Silence is a sign of agreement is an expression used in many different ways and in different languages. Jesus was silent before His accusers but it didn’t mean He agreed, but that He gave Himself to the destiny God had for Him, to die for our sins, in the book of revelation we read about half an hour of silence and that was a silence of awe before the judgment of God. Silence can mean many things not necessarily that we agree or are indifferent.
But sometimes silence can be a result of survival instinct and deep fear of suffering, we turn the other way hoping the evil before our eyes will just vanish by itself, but it will not. When Hitler started his ‘Final solution’ too many people disagreed in silence, of fear for their own best turned the other way. Jesus said ‘he that wants to keep his life will lose, but he who lay down His life for my cause he will find life’. All through the history we read about heroic people, people who instead of turning the other way when facing evil rose to the occasion and became true heroes, many times with the price of losing their own life. Someone said ‘better dying as a hero than living coward’.
When we are today, 27th of January, remembering Holocaust and the tremendous atrocities committed I have run into some heroes, ordinary people who rose to the occasion and resisted evil with the risk of their own lives and well-being. One such a Hero I found here in Ukraine was Hieromonk Daniil Tymchyna a monk who lived in the western part of Ukraine, he saved three Jewish kids. One of the boys was born in Israel, Odd Amarant, was just visiting relatives in Ukraine when the war broke out. Hieromonk Daniil Tymchyna hid him and saved him so he after the war could return to Israel
“Whosoever saves a single life, saves an entire universe”
Another of the boys, Adam Daniel Rotfeld, was also saved and returned to Poland after the war where he became a famous researcher and even became Poland’s Minister of Foreign affairs in 2005.
IN Kharkov where I live there where many heroes who resisted the Nazis Final Solution plans, saving, hiding, and feeding Jewish people on the run. Those people where all heroes! Almasa Kisheshyan was a young Armenian girl who lived in Kharkov who saved the life of her Jewish friend Reiza Krasova and her two children buy first smuggling them out of the tractor plant where all Jews where kept until the time they were finally killed and then Almasa hid them in her parents’ home until they finally could get them to Poltava which was then already not under Nazi occupation.
What are we doing today when anti-Semitic voices and racism is running rampant in broad daylight?
Jesus said ‘If we are silent the stones will cry loud’!
Let us not be silent in face of evil but let’s make a difference!
Matsjan
