Book Review: The Auschwitz Escape by Joel Rosenberg

Still photograph from the Soviet Film of the liberation of Auschwitz | USHMM/Belarusian State Archive of Documentary Film and Photography

It has been said that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.

Judging from the glaring headlines we read from around the world, a repeat of the horrors of the past may be growing closer than we think.

What are we Christians in America doing about the atrocities taking place overseas in places like Nigeria, Sudan, and now the Ukraine? Do we read the headlines, while sipping our $5.00 Starbucks, and flip over to more “important” sections like Money?

Or are we actively involved, sounding a warning to all who will listen?

These are the questions I’ve found myself pondering after spending the weekend reading Joel Rosenberg’s The Auschwitz Escape. I have read all of Rosenberg’s novels, so I was prepared for a good read, but nothing could prepare me for the emotions I would feel afterward.

By the time I was halfway through I felt burdened. I felt heart sick.

I saw crystal clearly the parallels between 1944 and 2014.

By the time I finished the book, I wanted to weep. I felt ashamed.

Ashamed of my country who failed to stop the massacre of at least a million Jews only seventy years ago.

Ashamed of how easy it has been to shove the Holocaust aside as a dark spot on our world’s history — and one that need not be talked about or discussed.

Ashamed of how I’ve turned my eyes away as I’ve seen the signs of modern genocide around the world.

Ashamed of how my nation, the same one that ignored desperate appeals for help in 1944, is once again ignoring the calls for liberation in 2014.

What Joel Rosenberg has managed to do with the Auschwitz Escape is to write a masterful piece of fiction, which feels lifted off the headlines of 1944 and 2014 at the same exact time. He has written a cautionary historical novel that appeals to both Jews and Gentiles alike. Unlike many works of fiction, it is not easy reading. But it is necessary reading.

After reading the Auschwitz Escape, you hopefully won’t be able to look at the Holocaust in quite the same way. The legacy of one million—say that aloud, ONE MILLION—lost souls becomes real to you through the lives of Jacob Weisz and Jean-Luc Leclerc. And hopefully you’ll find yourself wanting to do something to help prevent it from happening again. Whether it be to Jews, Sudanese, Nigerians, or Christians in the future.

So after reading the book, I found myself asking the question of “What can I do”? I’m no President, no Congresswoman, or even someone with a large checkbook to make big donations.

But fortunately there are things that we all can do.

1. Pray

Let the plight of the persecuted church overseas become real to you. Stop thinking of them as foreigners from a country you can barely pronounce. Make it personal. They are your brothers and sisters, children of your Father. Pray and intercede for them just like you would pray for your own loved ones in times of crisis.

2. Make your voice known and HEARD.

Write your elected officials. Bring to their attention—and their staffers’ attention—the plight of the persecuted church. Pressure them with phone calls and letters to stop turning a deaf ear. And if they don’t listen to you, vote them out.

3. Give

There are many wonderful ministries helping to protect and provide for those suffering religious persecution. One of them is Rosenberg’s The Joshua Fund. Another one is our dear friends and clients, the Compassionate Hope Foundation, which ministers to the families of martyrs in Asia, among other causes.

Edmund Burke wrote that “all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

That is what happened with Hitler in 1944 . . . and over a million Jews lost their lives at Auschwitz.

Please don’t let that be said of our generation in 2014 if it happens again.