On the 28th of January 2025, BBC Headline: “Survivors of Auschwitz deliver warning from history as memories die out”. An article by Paul Kirby.

This is the Daily Monsoon. I’m Terence, your host, as I connect the news to matters of faith.

Today is International Holocaust Memorial Day. That is on everybody’s mind in Europe. Today is also Lunar New Year’s Eve and that is everybody’s mind in Asia. Let’s first talk about the Holocaust, then New Year’s Eve, then how one Christian event links the two.

In Auschwitz, BBC reporter, Paul Kirby writes:

World leaders and European royalty rubbed shoulders with 56 survivors of Hitler’s genocide of European Jews on Monday as they marked 80 years since its liberation.

Do you know what is Auschwitz? If you feel insulted by my question, I would guess your age — you are the same age or older than me — or I would say you are a keen learner of world history.

In my conversations with young people, I am often amazed at how little they know about past and present world events. They in turn are often amazed at how little I know about celebrities and pop culture.

In case you are young, or ignorant, but I repeat myself… the article refreshes our memory of what is Auschwitz.

The Nazis murdered 1.1 million people at Auschwitz-Birkenau between 1941 and 1945.
Almost a million were Jews, 70,000 were Polish prisoners, 21,000 Roma, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war and an unknown number of gay men.
This was one of six death camps the Nazis built in occupied Poland in 1942, and it was by far the biggest.

Big numbers like this don’t register in our minds. We just can’t process it. Just try to think the last time you felt sad when someone died, not due to old age or sickness, but due to a murder. We read and react to the news about a child being stabbed, or a woman being raped and murdered, or some innocent shoppers deliberately killed by a speeding vehicle. Now consider that trauma repeated a million times, at an industrial scale. For that is Auschwitz, it was murder at an industrial scale, with German efficiency.

It’s easy to say Auschwitz is an European matter, not an Asian matter. I disagree. Auschwitz is a human-race matter. China has its Nanking massacre. Cambodia has its killing fields. Africa and South America has its own dark and ugly history of death squads and organised murder.

But from a Western perspective, it is easy to dismiss all of them as the barbarism, the uncivilised nature of third world countries. Auschwitz puts a stop to any claim of Western superiority. It is proof that being advanced or cultured does not make the world a better place. You can have advanced and cultured killer nations.

Humanity is at risk of forgetting these lessons, which is why we have International Holocaust Memorial Day.

From the article:

The director of the Auschwitz museum, Piotr Cywinski, issued a plea to protect the memory of what had happened, as the survivors died out.
“Memory hurts, memory helps, memory guides… without memory you have no history, no experience, no point of reference,” he said, as survivors listened on, many of them wearing blue-and-white striped scarves to symbolise prisoners’ clothing.

But memory is not just about remembering bad things. It can also be, and should as much as possible be, about remembering good things. Things that bind us together.

Today is the Chinese New Year’s eve. Family rush from all over the world to their family home to celebrate the dinner. The house is full of noise, as the adults catch up with one another, and the children run after one another.

Chinese New Year’s Eve is a time to create memories. The traditional family group photo is often taken during this season because everyone is back. For many, this season can be the happiest memory they have as a family.

I am now going to link the tragic memory of murder with the happy memory of family celebrations in one event. Can you guess what is that event?

It is the Lord’s Supper, sometimes known as Holy Communion.

The Lord’s Supper is a memorial. Jesus said so, and it’s what pastors have repeated every time before the Lord’s Supper, Jesus said, “Do this in remembrance of me.”

And what are we remembering? We are remembering how the body of Jesus was broken and how his blood was spilled on the cross. The cross was an instrument of torture, meant to bring about the most painful death possible as a warning to everyone else to not rebel against the Roman authorities. And so, in Jesus’ own words we are remembering his death.

Yet, the Lord’s Supper does not end with just remembering a death, it is just as important, to remember the life. Jesus also said, “I tell you I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.”

Thus, he points all of us forward to that day. And so Christians take the Lord’s Supper as a celebration of the common hope we have to drink it one day with Jesus in our Father’s kingdom. It is a family gathering, a spiritual family’s gathering.

I argue that we should come to the Lord’s Supper with some anticipation. I say this to remind myself because I slip too easily in going through the motions, as part of a monthly routine in my Christian faith. Empty gestures of religiosity is not what Jesus had in mind when he said, “Do this in remembrance of me.”

For the Auschwitz survivors, they are very conscious that as they die, the memory of what they saw, may fade away. Thus, we have all this fervent commitment to never forget. The Lord’s Supper is the Christian’s fervent commitment to never forget.

For the Chinese New Year’s Eve Dinner, it is a moment for family members to reunite, celebrate and look forward to a new year ahead. The Lord’s Supper is a moment for Christian family members to reunite, celebrate and look forward to a new age together.

This is the Daily Monsoon, a podcast where I connect the news to matters of faith. Thanks for listening.