"The Wicked" - Ronald L. Dart

Sermon delivered by Ronald L. Dart - 3/20/04
https://www.borntowin.net/audio/the-wicked/
---
I suspect that many think the Nazi war criminals were convicted and hanged because of the testimony of Jews against them. That is a mistaken impression. The testimony of the survivors of the death camps was important, but it was not the most damning testimony. The most damning evidence at Nuremberg was the Nazis own meticulous record keeping.

Robert E. Conot, who wrote "Justice at Nuremberg": "No one who experienced the trial or has become familiar with the evidence and record can doubt that the case was proved conclusively; that despite all the horrors that were brought to light, it was, if anything, understated. None of the defendants attempted to refute the evidence. They sought instead to explain away their own participation and to shift the blame onto others.

"Not only were the documents the prosecution introduced the Nazi's own words, but the witnesses—both for the prosecution and for the defense—included some of the highest officials in Hitler's government. Far from denying what had taken place, each contributed additional information to the litany of murder. Dieter Wisliceny, one of Eichmann's half-dozen deputies, provided a detailed accounting of the 5,250,000 Jews who had been exterminated. Otto Ohlendorf, the chief of Himmler's internal intelligence division and commander of an einsatzgruppe in Russia, testified to the slaughter of the Jews in the east. Rudolf Höss, commander of Auschwitz, related that three million people, most of them Jews, had perished in this concentration camp—and he, most assuredly, was an authoritative witness. Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, the chief of the anti-partisan forces, confessed to the indiscriminate extermination of the innocent. It was not as if the evidence was circumstantial or depended upon secondary witnesses. It was direct and damning."

I'm not sure what it is about such evil that the men who do it seem to maintain such good records. They weigh the violence of their hands. Having taken a good, hard look at the evidence, I find myself seething with anger when people try to deny it ever happened. I have no patience with Holocaust deniers.

Justice Jackson, in his opening address to the Tribunal remarked, "What makes this inquest significant is that these prisoners represent sinister influences that will lurk in the world long after their bodies have returned to dust." Conat remarked, "These influences, in fact, have regenerated like a poisonous weed." And I must add, they always will in this world, under this system. Failure to recognize this is dangerous in the extreme. "The wicked walk on every side, when the vilest men are exalted."

All this came to mind when I was reading the 58th psalm…
---
[Image credits, if any, may be found by visiting the link above.]