By Thurman Hayes

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, I watched Steven Spielberg’s classic film, “Schindler’s List.” I had seen it in the theater some 25 years ago and wanted to watch it again. But this time, I watched it with my son, who was not even born when the film debuted. Growing up in our home, my children certainly have heard about the Holocaust, in which the Nazis murdered six million Jewish people during the Second World War. But I wanted Caleb to view this film, which highlights a true story from the Holocaust.

Oskar Schindler was a German businessman and a member of the Nazi Party. He ran a factory in Krakow, Poland. Before World War II, Krakow had been a center of Jewish culture in Europe. But when the Nazis overran Poland, they herded Jewish people into ghettos in the cities, in order to make it easier to murder them. Krakow was one of those cities.

Schindler employed more than a thousand Jewish workers in his factory. When he began to see that the Nazis were systematically murdering Jewish people, his heart was convicted. He secretly began trying to protect every Jewish person he could. He knew that if they were employed in his factory, the chances of them getting sent to the gas chambers were greatly diminished. Therefore, he spent his entire fortune bribing Nazi officials, in order to save the lives of the Jews who worked in his factory.

Oskar Schindler is buried in Jerusalem, just outside the walls of the Old City. He is also honored at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum, in Jerusalem.

With the recent shooting at the Pittsburgh synagogue, we are reminded that anti-Semitism is still around. Those of us who live in Virginia were reminded of this last year, as a group of Neo-Nazis descended on our own city of Charlottesville, parading with torches and shouting, “Jews will not replace us!” This was reminiscent of the night rallies that Hitler staged.

Anti-Semitism is on the rise in Europe, as well. A recent poll revealed that 28 percent of Europeans believe Jews have “too much influence” on business and finance around the world. In other words, more than a quarter of Europeans are buying into the same kind of anti-Semitic themes that the Nazis used to weaponize hate.

Shockingly, 34 percent of Europeans knew little or nothing about the Holocaust, even though it just happened in the 1940s, and thousands of Holocaust survivors are still alive. In fact, among 18-32 year olds in Poland, where most of the concentration camps (like Auschwitz) were located, 32 percent knew little or nothing about the Holocaust that occurred in their own country less than a century ago.

One of the most moving scenes in “Schindler’s List” shows a little girl in red. The entire film is in black and white, except this little girl, who is wearing a red coat, and being chased by Nazis, as they murder the Jews of Krakow. This little girl captures Schindler’s heart, and he determines to save all the people he can.

In the times we live in, the streets are running red with blood, produced by hate. Against that backdrop, let us be people of love, motivated by the love of a Savior, whose blood ran red for us.

 

Dr. Thurman R. Hayes Jr. is senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Suffolk. Follow him on Twitter at @ThurmanHayesJr.