- Webster University at St. Louis. There he is the professor of Literature and Language and also a professor of Religion. He is known as one of the leading authorities on the Holocaust. Calls himself a post-Auschwitz Catholic. And he studied the Holocaust for nearly two decades. He's been stimulated by his friendship with Elie Wiesel, and he has co-authored a book with him. He has written at least 22 other books, including "A Christian Response to the Holocaust," "When God and Man Failed: "Non-Jewish Views of the Holocaust," "The Holocaust: An Annotated Bibliography." His numerous articles on the Holocaust have also appeared in hundreds of newspapers around the country. We are very pleased to have him with us today, and we will have an opportunity after the service to continue an informal dialogue with him in the chapel basement, where you are all invited for a reception. I would also ask you at the conclusion of the service to please leave your programs on either balustrade as you exit. Thank you. (papers rustle) (footsteps walking) 

- We begin our service in remembrance of the Holocaust in silence. Let us surround our worship, our community in prayer, with silence. Silence in preparation for the presence of God. And after silence, let us stand and give expression personally and communally to the proclamation of God's name to the world. 

- Praise and proclaim God's name, to whom all praise is due. 

- Praised and proclaimed be the name of God, to whom all praise is due, now and forever. 

- Out of silence and darkness, the creative word of God was spoken. It first took the form of wind, of ruach, God's spirit hovering over the waters of chaos to control them, to hold them back, and to make possible the goodness of creation itself. 

- "When God began to create the heaven and the earth, "the earth being unformed and void with darkness "over the surface of the deep, "and a wind from God sweeping over the water, "God said, "Let there be light. "And there was light. "God saw how good the light was, "and God separated the light from the darkness. "God called the light day, "and the darkness he called night. "And there was evening, and there was morning, "our first day." 

- "And God said, "I will make man in my image, "after my likeness. "They shall rule the fish of the sea, "the birds of the sky, the cattle, the whole earth, "and all the creeping things that creep on earth. "And God created man in his image. "In the image of God he created him. "Male and female he created them. "God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fertile and increase. "Fill the earth and master it, "and rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, "and all the living things that creep on earth." 

- "God said, "See, I give you every seed-bearing plant "that is upon all the earth "and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit. "They shall be yours for food. "And to all the animals on land, "to all the birds of the sky, "and to everything that creeps on earth, "in which there is the breath of life. "I give all the green plants for food. "And it was so. "And God saw all that He had made and found it very good. "And there was evening, and there was morning, "the sixth day." 

- "Heaven and earth were finished in all of their array, "and on the seventh day, God finished the work "which He had been doing. "And He ceased on the seventh day from all the work "which He had done. "And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, "because on it God ceased from all the work of creation, "which He had done. 

- But there can be another type of silence, and another kind of wind. At a time of horror, in the middle of the 20th century, the silence of the world made possible the monstrous crime of genocide, the attempted murder of a whole people, for no other reason than that they were a particular type of people, a people called by God, the chosen people, the Jews. 

- In the heart of civilized Europe, aided by the silent acquiescence of so many of the nations and peoples of the world, a wind of abomination and racial hostility, a wind of evil whipped a continent into a frenzy of senseless killing. In Hebrew this destructive event, the Nazi murder of two thirds of European Jewry, is likened to the Shoah of the biblical text, a devastating, diabolic wind that scours the earth of all life, leaving only chaos and death in its wake. 

- Six million Jewish men and women, one million children among them, were taken by other human beings to die in gas and fire. Their very ashes spewed from the chimneys of Auschwitz to mingle with the soft breezes of the air in full, nameless and graveless, spread over a continent that had itself become a graveyard. 

- Not only did Jews die, caught in the eddies and swirls of the Holocaust, millions of Poles and Gypsies, Russians, and other Europeans also ended their lives as victims of Nazism's diabolically efficient technology of death. But to be Jewish in Nazi Europe, of itself, meant alienation and death. 

- Martin Niemoeller, a pastor in the German Confessing Church, spent seven years in a concentration camp. He wrote, "First they came for the Jews, "and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. "Then they came for the socialists, "and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. "Then they came for the trade unionist, "and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. "Then they came for me, and there was no one left "to speak out for me." 

- Pope John Paul II, a Pole who knew well the heel of Nazi inhumanity, prayed during his pilgrimage to Auschwitz in 1979, "I kneel before all the inscriptions "that come one after another, "burying the memory of the victims of Auschwitz. "In particular, I pause with you, dear participants "in this encounter before the inscription in Hebrew. "This inscription awakens the memory of the people "whose sons and daughters "were intended for total extermination. "This people draws its origin from Abraham, "our father in faith, as was expressed by Paul of Tarsus, "the very people who received from God "the commandment, "thou shall not kill, "itself experiences in a special measure "what is meant by killing. "It is not permissible for anyone "to pass by this inscription with indifference." 

- We now light six candles in memory of the six million. As we light these candles, we commit ourselves to responsibility for one another, to build on this earth a world that has no room for hatred, no place for violence. Together we pray for the strength to fulfill this vocation. Please stand. 

- "My God, my God-- 

- "Why have you abandoned me? "Why so far from delivering me from my anguished worry? 

- "My God, I cry by day, you answer not. "By night and have no respite. 

- "But you are the Holy One, throned, praise of Israel. "And you our fathers trusted, "they trusted and you rescued them. "To you they cried out. (muffled recitation) "In you they trusted." (muffled recitation) 

- Jewish voices were heard in reciting prayers in biblical text on the trains to the concentration camps, at the doors of the gas chambers, in hiding, in fighting the enemy, manifesting grief, hope, despair, trust in God, faith. One of those voices, Moshe Flinker, an adolescent hiding in Belgium, expressed his religious fervor and commitment in verse and prayer. One afternoon he wrote in his diary. 

- "I am sitting at the window "and readying myself for the Minhah prayer. "I look out, and I see that all is red, "that the whole horizon is red. "The sky is covered with bloody clouds, "and I am frightened when I see it. "I say to myself, "Where do these clouds come from? "Bleeding clouds, where are you from? "Suddenly everything is clear to me. "Everything is simple and easily understood. "Don't you know? "They come from the seas of blood. "These seas have been brought about by the millions of Jews "who have been captured, "and who knows where they are? "We are the bleeding clouds, "and from the seas of blood have we come. "We have come to you from the place where your brothers are, "to bring greetings from your people. "We are witnesses. "We were sent by your people to show you their troubles. "We have come from the seas of blood, "we were brought into being by an inferno of suffering, "and we are a sign of peace to you." Young Moshe, who died in Auschwitz, was able to find in his faith in God and in continuity of the Jewish peoplehood: a Jew in thought. 

- A Jew in deeds. 

- A Jew in trouble. 

- A Jew in (mumbles). 

- A Jew in speech. 

- A Jew in silence. 

- A Jew in arising. 

- A Jew in sleep. 

- Jew in God. 

- A Jew (mumbles). 

- A Jew in life. 

- A Jew in death. 

- A Jew you were born. 

- A Jew you will die. (papers shuffling) 

- Congregation is invited to join in singing. (guitar plays sad music) ♪ Hear, O Israel ♪ ♪ The Lord our God, the Lord is one ♪ ♪ Hear, O Israel ♪ ♪ The Lord our God, the Lord is one ♪ ♪ Hear, O Israel ♪ ♪ Two thousand years have we been in exile ♪ ♪ Two thousand years have we been suffering ♪ ♪ Two thousand years have we been hoping ♪ ♪ For a long delayed salvation ♪ ♪ Two thousand years have we been wondering ♪ ♪ Two thousand years have we been moving ♪ ♪ Two thousand years have we been yearning ♪ ♪ For a long delayed salvation ♪ ♪ And now we are standing here ♪ ♪ Hear, O Israel ♪ ♪ The Lord our God, the Lord is one ♪ ♪ Hear, O Israel ♪ ♪ The Lord our God, the Lord is one ♪ ♪ Hear, O Israel ♪ ♪ Standing here, we yearn for your help, O Lord ♪ ♪ Shall you help us ♪ ♪ Yes, our Lord shall help us ♪ ♪ Hear, O Israel ♪ ♪ The Lord our God, the Lord is one ♪ ♪ Hear, O Israel ♪ ♪ The Lord our God, the Lord is one ♪ ♪ Hear, O Israel ♪ ♪ Yes, our Redeemer, you shall redeem ♪ ♪ You have forgotten, shall remember ♪ ♪ You have neglected, and you shall return ♪ ♪ Hear, O Israel ♪ ♪ The Lord our God, the Lord is one ♪ ♪ Hear, O Israel ♪ ♪ The Lord our God, the Lord is one ♪ ♪ Hear, O Israel ♪ ♪ Hear, O Israel ♪ 

- You may be seated. 

- Christian witness in this time of degradation was barely heard. While many were silent, some spoke with their deeds. Let us listen now to a few of their stories. 

- From Germany. (distant, muffled speaking) In August 1941, he declared in a sermon that he would include Jews in his daily prayer because their synagogues had been set on fire, and Jewish businesses had been destroyed. (muffled speaking) A brief announcement in the newspaper informed his followers that he had been arrested for subversive activity. He was sent to prison, and after serving his term, sent to a concentration camp for re-education. (muffled, distant speaking) 

- From Poland. Abraham H. Foxman was born in Poland in 1940, a few months after the Germans had occupied the country. His parents fled to Vilna in an effort to keep ahead of the Nazis. But in less than a year, the German armies occupied Europe, and rounded up all Jews in the ghetto. The first step (coughing drowns out speaker) to concentration camps. A maid from (mumbles) offered to hide the baby. In a few months he had a new name and baptismal certificate. His mother and father were together in the Vilna Ghetto for one year when his mother escaped, managed to get false papers, and moved in with the baby, as her sister, and the baby's aunt. His father, liberated in 1945, made his way back to Vilna at this time. The whole family was smuggled out of Poland (mumbles). Austria. They reached the United States in 1950, when Abe was ten years old. 

- From Denmark. 

- (distant, muffled speaking) An outstanding biblical scholar. (distant, muffled speaking) 

- From Belgium. In May 1943, Mme Marthe de Smet of Dilbeek, in the countryside near Brussels, received a telephone call from Sister Claire, a nun of the Convent des Soeurs du Tres-Saint-Sauveur in the city. Was she willing to hide another Jewish child, the caller asked. The situation was desperate. The nuns had hidden 15 little Jewish girls until their hiding place was betrayed by the Gestapo. Just hours before the Gestapo's truck arrived to take the children to their death, the nuns had somehow gotten through to the underground. The children had been hastily moved under cover of darkness, and then placed in safe but temporary (mumbles). Now it was essential to find a permanent hiding place for each of them. Sister Claire knew the De Smets, Georges, his wife Marthe, and their children, Marie-Paule, Andre, Eliane, and Francis, were already hiding a Jewish child, three year old Ginette Monk. Nonetheless, she was confident Mme De Smet would not turn her down. She was right. A few days later, three year old Yvette Lerner came into the De Smet household to be safely sheltered there until the liberation of Brussels, in September, 1944. Shortly after her arrival, the De Smets took a third child, then an infant, Lily (mumbles). At the risk of their own lives, and those of their children, the De Smets embarked in the course of active opposition to the Nazis' plan for the extermination of all Jews. In this, they were motivated by their deep religious conviction, and by a strong love of children. After the war, the De Smets refused all remuneration and asked only for the continued friendship of the families to whom they had given so much. 

- From France. Important rescue work was carried out by a Catholic missionary organization, the Fathers of Our Lady of Sion. At the head of this group was the Reverend Father Superior (cough obscures sound) Devaux, who is credited with saving 443 Jewish children and 500 adults. At the end of 1942, Father Devaux organized temporary shelter for his wards on rue Notre-Dame des Champs. From here, he sent the children to many parts of the country, where they found temporary homes with workman's families, among peasants, in convents and monasteries. The expenses were provided for by the group. When the relief work proved beyond their modest means, they solicited and received money from individuals, Jews and non-Jews alike, and from various organizations. The Gestapo heard about the clergyman's ceaseless activities on behalf of the Jews. They summoned Father Devaux and cited a long list of his offenses. (mumbles), an SS officer known as a hangman of French Jews, personally dealt with Devaux. He slapped the priest's face as an initial warning, and cautioned him to cease helping Jews or accept the consequences. Father Devaux returned to his rescue work. In 1945, the brave priest was interviewed by a Jewish journalist, who asked him whether he had not been aware of the great danger involved in his rescue activities. Father Devaux's answer was simple. "Of course I knew it. "But this knowledge could not stop me "from doing what I considered to be my duty "as a Christian and a human being." 

- From Italy. The city of Assisi, home of Saint Francis, turned itself into a place of kindness and refuge for Jews. Organized by priests of peasant stock, (mumbles) hundreds of Jews were hidden in the town's ancient monastery and convent, and provided with fake identity papers. The Germans raided the village's houses, searching for the Jewish refugees, who were dressed in religious (mumbles), temporarily transformed into monks and nuns, piously saying their prayers. A small printing press in the town's pharmacy at night cranked out false documents, which were then smuggled to Jewish survivors throughout Italy. In all, some 32,000 Italian Jews, representing 80% of Italian Jewry, and thousands of foreign Jews, were hidden successfully by Christian laymen and religious alike. 

- From Holland. After the Nazi invasion of Holland, a program to train Jewish youths in agriculture prior to sending them to Palestine, boldly moved underground to smuggle Jewish children on to the Pyrenees, to Spain, and from there to Palestine. But the Jews needed help in the field of the Dutch socialist underground. Among those who helped with their assistance, was a man named Joop Westerweel, a principal in (mumbles) high school. Son of a pastor, Westerweel was (mumbles) educator and father of three children, a fourth on the way. He was eager for his first journey across (mumbles) borders bristling with Nazi bayonets. Early in 1943, Shushu Simon, the leader of the Jewish underground, was captured by the Gestapo. Joop Westerweel was thrust into the position of leadership. It was now his job to lead the Jewish children across the low country and mountainous peaks and on to Spain. This became part of his everyday existence and he dedicated himself to it fully. At the foot of the Pyrenees, where he usually took leave of the young Zionist pioneers, Westerweel enjoined them not to forget their non-Jewish comrades and reminded them that they were bound to all humanity. (papers shuffling) 

- I think the Holocaust is the greatest Christian tragedy since the crucifixion of Jesus. In our story, there was the resurrection. And one of the questions that we Christians have to ask ourselves is: can there be a rebirth for Christianity after what so many people who call themselves Christians participated in? The death of close to six million Jews, one million of them before they reached their teens, it's very likely that everyone who killed somebody during the Holocaust was baptized in the name of Jesus. There were centuries of Christian words and deeds which led up to this. Historically there's probably been three steps in the treatment of Jews by anti-Semites. Ghettoization, expulsion from nations, and finally murder. It's almost, without getting too dramatic, a sin to read some of these words in this kind of a setting. But I also think it's almost a sin to forget these words of background. Let me read these to you from Saint John Chrysostom, someone that the Catholic Church has canonized, called one of its heroes, and one of a group that I call an all-star cast of anti-Semites. And I want to tell you that these words, which so many of us now deny or abjure, are the very words that today you find quoted in the neo-Nazi literature that is available throughout this country and throughout the world. These are from Saint John Chrysostom, whom Father Edward Flannery called probably the most vicious of all Christian anti-Semites. 5th century. "How can Christians dare have the slightest converse "with Jews, most miserable of all men? "Men who are lustful, rapacious, greedy, perfidious bandits? "Are they not inveterate murderers, destroyers, "men possessed by the devil, whom debauchery and drunkenness "have given them the manners of the pig and the lusty goat? "They know only one thing, to satisfy their gullets, "get drunk, to kill and maim one another. "Indeed they have surpassed the ferocity of wild beasts, "for they murder their offspring "and immolate them to the devil. "They are impure and impious." He goes on to say more words about the synagogue being the house of the devil, and so on. And while I have them here, I find it, each time I try to quote them, very difficult. He ends by saying, "I hate the synagogue "precisely because it has the law and the prophets. "I hate the Jews also because they outrage the law." Now let me move many centuries forward and quote from one more person. And I guess I'll tell you now, these are the words of Martin Luther. And perhaps if I did not tell you that, you might suspect that they came from the mouth or the pen of a Nazi. "First, their synagogue or school is to be set on fire, "and what won't burn is to be heaped over with dirt "and dumped on so that no one can see a stone "or chunk of it forever. "Second, their houses are to be torn down "and destroyed in the same way. "Third, they are to have their prayer books "and Talmudics taken from them. "Fourth, their rabbis are to be forbidden henceforth "to teach on penalty of life and limb. "On penalty of life and limb, "they are to be forbidden publicly to praise God, "to thank God, to pray to God, to teach of God "among us and ours. "And furthermore, they shall be forbidden "to utter the name of God in our hearing. "No value shall be accorded the Jewish mouth "by us Christians so that he may utter "the name of God in our hearing, but whoever hears it "from a Jew shall report him to the authorities "or throw pig droppings on him. "Fifth, the Jews are to be deprived totally "of walkway in streets. "Sixth, they are to be forbidden lending for interest, "and all the cash in holding of silver and gold "are to be taken from them and put to one side "for safekeeping. "Seventh, the young, strong Jews and Jewesses are to have flail, axe, and spade put into their hands." It's hard to say, but Christians have created victims. We followers of Jesus the Jew have created Jewish victims. But Christians too have become victims. We have become victims of our own hatred. Martin Luther King used to talk about how racism, in the long run, hurts the racist more than it does the object of racism. Frantz Fanon in Algeria, a psychiatrist, wrote about the effect of torture by the French on the torturers, what it did to their psyches, their spiritual life. We must not forget the righteous in our program today. Several of them are remembered. We must honor them. Sister Edith Stein among them, Father Alfred Delp, Franz Jaegerstaetter, the Austrian peasant, who, when he was told that the issues were so complicated, told by his bishop that the issues were so complicated, they should be left to the government, he asked, "Why has every man a conscience, then?" Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who set a standard I think, for uniting theology and action. And Daniel Trocme is another, the pastor at Le Chambon, a community of 3,000 Christians who saved 3,000 Jews. Asked why he acted the way he did, said, "Because later I would not have to be ashamed." But unfortunately, the number of these people is quite few. Adolf Hitler did what he did because he could. After all, how many people does it take to kill 12 million people? Six million Jews, six million others. Not just Germans, not just Nazis, as our text this evening said, a continent. There were, for example, 3,100,000 Polish Jews before the outbreak of the Second World War. 2,700,000 lost their lives. Today there are 6,000 Jews living in Poland. How did the Nazis know who they were? Who pointed them out? Who traded their lives for a bottle of vodka, a carton of cigarettes? My point is that these were not just soldiers. And I think this has special meaning in a university setting. Who are the sociologists who came up with and supported certain racial theories? The judges and the lawyers who implemented the law that said Jews were inferior? The historians who said from their perspective the same thing? The theologians who, among other things, blamed Jews for the crucifixion of Jesus, which is both bad history and bad theology? The medical profession, and all the experiments that these people did on the Jews? Pharmacists and Zyklon gas, for example? I mean, somebody said to the Nazis, "There is a more efficient way of killing." Bullets were becoming too expensive as the war effort was dragging on. We could save money by building gas chambers and using gas. Somebody designed the gas chambers. Somebody bribed government officials for the privilege of getting the contract to build these. Who were these people who contributed to what our text this evening called the diabolically efficient technology of death? And indeed, we have a commitment ourselves to be responsible for one another, as we heard. Responsible, I suggest, to the past, to the present, and to the future. To the past, some of you know that earlier this afternoon there was a memorialization of the dead by the reading of many names for almost four hours of the victims of the Holocaust. But of course, the best way we can give testimony to the dead is with our lives. We must not condemn ourselves to repeat the errors of the past, as George Santayana has told us, and we have a responsibility to the living victims, the survivors of the Holocaust, who bear the scars, scars that we can never know. Survivors who, even now, commit suicide over what they experienced because so many of them have found that the promise that they hoped for wasn't realized. When we get out of here, the death camps, those of us who will survive, the world will be a better place. And when they hear what happened to us, they will act in another way. But some of us did not execute, if you will, our responsibility that well. And we have a responsibility to the future. Jews and non-Jews alike, all humanity. The quotation we heard from Martin Niemoeller, "First they came for the Jews, "and I was silent, and then they came for the socialists, "and I was silent," is a beautiful quote, and I honor the heroism of Martin Niemoeller, but that text must not be misinterpreted. We mustn't be concerned about Jews, because then they'll come for us, or about socialists because they'll come for us. We must be concerned for Jews because they're human beings. Never mind the effect that it will have on us if we are silent. Each of us is a center of the universe. It's a humbling kind of thing to understand that without me, the universe is incomplete. Without you, the universe is incomplete. My task is to discover my role, my place in the puzzle, if you will, to fulfill it. Discovering is difficult. But the search for my uniqueness, why God created me a certain way, is the ongoing adventure of life, if you will. Trying to fulfill it is an accompanying role. And certainly this includes responsibility to God, responsibility to myself, to survivors, and to humanity in general, as I suggested. We can, in fact, change the meaning of the past by our acts and by our inactivity. We could grant Adolf Hitler a posthumous victory. We could make the meaning of the lives of Jesus, and Martin Luther King, and Buddha meaningless. The Holocaust was an awesome event, but since it could have been done, it could have been prevented. Max Broad, perhaps best known as the person who saved Franz Kafka's manuscripts, wrote a book in which he talked, he made a distinction between noble suffering and ignoble suffering. Ignoble suffering is the kind of suffering that we experience that could have been averted. Children starving in Ethiopia are starving ignobly. We as a human race could put an end to that. Noble suffering, I suppose, would be natural disasters and so on. Earthquakes, tidal waves, oftentimes we have no control over, no warnings, but Max Broad urges us to give our attention to stamping out, to preventing ignoble suffering. What will I do with my life to prevent ignoble suffering? Just think for a moment of all the people that I can hate. In fact, that I am sometimes urged to hate. As a white person, I hate people of color. As a male, hate or fear, they may be the same thing down the line, women. As an American, non-Americans. As a northerner, southerners. As a tenant, landlords. Maybe as a teacher, students. As a Christian, Jews. The list is enormously long. How do I act upon these divisions? Do I work to eliminate them? Or I can go another way. And I wanna close with the words of the great Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, who suggests for us the way to go. Niebuhr wrote, "No thing that is worth doing "can be achieved in a lifetime. "Therefore we must be saved by hope. "Nothing which is true or beautiful or good "makes complete sense in any immediate context of history. "Therefore we must be saved by faith. "Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone. "Therefore, we are saved by love." (papers shuffling) 

- We remember the six million by reciting the Kadish, the traditional Jewish prayer for the dead. This prayer is not a funeral hymn, but an affirmation of God's everlasting presence and dominion, praising God's existence and creative love. It is in this spirit that we pray the Kadish, remembering the victims of the Holocaust. We also pray for the survivors, whose faith in life enabled them to rebuild in other countries their shattered lives. They had destroyed worlds. Joining together, they brought about new life. They raised new families in new lands in defiance of absolute terror and despair, and invincible hope. Exalted by that spirit of life-giving and faith, we pray today. Let us stand. (chanting in Hebrew) Hallowed and enhanced, may God be throughout the world. May God's sovereignty soon be accepted during our life and the life of all Israel, and let us say amen. May God be praised throughout all time. Glorified and celebrated, lauded and praised, acclaimed and honored, extolled and exalted may the Holy One be. Far beyond all song and psalm, beyond all tributes which humanity can utter. And let us say amen. Let there be abundant peace from heaven, with life's goodness for us and for all the people Israel. And let us say amen. God, who brings peace to the universe, will bring peace to us, to humanity, and to Israel. And let us say amen. Exalted, compassionate God, grant perfect peace in your sheltering presence among the holy (muffled recitation) to the souls of all men, women, and children in the House of Israel to the righteous Gentiles to the millions who have died defending the right to be different in a time of madness and terror. May their memory endure And inspire us to attend loyalty in our lives. In our religious commitment and tasks, may their memory be a blessing and a sign of peace for all humanity, and let us say amen. (papers shuffling) 

- We end our worship by reciting together the words found on the walls of a cellar in Cologne, Germany, where Jews hid from the Nazis. "I believe. "I believe in the sun, even when it is not shining. "I believe in love, even when feeling it not. "I believe in God, even when God is silent." We have proclaimed together our faith in the one God, ground and nurturer of us all. Before we go our separate ways again, let us extend to one another a sign of reconciliation expressing our--