson of it.  We ignore this horror because it was so, well, horrible.  Some total loons deny it ever happened.  The memory of these events are not easy for those that endured them, why should it be easy for the next generations if we have not learned a thing from those that died.

"We have to remember, always, but it's never easy." 

-- Alberto Israel, Auschwitz survivor

There is no better way to remember than to constantly voice that which we know.  We have passed on our histories by word of mouth since the beginnings of speech, why do we find it so difficult to accurately pass down history now?  Political correctness?  PC is a way of twisting facts to meet what the people want to hear, not what they need to hear.  This is what facilitated the Holocaust, to begin with.  

We must listen to the survivors of horror.  We must listen to the words of those that fight and die, and the children that watched and survived.  We must document these facts for posterity before we lose these precious survivors to the march of time.  We must learn from them the lessons we need so desperately to move forward, find peace, and survive this new, ever-changing world.

"I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation.  We must always take sides.  Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.  Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

-- Elie Wiesel, Auschwitz, Buna, and Buchenwald survivor.

We don't teach history today like we did when I was a child.  Even then the truth was tempered by politics and race.  When we don't teach our young we do them a devastating disservice.  We give them a ticking bomb and no tools to disarm it.  We try to convince ourselves that this is for the best, but then we look around and see what our ignorance has done to the world around us; to the country around us.

"Today I see that when there is a disaster, they send people to a psychiatrist or a psychologist.  We had to work out our own problems.  As parents we were overprotective to our children.  My eldest daughter was accepted at an Ivy League college, but I was afraid to let her go away from home to school.  We were afraid to let our children know too much about our past."

Eva Galler, death train escapee and survivor

We, America, are tired of being the "police force" for the world.  But we must ask ourselves, if not us, who?  Who will take over this thankless mantle of peacekeeper, the inept United Nations?  They play the game of our current president by drawing meaningless lines in the sand.  Today we see them sending relief to battle-torn areas only to find the relief went to the aggressor and not the hapless victims.  We are America, for better or worse, and we have nothing to be ashamed of as long as we are serious, and united, in our endeavors.  

"Some mornings I wake up and I am so worn out I cannot go to work.  I am free but I am still in the concentration camp.  You go through it again and again.  Whenever I hear singing, God Bless America, I have to repeat several times: God bless America.  That's freedom.  Nobody is going to bother me here anymore."

Joseph Sher, Cieszanow labor camp survivor

What we do should make us proud.  It is patriotism that is failing due to poor leadership, not because of who we are.  We will always be Americans, at least until we're not.  Makes you think.

God bless us all, and God bless the victims of the Holocaust.