Poland, Czech and Auschwitz

“In four years the subsidy we receive from Campus Crusade will have been phased out and we will be responsible for 100% of our own funding. This is putting much fear into us; we must act now so we don’t lose our staff.”



Here I am with our ministry's Polish director Mariusz who oversees 100 Polish staff sharing Christ in a country about the size of Texas. Those are 3 of Mariusz's kids, all of whom are growing up speaking both English and Polish.

Above the photo are the words said to me by Mariusz Kwapisz, the new country director of Poland. Unfortunately it is a scenario repeated many times in our ministries throughout Eastern Europe. EB and I spent a week with our Polish staff at their annual conference and I met with Mariusz and other Polish leadership to put together a plan to help our staff there. It was good to be with our Polish staff and get to know them and worship together.

Auschwitz: EB and I spent a day at this tragic place, not far from the location of the Campus Crusade Polish staff conference. To see one location where over a million were murdered was overwhelming. Emotionally I was doing okay until I saw the displays with the personal items of those murdered. Seeing the actual clothing taken from children before they were executed made me both curse the Nazis and cry.

I was also particularly moved when I visited the cell where Father Maximilian Kolbe died. Another prisoner received the sentence of death by starvation and Kolbe, himself already a prisoner at Auschwitz, volunteered to take his place in the starvation cell. The Nazis allowed this substitutionary death as a fulfillment of their law while obviously missing (and rejecting) the Truth to which Kolbe’s sacrifice pointed. No man would have done what Father Kolbe did unless they not only understood but greatly treasured what Christ did for us on the cross. May Father Kolbe’s faith and pain be a witness to us all!



At first, Auschwitz was used by the Nazis to murder Polish and Soviet prisoners of war as well as those of other nationalities and Gypsys. Yet when the Nazi plan was put into effect to exterminate all European Jews, Auschwitz became the setting for the most massive murder campaign in history. No one knows with certainty how many died at Auschwitz; the best guesses range from 1.1 million to 1.4 million.



A display of many of the shoes taken from prisoners at Auschwitz.



The entrance to the gas chambers and ovens.

Czech: We dropped our kids off at a camp for missionary kids in the Czech Republic on our way to Poland. While traveling between the two locations, EB and I visited the small Czech village of Olomouc. Today it has cobble stone streets, a village square, churches centuries old and a rich history. We discovered that Olomouc has a dark side as well.

Jon Hus was a Czech Christian who in the days before Luther and the Reformation, called attention to the abuses of the Catholic church. Hus was eventually burned at the stake in Prague. Two of Hus’s followers were burned at the stake in Olomouc in 1415. The city then rebelled against the Czech king (who was pro-Hus) and gave its allegiance to the Catholic king of the then Hungarian empire, Matthias Corvinus. Ironically, today in Budapest the evangelical church we attend meets in a building name after King Corvinus.

EB and I are learning how much suffering this part of the world has had. Both the Polish people and the Hungarian people (and other peoples of Europe as well) have long, tragic histories of oppression and war. Christians likewise have suffered greatly in Central Europe. Yet today the enemy both within and without for Christians is not persecution but indifference.