On the fourth day of their gathering, the World Communion of Reformed Churches (WCRC) Executive Committee paused their meetings to visit Bergen-Belsen. What now stands as a memorial to those who lost their lives at the concentration camp became a sacred space for sorrow, empathy, and a renewed commitment to hope.
The morning began with worship, during which executive committee member, Kupa Munikwa offered a devotion on Ecclesiastes 3:1-12. Reflecting on the listening she had witnessed during the committee’s sessions, she encouraged her colleagues to remember that there is always a time to listen before leading. Acknowledging concerns that the church is declining, she offered a word of hope, “Young people are not walking away from God, but they are leaving behind institutions of harm and pain. The church will not die, but it will change.”
Her words set the tone for a day that would confront the darkest chapters of human history while refusing to surrender to despair.
As worship concluded, the executive committee members boarded the bus to visit Bergen-Belsen. Walking the grounds of the former concentration camp, where tens of thousands of people perished during the Nazi regime. The group grappled with the visceral reality of historical trauma. For many, seeing the physical space transformed abstract history into an embodied experience and a chilling reality of today’s world. Munikwa reflected, “To see it in person. It was powerful and moving. The whole point of the memorial is ‘never forget, and it will never happen again’—but it is still happening. It has just changed the format, changed the place.”
Yet even amid the heavy silence of the camp, there were glimpses of hope. Jooeun Kim, one of the worship leaders for the meeting, shared a moment of unexpected hope in a place that holds so much pain and suffering. While walking apart from the group, she paused in reflection and closed her eyes. Instead of the sounds of suffering, she heard birdsong and wind moving through the trees. Kim, who brings her background of music and shared her talent with the group, said, “If you just close your eyes and listen to the bird sounds, the nature sounds, it is hard to believe you are standing in a former concentration camp. We remind ourselves of the stories that happened here to honour those who died. We listen for where hope might be in the remembering. The hope that others may never again experience this suffering.”
Following the tour, the committee gathered for a panel discussion on authoritarianism and the church’s witness. Prof. Dr Meron Mendel, director of the Anne Frank Educational Centre, traced Germany’s long, contested struggle with Holocaust memory, noting that “never again” is often interpreted in contradictory ways and the issue of German responsibility and history has never been peaceful, easy and consensus-based. He reminded the committee that the work of the church should be to promote values of mutual understanding beyond national borders and to resist the instrumentalisation of religion for nationalist aims. Mendel concluded his time saying, “I think the global church has to recognise it exists in a world that is very much nationalistic. The work of the global church is to find shared values and language which are not so particular, not nationalistic, so that they bring people together from different origins.” Reminding the communion that “never again” applies to all people in every corner of the world.
Rev. Dr Hanns Lessing, WCRC executive secretary for communion and theology, shared personal family stories of his maternal grandmother, moved by the Confessing Church’s costly decisions in 1934, and of his paternal grandfather, a judge who sentenced forced labourers to death. “There was no lack of theological clarity,” Lessing said. “But there was a widespread lack of strategic imagination for carrying resistance beyond church spaces.” He warned that as right-wing parties gain ground globally, the question is still: Will the church be prepared to sacrifice privileges and risk rejection?
Rev. Jihyun Oh, Stated Clerk of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and WCRC executive committee member, called for nourishing the moral life of the nation through theological unentangling, contending with theologies that supported slavery, the Doctrine of Discovery, and Christian nationalism. She urged renewed liturgical practices of confession and disciplined, whole-church action. “Confession acknowledges that might doesn’t make right. It is an act of remembering rightly, telling the truth instead of hiding it as a secret.”
At the end of the day, the committee shared their personal reflections over dinner. Yu En Wang, an executive committee member, drew connections between education, empathy, and resistance to authoritarianism. Reflecting on the many school groups that visit Bergen-Belsen as part of mandatory education, Wang expressed a perplexing question, “If education alone could save us, why do people remain susceptible to narratives of victimhood and blame?”
The answer, the group suggested, may lie in empathy—the capacity to see the image of God in the most unexpected places, even in those with whom we deeply disagree.
Wang recalled a striking image from the museum, skeletal survivors of the camps, and the question posed to visitors, “Do we see Jesus in them?” He connected this to the ongoing work of the church, “Some of the churches, even though they believe in Christian nationalism or other ‘isms,’ they are still our brothers and sisters. Somehow, we have to find a way to have a conversation with them. How do we get this unity in diversity? I think that will be the work of this generation.”
And Kupa Munikwa returned to the theme of hope, noting that despite the persistence of atrocity, the purpose of memorialization is not despair but remembrance that fuels resistance. We are perplexed but crushed, and we persevere in our witness.
The WCRC Executive Committee left Bergen-Belsen not with answers, but with a renewed commitment to listen, to remember, and to believe that even in the darkest places, the church is being called—not to die, but to resist authoritarianism, and to live out justice for the world through the work of the global communion and witness.
