It is this year fifty years ago that allied soldiers entered the gates of the camp called Auschwitz and set free the 7000 living skeletons inside. The arrival of the allied soldiers came too late for thousands upon thousands others who had been pushed through the gates of Auschwitz; in the course of the war an estimated 1.5 million people perished in that sepulchral concentration camp. This year’s anniversary of the liberation of the 7000 gives occasion to consider what we have learned from Auschwitz.

Of all the atrocities committed by mankind against his fellow humans, Auschwitz surely represents the worst. People have done so horribly much evil to others, but without doubt the horrifying coldness one person can display to another is nowhere spelled out more vividly than in the ghastly gas cham­bers of that merciless death camp. A member of the International Auschwitz Committee described the place too graphically:

It was an experiment in how to kill the most people in the smallest area, in the least time, for the cheapest price. It was a killing machine.

One would like to think that the world’s population – and I consciously include ourselves … has surely learned something from Auschwitz. And undoubtedly, something has been learned. But I’m afraid that the lessons which really count have passed us by...

What lessons really count? The first lesson surely revolves around the tragedy of man­kind’s depravity. Tell me: of what else is a factory-like systematic extermination of en­tire peoples indicative? Surely not of the doc­trine of the basic goodness of the human heart!! If ever one would wish indisputable evidence of the deadness of the human heart, surely it is that camp. Auschwitz points up the disagreeable reality of God’s holy word:

The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked.Jeremiah 17:9

But this lesson of Auschwitz isn’t welcomed by the peoples of today. In fact, even while Auschwitz is synonymous in the common mind to concepts as “horrible”, “ghastly”, “in­human”, “revolting”, our society blithely and blindly continues the mass killings Auschwitz began. Tell me: of what else is the factory-like systematic extermination of hundreds of thousands of unborn infants indicative?! In the abortion clinics of so many cities and towns across the western world, the legacy of Auschwitz lives on: unwanted people are cut out of the way...

But recognise in the abortions performed that the human heart is impossibly depraved is something our society refuses to do. The land lives in the darkness of unbelief, and therefore has no defence against the atroci­ties of an Auschwitz. Over and over again our society can wish to learn the lessons of those ghastly gas chambers, but until the world admits human depravity for what it is, the lessons of Auschwitz will never be learned. And the death industry will earn its millions.

That’s also why – I’m convinced – we can ex­pect no improvements in time to come. In fact, given the depravity of the human heart as evidenced by Auschwitz of yesterday and the abortion clinics of today, one can expect the human heart to contrive still more ghastly ways of getting rid of unwelcome citi­zens of planet Earth. How long will it be before the unproductive aged are considered too costly to maintain (particularly in ill­ness), and hence put away? And what of the handicapped? The human heart will stop at nothing... No, I do not think that the time to come – unless the Lord God will work repen­tance throughout the (western) world – will be so supportive of the frail and the weak as the past years have been. The dark reality of mankind’s depravity will continue to bear its bitter fruit.

But now the clincher: I – am no better than the Gestapo agent who flicked on the gas in Auschwitz...  And you? I wish it were other­wise, but you too, dear reader, you too, with me, are no better than those who operate today’s abortion industry... My heart, your heart, is also so terribly depraved, deceitful above all things... As the apostle writes to the Ephesians about the Ephesians:

You...were dead in trespasses and sins.... We all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the oth­ers.Ephesians 2:1ff.

Yes, in Auschwitz I actually see myself.

But, says Paul further, but, “but God ... made us alive together with Christ!” O gospel so profound: God had mercy on me though I’m as evil as Auschwitz can spell out! Of all the marvels of the world, He gave His Son to wash away my sins – sins no less ghastly than those committed in yesterday’s Ausch­witz or in today’s abortion clinics. See there the second lesson of Auschwitz: if people are so dreadfully corrupt, how delightfully gra­cious was God to send His Son for the salvation of such folk!

Auschwitz, abortion: the self-centeredness these words exemplify are a mirror in which I see myself. Auschwitz, abortion: what cata­lysts those words are to praise unceasingly the God who had mercy on a sinner as I!