In his classic The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote:
The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart — and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains … an unuprooted small corner of evil.
I could not help but think of those words after my December visit to the notorious Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp ahead of the 80th anniversary (Jan. 27) of the Allied troops liberating those who remained after the evil Nazi regime exterminated millions.
While Auschwitz was liberated by Russian troops, the horrors that occurred there were also happening at camps Americans liberated.
On April 12, 1945, with the Allied forces on the march to Berlin, General Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe, went with his fellow generals Omar Bradley and George S. Patton to visit the Ohrdruf camp, an annex of the infamous camp at Buchenwald.
What Eisenhower, Bradley, and Patton saw horrified all three men, who had been hardened by years of battle.
Those who had survived the Nazi atrocities showed the three men, and the others with them, the more than three thousand naked, emaciated, and rotting corpses scattered across the camp.
General Patton, perhaps the toughest Allied general — a man who had fought in some of the bloodiest battles of both World Wars — vomited as he looked at the horror. Other observers noted that Eisenhower’s face was white and frozen.
He would later write to his wife Mamie, “I never dreamed that such cruelty, bestiality, and savagery could really exist in the world!” In his book Crusade in Europe, Eisenhower would write, “I visited every nook and cranny of the camp because I felt it my duty to be in a position from then on to testify at first hand about these things in case there ever grew up at home the belief or assumption that ‘the stories of Nazi brutality were just propaganda.’”
What Eisenhower, Bradley, and Patton saw firsthand, and what I saw just a few weeks ago, was what Solzhenitsyn described — evil runs through every human heart, and the depth of that evil has no limit.
While I cannot even begin to imagine the magnitude of what these three men saw, I know what I felt when I visited Auschwitz 80 years hence.
During my three hours there, I learned about the atrocities from a Polish native who was superb at putting the evil reality of that camp in powerful perspective. As I reflected on what I heard and saw, I felt horror and sorrow deep down in my soul — my heart weeping with a hurt that shook me to my very core.
On the one hand, it is the human heart that grieves at what is seemingly unimaginable; on the other hand, it is the human heart that made such horrors possible. The heart that created the nightmare of Auschwitz and all the other Nazi death camps was a heart that had forsaken God and replaced Him with self at the center.
But as I viewed the very personification of evil, I also remembered Solzhenitsyn’s words about the small bridgehead of good.
Amid the overwhelming evil the Nazis unleashed on humanity, America and its allies established and expanded that bridgehead of good, bravely and sacrificially fighting their way across Europe — in bloody and deadly battles against Hitler’s war machine. As I viewed the horrors of Auschwitz, I also reflected on and was grateful for the fact that America, despite our imperfections, still serves as light — or as Ronald Reagan put it a “shining city on a hill” — to the world to stop the advance of evil.
That bridgehead is reflected in how we treat every human being with whom we interact — with dignity and respect — because each one of us is made in the image of God.
It is my hope and prayer that we never forget that. If we do, what was seemingly unimaginable will occur again, because as Solzhenitsyn wrote, “even in the best of all hearts, there remains … an unuprooted small corner of evil.”
That evil — which has existed from the very beginning of time — will always exist in our hearts. But on this 80th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camps, let’s remember and focus on the bridgehead of good that exists in our hearts — both personally and as a nation — while never forgetting the evil that dwells within as well.
