the good, the bad, the ponderings

So Claudia has left for her date tonight and has promised to share the details upon her return. They're going double-date to champion's fun center (archade games, dance-dance-revolution game, go-carts, mini-golf, black light bowling, etc.) and a nice restaurant. :D Rock on.

Speaking of good times, our marketing campus ministries team challenged leadership for laser tag. it totally rocked and we won! whoohoo!! :) Super fun--midsts everywhere, black lights, three-levels to sort through, 8,000 foot space, 9 people divided into two teams. I got second place for shooting everyone, lol. and a couple times, Sheli even screamed from discovering different people with laser guns around the corner. it was SO AWESOME!

on a sadder note, for class i've been reading a lot about the holocaust. my topic for research paper, the uprising of a death camp, Sobibor--the most successful uprising of a death camp ever, with 300 people making it to the woods around the camp...46 people actually survived the war. The camp had 600 Jewish slaves to take care of the operation to murder more than 250,000 people...and they knew their deaths would be as soon as all the other Jews in Poland were liquidated...if not before. this leads me to many disturbing questions.

During an interview, the author of "Escape from Sobibor" is asked by a Jewish survivor of the escape, "Who is guilty and who is innocent? My mother? My father? What did they do? Who is guilty, Richard?"

"God maybe?"

"Yes, He is the guiltiest of them all."

I don't know that I agree with his conclusion. Where was the action by people, countries all around the world who knew, they KNEW what was happening and refused to take action? And currently there are intellectual people today who refuse to belief the Holocaust has ever existed. And soon all the aging eye-witnesses will be silenced by the grave. We will be left to "ponder the conflicting stories" instead of recognizing the brutal truth of humanity. Where was the action of humans? Why was there silence then? And now? And where is God in all this? Yes, he allowed freedom of choice by Nazi men, by prejudice common people, by indifferent masses. Where does He step in front of freedom of choice and say, "ENOUGH!" Was He there in the ghettos? In the camps?

One survivor, referring to a Nazi literally "work to death" camp said, "Because of the simple existence of Auschwitz, I cannot believe there is a God."

Another survivor clung to her belief in God and believed it carried her through. She lived a much more adjusted, compassionate, unbitter life in comparison to two other interviewees who had completely abandoned their faith in a compassionate God. Yet she refused to even question God for the life and death in Sobibor.

I know God exists. He has been real since I was a child. And I cannot accept the idea of not questioning. For those who know me, that is completely against my nature. I seek out answers. And in researching the Holocaust, I've discovered a new set of questions.