On Saturday September 17, I woke up in an old Eastern Block apartment building in East Berlin, Germany. Even though the Berlin Wall has been down for years and Germany has been united for years, I was very aware of the history of where I was waking up.
If I had woken up in that building 22 years ago, I would not have been able to take the train to my destination that morning. I looked outside my window at the colorful paint on the buildings and wondered what kind of scene I would have witnessed in 1989.
What was amazing to me was the group of youth that were gathering outside that building with me on this beautiful fall morning. I was joined by youth from Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, Ireland, America and many more nations. These young people had traveled by train, plane and automobile to take a united stand in the center of one of the most historic and notorious cities on earth.
One of the first things to pop into anyone’s mind when you think of Berlin is probably the Berlin Wall. Thoughts of an evil dictator hypnotizing a nation into believing that certain people were less than human fill our minds. Images of a barbaric and unthinkable era when our fellow human neighbors were being slaughtered by the millions make us cringe.
I think the history of Berlin makes the March for Life there even more important to me than marches in any other city in the world. I have been part of protests and marches in hundreds of cities and over a dozen countries, but nothing is as powerful as the March for Life Berlin.
We gathered just around the corner from the Brandenburg Gate, where Adolph Hitler marched for the beginning of this “Thousand Year Reich”. We were just around the corner from the Jewish Memorial in the center of Berlin, a place where thousands of people a day remember the bloodshed of the holocaust that took over six million lives just 70 years ago.
As I stood and pondered all of this I was overwhelmed with grief by the fact that we were standing here in this city, a city where lessons were obviously not learned. Here we were in the home of one of the worst human rights atrocities in history, standing up to fight against another holocaust that is being celebrated instead as a so-called “right to choose.”
The Germans told me that they were not allowed to compare the Jewish Holocaust with the Abortion Holocaust; it was just not acceptable for them to draw these comparisons. They encouraged me to continue to do so, to shed light on the fact that what is happening around the world today in abortion clinics is no less deplorable and deadly they what happened in the death camps of WW2.
The crowds started to gather in the park for the March for Life and the counter-protestors also started to gather and take their places in the audience. I began to take photos of the counter-protestors and they quickly began to hide their faces; they refused to answer when I asked them if they were ashamed of their stance.
Many of them held sex toys, condoms and signs as they chanted and screamed at the top of their lungs, trying to overpower the talks coming from the stage. Many of them blew whistles, threw confetti on people or waved sex toys in their faces.
Once again I was honored to speak from the stage along with Eric Schiedler of the Pro-life Action League who came from America with me to stand with our European pro-life brothers and sisters. I have added a link to a condensed video version of my talk at the end of this article.
One of the coolest things was the fact that many of us who spoke on that stage also spoke together in Belgium, Ireland and many other places. There is a new coalition of Pro-life youth from around the world who are coming together and supporting each other’s nations as we take a stand against child killing globally.
The March itself is a beautiful sea of international youth and older people standing, marching together, hold crosses and praying as we walk through the heart of Berlin. There were hundreds of counter-protesters following us, trying to disrupt us and throwing things at us in vain. We finished the March for Life at a Church where everyone gathered for an ecumenical prayer service.
That night many of the young people gathered for a conference where we all took turns sharing the work we are doing in our own nations and giving each other ideas. We may all speak different languages and live in different countries but we were all one family that night as we knew we were the all united in purpose and in Christ.
I am so excited to know that many of the international youth pro-life movement will also be joining us in January for the March for Life in Washington DC. The youth pro-life movement is growing and the abortion holocaust worldwide is in danger. We are coming together as a united voice to be the light that will destroy the darkness of abortion.
Here is the video of me speaking at the March for Life Berlin:
