One last thought from my trip to Berlin:

One cannot spend time in Berlin and not be impressed by her history. There are cathedrals that date back 800 years. Coming forward, there are still remnants of the Soviet era: sections of the infamous Berlin Wall and one lone standing guard tower from the so-called “kill zone.” But, it’s World War II that dominates Berlin’s history.

 

North of Berlin in the little town of Oranienburg is a camp called Sachsenhausen. No, it’s not a boy scout camp. In fact, the men that built and used it were anything but boy scouts. They were agents of death. Sachsenhausen was the prototype for all subsequent Nazi concentration camps. It was there that they devised the plans and perfected the operation of more famous camps like Auschwitz and Dachau. There the Nazis imprisoned their opponents. There they killed their prisoners in a huge trench. There they burned their remains. There they began their medical experiments. There they honed their skills in the art of death.

While Sachsenhausen dates from the mid-1930s, the other site the impresses Berlin’s history upon the visitor dates from 1945. Not far from the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag stands a non-descript apartment building. Behind it, one can hear the squeals of children playing soccer in a field across the street. Between the two stand three small trees. The trees serve as a living memorial to the art of death initiated by Hitler and then ended by Hitler on that very spot. Beneath the surface sits the broken remains of Hitler’s notorious bunker where he directed the war’s final days. The bunker is also where Hitler and Eva Braun took their own lives in April 1945. The spot between the three trees is where Hitler’s driver cremated the remains of der Fuhrer of Death and his new bride. With Hitler’s death came the end of Nazism. The reign of terror and death ground to a halt there in Berlin.

Both sites, Sachsenhausen and those three trees, are somber places. The bright sun above and the sound of laughter across the street cannot break the oppressive gloom of Hitler’s legacy. One cannot help but be struck by the depth of man’s inhumanity to man.

Yet, in the darkness of the evil that pervaded Hitler’s regime and still hangs over these artifacts of death, the bright light of hope breaks through. The brilliant greens of the trees reminds us of the newness of life that God can bring forth from the ruins of death. The image that is etched in my mind, however, comes from Sachsenhausen. There amidst the devices of death are a series of low lying concrete slabs erected to commemorate the location of the various buildings that once housed the people Hitler fear so much that he thought their massacre was his only hope. On top of many of those slabs past visitors have stacked small rocks, bits of broken earth standing as memorials for the lives lost on that unholy ground. They are stones of remembrance, stones like those collected by Joshua and built as a memorial for future generations to see and remind them of the goodness of God.

There’s little goodness in Sachsenhausen, at least on the surface. But, when we consider that God graciously brought that war to an end before Hitler could complete his task, that God but to death the author of so much death, we are reminded that God remains God even in death. God did not forget his people in the concentration camps of Hitler’s Germany and he will not forget his people in the troubles and trials of their lives. He has already declared the end from the beginning and his plans will not be thwarted (Is 46:9-10). He will faithfully keep his covenantal promises and he will save his people from the second death. Praise be to God who has put death to death. 

This entry is filed under History, Theology.

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