Would I Have Been Silent?

I (cannot) be silent.

Let me tell you, people get very incensed when a comparison is drawn between the modern-day Abortion practices and Holocaust. 

"It's a stretch!"

They say.

"You people who compare the Holocaust to modern day Abortion practices are a bunch of #!%@!*#!%*."

If you happen to be one of those individuals who would elect to describe people like me using certain four letter words (you know, like "cool?")

I have two for you:

Humor me.

Yes, I am no scholar, and I make no claim to be anything close to that. These thoughts written here are my own, and they come from the heart.

I've personally set foot in Auschwitz, in fact, I visited and toured four concentration camps last month in Germany and Poland. I blogged my experiences while there, which you can read about at length: Auschwitz-Birkenau, Buchenwald: Day One, Buchenwald: Day Two, and Dachau. It's true that I have studied the Third Reich and the Holocaust extensively. 

And I am here to tell you something. 

There were entire villages and families that lived only miles away from where the site of the atrocities- what we have now come to know as the Holocaust- were committed over the course of years. In fact, the building in the picture below is close to the house where the camp Commandant of Auschwitz (Rudolph Hess) lived with his wife and children. He was adamant they live there, and is said to have told others that:

 ".....it (Auschwitz) was a perfectly fine place to raise their family."

This begs the question:

Were these people, living in the shadow of the camps, willingly ignorant? Or were they aware, yet simply turned a blind eye? 

Or, did they just not care?

Perhaps some were aware, yet genuinely believed that it was necessary for the "good of the people" to not be "burdened" with these "un-necessaries" any longer. 

I don't think we can know for sure.

I could quote Himmler or Goebbels, to show you what they thought of the "Non-Aryan" people groups, but  chances are, you are already aware of this. In short, the Jews, the Communists, Slavs, Gypsies, Gays, as well as anyone who opposed them- men such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of my heroes- were all deemed "unfit"  to live. The Jews, in particular, were bestowed with the special title of "sub-human" and "not even human."

Early Inmates of Auschwitz

How can we fail to see a pattern here? 

Whenever a group of human beings is considered "less than" in a society- that is, whenever they are considered to be somehow "sub-human" or "not fully human," we should pay very close attention. Or, you could unwittingly find yourself in the midst of a society that tolerates, or worse, promotes, atrocity. Most frightening of all, you might not even know it.

Deeming a people group or a class of people "sub human" or "less than" then gives ample grounds to justify either their demise, as with the Holocaust, or their enslavement, as with slavery. Some of the (many) labels for justifying abortions include:

"oh, it's not a human yet."
"it's inconvenient for me to have a baby now."
"if this baby even lived, the quality of life it would experience would be very low."

Are you blinded by what has been going on in our country?

Or, are we only enraged now that we see the evidence that the bodies of these babies are being profited from? This, completely aside from the fact that it is, in the first place, a murder that is not only sanctioned, but also funded, by our nation? 

Are you speaking out?

Are you afraid of the consequences of doing so?

Are you afraid of what others will think? Of losing friendships? 

These are also the questions I ask myself.

Or maybe I should put it this way. If you and I lived in Nazi Germany, would you have taken a stand for the helpless?

Children, imprisoned in Auschwitz

"Unfit for Work"

If you live in America today, will you take a stand for the helpless?

One exhibit I visited in Auschwitz displayed the clothes of some babies and children who were exterminated by the Nazis. I can still hardly bear to look at these two pictures, and at the time, I struggled to stay my shaking hands long enough to take them.

Tell me, what is different? 

Will we look back upon these years when Planned Parenthood and abortion-on-demand reigned supreme and wonder why on earth no one stood up for what was right? Just as we do now, when we look back on the Holocaust? 

May it never be.