Lessons from My World War II Heroes Part Four: Every Life is Precious

 

The movie Sophie Scholl: The Final Days portrays the final few days of the life of Sophie Scholl, a young German woman who was arrested after she and her brother Hans distributed leaflets telling the truth about the war and the Nazis’ crimes. 

At one point in the movie, Sophie’s Nazi interrogator refers to mentally disabled children as “unworthy lives.” 

Sophie responds, “Every life is precious.” 

And that’s another of the themes I see again and again in the lives of my World War II heroes, people like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Corrie ten Boom, Diet Eman, Hans Poley, and others. Unlike the Nazis, who sought to exterminate anyone who did not conform to their image of the “ideal Aryan,” these heroes believed that every life was valuable. 

Corrie ten Boom, a Dutch watchmaker who was imprisoned for helping Jews, told the German officer questioning her, “God’s viewpoint is sometimes different from ours—so different that we could not even guess at it unless He had given us a Book which tells us such things… In the Bible I learn that God values us not for our strength or our brains, but simply because He has made us.” 

That’s why life is valuable–because God made us. He made us in His image (Genesis 1:27). 

The Nazis saw Jews, Poles, Romani people, Russians, the disabled, and others as lesser forms of life, comparable to animals. But the Bible clearly teaches that there is one race–the human race (Acts 17:26). Every man, woman, boy, and girl is made in the image of God. We’re not just a slightly more evolved animal, but something intrinsically different. 

Adolf Hitler had these people systematically murdered. Two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe was killed during World War II, as well as countless millions of other innocent people. 

I think it is extremely disrespectful to everyone who suffered during the Holocaust to compare a current leader to Adolf Hitler and also shows a lot of ignorance of just how evil Hitler and the Nazis were. Just to clarify, I do not believe we are at the point in America today that Germany was in the 1930s, and I am not advocating the kind of resistance today that was necessary then.    

But I do see a disturbing disregard for human life today. It’s cloaked in words and phrases like “reproductive rights,” “healthcare,” and “choice.” But it is a lack of respect for human life. 

Respect for human life begins in the womb. We live in a world that tells women facing unplanned pregnancies that ending the life of their baby is their best option. Yet Psalm 139:13-14 says, “For you formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise You for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are your works, And that my soul knows very well.” And Jeremiah 1:5 says, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; Before you were born I sanctified you.” 

Another extremely disturbing trend in our world today is the rise of euthanasia, especially in Europe and Canada, and the number of people who see no problem with it. 

Tim Challies writes, “Canada has become infamous for its high rates of euthanasia (deceptively termed MAiD or Medical Assistance in Dying) and it is now common for ill or elderly people to opt to end their own lives. Meanwhile, of course, they are sometimes pressured to do so.”

And in the past couple of years, anti-semitism and crimes against Jews have risen alarmingly. 

All of this convinces me that these stories must be told. That is why I am writing about World War II and the Holocaust. We must remember and learn from our history.

Even though the practicals of how we will stand for life will look different today, we can follow the example of my World War II heroes in valuing life–all human life. 

We can share the truth that God values every life, and be part of changing our culture to one that values life like God does. We can be a voice for those who have no voice (Proverbs 31:8). 

And we can offer practical help to those in need–the disabled and those with special needs, the elderly, the women with unplanned pregnancies. 

We can be a light in the darkness. 

Notes:   

All Scripture taken from the New King James Version® Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Tim Challies quote taken from the following article: 

https://www.challies.com/articles/these-are-strange-days-in-canada/

Sources for World War II stories: 

The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom with John and Elizabeth Sherrill 

Sophie Scholl: The Final Days movie 

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