Auschwitz buildings today. From Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.

International Holocaust Remembrance Day

In 2005, the United Nations designated Jan. 27 as an annual International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Why Jan. 27? It was on this day in 1945 that the largest World War II concentration camp, Auschwitz, was liberated.

Auschwitz, a network of three camps, was operated in Poland under German occupation from 1940-1945. It probably accounted for the death of over one million Jews. Among other well-known “death camps” were Dachau, Treblinka and Bergen-Belsen.

Claims that the Holocaust Didn’t Happen
Currently, there are claims being made that the Holocaust never happened. These claims are frightening and outrageous to Jewish people, and could not be farther from the truth.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. houses more than 85,000 Holocaust photographs, twenty percent of which can be viewed online. There are traveling exhibits and several stationary USHMM branches around the U.S.

The Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem has archived 62 million pages of documents, photos, testimonies of survivors and other articles as proof of the Holocaust.

How/Why did the Holocaust happen?
Adolph Hitler intended to create the perfect Aryan race, eliminating those people who didn’t fit his description of “perfect.”

Beside the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust, it is estimated that two million other people lost their lives for either assisting the Jewish people or being imperfect themselves.

Extending beyond his takeover of Germany, Hitler wanted to rule at least all of Europe, and perhaps the world. See a history with more details here at USHMM.

Do Christians hate the Jewish People?
Because some churches and Christian organizations either looked the other way or went along with Hitler’s bidding due to their own fear, some Jewish people are convinced to  this day that Christians hate them.

However, Yad Vashem has a special memorial called “Avenue of the Righteous Among the Nations” dedicated to Christians and others who lovingly and bravely assisted the Jewish people at the risk of their own lives (watch for Part 2 of this article for portraits of several Christian “Holocaust Heroes”).

There are many organizations of Christians and Jewish people working alongside each other today to make the way for better relationships between Christians and Jews, to erase rumors that the Holocaust never happened, and to stand against anti-Semitism and anti-Christianity.

Want to get involved in this effort? Here are a few such organizations:*
American Alliance of Jews & Christians
Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry, Inc.
Christians United for Israel
Jews Against Anti-Christian Defamation (JAACD)

*(The Underground is not connected to these organizations, and the views expressed herein do not necessarily represent the views of these organizations.)

Underground staff writer Sheryl Young is the author of What Every Christian Should Know about the Jewish People: Improving the Church’s Relationship with God’s Original Chosen Nation.

An extreme terrorist training camp for children was recently discovered by the Pakistani military within their country’s borders.

According to a January 6, 2010 CNN report, the media in Pakistan were first to break the news some time in the past month.

Spokespeople for the Pakistani military told CNN the compound, found in the former Taliban stronghold of Nawoz Kot, was apparently used to brainwash Pakistani children and youth between the ages of 12 and 18 into a suicide-bomber mentality.

There was enough room for more than 200 children at a time; children whose parents thought they were sending them to a school for better education and free food. But pamphlets were found which explained how to prepare suicide jackets, handle weapons and perform ambushes.

An expert in Taliban tactics described for CNN that the compound was painted with elaborate artwork of a glorious afterlife for suicide bombers; that there was information promising that death was better than life, and other possible distortions of the Islamic faith.

The expert, Zahid Hussein, reported that over 90 percent of suicide bombers are within that age group.

The Taliban has denied that the compound at Nawoz Kot was theirs (it was bombed over the summer).

Recent examples of suicide attacks remind us that the extreme terrorist mindset is widespread beyond one group or country. A Nigerian is suspected of being responsible for the attempted airplane bombing over Christmas. A Jordanian suicide bomber is assumed to have committed the attack that recently killed seven CIA agents in Afghanistan. But the Associated Press reports that both al-Qaida and the Taliban are claiming responsibility for the CIA attack.

That children should be trained to follow in these footsteps and commit such acts, including the possible taking of their own lives, is unthinkable to peaceful citizens of many countries and faiths. However, it would not be the first time that children were used recklessly in the past century to achieve extreme and violent goals.

Hitler was training Germany’s youth from age ten and up to accept nothing less than a perfect Aryan society (see Hitler-Jugend – Hitler’s Youth). The Viet Cong used children within their villages to lure and defeat American troops in Viet Nam.

It may seem overwhelming to think that a terrorist attack can happen anywhere, at any time.

Yet, “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand” (Ephesians 6:12-13, NIV).

A long, long time ago, in a state all the way across the country, I attended high school.

One of the people I’ll never forget from my time at XYZ Academy (real school name withheld to protect the guilty), is Mrs. Spencer.

She was my biology teacher.

I must admit that I learned a lot under her tutelage, so much that I even thought about majoring in biology in college.

She was weird though. She had some crazy views on life, the universe, and everything else.

One of her beliefs revolved around negative population growth. She was a member of some NPG organization, and she preached the benefits of NPG from her classroom pulpit.

“If we limit the number of people on earth,” she said, “We’ll have more food, a cleaner, healthier planet, and more space to spread out.”

The issue of NPG didn’t come up again until today, when I was reading about David Attenborough becoming the supporter of a NPG group.

If you guys don’t know who Attenborough is, he’s a famous British naturalist. His BBC-produced specials still get airplay. Think of him as the face of the British version of National Geographic.

Anyway, Attenborough’s patronage of the Optimum Population trust brought back memories of Mrs. Spencer and her NPG thoughts.

When I was a teen, I absorbed what she said about NPG. I even thought it was a good idea. I never thought about the consequences of those thoughts.

The first problem that rears its ugly little head is deciding who gets to stay, and who has to go. Do we institute some kind of lottery? Do the rich get to stay, and the filthy poor get the boot? Who decides this?

Then there’s the matter of how people have to go. Will they be shipped to another planet? Or will they be executed en masse? Will this masse execution take place prior-to or after birth? Again, who decides this?

If it’s expedient to kill people to clean up the planet, how is NPG different from Hitlerian Eugenics?

Well, it’s not really. I’m sure Hitler thought he was cleaning up the planet, by getting rid of the Jews.

How is it that most people think Hitler was dead wrong in his assumptions, but they are willing to let some humans be murdered so that “We’ll have more food, a cleaner, healthier planet, and more space to spread out?”

Why would Jewish people have some sort of intrinsic value that other humans do not have? Here’s the answer: They don’t.

All humans have intrinsic value. This value isn’t tied to nature or blood ties or anything like that. We have value because we are God’s image bearers, and as such we have a responsibility to God and to each other, not to kill each other because of convenience.

If we want to clean up our planet, that’s fine. Let’s all get together to do so. We don’t have to kill people to do it.

–Tiff-The Underground Site, editor