buchenwald

During my time in Germany, I had the opportunity to visit Buchenwald Concentration Camp.
I have no photographs to share because it did not seem right to photograph a place so sacred - in all the horrors that had existed on those grounds. Although Buchenwald wasn’t a death camp, over 56 thousand prisoners died of starvation, over-work, failed escape attempts, or execution. On the silent bus ride back from Buchenwald, I wrote to process my experience. I am sharing this reflection with you this week.

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Buchenwald

Walking through the gates of Buchenwald, the air seems to change. 
It’s as though the trees themselves are holding space for death and remembrance. 
The only eye-witnesses to the atrocities committed on these grounds.
It is quiet. 
The birds and the wind are the only sounds.

I was expecting arid, dead earth on this site. 
It seemed that would be fitting. 
Instead, the camp is surrounded by lush forest and grasses, 
tiny wildflowers blanketing the sites where the prison barracks once stood. 
It is as though God was cloaking the fields with flowers in lament, 
as God once clothed Adam and Eve in lament of their exile. 

Our God, allowing us the choice to love, 
knows that at any moment we may choose the opposite.  
Standing in a concentration camp, the physical embodiment of the Holocaust, 
we face humanity’s collective choice not to love.
We see the fallout of humanity choosing death instead of life, 
destruction instead of creation. 
And in response to this cooperative destruction… 

Jesus weeps. 

Jesus wept when the barbed wire fences were constructed. 
Jesus wept when the first guards entered the camp.
Jesus wept when the first prisoner walked through the gates of Buchenwald 
and never walked out. 

And so we stand on hallowed ground, 
blanketed by the tears of our Lord who cried out in anguish at the suffering of His people. 
And every Spring God lays flowers down in memory. 
Reminding us that even in spaces of death and destruction, 
God will create life anew.  

All around Buchenwald, buildings are decaying. 
But life encroaches between the bricks, 
grass growing through tile and stone. 
As though God is reclaiming with life this camp of death.
As God reclaims us, over and over again.

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