St Finbar's Father Joe has just returned from visiting family in Germany. Part of his sermon today reflected on his journey to Dachau concentration camp, of the sheer awfulness of what happened there. Nevertheless, he noted how God's love and sacrifice shone through, even in such a place. 

It may be hard to understand a thing like love in the midst of evil - the actions of the Nazis call for revenge and swift justice in most people's eyes - but a longer view might reveal a Divine hand at work. Not that God in any way was an agent in such events, but that we might derive some peace and comfort for taking  a longer view and wondering how it looks in the broader scheme of things. How might sheer wickedness have some kind of redemptive quality?

This reminded me of my own pilgrimage to Dachau over forty years ago. Like the Father I was shocked and horrified by what I encountered but I can't recall, except for anger, what I thought of God's purposes in such a hell. It was winter, very cold and I well remember simmering on the train back to Munich. But modern Germans, of course, know only too well about their recent past and are certainly contrite. Dachau is a warning about unrestrained or misdirected human nature - a salutary warning about negative human capacity.

The Dachau Camp was relatively benign when compared to places like Auschwitz or Buchenwald, where slaughter was on a mass scale. 41,000 people died here - bad enough - sure, but far less than at the other killing grounds. May such a thing never happen again. Only constant reminders will keep it in our race memory.