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Christianity Today, February (Web-only), 2008 |

THEOLOGY IN THE NEWS

Redeeming the Memory of the Holocaust

French president's plan shows promise but carries a potential problem.

Collin Hansen | posted 2/22/2008 09:15AM

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The hope Christians have — the escape from the deadly cycle — is rooted in the Cross, which Jesus told his disciples to remember through the Lord's Supper, and the historic fact of the Resurrection. If Christians are wrong about these, they are truly pathetic ().

But Christianity is incomplete without another hope: vindication for those wronged. Patiently anticipating the return of Jesus Christ, we can forgive. This is our hope for escaping the dark side of memory.

Verse for the Fortnight

"I, I am he
who blots out your transgressions for my own sake,
and I will not remember your sins."

Isaiah 43:25

Collin Hansen is a CT editor-at-large and author of Young, Restless, Reformed: A Journalist's Journey with the New Calvinists (Crossway, 2008).

Related Elsewhere:

Previous Theology in the News columns are available on our site.

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February (Web-only) 2008, Vol. 52

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Millie

Posted: February 27, 2008 8:44 AM

There are museums because more Jews were targeted and died. In many cases, Jewish people built the museums. I also feel that Jewish people in Israel are not being fair to Palestine, but nonetheless this does not take away from the fact that my Christian Jewish grandmother and aunt died in Auschwitz for no other reason than that they ethnically Jewish which was enough for Hitler's atrocities. My grandfather was killed. My dad was in a forced labor camp, and survived but lost his mom, dad and sister at 20 years of age. His family was protestant supporters of Jan Hus, the martyr who died trying to do the same thing that Martin Luther did. My cousin, who is Catholic, looks sadly at her dad's name on the memorial wall, and says, "He was a better Catholic than I am." Yes, many Christians (Orthodox, Catholic & Protestant) also died because they refused to go along with Hitler. People considered "defective" like physically handicapped and mentally ill, as well as homosexuals were killed.

David Nix

Posted: February 25, 2008 4:07 PM

It would be wise of us to also remember that others groups suffered horribly at the hands of the Nazi Party. The first were the disabled, both mentally and physically, to be gassed. While I cannot agree with their politics, the German communists certainly did not deserve to be sent to the Concentration Camps, and they were the first to be sent to them. No one did. Also, the almost universally hated Sinti & Roma (Gypsy) people were practically wiped out by the Nazi. None of that detracts from the horror of the millions of Jews that died, but these others too should not be forgotten, and frequently are. The Jews are significant to us, as Christians, from a religious and historical point of view. Unfortunately, there are many other peoples in the world today that suffer current genocide in progress. God loves all the people of the world and wants them to find salvation in Christ and peace in this life, as much as possible. Yes, let us remember and pray and take action when we can.

Irving Hexham

Posted: February 25, 2008 12:58 PM

While Collin Hansen has written an interesting article about French reactions to the Holocaust and Nazi occupation the Editors of "Christianity Today" ought to hang their heads in shame for allowing the following statement to be published. Hansen writes "During World War II, France's powerful army suffered a strangely quick defeat to the Nazis." Anyone who knows anything about World War II knows that the French Army, as Gerhard L. Weinberg points out in his "A World At Arms," Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp. 127-128, was outmaneuvered and smashed. Some units broke but many fought with great bravery only to be routed by the vastly superior German armored divisions. To imply that somehow the French simply gave up because they harbored anti-Semitic sentiments is an insult to the dead someone who thinks war is a video game. It is this type of a-historical thinking that gives rise to Holocaust Denial by setting up men of straw that can easily be shown to be false.

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