Komarnicki shared how Bonhoeffer’s story inspires him to follow Christ more boldly. “What do we find to be true,” he said, “is that the things that are the most difficult hold all the rewards. And I always say about my life that the worst things that ever happened to me were the best things that ever happened to me.”
“I just have to remind myself, when a terrible thing is happening again, that it is not just okay, but that it’s better than the good thing that I wanted,” he explained.
Komarnicki addressed how quickly people have forgotten about the horrors of the holocaust and what Bonhoeffer was fighting for. He said, “I think it should be mandatory for every leader of the free world to walk through the concentration camps. To stand on the bones of the millions of dead and to look at the cells that are still there at places like Flossenburg and Dachau.”
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Our culture lives like this tragedy happened long ago, Komarnicki said, “but in all reality it was just yesterday.”
“I highly recommend that everybody go to Flossenburg. This is the camp where Bonhoeffer was ultimately executed. The sign is still there when you enter the camp, and it says, ‘Work sets you free,’” Komarnicki continued. “And it was at this camp that they worked to death hundreds of thousands of people.” He explained, “And within weeks of the liberation of this camp, the town members of Flossenburg were putting up apartment buildings on the campsite.”
Chillingly, Komarnicki told ChurchLeaders, “That’s how fast human beings want to forget. That’s back then. Now, in this culture, are you kidding me? Between tick and tock we’ve forgotten the dance.”
Komarnicki said that he hopes that viewers of the film, especially Christians, will come away inspired to be more “brave” in living like Jesus Christ. “Bravery is a supernatural gift,” he said. “In these situations, we have to stay connected to the Holy Spirit, we have to request it, and we have to lean on it.”
