Tragedy and Triumph: The Story of Modern Israel

Yesterday I had the honor, along with my fellow travelers, to visit Yad Vashem -the Holocaust museum here in Jerusalem. Yad Vashem has sought to give the victims of the holocaust a name, where the Nazis treated the victims as only a number. This is a beautiful contrast between the inhumane barbarism of Hitler and the humanity of the Jewish people.

I don’t make it a habit to cry in public, but I did sob at the sight of the shoes of victims at the concentration camps, many of whom were not even two years old. As I sat at the horrific sight of baby shoes among the thousands of victims’ shoes, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the barbarism with which we treat our own unborn children in America. The sickening actions of Kermit Gosnell, the butcher of Philadelphia, seemed to find a match in Austwitz.

The cornerstone of any free society is respect for human life. Absent such respect for the human person, it is impossible to build a nation of laws and justice. The beauty of the Jewish State is that it vows “never again” to allow the Jewish people to face the horrors of Holocaust. Now, we in America must recommit ourselves to the sanctity of every life as well – to ensure that human dignity is preserved in our midst.

Every single soul, every person, is made in the image of God, and thus possesses human dignity. A truly civilized society must recognize this and that, unlike the Nazis, that there are no such lives as “lives unworthy of life.”

We must recommit ourselves to human dignity, and the sanctity of every human life. May it never be said of America that the whole country turned its gaze from a Holocaust of the unborn, and that the defenseless were left totally undefended.

I will never forget my visit to Yad Vashem. I will never forget the tragedy that ensued when lives were treated as unworthy of being lived. Modern Israel is a testament to the human spirit – and to God’s guidance. Israel rose again to statehood, after over 2,000 years, in spite of evil embodied in Adolf Hitler, who tried to squelch the emerging Jewish nation before it could be fully born.