Reflections from Flossenbürg and Königslutter

In Flossenbürg, not too far from where I live, are the remains of a Nazi concentration camp, which now includes a monument, museum and a handful of preserved buildings. Flossenbürg was nowhere near the scale of the larger and more infamous camps, but hundreds of thousands of Jews, Roma, petty criminals, other "asocials" and POWs passed through Flossenbürg and its subcamps, and tens of thousands met their deaths there. I've been aware of Flossenbürg and its proximity for over a year and a half. Why did it take me so long to make it there?

I was in Afghanistan for a year, true. But I've felt a reluctance to visit Holocaust sites for a more than one reason. For one thing, Germany is full of places I've longed to experience for years: great cities, landscapes and ancestral homes. Only recently have I exhausted the list of the places I most desired to see.

More troubling, though, was my uncomfortable relationship with Holocaust remembrance, which in my youth felt more like emotional blackmail than anything. Reading Elie Wiesel may be one thing, but recurring recitals of the horrific details of the National Socialist State's killing machine disturbed me, of course as the atrocity came into focus, yet in my youth I sensed our teachers were trying to force an emotional reaction and proud and rebellious as I was, although only passively so, I believed I knew better than to allow my feelings to be manipulated by teachers who were otherwise so uninspiring. And what did these crimes from before my parents' birth have to do with me?

But still I felt pulled to Flossenbürg, and so one week ago, on the first free weekend I had with a borrowed car I made the drive. In the nearby town of Floss is a remarkably well-preserved Jewish cemetery, one of the few reminders of what was once a vibrant Jewish community.

Arriving at the camp, I was underwhelmed by the scale of what remains. It was small and every remaining building was so sanitized. I was appalled to find a residential neighborhood encroached on the land of the former camp, with pretty little homes resting on the same ground that once supported barracks full of freezing, starving men in striped uniforms who worked in granite quarries 7 days a week until death, transfer or liberation brought relief.

The place was sickening. It was not only gloom that oppressed me, but I felt heavier in that place and nauseous until I left the grounds. There is a weight there that cannot be lifted.

What did I learn there? I had never understood the role of the Sonderkommando. The Sonderkommandos were special details of prisoners who were assigned to supervise other prisoners. In Flossenbürg German criminals were often appointed to the Sonderkommando for their brutality and supposed racial superiority. Members of the Sonderkommandos may have been bullies, administering beatings to fellow-prisoners, but many committed courageous small kindnesses and protected their fellows from the indifference or the cruelty of the guards.

Several exhibits in the museum testified to what many contemporary Germans denied: the complicity of the local populace in the construction and work of the camp. Not only did local businesses participate in the building and maintenance of the camp, but as the war brought a shortage in labor, local citizens sent written requests to the camp's commander for prisoners to be sent to dig in their quarries, harvest their crops and repair their mills.

Outside the museum a path extends down the "Valley of Death." Here there was a ramp used to take the remains of prisoners downhill to the crematory. At this site, which was neglected for many years, new remains were still being uncovered in the 1990's and there is still likely much to be learned about the work of death in Flossenbürg. The crematory is preserved, with the oven lying open in a small, empty room.

I was lucky to have come in the late afternoon when there were few visitors and I could walk through this valley alone. I wept as I removed fallen leaves and overgrown branches from the faces of monuments erected by many different nations to their victims: Latvia here, Greece there. When I came to an obelisk, with memorials on one side in French, on another in Russian with hammer and sickle I thought, what is the point? Why a flag here? In spite of the symbols worn by the victims to denote their status, they were all brutalized, imprisoned and many murdered. What meaning does a flag have here? And why the Christian church next to the small Jewish "place of prayer?" Here there is only humanity. Human beings piled like wood and burned as a monument

to hate, now lying in a pyramid of ashes.

And I can say I understand better than my younger self. It is awful to confront, even from the comfort of nearly 70 years, the reality of what happened here. But it is right for us to confront it, for those of us who are grown and seek to better ourselves to stand in an awful place and to feel the mass of ruin. The ruin the Germans wrought on themselves and a whole continent. The ruin they might have brought to the whole world had they never been stopped.

What will I teach my children? The value of life. It is sacred. We must not compare the worth of the elderly, the foreign, even those who work evil. They are made in God's image. They are all made in the image of God who mourns with us for the violence that fills the earth.

This week I visited some distant relatives who live in Niedersachsen. Ida is the cousin of my late paternal grandfather. Now 82 years old, I was surprised by how warmly she and her family greeted me. We sat many hours in her kitchen as I asked her and her husband about their childhood in Poland and Ukraine, about the trials of the war and their final expulsion back to West Germany in 1958. Suddenly Ida, who was only a girl when the war was over, leaned in to me and became very serious. "Have you heard what Hitler did to the Jews?"

Ida, second from right, at her father's funeral, 1945

If you liked it then you should have put a scarf on it

We apologize to the reader for the abortive enthusiasm of the last post. Sometimes the editorial we, like Jotham, makes promises we find difficult to keep.

To dip our toe back in the water, however, a minor incident at church was of note to us. We were visiting a small branch of the church in an Austrian city last week. The Sunday School teacher was a genial 60-something local in a threadbare suit from the 70's. To begin the class we watched some dubbed excerpts from young women's conference. At the conclusion of the video the teacher turned to us.

"You know what we forgot? We forgot to pray. Is there a sister who would be willing to pray?"

A sister volunteered and as she stood to pray the teacher inserted, "Excuse me, would you mind covering your head when you pray?" The woman, who happened to be wearing a scarf, unquestioningly put it over her head and carefully tucked her hair inside of the scarf to conceal it and meekly asked the teacher, "Like this?" The teacher approved. We were stunned and scanned the room to espy whether we were the only sane ones present and noticed that this woman was the only one who had been wearing a scarf around her neck. What the heck was going on here?

At the conclusion of the prayer the teacher launched into a discussion totally unrelated to the videos he had shown. The balance of the time was spent discussing Paul's injunction that the woman cover her head, the members of the class offering approving comments. We were eager to speak out, but were prevented from doing so by our poor facility in German. What might you have done, reader?

Aufersteh'n, ja aufersteh'n wirst du mein Blog, nach kurzer Ruh'!

Triumphant return, new posts, before the week is out.

Merry Christmas

This Christmas, far away in an Islamic land, I've thought more about the Savior and the meaning of Christmas than perhaps I ever have. I've been singing Christmas songs for weeks, driving my buddies crazy I think, and in spite of the ongoing grind and lack of a Christmas season and all that entails, the world has acquired a special sheen for me recently. On Christmas Eve we went out to work before dawn and sat in a spot where we could see the whole city for most of the morning. Watching the sunrise, hearing the call to prayer and seeing the city come to life was a Christmas I will never forget. Seeing a small elder sister holding the hand of her toddler brother as they navigate the bazaar made me smile to think of my own children. The Afghan people amaze me in their ingenuity and industry. Despite the nearly unbearable hardships they face every day, they meet it with courage and carry on the best they can. They and we who do not know such troubles have all been greatly blessed. With the revelator I pray "Come, Lord Jesus, Come." Come and bring the day when the lion lies down with the lamb and we beat our swords into ploughshares.

Happy Holidays

My first missionary companion was a dedicated, smart and stubborn Elder from a foreign land. As we were tracting (going door-to-door) during the holiday season he would offer to share a Christmas message with the people we met. After he got a couple of doors slammed in his face at homes with mezuzot on the doorpost I explained to him the significance of the mezuzah and why a Jewish person might be offended by a Christian missionary offering to talk about Christmas. I also suggested that he might say "Happy Holidays" as a more neutral seasonal greeting. Perhaps my delivery was off, but my companion was deeply offended himself and said, "You don't understand my culture!" I said, "We are not in your country, I'm trying to help you." Of course there was a mezuzah on the very next door. When he offered to share a message with the person that greeted us at the door she replied, "Not interested." My companion: "Merry Christmas." Shouted reply, while slamming the door: "I'm JEWISH!!!"

We live in a pluralistic society. Those of you who find generic cultural minutiae like "Happy Holidays" which downplay "our" Christian heritage offensive you are either oversensitive or insecure in your faith. Jesus does not care whether you ever mention Christmas, the celebration of which he nor his apostles ever mandated. For those of you who are Christians, the modern much-derided "politically correct" spirit or avoiding giving offense unnecessarily is completely in line with the gospel of Jesus Christ. As Paul said, "I know, and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that there is nothing unclean of itself: but to him that esteemeth any thing to be unclean, to him it is unclean. But if thy brother be grieved with thy meat, now walkest thou not charitably. Destroy not him with thy meat, for whom Christ died." That is, if you know that what you eat is a stumbling block to your brother, do not eat it.

Wilford Woodruff, a successful early Mormon missionary and future prophet and president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, told a story from his English mission: "I had with me an old cloak which I got in Tennessee [. . .]. It had once been a dandy cloak, and had on keg buttons, and when new had a good deal of trimming and fancy work about it; but it was then pretty well threadbare and worn out. I wore it in Kirtland and I carried it to England with me; and when I was called by revelation to go to John Benbow's and preach the gospel I wore that cloak. I went there and found over six hundred people, called United Brethren [. . .], and they, as a people, were prepared for the word of the Lord, and I wanted to catch them in the gospel net. Before embracing the doctrine of the United Brethren, Sister Benbow had been what is called a 'lady' in England, and she had worn her silks and satins; but after obeying the doctrine of this religious body she cut up and burned and destroyed her silks and satins and wore the plainest calicoes she could get, because she thought that was religion. When I went there to preach she looked at me with this old cloak with the keg buttons on, and the Spirit of the Lord bore testimony to me that religion, so far as she was concerned, had a good deal of tradition about it, and that her faith could be tried by the coat a man wore; and as Paul said, if eating meat offended his brethren, he would never eat any more, so I felt a good deal, and one morning I went out and cut off the buttons from my old cloak, and never had a button on it afterwards. By doing this and some other things, which some perhaps would call foolish, I, through the blessing of God and with the assistance of Brother Young, George A. Smith and Willard Richards, caught the whole flock and baptized every soul except one solitary person into the church and kingdom of God."

Those who insist on public (i.e., on public or governmental land) expression of a particular religious tradition to the exclusion of another or who bristle at "Happy Holidays" would do well to consider that Jesus' apostles taught that God "hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth," that Jews, Muslims, Wiccans and atheists are our brothers and sisters and that we will be able to accomplish more united in what we hold in common that we will dwelling upon such petty matters as our neighbor's seasonal habits.

Postscript:

This reminds me of the time I asked to buy Eid ul-Fitr stamps at the post office which were advertised in a poster on the wall. I had to ask three times for Eid stamps and the confused attendant muttered, "What? Aid stamps? Like, first aid? Like, Red Cross?" So I had to break down and said, "No, the stamps for the Islamic holiday with the funny writing on them." She understood that well enough.

Listen

Due to my blogging hiatus of roughly a year from since last fall I thought I might post some of what I've been up to since my arrival in Germany. This post addresses what I've been up to quite narrowly: what I've listened to in the last year.

Beethoven's string quartets have taken up more of my listening time than anything else. I had avoided chamber music in my listening for so long until my frustration with my own ignorance of the repertoire caught up with me last year and I purchased the Takacs Quartet's recordings of the early and late quartets. I've found that while his early quartets define a comprehensible formal standard for Viennese classicism, the ingenuity of his voicing, the violence of his gestures and silences in even the earliest chamber works allows the listener enough surprise as to be vaguely unsettling without destroying the formal framework. The quartets are truly an adventure of the mind. I feel that mine isn't yet nimble enough to grasp many of the later works, but there is more than enough material for a lifetime of listening, study and thought here.

After Beethoven comes Josquin, whom I rediscovered about a year and a half ago. The Missa pange lingua, Missa l'homme armé super voces musicales and the Missa la sol fa re mi recorded by the Tallis Scholars have been a great comfort to me as has

Johann Sebastian Bach's St. Matthew Passion. The music never wears on me and never ceases to amaze me for its inventiveness and infinite variety.

There was a period this year of about a month when a ridiculous desire drove me to listen to the ballet from Sanson et Delila over and over. This small piece is as near perfection as music can be. Saint-Saëns never seemed an ambitious composer to me, but this bagatelle does everything such a piece should and exceeds expectations.

Lastly I would like to mention an addiction I've developed that surprised me. Ever since Lady Gaga became ubiquitous around 2008, the strains of "Just Dance" or "Poker Face" were a constant annoyance, but it wasn't until this February when I first noticed "Bad Romance" that I stopped to listen. I have learned to appreciate the image she has constructed of herself and the intersection of glamour, self-expression and self-concealment and surprisingly good musicality. There was a time a few months ago when I would have said that Lady Gaga was the soundtrack of my time in Afghanistan.

Sleep

Having returned from a grueling day's and night's work at 4AM I put in some headphones and began listening to Josquin des Prez' Missa Pange Lingua as I laid down to sleep. When it came to the Gloria movement and as sleep closed upon me I had a vision of a beautiful procession of animals lined up two by two: great stags and bears and other creatures of the forest. They were lined up in front of a gorgeous icon of our Savior and were doing obeisance. The song of praise flowed from the love and honor that these creatures had for the Lord and they were full of dignity and beauty.