Becoming “liberators”

In his book The Liberators, author Michael Hirsch details the stories, impressions and reactions of American soldiers who liberated the Nazi concentration camps as they chased the last remnants of the Nazi army in the final days of World War 2.

Hirsch also includes in his book the recollection of one of those liberated. Coenraad Rood was a 24-year-old Dutch Jew who worked as a tailor. He was arrested in 1942 and spent three years imprisoned at a number of camps. In January 1945, he lay dying in a covered ditch in the camp at Ampfing when the 14th Armoured Division liberated the camp. Rood remembers:

“Suddenly, I heard my friend Maupy. I heard him speaking English, saying [to someone] ‘go in there. My friend is dying. He should know that he is free before he dies.’ [The trapdoor to the ditch] opened up and there was an American soldier           there . . . I was laying in the dark, in the dirt, and he told me, ‘come, comrade, you are free now.’ And then I started crying. I try to get to him, but I was, like paralyzed . . . I was crawling on the ground, trying to get to the door. And then he picked me up by the collar of my little jacket [and] he was holding me. I remember I thought, ‘Man, is the man strong!’ . . . And he told me, ‘You’re free now. You understand? It’s over.’”

“As dirty and sick as I was, that soldier, that American soldier, kissed me. And I kissed him back, and he was holding me and took me [outside to ditch, into the light] and said, ‘See? You are free now.’ And he cried to.”

After the liberation, Coenraad Rood was reunited with his wife Bep, who survived the war in hiding. And they made a new life for themselves in the United States.

You are free; it’s over – the words of American soldiers to the victims of the Holocaust. Why do you seek the living among the dead? – the angels ask of the women who come to the tomb on Easter morning. Easter is God’s never-ending invitation to freedom, his raising us up from “tombs” of selfishness and fear and anger and hatred. In the many manifestations of his compassion and mercy around us, God picks us up and carries us out of our prisons and ditches. And, in turn, we become “liberators” ourselves, picking up others from among the “dead” and restoring them to life and hope. In raising his son from the dead, God vindicates the Gospel of his Christ. In the light of Easter’s empty tomb, every moment of forgiveness, every triumph of justice over persecution, every insistence of goodness in the face of horrendous evil, every act of compassion no matter how simple or small proclaims the good news that Christ is risen.