Cardinal O’Connor would often reflect on a singular experience he had in 1975 before becoming the Chief of Navy Chaplains making him responsible for the needs of almost 2 million souls, 800 chaplains, and the religious programs on ships, submarines and bases around the world. He knew he needed to make a retreat and thought of the many monasteries and convents around the world where he could pray and prepare for the tremendous task that lay ahead. Somehow none of these places seemed right. So he did something that might seem very strange. He flew off to Germany and made his way to the Nazi concentration camp, Dachau. What drew him to this place of the most infamous crimes against humanity? Whatever the motivation was, this decision and this retreat changed him in a dramatic way and in turn the lives of countless others. He described his experience as he walked through the concentration camp and came to the red brick crematoria where the bodies were burned, “I placed my hand in the oven and felt the intermingled ashes of Jew and Christian, rabbi, priest and minister.” Struck to the heart, he thought, “Good God, how could human beings do this to other human beings?” He was pierced to the core of his being and vowed that he would do whatever he could, until his dying breath, to promote the sacredness of every human life. Cardinal O’Connor would often speak of the effect this experience, “My life was changed radically, not modestly, not fractionally but radically when I put my hand into the oven at Dachau for the first time…I knew that with all my studies and all my degrees up until that moment, I knew no real theology. I learned it at Dachau. And it radically changed my life.”
For Cardinal O’Connor, it was always about the individual person – what he called the dazzling value, the infinite worth of a single soul made in the image and likeness of almighty God. To him, it was not that 6 million Jews and 5 million Christians were killed in the holocaust – but that 1 person of infinite worth was killed, 11 million times and that God experienced each death as His own.
Originally printed in IMPRINT Magazine Fall 2014.
