Quite often when I read, I picture myself in the story. Do you ever do that? It makes the experience of peering in the window so much more dimensional. This morning as I was retrieving articles for business for my LinkedIn page, I came across an article written by Sarah Gensburger, “The Banality of Robbing the Jews" in the New York Times. Sarah described the pillaging of the Jews during World War II. It brought me to tears. It began with German troops arriving in Paris in 1940. At first, it was about taking their art collections, but then it became so personal. As the Final Solution was enacted in January of 1942, the ravaging spread to the entire Jewish population. Please remember most of this population was made up of poor immigrants from Eastern Europe. This senseless act was part of the effort to take from them not only their personal belongings, but their dignity, their worth, their place in the world. Yes, pillaging them was used as an essential tool of extermination.
This occurred in France, Belgium and the Netherlands. From 1942 to 1944, at least 70,000 homes were emptied, in Paris 38,000 apartments were stripped bare. It took 674 trains to transport the items to Germany. Nothing was left untouched: toys, dishes, family photo albums even light bulbs. What’s worse, they used the Jews in the work camps to sort and crate the items. From 1943 to 1944, nearly 800 Jewish men and women lived and worked among their belongings. Can you imagine them seeing their own possessions pass before their eyes and them realizing that they too were considered only objects to be moved or done away with too?
The nicer items were set aside for the supervisors of the camps and their families and friends. Some of the Jewish detainees who had been tailors, cobblers or leather workers before their arrest, were forced to make their wares for the Nazi dignitaries and their wives. Reading all this was so much for my spirit to stand. It broke my heart and stirred an anger in me. The objective of this heinous act was to destroy all traces of the Jews identity. To take all their belongings, some practical and some precious and generalize them in a way that stripped any personal identity attached to them. The Germans wanted to discount them till they believed they didn’t matter. To squelch any iota of hope that may have still burned in their heart.
As I said before, I really “personalize” what I read. I have been a single mother and a single woman. I have no husband or additional income to assist me. I work to provide for my son and I. I have to choose carefully what I spend money on. Though these things are material possessions, there’s a pride in being able to give these provisions to him and for me to live. It would wreck me for someone to come in and take what I have rightfully earned. It would anger me for someone to come into our space and pillage through those things precious to me. I would not be able to watch them destroy the pictures of Jake competing, pictures of us at family gatherings, items that hold sentimental value for us. And yet, these are just “things”. The bigger wound is that I don’t matter. I would have no control over this terror taking place. There is no one to fight for me or defend against it.
Today we don’t have Nazi occupations coming through and pillaging our homes, but we allow an invisible enemy to come in and pick pocket our lives and the lives of our family. We almost forget to lock the door to our hearts so that there is easy access to take our hope, our dignity, our worth. The longings and desires of our hearts go out the window as the assertive enemy comes in to rob us. Any shred of passion left is ushered out in a box sealed to be burned in a proverbial bon fire along with so many others belongings in the world. We don’t realize it but we have allowed a spiritual extermination.
We have allowed ourselves to be taken to mental concentration camps devoid of hope, littered with bitterness and unforgiveness. We poison ourselves with the thought that we have no one to save us and yet we were saved so long ago. Somewhere along the way we missed the invitation to freedom. Jesus wrote our Emancipation Proclamation and we’re still serving as slaves to our fears in the fields of life. It’s time to take off your shackles friends, you are free.
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