Called Out

I had an amazing privilege yesterday. I visited a post-WWII memorial (here WWII is called "The Great Patriotic War"). It's at the site of a former village called Khatyn (ha'-teen).

You can see the whole story of Khatyn by visiting this website: http://www.khatyn.by/en/

To make a long story short, the Nazi Army invaded Khatyn after a popular German soldier was shot not to far away. As far as anyone knows, the inhabitants of Khatyn had nothing to do with the attack. But, someone had to pay for what had happened. So, the army invaded the small village and herded everyone into a shed. They then set fire to the shed and burned nearly all of the towns inhabitants alive. If anyone tried to escape the fires, the German armies shot them. A horrifying scene to be sure. Yet, Khatyn is only one of many of these such stories throughout the Belarusian country-side.

It's really pretty incredible. In WWII, 2.23 million Belarusian people died. That's roughly 25% of the population at that time. (Which follows a roughly 7% population loss in WWI.)

The pictures above are just a few of the memorable images. The upper right image simply gives the facts of all that happened. The image of the statue follows the following story:

The only adult witness to the Khatyn massacre, a 56-year-old village smith
Joseph Kaminsky, also wounded and burnt, recovered consciousness late at night
when the fascists were already gone. He had to suffer a hard blow, though. He
found his injured son among the corpses of the fellow - villagers. The boy was
fatally wounded in the abdomen and totally burnt. He died later in the arms of
his father.

The final picture, of the eternal flame, is another symbolic area. The three trees represent the 3 out of 4 that lived after the war giving honor to the one who died in the battles.

To put what I experienced there into words is nearly impossible. So, I don't think I'm going to bother to try. But, I definitely wanted to share a few images with all of you back home.

Things dealing with the class I'm teaching are going quite well. I am having an increasing level of substantive conversations outside of class as well. To even begin to write here about them all, would take more time than I have to spare.

Please continue to pray as my time here closes. Your prayers are making a tremendous difference. I know that you're willingness to send me here is making a Kingdom impact!

-Ben