Déjà Vu

I lived in Germany during the Nazi holocaust. I considered myself a Christian. I attended church since I was a small boy. We had heard the stories of what was happening to the Jews, but like most people today in this coutnry, we tried to distance ourselves from the reality of what was really taking place. What could anyone do to stop it?

A railroad track ran behind our small church, and each Sunday morning we would hear the whistle from a distance and then the clacking of the wheels moving over the track. We became disturbed when one Sunday we noticed cries coming from the train as it passed by. We grimly realized that the train was carrying Jews. They were like cattle in those cars!

Week after week that train whistle would blow. We would dread to hear the sound of those old wheels because we knew that the Jews would begin to cry out to us as they passed out church. It was so terribly disturbing! We could do nothing to help these poor miserable people, yet their screams tormented us. We knew exactly at what time that whistle would blow, and we decided the only way to keep from being so disturbed by the cries was to start singing our hymns. By the time that train came rumbling past the church yard, we were singing at the top of our voices. If some of the screams reached our ears, we'd just sing a little louder until we could hear them no more. Years have passed and no one talks about it much anymore, but I still hear that train whistle in my sleep. I can still hear them crying our for help. God forgive all of us who called ourselves Christians, yet did nothing to intervene.

Now, so many years later, I see it happening all over again in America. God forgive you as Americans for you have blocked our the screams of millions of your own children. The holocaust is here. the response is the same as it was in my country -- Silence!

The story of an elderly gentleman he told to Penny Lea, as told in Alvin Reid's book Introduction to Evangelism, pg 339, quoting the brochure, "Sing a Little Louder," by Penny Lea.