From the coordinator
60 years after Auschwitz – and Jewish Evangelism
Simone Veil, president of the Shoah Foundation and former European Parliament president, was one of the speakers at the 60th anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation, January 27, 2005. As one who as a teenager survived Auschwitz with the prisoner number 78651 she said the following, among other things, in her speech:
“What would have become of them, of these millions of Jewish people murdered in their infancy, here or in ghettos or in other Nazi death camps? Would they have become philosophers, artists, great scientists or perhaps just skilled craftsmen or mothers of families? All I know is that I keep crying whenever I think about them.”
Moving words. And challenging words. We who are involved in Jewish evangelism have a special obligation to keep the memory of Shoah alive. Not least because of the accusation that has been made against us that Jewish evangelism is a kind of “Endlösung” to the Jewish problem. There were also Jesus-believing Jews among those who were burnt in the gas chambers.
Quietly and unpolemically we who are involved in Jewish evangelism would like to add some questions to the questions asked by Simone Veil about those who were murdered in their infancy: Would they have become Jesus-believing Jews, great leaders in the Messianic Movement or just skilled craftsmen or mothers of families, who had found a new life in Israel’s Messiah?
Only God knows. We do not understand him, but in Jesus we shall continue to trust him. Even when he conceals himself from us.
The last words are also said with the Tsunami in the Far East in mind.
Kai Kjær-Hansen
lcje.int@gmail.com