TORONTO — Christians owe a special duty to study the Holocaust. After all, acknowledges Susanna Kokkonen, centuries of Christian anti-Semitism lay the groundwork for the Holocaust, and Christian values – not to mention churches themselves – mostly failed to prevent the murder of Europe’s Jews even as it happened.

Susanna Kokkonen

Christians honour the Holocaust by studying it, says Kokkonen, and in so doing, wrestle with its many implications for their faith.

As director of Christian Friends of Yad Vashem, the soft-spoken Kokkonen oversees hundreds of Christian scholars and schoolteachers who come to the world-renowned museum and memorial in Jerusalem to learn how to teach history’s greatest act of mass murder.

It’s also her role to reach out to churches and Christians around the world, not only to glean universal lessons of the Holocaust and showcase so-called Righteous Gentiles who saved Jews, but to voice support for Israel.

Christian Friends of Yad Vashem was established in 2006, and Kokkonen was appointed its director two years after that. A native of Finland who served as cultural attaché at the Finnish Embassy in Tel Aviv, for five years, she went on to earn a doctorate in Holocaust studies from Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

A believing Christian raised in a Pentecostal home, she does not support Israel in order to hasten the Christian apocalypse and the subsequent conversion of Jews. She does so because, as a strong Zionist, she believes Jews have a right to a homeland.

“Since I was a tiny girl, I knew the Bible spoke about the Jews’ return to Zion. From then on, I knew my future would be connected to the Jewish people,” Kokkonen told The CJN prior to addressing an audience last week at the Sarah & Chaim Neuberger Holocaust Education Centre.

Her appearance was also sponsored by the Canadian arm of International Christian Embassy Jerusalem and the Canadian Society for Yad Vashem.

Kokkonen supports Israel for other reasons: “It’s a country that is trying to defend itself, surrounded by mostly hostile states. And we need Christians to wake up and to see that this is our responsibility now. We need to stand with Israel today.”

Her views were also shaped by her youthful surroundings. Finland, she said, has been staunchly pro-Israel for years. And the top two countries to send teachers and researchers to Yad Vashem are Finland and Norway, she added.

The 30-something Kokkonen was in Toronto as part of a Canadian tour that took her to Winnipeg, Calgary and Vancouver to speak at churches and Bible colleges.

Kokkonen sighs softly when it’s pointed out that the Holocaust was carried out in Christian countries. In some places, churches and clergy spoke out, while in others, they remained mostly silent.

“It’s not fully understood, the Holocaust and its implications to us as Christians,” she conceded. “That’s why we have a special responsibility, not only to commemorate the Holocaust but to understand why Christian values did not work. The lessons speak to Christian failures.”

An added dimension to the Holocaust’s relevance, she noted, is its use to study other 20th-century genocides.

“Even if the Holocaust was unique to the Jewish people and it’s the largest genocide the world has ever known, these lessons we learned from it are in fact valid to many other situations in our societies.

“The lessons are universal, and we can transfer those to other genocides to understand them better.”

Kokkonen is dismayed that so many churches and Christian organizations in the West have led boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns against Israel. Comparing the Holocaust with Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is “obviously a lie.”

“They cannot be compared in any way. Equating these hinders the peace process and obscures the facts. We know [the Holocaust] was mass murder. The conflict in the Middle East is over land.”

She also understands the reluctance of some Holocaust survivors to open up to Christians.

“I understand their suspicion. It’s completely justified. But it’s misguided. It would be extremely short-sighted if this remained just a Jewish issue. It is an issue for the world.”

As she sees it, “God requires from each of us to act. The worst thing that can happen is if people stopped acting.”