I read an amazing thing the other day. At the point that East Germany became free from communist rule, they had their first free elections.
The first thing the newly elected politicians did was to make a statement, part of which follows:
‘We, the first freely elected parliamentarians of the GDR… on behalf of the citizens of this land, admit responsibility for the humiliation, expulsion and murder of Jewish men, women and children. We feel sorrow and shame, and acknowledge this burden of German history…. Immeasurable suffering was inflicted on the people of the world during the era of national socialism… We ask the Jews of the world to forgive us….’
Having read the statement, there was spontaneous applause throughout the parliament, and then a period of silence as they remembered those who had died.
Such forgiveness will not bring back those who died, but it builds bridges of friendship and a release of forgiveness. As Lewis Smedes says, ‘when we genuinely forgive, we set a prisoner free and then discover that the prisoner we set free was us’.
Climbing the mountain of forgiveness is always worth it.
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