Rainbow at Auschwitz
Bill Gnade on a Photograph Beyond a Thousand Words
The judges of the World Press Photo contest will not notice this photograph. The Pulitzer committee will not shortlist it. In fact, few will notice it, not because it lacks artistic merit but because it is too religious. To me, it is one of the most thoroughly Christian images ever made. But anyone antagonistic or indifferent to the Christian faith will see only colors, a man in a dress, a photo op.
It is almost as though the cosmos aligned in so grand a manner when this photo was taken that the mystics and astrologers are right in believing that the stars and suns and moons and clouds bespeak the presence of God. Everything had to come together in a moment that lasted no more than a second: the position of the sun, the clouds, falling water droplets, the slope of trees (dozens of years old), the bricks, the barbed wire; not to mention that the pope is at Auschwitz and it is raining and sunny, and the photographer is in the right place, crouched just so, with the right lens, the right shutter speed, the right aperture.
A German pope standing in the dust of death, the remains of Auschwitz, the infamous death camp of Hitler’s terror. But this is not just any German, nor any pope; this is Joseph Ratzinger, a former member of Hitler’s youth squads and former German soldier. And in this vision there is something not just for the eyes, but for the ears as well. For we can hear our Savior’s voice speak to us about Ratzinger, about Auschwitz, about our own souls: Behold, I make all things new.
Think of Auschwitz, that place of death where dark, ashen clouds hung against deep blue skies; where rainbows broke over the landscape with so much radiant beauty, where birds and bees proclaimed freedom on the wing. Think of the waiting, the hoping, the deep, unrequited longing in the breast of each imprisoned father, mother, child, or orphaned boy. And now look at the man in white, praying.
Gnade is the German word for grace, for mercy. There was a Captain Hartwig Gnade who reportedly murdered 1,600 Jewish men in one day in Lomazy, Poland, while serving in Hitler’s Police Battalion 101. He refused to order gnadenschusse (mercy-shots) for the dying wounded. I can hear countless voices begging for gnade. There is bad blood, somewhere, in my family. The German pope praying at Auschwitz settles me, comforts me, when I think of this.
An Imperfect Photo
What makes this photograph so powerful? Is it the rainbow of promise—in the background, no less!—radiating below dark clouds? Is it the expectant crowd of witnesses? Is it the pope, head lowered, the simple man in white? Or is it the barbed wire, the symbol of restraint, limitation? Is that ghastly wire fence the thorns and thistles of Adam’s accursed sin? Is it the Crown of Thorns piercing the heavens? Do the heavens bleed rainbows over our great sorrow, our great sin?
And then there are the bricks at our feet, the countless bricks no doubt made by prayerful Jews in Egypt’s bitter pits thousands of years ago; bricks of clay and stubble that heaven’s fires will one day melt down into paving stones of gold. God proves through the fires that he is the alchemist par excellence: He finds gold in everything, even bricks of sweat, soil, and tears.
But there is something else in the photo besides the hidden names, the mass graves, the faceless mass beyond our vision, or the grave Mass we know is our salvation. We may be looking at the pope absolving humanity’s sin, or at least our complicity, from beneath a thorny crown; we may be looking at the rainbow that serves as the symbol of God’s promise that he will never again regret creating us.
But there is something that maybe only I see. For I am a photographer, and there is something in this photograph that disturbs my artistic sensibilities: It is the black-clad man just over the pope’s right shoulder. He makes my camera shudder.
Bill Gnade works as a writer, poet, and photographer in New Hampshire, where he lives with his wife and son. He holds a BA in philosophy and theology from Gordon College.
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