Never, never again

On the 100th Birthday of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of the Christians who gave their lives to fight the Nazi horrors, the Nebraska State Paper gives us this story from David Hahn:

Walking slowly, I listened to the story of a young woman who lived in the village next to Dachau but who did not, at first, know of the horrors that occurred there.

She explained that the German military, and many SS, announced that it was a training and military camp, needed to protect the German homeland. When trains loaded with civilians began to arrive, villagers were told it was a work camp.

When she, her friends and family, eventually realized it was a ‘death camp,” she said, her life was ruled by fear.


Children of Dachau.
The now-infamous words Arbeit Macht Frei (Work Makes Freedom) were atop the black, steel gates that led to the camp. We stopped. She did not say she could not continue, but I knew she could go no further. The dog sat passively. I looked down into the woman’s face, her eyes now glassy wet with the tears of pain and the hope of grace.

She said only to me "Never again, never again. Please, you must make sure, never again."

. . .

There is no preparation for being in a place where, thirty-five years before, people tossed bodies into carts, so that the bodies could be burned in furnaces. Where people performed chemical experiments on other people. Where life was absent. Where death won.

Now, they tell us it's to save lives and improve health. We gradually learn that it's to be younger, stronger, and to make money and increase power. And the embryos are so hard to see, so hard to identify as "people."

Edit - I fixed an error I made in typing Dietrich Bonhoeffer's name.