Dialogue of Suffering

Rick Wienecke • December 14, 2021
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The Cross and the Holocaust

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Editor’s note: In 2021, CMJ USA committed to writing about antisemitism in the United States throughout the year. We close with this meditation by artist Rick Wienecke. The ugliness of antisemitism bore the awful fruit of the Holocaust in the 20th century. What does Jesus have to say about this cataclysm? Rick and his wife Dafna created the Fountain of Tears , a sculpture that displays a conversation between the crucified Messiah and a Holocaust survivor. Learn more about the sculpture and the Wieneckes at fountainoftears.org.

By Rick Wienecke

In 2001, I had a number of encounters with the Lord in which he was showing me that he was going to restore to the Jewish people all that had been taken from them as a result of the Holocaust. I was to create a memorial to the six million Jews who had perished that would be interwoven with the seven last utterances of Jesus from the crucifixion. All the tears and emotions of this scared me, but at the same time, pulled and intrigued me. After much struggle, I began a creative response. 

For all the years that Dafna and I have given into sculpting the Fountain of Tears , we have realized that there is a genuine dialogue of suffering between the Holocaust and the Crucifixion. This dialogue is between two personalities ; it is not a dialogue of religious symbolism. There are s even panels of crucifixion , but no cross shown. Why no cross?   

My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?! A panel from Wienecke's Fountain of Tears

I have shared with groups that the cross as a visual symbol is much more negative to the Jewish people than the Nazi swastika ever will be. Through European history Christian persecution under the sign of the cross helped create the foundation for the Holocaust. This is a memory cut deeply into the minds of the Jewish people.   

One of the strongest comments made by an Israeli woman in seeing the Fountain was, “You have taken the two hardest things in our history and put them at the same table. This is insane.” She then started to call friends and relatives to come and see. The dialogue began to broaden our perspective in a lot of ways we never would have expected.

You have taken the two hardest things in our history and put them at the same table. This is insane.

I felt the Fountain had to focus on the person of Jesus and his last words with a single figure representing a Holocaust survivor , showing his response, his communication. The intense common suffering of both creates an intersection, a place of meeting … a relationship?

Where can this intersection have its beginnings?  For this article , let’s focus on the first word that Jesus speaks as he is dying : “Father forgive them they know not what they do . ” Besides the Lord h imself, does anyone really know the exac t order of the seven last words? What would be the most important to Jesus?  

Rick Wienecke in front of his Fountain of Tears

In my understanding of the perso n of Jesus , it would have to be a prayer of forgiveness for his own killers. This is more than a prayer; it is an intercession to Father, pleading for h is forgiveness because of the perpetrators ’ lack of knowledge. Yet these words are even more . T hey become the foundation of the New Covenant , a covenant founded firmly on forgiveness.    

The covenant demands response : if you are forgiven you must give out freely forgiveness to your perpetrators.  This first intersection creates a real dilemma for the Holocaust survivor.

There is a de ep understanding for the word “f orgiveness” in Jewish thinking , but when it comes to the Holocaust, there is also a deep fear that if I forgive on any level, those that perished will be forgotten .  Elie Wiesel in his book Night writes, “To forget would not only be dangerous but offensive: to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time . ”  

What we have discovered in our journey with the Fountain of Tears is that , at the intersection of the Holocaust and the Crucifixion, there is not always agreement, but there is definitely dialogue.   

A panel from Wienecke's Fountain of Tears

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