We visited a few World War II sites in Prague recently. We drove to the genocide site of Lidice, razed by the Germans after the assassination of Heydrich. The Nazis shot all the men behind a barn. Several women were pregnant, and the Nazis aborted all the babies and sent the women to concentration camps. The soldiers placed 83 children between the ages of 1 and 15 in a van and gassed them to death in 12 minutes. They piled their bodies in an open grave.

The memorial site overlooks a lake. People are walking with dogs. There is a rose garden. Everything is green, full of sunshine, and beautiful. Who could have imagined the suffering? The mothers would not give up their children. They were dragged from their arms. One of the fathers told his daughter as the soldiers wrenched them apart, “Do not forget God.” She was one of six children who survived because she looked Aryan and was “re-homed” in Germany. 

What is so shocking about all this devastation, cruelty, violence, and evil is how normal the people committing the evil appear. They don’t look like zombies, or orcs, or vampires or wicked witches. They look like clean cut young men, and happy round-faced girls. 

I look at the face of Hitler and he looks more silly than cruel. I see the face of Heydrich; he looks haughty and arrogant but not necessarily the mastermind of the systematic murder of millions of people. 

Does evil have a face? How often do we get it wrong? As I stand looking at this sprawling green hillside once the simple town, I recall the museum photo of three sisters in a rowboat on the lake near the town. They are smiling so brightly. This was taken just a few months before they were murdered by the Nazis. 

I wonder what my atheist friend is thinking as he walks his dog across the lawn. How does he reckon this wrong? What consoles him? 

I find the only answer to this cruelty is the line the father says to his daughter— do not forget God. It is the only answer. 

“Bring to an end the violence of the wicked and make the righteous secure—
you, the righteous God who probes minds and hearts.

My shield is God Most High, who saves the upright in heart.
God is a righteous judge, a God who displays his wrath every day.
If he does not relent, he will sharpen his sword; he will bend and string his bow.

He has prepared his deadly weapons; he makes ready his flaming arrows.

Whoever is pregnant with evil conceives trouble and gives birth to disillusionment.

Whoever digs a hole and scoops it out falls into the pit they have made.

The trouble they cause recoils on them; their violence comes down on their own heads.”

– Psalm 7:10-17