Holy Week Meditations

Driving around as much as I do gives me a lot of time in the car, and since I’m not one of those folk who can pray while driving, much less talk on the phone, and since I have a hard time finding a radio station I can stand to listen to, I nearly always have a CD in the player, either music or an audio book. For a couple of weeks during Lent I listened to Hunting Eichmann: How a Band of Survivors and a Young Spy Agency Chased Down the World's Most Notorious Nazi by Neal Bascomb. On one level, it’s an adventure story, far more exciting that anything in James Bond. On another level, it’s a meditation on the nature of evil and the quest for justice.

Adolph Eichmann was the man chosen by the Third Reich to put the “Final Solution” into practice. He made the plans and signed the orders that ultimately sent 6 million Jews to camps where they were shot, gassed, or worked to death. Those who survived were left with lifelong physical and emotional scars. Yet Eichmann, with his last breath, proclaimed his innocence. In the first place, he said, he had not killed anyone, nor had he ordered the killing of anyone. Yes, he had made the arrangements for Jews to be sent to the camps, but he wasn’t responsible for what happened to them after they got there. Besides, he said, he was following orders. He really had no choice.

Eichmann disappeared at the end of World War Two and was not captured until 1960, when he was found living in Argentina under an assumed name. Those who hunted down Eichmann and brought him to trial were nearly all either survivors of the camps or people who had lost family members in the Eichmann-orchestrated Final Solution. They could have simply assassinated him, and there were some on the team who wanted to do just that. But the view that prevailed was that the trial had to be public, so that the world would know and not forget. For many in 1960, the world had moved on, the Second World War and all that went with it was old news; the present threat was not Germany but Russia and the Communist influence. Eichmann’s arrest and his trial in an Israeli court brought recent history back into the headlines. Judging by the activity of Holocaust deniers in our own day, the instinct that led to a trial was the right one. Those who don’t believe the Final Solution was real should be sentenced to read the transcript of the Eichmann trial.

In an interesting twist to the case, a Canadian minister spent time with Eichmann after his conviction, while Eichmann was awaiting execution. The minister’s goal was to help Eichmann see his sin and need for repentance and forgiveness.

But Eichmann would have none of it. He stuck to his reasons for innocence, adding that he did in fact believe in God, though not a personal God, and that when he died he would return to the God who created him. So Eichmann was hanged, the only person ever to be executed by the state of Israel, and in a bit of historical irony, his body was cremated and his ashes scattered at sea so that no monument or memorial could even be erected at his grave site. Justice had finally caught up with Adolph Eichmann.

But in what sense could justice ever be done to Eichmann, or Hitler, or Goering, or for that matter Stalin or Pol Pot or Saddam Hussein? I believe that forgiveness was available to Adolph Eichmann, but—unless God did something with him in the final judgment that I don’t know about—Eichmann didn’t take it. My vision of Eichmann’s eternity is that he is overwhelmed by what he did. All that he tried to keep from thinking about he now has no choice but to think about; all the walls he put up to the truth are now broken down. No external torment is necessary; he is tormenting himself.

All this is by way of thinking about the thief on the cross. There two thieves, of course: one abused Jesus; the other had another view: “we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man”--Jesus--“has done nothing wrong.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” (Luke 23:41-43)

If there is forgiveness for the thief, there is forgiveness for Eichmann. If there is forgiveness for Eichmann, there is forgiveness for me. Eichmann didn’t take that forgiveness. May God give us the grace to take the forgiveness that Christ offers, and be thankful.