Saturday, February 22, 2014

The Shadow at Nuremburg


There it was as big as life. When I saw it I was shocked and dumbfounded but in light of all that had happened and what had been done, I saw in it the ultimate justice and may I say it God’s own commentary on all that had gone before it during the past 15 years in the cradle of National Socialism.

The Nuremburg Trials

This is where the dead Jewish children, the gassed families, the gaunt dirty striped walking dead found justice and a reckoning. This where the world learned justice’s wheels turn slowly but surely and their grind and power cannot be stopped. This is where the barbarism stopped and atrocities could not be performed without their eventual prosecution. The world had been put on notice.

But did the atrocities go on? Oh yes, Stalin’s purge, the Killing Fields of the Khmer Rouge, Darfur and the names go on. The evil of men will indeed find their toe hold and wriggle back from the abyss but Nuremburg was the moment when something was laid down and an example where “power yielded to justice” .

Why is this so? Why will power always yield to justice? Because it is the trait, the lost element in this world that comes forth when only two walked in the garden. It is the demonstration that there is indeed a God and whatever evil may spew in this world, its rule is only temporal. It will pass and the commentary eventually reached will not be the emotion of the zealot nor the rantings of the leader but the objective ruling on what once seemed unstoppable and squealed that it was permanent.

As Hitler stood at Nuremburg in a cathedral of ice in front of a vast sea of storm-troopers on the eve of the great war, the world shuddered and shrunk back from the display of power.  A few years later, the same place discarded and worn down by the war to which it had succumbed. The leaders then on the platform in all their power and glory now self-terminated, scrambling for a patch of darkness or caught and waiting for perhaps the second greatest trial to ever be held.

Justice had come. Justice will always come.

Those that love the light look for its coming and rise as it enters into its prominence….”All rise…”

Those of us who have lost loved ones to dysfunctional groups perhaps cannot be compared with such crimes some would say…but I have seen and experienced the horror of the loss of loved ones. I have experienced the pang of knowing those who have been caught , I may never see again. I have seen some once so vibrant and full of faith turn from the love of God because of so much pain. I have seen grandmothers skitter in restaurants to catch a glimpse of a grandchild that (per chance?) was against all odds in the same restaurant. I have seen those inside mentally and physically torturing themselves looking for a way out. I have seen the anguish of those caught in the jaws of the dysfunctional religious group because family members were still infused with the poison of the group’s mantras. I have seen the hopelessness of those both inside and outside. Ones that want to break free and those who never will because the ones they love are caught in the power grip of those that lead the group.  I have seen grandparents on death beds waiting for a last phone call that never came. I have seen the sick and to the point of death abandoned by the Mom and Dad.

For what?  The rantings and intimidation of a leader.

It has been years now since I saw my son and two daughters. They will not speak to us. They will not answer our call. They will not look for us. They are in step-looking forward…in the cathedral of ice. Their children at their sides being raised in Aryan tradition. They will not see, they do not want to see.

But justice comes. It will always come. Just as it did to Nuremburg.

How do I know that?

Because it is big as life, towering over the court room and in its shadow justice was served as the world looked on. The Silent Witness and perhaps the Great Judge Himself was there at Nuremburg.  As I saw it I began to weep and to understand the iron of the Word of God:

Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

 In that courtroom 306 still in use today, there above it all hangs a wooden Crucifix. To remind us, to remind me God is in control…and justice will be served.  

It is known that the crucifix was taken down during the trial and put back after the trials were over. But it is there today and will be there tommorrow and is a reminder to all that while removed, He will always return....to serve justice and to reckon with us all.