[The following thoughts were prepared for an April 1993 presentation I was invited to give in Vermont to the Norwich Congregational Church.]
Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day. The day chosen marks the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising – widely considered the most courageous act of Jewish resistance to Hitler’s strategy of mass murder. Fifty years ago today, the Nazi forces were making final plans for the next day’s assault. The previous twenty-one months had witnessed the virtual disappearance of Warsaw’s Jewish population. 100,000 Jews had already died of disease, starvation, slave labor, or execution. 300,000 had been deported to concentration camps. The beleaguered survivors of the torn families prepared bunkers and weapons. These poorly equipped and starving fighters would hold off a powerful German occupation force for several weeks before finally succumbing to the inevitable.
Holocaust Remembrance Day -- this special day’s title recognizes our ability to look back, to remember past experiences in and beyond our lives. Before attempting to focus on ‘holocaust’, a few thoughts about memory seem in order. “Why do we remember?” “How should we remember?” “What if we do not remember?” -- these are critical questions. Remembering enlarges our sense of self as we reestablish membership with past experiences. The past is, as Tevye sang in Fiddler on the Roof, “laden with happiness and tears”. It is a sign of maturity to remember without falling under the tyranny of the past or without manipulating the past.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer – executed April 1945 by the Nazis for his complicity with the 20 July 1944 attempt on Hitler’s life -- proposed that we should remember the past with the dispositions of thanksgiving and contrition (a theme frequently referenced in his prison letters). I would add honesty, vulnerability, and courage.
I did not grow up remembering the Holocaust in this way. My sense of self was first challenged by the Holocaust seventeen years ago. I was traveling for the first time in Europe. I was alone. I took the earliest train out of Munich for the few kilometers to the location of what remained of Dachau concentration camp. The gates into the camp were open. The grounds were silent. No one else had arrived. I walked quietly into the past. The photographs, the lectures, the memoirs, the documentaries to which I had been exposed were transformed into a shocking consciousness of the horror that shook my foundations. Curiosity quickly gave way as I made the decision to cross that threshold in remembering beyond which the past irreversibly impacts the present. Gawking was no longer a risk. However, looking and listening was awkward, embarrassing. It even felt disrespectful. Honest words are painful.
The word ‘holocaust’ -- which gained English currency in the mid-1950s -- literally means completely consumed by fire. What images do we associate with ‘holocaust’? Piles of shoes/glasses/suitcases, nakedness, starvation, rape, experimentation, dulled eyes, beatings, disease, ashes, mass graves? Or perhaps brutality, slaughter, innocence, dehumanization, darkness?
Where were their friends? Who were their friends? Eli Wiesel -- a Holocaust survivor and now persistent witness -- has said that the opposite of life is not death; the opposite of life is indifference.
The images of the Holocaust correspond strikingly with the image of Job. Though (or perhaps because of being) personally hedged about with excessive good fortune, he had dreaded catastrophe (3:24). The initial blows come without warning -- loss of children and property. Lamenting in sackcloth and ashes, he grits out what previously had been an easy prayer: “The Lord gives, the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
Then his health fails. Weeks and months pass. He shrinks to a shadow of his former self. He can get no relief from the open sores that cover his frail body. He eats little, as food has lost its taste. Nightmares keep him from deep, refreshing sleep. Acquaintances and family abandon him. Some forget. Others gawk and ridicule. His foul breath offends even his wife.
The three individuals for whom Job had reserved the most intimate meaning of ‘friend’ meet together and hurry to their stricken friend. When close enough to see but far enough not yet to be noticed, they hesitate in horror. They cannot recognize Job. After steadying themselves, they approach their friend. For seven days and nights, they sit with him in silence. Finally, Job utters words of pain and despair. Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar stumble and fail. Job senses their fear and feels their attack on the one thing left to him -- his integrity. He says:
What verdict is drawn when we place our attempts to be a friend alongside this challenge?
References to the starving in Somalia, the raped and slaughtered in the former Yugoslavia, the degraded victims of gang crimes in Los Angeles must have a place when we ask, “Who does Job represent for us?” However, such references alone may keep the issue at a safe distance. We can turn away with an easy conscience, satisfied by a hollow prayer or an extra dollar in the offering. No. If we are to feel the full pressure of Job’s words, we must focus on concrete relationships -- relationships present in this gathering or waiting for us when we leave. To whom are we bonded by vow, even if ‘holocaust’ strikes? How different from Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar are we prepared to be?
Quakers call their congregations ‘societies of friends’. Do we constitute a gathering of friends? I am not asking if we are all devoted to each other as Job defined friendship. To suggest such would be presumptuous and would neglect the wider network of relationships we all have. I am asking if we are gathered here as individuals deeply concerned to learn how to be the sort of friend who remains loyal when face to face with the despair imposed by ‘holocaust’.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer participated in a covert effort, organized within a branch of the military’s secret services, to bring Hitler down by coup or assassination. He was arrested April 1943. After two years in the grip of the Gestapo as a political prisoner, Bonhoeffer died by hanging 9 April 1945. Just a few weeks before his arrest, Bonhoeffer had written a reflection piece entitled ‘After Ten Years’. His point of reference – Hitler’s takeover in January 1933. He closed the essay with a question I want to put alongside our thoughts about remaining loyal to a despairing friend. The question – “Are we still of any use?” To this question, Bonhoeffer wrote:
These are piercing questions. Many ‘communities’ or ‘gatherings’ in our society set tables that have no place for a person whose despair is manifest in painfully honest words. May we be granted the humility and the courage to set tables at which despairing men or women, boys or girls, feel no expectation other than to simply and honestly be themselves.
Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day. The day chosen marks the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising – widely considered the most courageous act of Jewish resistance to Hitler’s strategy of mass murder. Fifty years ago today, the Nazi forces were making final plans for the next day’s assault. The previous twenty-one months had witnessed the virtual disappearance of Warsaw’s Jewish population. 100,000 Jews had already died of disease, starvation, slave labor, or execution. 300,000 had been deported to concentration camps. The beleaguered survivors of the torn families prepared bunkers and weapons. These poorly equipped and starving fighters would hold off a powerful German occupation force for several weeks before finally succumbing to the inevitable.
Holocaust Remembrance Day -- this special day’s title recognizes our ability to look back, to remember past experiences in and beyond our lives. Before attempting to focus on ‘holocaust’, a few thoughts about memory seem in order. “Why do we remember?” “How should we remember?” “What if we do not remember?” -- these are critical questions. Remembering enlarges our sense of self as we reestablish membership with past experiences. The past is, as Tevye sang in Fiddler on the Roof, “laden with happiness and tears”. It is a sign of maturity to remember without falling under the tyranny of the past or without manipulating the past.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer – executed April 1945 by the Nazis for his complicity with the 20 July 1944 attempt on Hitler’s life -- proposed that we should remember the past with the dispositions of thanksgiving and contrition (a theme frequently referenced in his prison letters). I would add honesty, vulnerability, and courage.
I did not grow up remembering the Holocaust in this way. My sense of self was first challenged by the Holocaust seventeen years ago. I was traveling for the first time in Europe. I was alone. I took the earliest train out of Munich for the few kilometers to the location of what remained of Dachau concentration camp. The gates into the camp were open. The grounds were silent. No one else had arrived. I walked quietly into the past. The photographs, the lectures, the memoirs, the documentaries to which I had been exposed were transformed into a shocking consciousness of the horror that shook my foundations. Curiosity quickly gave way as I made the decision to cross that threshold in remembering beyond which the past irreversibly impacts the present. Gawking was no longer a risk. However, looking and listening was awkward, embarrassing. It even felt disrespectful. Honest words are painful.
The word ‘holocaust’ -- which gained English currency in the mid-1950s -- literally means completely consumed by fire. What images do we associate with ‘holocaust’? Piles of shoes/glasses/suitcases, nakedness, starvation, rape, experimentation, dulled eyes, beatings, disease, ashes, mass graves? Or perhaps brutality, slaughter, innocence, dehumanization, darkness?
Where were their friends? Who were their friends? Eli Wiesel -- a Holocaust survivor and now persistent witness -- has said that the opposite of life is not death; the opposite of life is indifference.
The images of the Holocaust correspond strikingly with the image of Job. Though (or perhaps because of being) personally hedged about with excessive good fortune, he had dreaded catastrophe (3:24). The initial blows come without warning -- loss of children and property. Lamenting in sackcloth and ashes, he grits out what previously had been an easy prayer: “The Lord gives, the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
Then his health fails. Weeks and months pass. He shrinks to a shadow of his former self. He can get no relief from the open sores that cover his frail body. He eats little, as food has lost its taste. Nightmares keep him from deep, refreshing sleep. Acquaintances and family abandon him. Some forget. Others gawk and ridicule. His foul breath offends even his wife.
The three individuals for whom Job had reserved the most intimate meaning of ‘friend’ meet together and hurry to their stricken friend. When close enough to see but far enough not yet to be noticed, they hesitate in horror. They cannot recognize Job. After steadying themselves, they approach their friend. For seven days and nights, they sit with him in silence. Finally, Job utters words of pain and despair. Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar stumble and fail. Job senses their fear and feels their attack on the one thing left to him -- his integrity. He says:
14When desperate people give up on God Almighty, their friends, at least, should stick with them. 15But my brothers are fickle as a gulch in the desert – 16one day they’re gushing with water from melting ice and snow cascading out of the mountains, 17but by midsummer they’re dry, gullies baked dry in the sun. 18Travelers who spot them and go out of their way for a drink, end up in a waterless gulch and die of thirst. 19Merchant caravans from Tema see them and expect water, tourists from Sheba hope for a cool drink. 20They arrive so confident – but what a disappointment! They get there, and their faces fall! 21And you, my so-called friends, are no better – there’s nothing to you! One look at a hard scene and you shrink in fear. 22It’s not as though I asked you for anything – I didn’t ask you for one red cent – 23nor did I beg you to go out on a limb for me. So why all this dodging and shuffling? 24Confront me with the truth and I’ll shut up, show me where I’ve gone off the track. 25Honest words never hurt anyone, but what’s the point of all this pious bluster? 26You pretend to tell me what’s wrong with my life, but treat my words of anguish as so much hot air. 27Are people mere things to you? Are friends just items of profit and loss? 28Look me in the eye! Do you think I’d lie to your face? 29Think it over – no double-talk! Think carefully – my integrity is on the line! 30Can you detect anything false in what I say? Don’t you trust me to discern good from evil? (Peterson translation)
What verdict is drawn when we place our attempts to be a friend alongside this challenge?
References to the starving in Somalia, the raped and slaughtered in the former Yugoslavia, the degraded victims of gang crimes in Los Angeles must have a place when we ask, “Who does Job represent for us?” However, such references alone may keep the issue at a safe distance. We can turn away with an easy conscience, satisfied by a hollow prayer or an extra dollar in the offering. No. If we are to feel the full pressure of Job’s words, we must focus on concrete relationships -- relationships present in this gathering or waiting for us when we leave. To whom are we bonded by vow, even if ‘holocaust’ strikes? How different from Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar are we prepared to be?
Quakers call their congregations ‘societies of friends’. Do we constitute a gathering of friends? I am not asking if we are all devoted to each other as Job defined friendship. To suggest such would be presumptuous and would neglect the wider network of relationships we all have. I am asking if we are gathered here as individuals deeply concerned to learn how to be the sort of friend who remains loyal when face to face with the despair imposed by ‘holocaust’.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer participated in a covert effort, organized within a branch of the military’s secret services, to bring Hitler down by coup or assassination. He was arrested April 1943. After two years in the grip of the Gestapo as a political prisoner, Bonhoeffer died by hanging 9 April 1945. Just a few weeks before his arrest, Bonhoeffer had written a reflection piece entitled ‘After Ten Years’. His point of reference – Hitler’s takeover in January 1933. He closed the essay with a question I want to put alongside our thoughts about remaining loyal to a despairing friend. The question – “Are we still of any use?” To this question, Bonhoeffer wrote:
“We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds; we have been drenched by many storms; we have learned the arts of equivocation and pretense; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical. Are we still of any use?”Which way are we to look -- toward the heavens or back to our places in the world? Bonhoeffer’s question breaks our gaze toward the heavens. Are we still of any use -- to our partner? to our children? to our parents? to our neighbors? to our colleagues? to a stranger whose life becomes entwined with ours?
These are piercing questions. Many ‘communities’ or ‘gatherings’ in our society set tables that have no place for a person whose despair is manifest in painfully honest words. May we be granted the humility and the courage to set tables at which despairing men or women, boys or girls, feel no expectation other than to simply and honestly be themselves.
“Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward
slaughter. If you say, ‘But we knew nothing about this’, does not he who weighs
the heart perceive it? Will he not repay each person according to what he
has done?” (Proverbs 24:11-12)
