Today 27th January is International Holocaust
Remembrance Day. It marks what can only be described as the most horrific
period in human history. Not that the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime
are unique. Sadly we can find examples of attempted genocide throughout human
history.
January 27th is marked as Holocaust Remembrance Day because
it was on this day in 1945 that the largest death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau was
liberated by Soviet troops. It has been observed, on this day, in Britain since 2001,
although other countries have chosen different dates. It was officially recognised
by the United Nations General Assembly resolution 60/7, during 2005, to mark
the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Today the world uniformly
recognises the 27th of January as Holocaust Remembrance Day.
And why do we mark this day? It is not just out of respect for the
6 million Jewish people, the 3 million Soviet prisoners of war, the 1 million Roma, the
quarter of a million disabled, the 10,000 homosexuals and the many many more
who were so brutally murdered. We mark is to say never again. Never again can
this be allowed to happen. Well it seems that we have failed. Attempted Genocide still
goes on and brutality towards one another continues and has continued ever
since. Maybe not on the same industrial scale as under the Nazi regime, but it
has continued; it has continued not only in other lands, far, far away but in
our land too and to some extent in our very communities. It continues every
time we dehumanize another, or ourselves. It happens every time we fail to
recognise the sacredness of life, our own or that of others; for to commit such
brutality requires a human being to fail to recognise the sacredness of
another’s humanity and that of all life. It requires us to reduce ourselves or
others to nothingness; it requires nihilism; it requires us to reduce life or
at least the life of another into something without meaning. To destroy life
without conscience requires a human being to reject the sacredness of life.
I was sat trying to figure out how to approach this subject the
other day. I was doing my usual broad sweep, looking at different angles of approach, when I remembered that the first Unitarian service I ever attended,
some 8 years ago, must have been on or around Holocaust Remembrance Day. I know
it was a cold Wednesday lunchtime in January, when I first walked through the
entrance of Cross Street Chapel; I remember it like it had just happened; I can
re-feel the whole experience now. It was at a time when so much was changing in
my life and as a response I was attempting to make sense of things and
exploring religious paths. I was looking for spiritual answers, because I knew
that they did not lay in my former reductionist and materialist mindset. By the
way I’ve not found the answers, unless the answer is to seek and to serve,
which I suspect it might be.
I sat and listened intently and was touched deep down within the core of my being by the minister John Midgely's short address. What sank into my soul was this idea that Germany had
been overcome by a dark sickness, but that this was not unique to the German
people. It could happen to any country and or any culture. I can think of no
society or nation that has not committed atrocities against another and if not
against others then against its own people. What I realised was that this
darkness is in me as it is in everyone and everything, but it is not all that
there is, goodness, love and compassion is present too. The key is to feed the
love and not let the hate prevail. The basis of my own theology is that there
is that of God in everything, but that this is not the only force at work.
There is another force at work too and this force thrives on separation, on
alienation. I see it at work whenever we separate each other whenever we see
someone or something as lacking in worth and dignity. It operates whenever we
make someone or something unwelcome; it works whenever we reject, whenever we
refuse hospitality to someone or something; it operates whenever we lock
someone or something outside of the city gates, including ourselves; it happens
when we lose reverence for life itself.
Distrust and fear are deeply rooted within our psyche, within our
culture. We do not trust one another, we are afraid of the stranger. Just think
about how we greet each other. What do we do? We usually shake hands. Why do we
do this? Well it stems from the middle ages. Back then we shook hands to check
if our guest was carrying concealed weapons. It is not a greeting based on
love, but one based on distrust. Only after they shook hands could the host sit
comfortably with his guest. And what did the guest do as soon as he was poured
a drink? He chinked his cup with that of his host. He did this to ensure that
the host got some of his drink, therefore if he had been poisoned then so had
his host.
Deep mistrust and suspicion is ingrained within our culture. Maybe
this is why we find it difficult to welcome the stranger, to revere the other. We
are taught to separate.
There must be another way, a way that does not encourage distrust.
There is, the other way is reverence. The key is to learn to revere one
another. After all we are all formed from the same substance and we have the same
spirit running through us. Shakespeare expresses this so beautifully in Hamlet...
“What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in
faculties! In form and moving, how express and admirable, how like an angel! In
apprehension, how like a god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals!”
Hindu’s are taught to acknowledge one another reverentially
whenever they meet. Their greeting ritual is not based on distrust it is based
on reverence. They greet by bowing with hands joined together. They honour the
sacred mystery they are encountering. This is the key I believe, this honouring
of the sacred mystery in each of us.
We are all part of the one human family, the family of life. When
we separate, we dehumanize, we fail to acknowledge one another’s sacred mystery.
We are not all exactly the same we have different qualities, different
characteristics, different gifts to offer as well as different needs. That said
we are all made of the same substance, the very same substance that the whole
universe is made of, or at least the matter we have knowledge of and I believe
that the same spirit runs through all life. I do not personally believe it
controls all of it, but it is certainly present, always there offering the lure
of its love. It is our task to choose this love, because if we do not then we will
begin to separate and alienate and I believe that it is this that causes the
distrust and fear that leads to hatred and dehumanising violence.
The solution is simple, I believe, as solutions usually are. The
solution is reverence, reverence for life itself. We need to offer welcome to
everyone and everything including that which we find uncomfortable.
Today we remember the Holocaust and the millions that have been murdered
by the hands of fear, distrust and hatred. Today we recommit to the ideal that
we never let this happen again. We do so recognising that it happens all the
time. And that it begins to happen again every time we separate one from
another every time we fail to revere the sacred mystery of one another and the
sacred mystery of life.
So let us begin again in love, by learning to revere one another
and all that is life and beyond...
...It seems approapriate to end this blog with the following words by my colleague the recently retired Rev Cliff Reed
...It seems approapriate to end this blog with the following words by my colleague the recently retired Rev Cliff Reed
"Marking the
Holocaust"
I ask you now please to stand in solemn silence and remember the
names that stand for genocide –
Auschwitz, Sobibor, Majdanek; Dachau, Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen;
the list goes on and on...
Tasmania, Wounded Knee, Armenia; Halabja, Bosnia, Rwanda; the list
goes on and on...
The names of places where humanity failed to be human. The names
of places where we reached the depths.
We stand in solemn silence. We hear the words of the Kaddish
spoken in memory of the millions dead, each one an individual, a murdered
person.
We honour them as lost kin. We honour those who resisted evil. We
honour the righteous of the nations. Would that we had been among them...
Amen