“For you were made from dust, and to dust you will return.”

Genesis 3:19

            Men and women, teenagers, boys and girls, the elderly and the infant… carrying only their dignity, their faith, and a few possessions, were jammed into railroad boxcars and forced to travel hundreds, if not thousands, of miles in the midst of intolerable conditions.  They had been told they were being relocated… that when the war ended, they would return to their homes.  It was all a lie.  It was the journey to a systemic killing of millions of people.  It was the Holocaust.  Scattered all across occupied Europe, the Nazis constructed extermination camps.  By the hundreds, and then thousands, and then millions, the Jews were led to slaughter because of their faith and heritage.

          In the boxcars, there was no water, no food, no sanitation, no measure of human dignity.  The tightly cramped boxcars offered little ventilation.  There was no protection from the stifling heat of summer and no relief from the bitter cold of winter.  They stood for hours, so tightly packed that there was no room to sit or even find a moment’s respite.  Some died along the journey, as those around them helplessly witnessed the tragic ending of their lives.   Others survived the grueling journey, exhausted, confused, and fearful.  For most, literally within minutes of arriving at the extermination camps, their lives were snuffed out in a gas chamber, and bodies soon burned to ashes.  Maybe they were the fortunate ones.

         With the cremation of bodies, came the problem of what to do with the ashes.  The ashes of each human body weighed about 2 kg or roughly 4 ½ pounds.  The disposal was no small problem to be solved.  What to do with the cremated remains of millions?  It seems that each camp searched for possible solutions. The methods of disposal were varied.  There are stories and eyewitness accounts that describe how some of the ashes were dumped into local rivers and ponds, hoping that the atrocities would never be discovered. Some were scattered as fertilizer onto local fields and soon mixed into the soil. Some were used as landfill material, in what was in essence a mass grave. Still other ash was mixed into cement as a binding agent and fashioned into blocks.

          Some camps sought other ways to deal with the ashes.  There are stories indicating that some were pressed into small, circular discs (about the size of a large coin) with a number stamped on them. These discs were given to troubled individuals at the railway platform as they shouted their concerns about whether or not they would be able to retrieve their possessions after the so called, “delousing” showers. They were handed a disc to be used like a “coat check” ticket.  They were told that they would be able to retrieve their belongings by showing the numbered disc when they finished the shower procedure. What cruelty to think that what they innocently held in their hands were compressed, ground-up bones of their kinsmen. There are other stories that indicate that some of the ashes were mixed with fat and fashioned into bars that looked like soap. These “bars of soap” were handed to people walking into the “showers” to give them a sense of calm reassurance as they were unknowingly being led to slaughter.  Some suggest that these “bars of soap” were sold in various towns and villages.

          Some of the ashes were certainly scattered by the wind like dust.  Some surely found its way into the pathways and roads around each camp.  And most assuredly, some of the ash was carried away to distant places as the soldiers, whose boots were caked with the cremated remains, returned to their barracks.  Stomping their feet at the end of a long day to shake off the dust, surely meant a further desecration of precious lives lost.  Around each camp, even the soil of the earth must still cry out with the voices of lives taken and cruelties inflicted.

          There’s a hymn in the Christian tradition that speaks of Holy Ground.  The lyrics offer this sentiment… “We are standing on Holy Ground, and I know that there are angels all around…”  Allow me to borrow the phrase for a moment.  When you visit the camps and your mind tries to take in the unimaginable horror and darkness of such a place, consider for a moment that you are indeed standing on holy and sacred ground.  The very dust beneath your feet bears testimony to lives lost, but never to be forgotten.  Rather than shake the dust off of your feet, let a trace of it cling, not to your shoes, but to your soul.  These were human beings, made in the image of God, but erased by the misguided zeal of men.  We must remember them well.  Let their stories cling to your mind.  Let their voices echo in your hearing.  Let their spirit find a place in your heart.

          We too, will one day return to dust.  But let it be our fervent prayer and life’s passion, that we would die in our own time in a peaceful moment, and not at the whim of a violent oppressor.  May it be said of us, that we took the swords of division and hatred that we sometimes carry as flawed human beings, and beat them into plowshares that break open the fertile soil of hope, grace, and goodwill.