No Greater Love

I was asked to write a monologue for the Holocaust Memorial Service held annually in our city and which is hosted this year on April 15 at our church. This is a first person narrative monologue loosely based on a story in 'The Body' by Chuck Colson. It is from the perspective of a prisoner who was the recipient of the gift of the greatest love one man can receive from another from a Catholic Priest.  In light of the Easter celebrations almost upon us, I thought I would post it as a reminder that we are all recipients of the Greatest Love of all. 

No Greater Love

Have you been to Auschwitz? It is south of Warsaw near a pleasant little town called Oswiecim that the Nazis turned into a killing field. As you approach the infamous camp on a little tram from town, all chatter tends to stop as a curiosity and dread descends. Auschwitz does not encourage conversation. It takes a moment to sink in that you’re in this notorious place as you observe the double rows of barbed wire fence, the railroad tracks, the iron gate with the ironic ‘Work Makes Freedom’ motto etched in the arch above it. It’s a quiet, cold, empty museum now, but the displays of ordinary items prisoners brought with them…shaving brushes, eyeglasses, suitcases, and a disturbing pile of thousands of shoes…are fodder for imagining the stories of the literally millions of inmates whose lives ended there or were forever changed.

I was one of them.

We had only a short time to pack a small bag the night the German officer had knocked on our door in Warsaw to let us know we were to be ‘relocated’ as other Jewish families had been; to work camps of course because the country was at war, you know. We were to bring our valuables and Anna included the baby’s medicine and a toy for little Victor. They loaded us on the train, not a passenger car, but a cattle car and in near brutal discomfort we traveled south to the camp. My first view of Auschwitz gave me grave doubts as to the intentions of the Germans towards us…and then they separated me from my beloved Anna and my boys. I had no doubts then, only horrific certainty. I never saw them again. 

I was ushered into Bunker 14 and any hope for my survival here was drowned in the sight of emaciated men already there, dirty straw pallets and evidence of rat infestation. The men told stories of starvation rations, brutal work days, lashings for poor work efforts. It was not long before I experienced it all for myself. Hunger became my constant companion and pain and suffering my colleagues. There seemed no end in sight to my existence, no hope at all. The Nazis were good at crushing that.

I first met Father Max in the middle of the night, shortly after I arrived at Auschwitz. I was shivering on my pallet when I felt someone kneel beside me and held my breath, fearing the worst. I startled when he leaned down and tucked my pathetic rag of a blanket around my exposed feet. I turned my face over my shoulder in surprise and met with the kindest eyes I had seen in eons. They were as shadowed and smudged with fatigue and hunger as mine, but held compassion and hope to a depth I never seen in anyone before. ‘Let me pray for you, brother’, he whispered, as he gentled me with his hand to my brow. I nodded my throat thick with gratitude. I don’t remember the words he said then, only that a peace settled over me that I had rarely known before, let alone in that place.

Over the weeks and months that followed, I watched Father Max labour and waste away as the rest of us, but with a spirit that never…never…faltered. He was not for himself, but always for others. He was always whispering encouragement or a prayer in an ear, or a bit of his own food ration into a grateful hand. At night in Bunker 14, would talk to each inmate, asking questions about those people or things they cared about, held them when they cried, prayed for them. Sometimes he would softly sing sweet melodies of hope and love.

One night our meager sleep was shattered with the sounds of baying dogs, signaling that there had once again been an escape attempt…I say attempt because no one ever got very far. The Nazis had efficient ways of killing, as the five constantly smoking chimneys were testament to...especially after each train arrived. We never talked of those, turned our heads from the lines of people going into the ‘showers’ and from the ashes being shoveled out into the fields shortly after. But those German soldiers saved their worst brutality for those that resisted or defied, those to serve as examples…beatings, whippings, hangings and worse…impossible for us to ignore. So we expected the same for the escapee that next morning but it seemed the lucky fool had evaded the dogs and soldiers…and left the rest of us to pay penance for him. The absconder had been from Bunker 14. We, the bunkmates, were left to stand, in the roasting sun, after morning roll call, when all others had been dismissed. No drink or food was given all day…some crumpled under the heat and were kicked and beaten for their incapacity…the rest of us waited in terror for their final verdict. They did not disappoint. Ten would die for the one escaped…in the starvation bunker…the worst of the torture. Nothing, not even water was given and with arduous slowness, veins collapsing, throats turning to paper and brains to fire, prisoners would shrivel into a tortured death.  

The commandant inspected us as horses and drew out one by one the weakest unto their death sentence.  As he came up to me, he lifted my chin, inspected my teeth, my heart pounding so hard I felt sure it was audible to all around me. ‘This one,’ he barked to his assistant, pulling my marked arm out for him to see…#5659  he wrote down and I was dragged to the cast of dead men. My heart dried up in that moment; hope descending from it and out the bottom of my bare feet. I couldn’t help myself; I began to sob with the grief of it all…the loss, the searing loss of my beloved Anna, my sweet boys and the forfeiture of my very humanity. I cried out their names, sobbed out my anguish and defeat. Behind me commotion rose up as a prisoner broke ranks. This usually meant certain death for the defier, but the commandant, his revolver in hand, growled at the man, ‘What do you want, Polish pig?’.  It was Father Max…my heart choked out my sobs as it rose in my throat and I heard him say, ‘I will take his place.’

“Who, pig, whose place would you take and why?’

‘I am an old man, sir, surely to die soon anyway. I would take his place.’  Father Max pointed right at me…and smiled. Everything stopped in that moment for me…grief, pain, loss, hunger, fear….all gone; lost in the eyes of a lone battered priest and my own sweet disbelief and reprieve.

‘Who are you old man?’, the German officer sneered. Father Max straightened and squared his shoulders.

‘I am a Catholic priest.’  The commandant spit on the ground at the Father’s feet and pointed to the line. As Father Max passed me, he gripped my arm and murmured. ‘There is no greater love than for a man to lay down his life for a friend.’  He was yanked away and was gone.

I had no true comprehension for many days, weeks or even months of what Father Max had given me in a single final act of exquisite mercy and grace…undeserved, unmerited. And I had plenty of time to contemplate it…time Father Max had gifted me. What I did know was that I would not waste the gift. I survived another three and half years in the hell that was Auschwitz and saw a day of liberation…physical liberation and to freedom to a life beyond the war. But my soul had been liberated those years before by the love of a single, purposeful man who loved God enough to free me.