Faith and Family in the Storm

I have been immersed in reading about the Holocaust over the last week (see previous posts). I finished Bartov's Mirrors of Destruction today. I am also looking into anti-Semitism for my research project for my class. With some time, due to spring break, I picked up a book that has been on my shelf for a decade or so. Blood and Honor is the autobiography of Reinhold Kerstan.

Kerstan was born in 1931 in East Prussia--which is now part of Poland, but was German at the time. He was less than two when Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor.

His father was a Baptist minister, and the family wound up at a church in the middle of Hitler's Berlin. Brought up in the Christian faith, he was saw the biblical heroes (Abraham, Moses, David, the Apostles, etc.) as his heroes. They were all Jews, as were some of his friends and the family doctor. He could not reconcile that with the virulent anti-Semitism of the Nazi regime, especially the horrifying event of Kristallnacht.

The father is drafted into military service and sent to the front. His older brother Seigfried is sent away to school. Young "Reini" is sent to Czechoslovakia to a Hitler Youth school.

His world of faith in Christ collides with his faith in the Fatherland. Turmoil ensues internally and with his fellow students who wind up "crucifying" him. His faith sustains him through his months at school and in the bewildering aftermath of the war. He is eventually reunited with his family.

It gives me pause to think how would my faith hold up under similar circumstances. Not just the horrors of the war, but in the poverty stricken aftermath.