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Pastor’s Faith Tested by Holocaust Film

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The following column appeared in the “Matters of Faith” section of the December 30, 2012 edition of the Lancaster Online newspaper.

Pastor’s Faith Tested by Holocaust Film

THE REV. DR. TIMOTHY R. VALENTINO, Matters of Faith

Can a Christian’s faith survive the Holocaust? Can the church’s historic creeds endure the carnage of the 1940s? Can the happy-clappy hymns we sing quiet down the groans of our collective disgrace from the previous century?

Those were the questions I faced earlier this year when I watched “Misa’s Fugue,” a new 90-minute documentary that chronicles the story of Holocaust survivor Frank “Misa” Grunwald. Born in Czechoslovakia in 1932, Grunwald became the victim of Nazi oppression at the age of six. Seven decades later he agreed to tell his story on camera.

The film was produced by the Fleetwood Area High School, and my son Andrew created its visual effects during his junior and senior years. It premiered in April at the Miller Center for the Arts in Reading and is now making its way around the world. Reviews have been encouraging.

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Fleetwood Area High School

Holocaust documentaries are never easy to watch. They elicit gasps of horror at the sight of emaciated prisoners and bony corpses stacked up like firewood. They evoke tears of sorrow at the footage of train rides to gas chambers and death marches to wastelands. They produce surges of anger at the crazed führer and his lemmings who sieg heiled their approval of so much brutality.

On top of that is the sense of shame that comes from being human. Who wants to admit membership in a race that can treat its fellow citizens with such savagery and contempt? And where was God in all of this? That’s the agonizing question for believers. We’d rather avoid it because we’re not always sure what to do with it.

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Jewish Prisoners of the Holocaust

The whole affair is a sordid mess, and we try to sidestep it by channeling Carly Simon: “I haven’t got time for the pain.” My copy of “Schindler’s List” has been in its shrink wrapping for two decades. I already know the story, so I’m not in a hurry to watch it. After all, life has enough trouble, so why push “play” to get more of it on purpose?

My son had to get more of it. Drew is a recent Temple University graduate with a degree in film and media arts. Needless to say, his mother and I are proud of him. But Drew’s interaction with the film was nearly the opposite of my own. Where I was reluctant to dive into the story, he was overexposed to it.

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“Who wants to admit membership in a race that can treat its
fellow citizens with such savagery and contempt?”

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“I worked on the project so much,” he said, “that I found myself becoming desensitized to its horrors. But I had to give myself some emotional distance to keep working. Fortunately, I was able to do so without surrendering my intellectual revulsion to Misa’s plight.”

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Andrew Valentino, Visual Effects

It seems that everyone who approaches the Holocaust needs to find a coping device. Fortunately, Grunwald  found such a device in the midst of it. While exposed to some of the most horrific people and practices of the Third Reich, Grunwald endured his ordeal by creating music and art—skills he developed during his childhood in Prague.

Having encountered the notorious Dr. Josef Mengele and the legendary artist Dina Babbit along the way, Grunwald confronted the choice that everyone must eventually face—to devote one’s life to the creation of civilization or to its destruction. Grunwald chose the former, which is why he is able to share his story today.

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Frank “Misa” Grunwald

Did that story cause my son and me to lose our faith? No. We recognize that evil is a fact of life—a malignant reality that Jesus himself willingly endured. Theologian John Stott has said, “I could never myself believe in God if it were not for the cross. In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it?”

God can indeed be worshiped because God-in-Christ chose not to insulate himself from our evil and malice. Instead he swallowed our moral crimes so that their poison would not destroy us eternally. And in his resurrection, Jesus demonstrated that evil does not get the last word.

Grunwald’s story has actually deepened our faith. We care more about the mistreated peoples of this world, regardless of their religious beliefs. The degradation of one ethnic people was the degradation of us all. The Holocaust was a catastrophic failure of humanity and a dire warning about the fragility of freedom. And the anti-Semitism that fueled it cannot be tolerated today.

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“Evil is a fact of life—a malignant reality that Jesus himself
willingly endured.”

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Grunwald Working on a Sculpture

“Never again!” is the appropriate cry. I am thankful that Drew and his friends at Fleetwood High have done their part to keep the story alive. Their tireless work in giving Frank Grunwald a voice replaces that sense of human shame with a greater sense of human dignity.

The film ultimately shows that hope can survive beyond the worst of tragedies. So maybe it’s time for me to watch my copy of “Schindler’s List.” Yes, Ill have to weep for several hours, but the survivors have had to weep for several decades. They need to know that they’re not the only ones crying.

The Rev. Dr. Timothy R. Valentino is senior pastor of Fleetwood Bible Church and affiliate professor of pastoral ministries at Evangelical Seminary, Myerstown.

Email: tvalentino@evangelical.edu, pastortim@fbcflame.org


Filed under: Bits & Pieces Tagged: Andrew Valentino, Anti-Semitism, Frank Grunwald, Holocaust, John Stott, Misa's Fugue, Suffering, Valentino Family

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