In the image of God
“So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them." Genesis 1:27 [KJV]
Advertisement
According to this verse, every single man was created in the image of God. Therefore, every murder of a human being is considered to be an action against God regardless of the person's ethnic group, religion, skin colour or gender. This concept should be the moral base of every human civilisation. Once people dare to interfere in God's creation and decide who will live and who will die they are bringing destruction and agony into the world. The human history is full of tragedies that came out as a result of treating people as objects and ignoring the image of God that is hidden in every person. One of the biggest tragedies of all times is the mass murder of innocent people in Europe during World War II (1939- 1945). The largest group that was sentenced to extermination by the Nazi's "Final Solution" plan was the Jews – the sons and daughters of Israel. The Nazis and their assistants murdered in cold blood 6,000,000 Jews. The UN resolution dated January 27 as the International Holocaust Remembrance Day in order to ensure that this catastrophe will be well remembered, so it will never happen again!
Final solution
The "Final Solution" plan to annihilate 11,000,000 Jews, mainly from Europe, was formalised at the confidential Wannsee Conference that took place near Berlin on January 20, 1942. The conference was directed by Reinhard Heydrich, a high-ranked German Nazi. It is hard to believe that official figures of the German government such as representatives of Justice Ministry, Interior Ministry and Foreign Ministry joined forces with the Nazi Party in order to decide to exterminate millions of innocent people deemed not fit for the superior Aryan race, as claimed by Hitler's Nazi theory. This fatal decision did not come up all of a sudden. It was the last step stemming from an ideology that dared to act against God's creation. The Nuremberg Laws which were already introduced in 1935 should have been a warning sign for the Nazi's steps to come. These racist laws have cancelled Reich citizenship for Jews and prohibited Jews from marrying or having sexual relations with persons of "German or related blood." The Nuremberg Laws defined a "Jew" as someone with at least three Jewish grandparents. Therefore, even people who had converted from Judaism to another religion and became for example Roman Catholic or Protestant priests were classified as Jews by the Nazis and were therefore sentenced to death.
Not only Jews, who belong to the Semitic race, were considered by the Nazis to pollute the purity of the Aryan race. Gypsies, Asians, Blacks and more were considered also to be inferior races that should not exist in a pure Aryan society.
Defective genes
Moreover, the Nazis wanted to purify the Aryan race from "defective genes" coming from people with special needs, mentally ill, disabled and more. The "Nazi doctor's association" that was established back in 1929 put the seeds for this demonic plan. It is hard to understand how doctors that were supposed to save lives and heal people were performing forced sterilisations and murdered "defective" children and adults on the "Euthanasia" operation. In 1940, doctors systematically murdered such people that were defined as "life unworthy" (Lebensunwertes Leben). German physicians conducted cruel experiments upon this helpless population and then either starved their victims to death or poisoned them. It is doctors who became specialists in mass murder with gas chambers. This method was used later on to murder millions of people at Auschwitz, the extermination camp.
Re-examining of these facts, even after so many years, still brings up countless questions such as: How did that death industry succeed? How come normative people (not criminals!) allowed such horror to take place? How come the leaders of the world did not intervene? Were they aware of these crimes against humanity and yet did not take any action?
Prof. Jan Karski (1914-2000) was an underground Polish (non-Jewish) resistance movement fighter during World War II. In November 1942, Karski was sent on a risky mission to the west. He had to report to the Polish government in exile and the Western Allies leaders on the situation of the Jews in German-occupied Poland. His report which exposed the extermination of the Jews of Europe was supported by evidence such as documents and microfilms.
It is important to emphasise that Karski's report was based on his personal eye witnessing. He endangered himself, by sneaking into Warsaw's ghetto and into a camp in the vicinity of Lublin. The atrocities that he witnessed shocked him and convinced him that his mission was not only to represent the Polish underground, but also to carry the voices of the Jewish victims in Poland.
In 1942, Karski handed the British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, a detailed report on what he had personally seen in Poland. Afterwards he travelled to the United States, and on July 1943 met President Franklin D. Roosevelt and presented his report about the Jewish Holocaust in Poland. According to Karski's impression, Roosevelt did not show interest in the Jewish problem.
Holocaust
Claude Lanzmann, who interviewed Karski for his film "Holocaust" (1985), claimed that Roosevelt and the other western leaders listened carefully to Karski's report but were unable to comprehend the unprecedented horror that he described. Karski felt that he failed on his mission during the war, and it distressed him for the rest of his life.
On June 2, 1982, Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Centre, recognised Jan Karski as righteous among the Nations.
Auschwitz, the death camp in south-western Poland, was liberated by the Red Army on January 27, 1945. It should be noted that most prisoners in that horrible death camp were not released on that day by the Red Army. The Nazis have forced them to march on "death marches" toward Germany in the freezing snow in order to complete their annihilation plan. Many of the prisoners did not survive the march.
The UN Resolution
On November 1, 2005, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution declaring January 27, the date of the liberation of Auschwitz, as the International Holocaust Remembrance Day. It is an act of great importance that urges every member nation of the UN to honour the memory of holocaust victims and encourage educational programmes concerning the holocaust in order to prevent future acts of genocide. The UN Resolution rejects any denial of the holocaust and condemns every sign of intolerance against individuals or communities based on ethnic origin, religion, beliefs and so on.
Unfortunately, these destructive signs of intolerance continue to emerge around the world, such is the case of the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 in which half a million Tutsis were murdered by Hutus. It is especially important to note that nowadays a humanitarian disaster is taking place in Syria, where innocent children and women are being murdered on a daily basis. The responsibility of us as human beings is not to stand aside in silence, as written in Genesis 9:6: [KJV]: "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made He man."
The writer is a daughter of a holocaust survivor whose entire family was murdered in Auschwitz.
