Elie Wiesel has been a hero for me in my exploration of faith. While a high school student, I was astounded to learn how Hitler and the Nazi movement caused so much suffering through crimes against humanity. My history teacher told the story of Elie Wiesel and I mentioned admiration of Wiesel to my father. Dad encouraged me to read excerpts from Wiesel’s trilogy – Night, Dawn, Day.
I was astonished, appalled, and inspired. Let me remind you of Wiesel’s story.
When Elie was a child living in a Jewish community in Romania, they heard stories about Nazi atrocities, but the tales seemed too farfetched to believe. Their rabbi reassured them, “Nothing this horrible could ever happen because God would never allow such a thing.” However, those atrocities came to their village in 1944. Fifteen years old Elie was picked up with his family and other faithful Jews from his village. As they were forced to walk into the evil of the Auschwitz extermination camp, their family was separated. Elie’s mother and youngest sister died immediately in the ovens. Elie and his father were sent to a work camp where they were repeatedly beaten.
During the rest of 1944, Elie and his father barely survived. Then, as the Allied troops approached Auschwitz, the male prisoners were forced to march about thirty miles through a blizzard to Buchenwald. Elie took care of his father as much as he could. Yet, his father was very sick. One night, Elie was exhausted and fell asleep. The next morning, he awakened to learn that his father had been deemed too weak to work and had been thrown into the crematorium. Elie wrote these words to describe that moment in his life: “Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget, even if I am condemned to live as long as God.”
Elie survived the Holocaust and did tremendous good throughout the remainder of his life. For decades, he lived as an agnostic. If I had endured the unbelievable depravity brought upon him and millions of others through Hitler’s Nazi regime, I would have probably questioned every good and godly element of my world.
However, over the years Elie’s faith was like a flower emerging from winter’s cold. His faith budded, bloomed and brought forth much fruit. During his middle adult years, he wrote, “I would be within my rights to give up faith in God, and I could invoke six million reasons to justify such a decision, but I am incapable of straying from the path … We must not give in to cynicism. My wounded faith endures. My faith, though wounded, is not dead. I didn’t divorce God, but I’m quarrelling, arguing and questioning.” Elie Wiesel participated in a living faith.
In Elie Wiesel’s speech entitled, ‘The Perils of Indifference,’ he said, “The opposite of love is not hatred, it’s indifference.” This season of Lent requires a response from you – and indifference is not a response that offers a living faith.
Beloved, as we move closer to Holy Week, it is my pastoral prayer that you will be able to see past all your suffering, confusion, and chaos. Your wounded faith can endure with strength. It is possible that a deeply wounded faith survives with added clarity, compassion and life. Let us reject the perils of indifference. Amen. May it be so.
