The woman I met in Nahariya, the grandmother of my roommate in Jerusalem at the time (I was studying the Arab-Israeli conflict there for 6 months during college), was very small and frail, but had beautiful eyes, and was charming to the point of annoying her grandson so much that he didn’t want to chat with her. So somehow I ended up chatting with her — I can’t remember what he was doing — but we talked about the work I did with Seeds of Peace (http://www.seedsofpeace.org) — and she told me the story of how she and her husband came, after long unrest, even after they were ‘freed’ from the camp, to Israel. There was no housing for them, so they lived in tents for a long time…

They finally found a home to live in the north of Israel — in Nahariya, by the sea, which since has been a very popular tourist area (until the missiles started coming across from Lebanon in the 80’s and 90’s)…

Her only son was killed in the 6-day war in Egypt. She was so angry — she had lived through hell, and came to this promised land — and a political dispute ended up in her only son’s death…

She told me, “I understand the Palestinian mother…” (By the way — we spoke almost fully German — her English was broken — but we were both fluent in German)

She understood the Arab mother because she said… “we have both lost our sons…” We are all mothers waiting for our sons and husbands to come home…

That is probably the most powerful thing I have ever been told regarding true peace in my life. I wish that people from Israel and Palestine would lay down their weapons and listen to this woman speak.

And today, on NPR, I heard a woman speak who is a survivor of Auschwitz concentration camp. She talked of wearing only a dress, no undergarments or anything else to keep warm, of eating only a crust of bread per day. I read in the NY Times today that there was no grass in the courtyard because the prisoners had eaten it all.

But when the woman who survived Auschwitz spoke on NPR, she said, “I had no idea that I had so much strength…” They would have to stand in rows for 10 hours if one person was missing, or had died, in the winter, in only a simple dress. And somehow, she lived through it all.

The way I would put it isn’t strength, but courage. These people had immense courage. They showed the world that it is possible to live through anything, for the dream of reuniting with family, and for the dream of simply being able to live another day.

Today is the day marking the liberation of Auschwitz. I think that we should not simply mourn for those who were lost, but celebrate in the courage of all of the people who died, and of all of the people who lived.

God be with us to see that in Rwanda, in Iraq, in the flood-broken lands, in South America, and all over the world, people are suffering, and people are surviving with true courage through times that no human should ever have to endure.

God give us the courage and strength to carry on with our journey, to witness those people’s suffering and to stand by them, as Christ stood by the tomb of Lazarus and wept.