A Holocaust in Port-au-Prince
Elie Wiesel describes the Jewish Holocaust as follows (Legends of Our Time p. 15ff ): "The anniversary of the death of a certain Shlomo ben Nissel .. is tomorrow. He was my father, and .. I don't know how to link myself to it. Stretched out on a plank of wood amid a multitude of blood-covered corpses, fear frozen in his eyes, a mask of suffering on the bearded, stricken mask that was his face, my father gave back his soul at Buchenwald. A soul useless in that place.. But, he gave it up, not to the God of his fathers, but rather to the impostor, cruel and insatiable, to the enemy God. They had killed his God, they had exchanged him for another. .. The impact of the holocaust on believers as well as unbelievers, on Jews as well as Christians, has not yet been evaluated. Not deeply, not enough. .. Auschwitz, by definition, is beyond their vocabulary."
These words haunt me as I observe the holocaust in Port-au-Prince where thousands of blood-covered corpses were dumped in piles and bulldozed into mass graves. Their souls too are given up to an insatiable enemy God. Yet the perpetrators of this holocaust are not the dreaded Nazis. They are the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism. These conditioned the poverty, malnutrition and weak infrastructures in Haiti that resulted in this massive earthquake carnage.
It is tempting to avert our eyes and to say, "We are not responsible." But this response is unrealistic in the face of our culture conditioned by avarice and domination. We need a revolution in values. Dr. King realized this when he preached his "Beyond Vietnam" speech at Riverside Church on April 4, 1967. He said, "A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies. This call for a world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all men."
If the tragedy of Haiti moves us to such a revolution, the deaths of these innocents may not have been in vain.
Login
FAQ
Search
grampatom
