Middle and high school youth from St. Peter Lutheran Church, Lancaster, Pa., pose with Joseph Hirt, a concentration camp survivor who spoke with them as they stud- ied anti-Semitism in the history of the Christian church. The students also have been focusing on what it means to be a bystander, and the call to stand up for others and for human rights.
visit, Joseph Hirt addressed the class. Te Lancaster County resident survived the concentration camps as a Polish Roman Catholic in the 1940s. He gave each of the students a letter to be given to their teachers at school. Te letter, junior Liam Fyfe said,
carried a message: “He basically said, ‘I saw kids in the Nazi Party about these kids’ age and they were
ties refused to intervene. “Where is the grace in all of
this?” asked adult Kris Armitage. “How does that explain Martin Luther?” Almoney acknowledged that it’s
difficult to reconcile the conflict between Luther’s Christianity and his writings about the Jews. Te ELCA condemned Luther’s anti- Semitic writings in 1994 (search for “Declaration of the ELCA to the Jewish Community” at www.elca. org). Almoney said it’s important that Lutherans understand their history. “Te more you challenge your
faith,” she said, “the more you understand it.” Almoney reminded the class
that “God uses imperfect people” to carry out God’s work. Luther’s good theology shaped our church, she added. Not all Christians turned a blind
eye to Nazi atrocities. She pointed to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Ger- man Lutheran theologian who was a vocal critic of Adolf Hitler’s regime and was executed a mere month before World War II ended. A week prior to the museum
Author bio: Cornelius is faith & values editor of the LNP: Always Lancaster newspaper.
It’s difficult to reconcile the conflict between Luther’s Christianity and his writings about the Jews.
killing innocent people. I don’t trust education because of that, so try and teach your kids tolerance.’ ” At the museum, junior Will
Ayars was drawn to a room filled with shoes. “Tere was a person, or at least a bunch of people, for each pair of those shoes that died,” he said. “Tey didn’t throw away the shoes, they kept on using them.” Ann Fink, a seventh-grader, had
a hard time comprehending the inhumanity. “I can’t believe they did this to people who are just like them,” she said. What would the students say to
those who deny that the Holocaust occurred or suggest that it has been exaggerated? “We saw all of the pictures, all of the evidence and how awful it really was,” Mitchell said. Fyfe added, “We are probably
going to be the last generation to have ... firsthand accounts of it. Te museum said they have people come in all the time and give firsthand accounts. In some cases, it’s so hor- rible you can’t make that stuff up.” Junior Sophie McConnell didn’t
visit the museum but took part in a tour of the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp in Austria sev-
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eral years ago. “Tat,” she said, “was probably the most powerful day of my life so far.” Te message to the students,
Almoney said, is that genocide nei- ther began nor ended with the Tird Reich. It continues today in Darfur, Iraq, Syria and Nigeria—events the students are following. And that was part of the mes-
sage. As they entered the museum, adult Beth Soslow said the guide directed his remarks to the stu- dents: “Our generation failed. Te next generation failed. Now it’s up to you to make sure that this doesn’t happen.”
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