empty shoes (repost from myspace blog)

As I read an e-mail from my sister today concerning the Holocaust, I was reminded how blessed I am to be a part of this generation. I am young enough to have been told stories from people who lived thru WWII and are willing to share what they know and I am old enough to tell my daughters about what really happened (because I'm sure by the time they're in school, the "holocaust" will be a theory or something crazy like that). I've always been interested in history, mostly because I know that there is much to learn from those who went before me, but also to just imagine how life was for people in different eras.
From as far back as I could remember, I knew that my dad was a veteran. He never really talked about it, but one day on one of our random fishing trips, I asked him where all he had been. He went on to tell me a story that touched my young heart and I'll never forget the expression he had on his face as he told me. Even though he'd joined the Army after WWII came to a close, he was stationed in Germany and his company had to go to one of the concentration (death) camps. The main one he spoke of was Dachau. Before they even got to the camp, he could see a mountain of something in the distance. As they got closer, he still couldn't figure out what it was. When they finally entered the camp, he realized it was literally "a mountain of shoes". Shoes that had once been filled by people just like you and I. He said there were shoes of every size. The death camp guards and workers just tossed them into a giant pile as they gassed thousands of victims. Many of the victims were told they were going to take a shower but instead of a cleansing flow of water, they met the end of this life with a lethal flow of toxins. As a pre-teen, the background of that story wasn't something that I was really familiar with, I just remember my dad's face as he told me.
In 1993 I had the opportunity to visit the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C.(please check out www.ushmm.org when you get a chance) as part of a 4-H trip. There were about 30 teens that were in our group, and sadly most of us were just excited about sight-seeing in such a cool town. That changed in a split second after entering the museum. There was "Daniel's Story", an exhibit that walked you thru the story of a young boy who was deported to Auschwitz with his family. I know that many of us were in tears as we left that part of the museum. We walked a little while farther, shaking our heads in disbelief at what we were seeing. I came upon something that made my heart break. There they were, the shoes my Daddy had told me about so many years ago. Behind a floor to ceiling piece of plexiglass, there were hundreds of shoes, along with pictures of where they'd come from. As we went even further into this enormous museum, there was video footage of the torture that Jewish people, especially those who were disabled to start with, were subjected to. Those with dwarfism or any deformity were experimented on and put thru horrible pain under the knives of "doctors". I get chills just thinking of the images I saw and that was so long ago. The prisoners who were "lucky" enough to be healthy when they were deported to the camp were made to work in horriffic conditions with little or nothing to eat. Disease was rampant and I have to wonder if it crossed the minds of some of the people that they'd rather just die of natural causes than to live like this. From the pictures and video footage I've seen, it was the closest thing to an earthly hell that one could imagine. I am saddened to think of all of those souls who never had a chance to hear the message of a risen Saviour before they died in those camps. The survivors never had a chance at a "normal" life after they were relocated. The prisoner number tattooed on their left arm was a constant reminder that they were hated. Our society as a whole today has no idea of how this affected the lives of the survivors.
We hear stories but can't wrap our minds around them even though we see the same type of scenerios played out in Rwanda, Bosnia and most recently Darfur and Iraq. The technology today spreads pictures and video of these violent acts so fast that I could find out about something at pretty much the same time as someone an hour away from where it occurred. The problems I see with this are that we only see what the media wants us to see, after they put their slant on it, and also that we see SO much of this chaos that we become numb. Completely desensitized to the pain, sorrow and death. Every person that is included in a report about a suicide bomber or roadside bomb is loved by God. He loved them before they were born and was waiting for them to realize His love and come to the point of salvation and a personal relationship with Him.
The next time you see a news report on tv or a magazine article about this subject, I challenge you to stop and take even just 10 seconds to pray for the survivors and their families and all of the people who are dealing with the situation. Pray for God to work in their lives and send a flood of His love out to them. Many of those lost souls are following false gods and religions and may have never had the chance to hear even the most simple presentation of the Gospel. Prayer truly does change things and lifting these lost sheep up to Him can make an eternal difference! It'll be hard for me to stay focused on this with so much going on in a house with 2 kids, but I'm going to try. I have pictures in my photo section of the shoes my dad was talking about (I found them online). Check them out, it'll change your outlook on things.