Post on 26-Aug-2020
Sabbatical Talk
Thank you:
The 13 weeks of my sabbatical have provided me with some of
the deepest, challenging experiences of my life, and yet through
all that I have seen and experienced, grim as much of it has
been, this has also been I think one of the most fruitful
experiences of my life. So I want to start tonight by saying a
huge thank you to you all.
Thank you first for your prayers.
I asked before I left for prayers for safety with all my travelling
and I drove 3815 miles without a hitch – I witnessed some scary
road incidents, but I only nearly caused one and God even saved
me then from my foolishness; and the car didn’t miss a beat.
And I was well for the whole duration of the trips – not even
one cold!
I asked for prayers for the weather to be kind. Many of the
places I wanted to see are in remote places where the Nazis had
hidden their camps from prying eyes; camps like Treblinka in
such a barren place that I saw 3 wolves in a river meadow close
by, or like the camp called Natzweiller-Struthof 800 metres
above sea level in the Vosges mountains.
Bad weather would have severely curtailed my chances of
getting to these places. But perhaps there were only 3-4 days
when the temperature was around freezing. I saw snow once,
late one afternoon at Auschwitz, but even that was a brief 1hr
flurry which was cleared by sleet. Otherwise I saw evidence of
past snow with the remnants of snow piles at Treblinka and
Flossenburg, but the weather didn’t interfere with any of my
plans. Indeed I scraped ice of the car windscreen only on 3 or 4
occasions – remember this was Feb-March in Poland.
Your prayers also seemed to expand time – there was always
enough time to spend as long as I needed in a given place.
One person prayed that I would see the things I needed to
through unexpected sightings in the world around me and wow
did the natural world speak to me through the sights I saw. This
is a Fieldfare, a type of thrush, at Majdanek.
The same person prayed for protection over my mind and body
and I did feel protected from being oppressed by the evil I saw
or heard about.
So thank you for all your prayers.
And finally thank you to those who took on extra responsibility
whilst I was away. Within Church thank you to the Church
Wardens, Readers, all who led and preached, particularly Mike,
and to the office staff too – Jo and Brenda – and to anyone else
who had more to do at church because I was away. Thank you.
But to Fi who held the fort at home and continued to do all her
normal jobs plus mine, must go my biggest thanks. Without
your self-sacrifice this wouldn’t be possible.
And finally praise be to the Lord himself – for the experience
was far richer than ever imagined. God did bless me richly and I
hope that in the weeks and months to come that blessing will
be able to shared with you. Tonight is just the start.
So why do this?
In ministry I have faced some huge challenges over the last 10
years, and at times I’ve had to support and walk alongside
people whose life circumstances have been awful. But really
this all culminated in the work I did with a family who lost a son
through a tragic murder. “Where is God in this?” I was asked.
Oh I could give the standard answer of human fallenness, free
will and sin, but how can that help? It feels glib, useless.
In His life Jesus came across the full range of human
experiences, and ultimately He suffered and died on that cross
of Calvary, experiencing the pain of loss and bereavement from
His Father. And it was from that base that my sabbatical started,
with 4 weeks reading and reflection about the crucifixion, the
resurrection, and possible Christian responses to the Holocaust.
I read some amazing books which helped me prepare for my 5
week European trip.
I do feel that I have learnt so much from all I’ve seen and
experienced and I will share some of that tonight and more in
the months to come. But I want to stress this is only where I
have reached to date, and I know my understanding this side of
heaven is only ever going to be partial. I recognise too that my
thoughts may not tally with yours, but all I can do is share
where I’m at. So please bear with me – I really don’t have all the
answers to the question of where is God when evil manifests.
But I hope what I bring helps.
I want to start unpacking my European trip with a few quick
thoughts. It was Alexsander Soltz… who said once “the line
between good and evil does not run between nation states but
right through the middle of every human heart.” And he’s right
isn’t he? I have moments when I am surprised, disappointed
and frustrated by the thoughts that pierce my mind, despite the
fact my life is undoubtedly purer and holier now than when I
came to faith in 1991. So we need when considering the
Holocaust to avoid demonising nations.
The crimes were committed by the Nazis and not the German
nation in its entirety, as there were many amazing Christian
Germans who fought the system like Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer
whose bust this is in the Church on the grounds of the former
CC of Flossenburg where he was executed.
But equally there were Nazi party members who fought against
the evil – of whom Oskar Schindler, whose factory I was blessed
to visit in Krakow was one. So not all Nazis were bad.
So I shall avoid generalities.
I also want to burst a key myth too which I have heard so often
and yet it absolutely untrue. And this is important for reasons I
will explain shortly.
On my second day at Auschwitz I was on a study tour led by a
very knowledgeable lady called Agneiska, whose mannerisms
were just like our own Caroline Gould. You have a Polish
doppelganger. A British man on this tour commented about the
lack of bird song at Auschwitz-Birkenau, how the birds aren’t
there because of the evil perpetrated. Agnieska our guide
smiled, and said “Oh yes – it’s a lovely story the British tell isn’t
it. But it’s not true.
Oh yes they may well not have heard or seen birds there as they
focus on the railway line, or the crematoria or the barracks, but
actually the natural world very quickly reclaimed the vacated
site after WW2 and birdsong is everywhere.”
And I need to tell you she was spot on: I heard so much
birdsong it was untrue. Flocks of Fieldfares in the trees and then
overhead by the crematoria. Here is a pond where thousands of
tonnes of human ash from the crematoria had been tipped
leaving the water a very strange colour – not a very natural
place… But look again – here are 2 mallard ducks swimming.
And then there were lapwings doing their mating routines in the
fields of the barracks, birds of prey circling overhead.
and I came across a huge flock of starlings in one field of ex-
barracks. There’s loads of birdsong and wildlife at Auschwitz-
Birkenau.
The reason I need to expunge that myth is because it
encourages the thought that the evil was so great, that the
place cannot be inhabited again. But that’s nonsense, the
natural world is everywhere in Auschwitz-Birkenau. So
therefore let’s not see that place as beyond redemption – if
Christ took all the evil and sin of the world upon himself on the
cross, then that includes the evil of the Holocaust, even at
Auschwitz.
So what did I do:
In the course of 34 days I visited:
a) 5 extermination camps:
Chelmno, Treblinka, Belzec, Majdanek and finally
Auschwitz.
1,100,000 Jewish people were murdered in Auschwitz, and
nearly 2,000,000 altogether in the other 4 combined, so I
saw 5 sites where over 3million of the 6 million Jewish
people who perished in the holocaust
b) 8 concentration camps:
BB, Neuengamme, Gross-Rosen, Plaszow, Mittelbau-Dora,
Buchenwald, Flossenburg, Natzweiller-Struthof
c) And the sites of 3 former Jewish ghettos:
Lublin, Krakow and Terezin
I wonder how many of those names were new to you? Post-war
different camps had different significances for the Allied
powers. For every camp liberated brought the horrors of
multitudes dying and piles of corpses.
Majdanek in Lublin was the first cc captured by the Russians,
and its horrors made it a focal point for remembrance
particularly for young children in subsequent years.
The Americans captured Buchenwald and the sights they saw on
entering the camp meant that when the 70th anniversary of the
camp liberations came, it was Buchenwald where President
Obama went accompanied by the famous holocaust survivor
from that very camp – Ellie Wiesel.
For the French, Natzweiller-Struthof, the only camp on French
soil has become a place which all schoolchildren in the area visit
with its focus now on resisting evil and nations working
together.
And for the British – it was Bergen-Belsen where Anne Frank
died and whose horrific aftermath will be etched on anyone’s
memory if you’ve seen the films.
And Auschwitz – well it was liberated on 27th January 1945, and
given that it was the camp where systematised slaughter of the
Jewish people reached its nadir, that’s why that date 27th Jan is
now International Holocaust memorial day.
Stories:
I want to tell you a few stories now and as I go on I will begin to
weave in where I believe God fits into this, until at the end I’ll
hope to unpack this.
Let’s start though with a couple of grim tales. I promise I won’t
be too explicit, but I need to bring us to look over the cliff edge
of evil if we are to appreciate the wonder of what Christ can
bring. I have read loads about the Holocaust and I don’t think I
could have been better prepared for my trip, yet there were
moments I was just aghast. And I was glad that was the case –
because on a trip like this you fear becoming emotionally
hardened by what you see. Well far from that, I found the
experiences frequently brought me to tears – not of brokenness
but in a sense I believe entering in part into God’s own sorrow
about what had been.
I had read a great deal about Majdanek Concentration and
Extermination Camp on the outskirts of Lublin. In Holocaust
terms it is believed about 80,000 were murdered there. From
the Nazi’s point of view it was the least effective of the
extermination camps, yet on 3rd November 1943 the biggest
single execution of civilians took place in its grounds. 18,400
Jewish men, women and children were shot dead in pits dug by
the victims. From morning till evening, loud orchestral music
was played through the camp loudspeakers to try and hide the
sounds of shooting. The Nazis called the operation “Erntefest” –
which translates as “Harvest Festival”!
I’d read about this, but to see the ripples in the land in the camp
today, which leave no need for imagination at all, was deeply
shocking. That sense of loss was brought home to me very
poignantly, as right next to this site was both the mausoleum
and the camp crematorium, and whilst I was there several
hundred Israeli Police Officers in Europe visiting Holocaust sites
held a prayer meeting with solemn singing. Deeply moving.
And for a second example, leaving out all the most gruesome
details, I discovered that the gas chamber installed at
Natzweiller-Struthof camp had been put in for a unique
purpose. Not for the mass extermination of prisoners but to aid
“so-called medical experiments.”
It started when a Nazi doctor from Strasbourg University
wanted to test possible antidotes to mustard gas and phosgene
gas, 2 gases used in WW1 which the Nazis were contemplating
using. The gas chamber was set up to enable his experiments on
a number of human guinea pigs (Roma/Sinti and homosexuals
in this case); he could test whether the antidotes worked after
various levels of exposure to the gases – the mustard or
phosgene being released in the gas chamber. Needless to say a
number of the prisoners died and others suffered terrible side
effects. Another doctor wanted a collection of human bodies for
analytical studies, so a further 86 were murdered in these gas
chambers just for that purpose after have been hand picked
based on their body shape. The victims were all Jewish people
deported from Auschwitz, who probably thought therefore they
were going to be safe; but no they died in Natzweiller-Struthof
so someone could further his medical career. Those stories are
2 of many I could tell which makes it ever so important that we
seek to find where God can be found in this carnage.
So before our pudding break, I want to tell you 3 deeply
inspiring stories too. For although evil was manifest in the
Holocaust, there were some remarkable tales of people who
acted heroically.
I want to start briefly with the story of Oskar Schindler, brought
to global attention in Steven Spielberg’s multi-Oscar winning
film “Schindler’s List”. Schindler was a womanising Austrian Nazi
who served in the German military police, who was always after
a fast buck and quick profit. So in 1940 following the invasion of
Poland, he arrived in Krakow and took over a bankrupt
enamelware factory employing firstly local Poles, and then
increasing numbers of Jews from the Krakow ghetto established
in 1941. What happened then defies belief. Schindler witnessing
the cruelty of the Nazis to the Jews close at hand, and coming to
appreciate them for the people they were at his factory, had a
"Road to Damascus" moment and from that moment on worked
tirelessly to provide humane, safe working conditions for his
Jewish employees, employing even those incompetent at their
jobs to save their lives.
When the Krakow ghetto was liquidated in January 1943 he
saved the lives of those who were working for him and he
actually negotiated the setting up of barracks for his Jewish
employees on site rather than in the local Plaszow
Concentration Camp where conditions were atrocious. You see
Schindler, being officially a Nazi official, though in reality by now
only as cover, was on close terms with the Concentration Camp
Commander Amon Goth and as a charmer Schindler was able to
get what he wanted. The story becomes even more remarkable
in that when the Russians closed in on Krakow in summer 1944
and the CC at Plaszow was to be shut, with all the Jews
therefore being sent to Auschwitz and certain death, Schindler
actually relocated his entire factory to modern day Slovakia and
took his whole workforce with him which involved the women
being rescued out of Auschwitz. No other transport into
Auschwitz were ever rescued from it. Needless to say that after
WW2 finished, and 2000 Jewish lives had been saved. Oskar
Schindler, was declared "Righteous among the Nations" by the
Yad Vashem Jerusalem Holocaust centre.
Less well-known, but also linked to this story, is that of a Polish
Pharmacist called Tadeusz Pankiewicz. His Pharmacy called
Apteka Pod Orlem (literally the Pharmacy under the Eagle) was
situated on the corner of a square that got incorporated into
the Jewish ghetto when it was set up in Krakow in 1941.
Pankiewicz was encouraged to find new premises elsewhere but
he was a compassionate man and decided to stay, and Tadeusz
and his three female assistants helped the Jews in the ghetto in
extraordinary ways. They shouldn't even have been allowed to
operate a non-Jewish business in the ghetto but surprisingly the
Nazi's allowed it, and as a result many lives were saved. One
incredible story is about the amount of hair dye the pharmacy
dispensed to make people look younger and therefore
acceptable for work. In the ghetto if you worked you lived, so
hair dye for some was a life saver. Equally he dispensed a drug
called "luminal" to parents of small children - it basically
sedated them so they wouldn't create a fuss during
deportations and attract the Nazis unwanted attention (they
shot noisy children...) - in this way saving more lives.
And then of course there was all the ordinary medicines he
dispensed. Moreover he also kept for safekeeping valuable
Torah scrolls given him. Tadeusz Pankiewicz was awarded by
Yad Vashem (the Jewish Holocaust Memorial Institute in
Jerusalem) the title "Righteous among the nations" after the
war in memory of his extraordinary efforts as a non-Jew to save
the Jewish people.
And one last story before our puddings. In Treblinka, where
nearly 900,000 Jewish people died, I learnt about the incredible
story of Janusz Korczak .
He was a Jewish doctor who worked in Warsaw running an
orphanage for Jewish children called “Dom Sierrot” and such
were his gifts that he also produced radio programmes for
children, taught at summer camps and lectured at universities.
In 1940 the Nazis set up the Warsaw Ghetto and although
Janusz Korczak was offered the chance to leave the ghetto (he
was after all a very useful Jew to the Nazis), he would not
abandon the orphans as he sought to alleviate their plight in the
awful ghetto conditions. Indeed he wrote a diary which has
been since published about the situation. In August 1942 the
time came for the orphanage to be included in a deportation to
Treblinka extermination camp, in whose gas chambers virtually
all the Warsaw deportees perished. Even though Korczak was
offered several chances to be released back into every day life,
even having been warned personally what going to Treblinka
meant, he would not abandon his 200 children. And so he
accompanied them onto the cattle wagons bound for the death
camp and into the gas chambers. A stone in his memory lies
amidst a field of sharp jagged stones surrounding the memorial
at Treblinka.
In each of these three stories we see something of Christ in the
lives of Janus Korczak the doctor, Tadeusz Pankiewicz the
Pharmacist and Oskar Schindler the factory owner. I will explain
more after the puddings. But to close this section, here is an
image of the memorial at Treblinka next to which lies Korczak’s
memorial stone.
The central Treblinka memorial was built on the site of the
former gas chambers and has several distinct features. Firstly
the savage break in the stone down the middle indicates the
abrupt end of life. And secondly, in the stone on top you see
depictions of mangled body parts.
The Holocaust destroyed 6 million Jewish lives – where was God
in all that went on?
Part 2
Ellie Wiesel, the Jewish Holocaust survivor, who was liberated
from Buchenwald Concentration Camp in April 1945, tells the
following story from his time in the camp. It opens a door to us
beginning to comprehend the question “where was God in the
camps?”: [Ellie Wiesel “Night” p75]
The SS men hanged two Jewish men and a youth in front of the
whole camp. The men died quickly but the death throes of the
youth lasted for half an hour. “Where is God? Where is he?”
someone asked behind me.
As the youth still hung in torment in the noose after a long time
I heard the man call again “Where is God now?”
And I heard a voice in myself answer “Where is he? He is here,
he is hanging there on the gallows…”
Jesus suffered death on the cross. But it wasn’t just his death, it
was a death during which he bore the sins of the whole of
humanity for all time. Your sin, my sin; yesterday, today and
tomorrow’s sin.
Jesus death was precisely to save and free us from the sins of
the world. Those we commit and those committed against us.
Reflecting on Ellie Wiesel’s story, I looked in detail again at the
story of Christ’s journey to the cross. As I did so I found
inescapable links to the fate of those condemned to death at
Auschwitz. I want to explore this with you now and my prayer is
that as we see what Jesus underwent in Jerusalem 2000 years
ago, we may see that it closely resembles the experiences of the
condemned Jewish people.
Event in Jesus trial/crucifixion Comparison event for condemned Jew
The appearance of a choice: Jesus or Barabbas
The appearance of a choice on ramp: To the left (death) or right
Fickle crowd stirred by enemy to choose death for Jesus
Doctor selection (Mengele – demonic) to determine life or death
Pilate abdicates responsibility – washes his hands…
Nazis complicit in war crimes tried to do likewise and blame their superiors – we had no choice…
Simon Cyrene carried Jesus’ cross
Sense that God in crucified Christ accompanied these prisoners to their death
Jesus abused – crown of thorns and hit on head with staff
Condemned screamed at and beaten whilst on their way to gas chambers
Jesus stripped by soldiers Condemned had to strip before death
Divided up Jesus clothes and cast lots
Clothes & belongings of condemned were pilfered and given away.
The sentence passed on Jesus was revealed in the notice above his head – his crime
Over the condemned there was no notice but their sentence was the release of a poison chemical.
Jesus crucified between 2 strangers – 2 criminals
Condemned died surrounded by strangers
Darkness descended at Golgotha The lights were turned out in the gas chambers before the Zyklon B added
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” – desolation and rejection
Sense of absolute forsakenness and helplessness
Considering this, I have no doubt not only that Jesus would be
able to totally identify with the suffering of Jewish people in the
Holocaust, but also that as they cried out in their suffering, just
as the Father’s heart was broken by the treatment/crucifixion of
His Son, so the Father’s heart broke for the chosen people –
“the apple of his eye”.
But I believe there is still more in this which we can see, firstly
by looking back at the three amazing stories earlier.
Janusz Korczak accompanied his orphans from the ghetto to the
gas chambers at Treblinka – he would not leave them. I believe
the Jewish people too, though they experienced that sense of
abandonment expressed by Christ, were not abandoned by
God. Just as Elie Wiesel sensed God with the man hanging on
the gallows in Buchenwald, I have come to that belief that God
in Christ also was with the victims of the Holocaust even if they
didn’t sense it, just as Janusz Korczak accompanied his orphans.
Tadeusz Pankiewicz the Pharmacist was a source of
encouragement and crucial medicines for the ghetto inhabitants
giving them what they needed. Although many Jews struggled
with the question of “where is God in this?”, still others found
the strength and comfort they needed for journeys and to face
their deaths. These were usually the religious Jewish people,
because remember the Holocaust was based on racial grounds,
not faith grounds, and so secular and religious Jews were
slaughtered alongside each other. I believe after all my
sabbatical experiences, that God never relinquished His Chosen
People and still has a purpose for the Jewish People. In Mark 13,
Jesus speaks of the signs of the End of the Age – this is usually
linked to both the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple and to
Christ’s 2nd Coming; yet as a prophetic word parts of it can apply
at other times too. Let me read Mark 13.14-20:
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I believe in the light of what happened to the Jewish people,
this passage can speak powerfully about the Holocaust, and on
that basis I believe God still has a plan for faithful Jewish people.
As Paul writes in Romans 11.28-29:
28 As far as the gospel is concerned, they are enemies for your
sake; but as far as election is concerned, they are loved on
account of the patriarchs, 29 for God’s gifts and his call are
irrevocable.
So we’ve looked at the Doctor and orphanage director and the
pharmacist, but it’s in the story of Oskar Schindler that we see
the closest parallels to the work of Jesus. Schindler’s actions
saved the lives of all the Jews who worked for him. And similarly
as followers of Christ we know that although we will have an
earthly death, all who bear Christ’s name and work for Him in
this life will find they are eternally saved.
And this all came together for me when I walked around the
huge Memorial that the former East German Government set
up on the hillside near the former Buchenwald Concentration
Camp.
The history of creating the memorial was complex, for with the
onset of the Cold War, the East Germany leaders wanted to
create a memorial which not only spoke of the defeat of the
Nazis, but also the victory of communism. In line with all this
was slowly but surely created a variety of myths, actually plain
lies, so that a cult grew which justified the superiority and
legitimacy of the DDR state. Primary amongst these myths was
that communism had defeated the fascists and any reference to
American liberation was ignored in favour of a doctrine of the
communists usurping the Nazis, and specifically the communists
of East Germany. Needless to say when Germany was reunified
in 1990 a lot of work had to be done at the site of Buchenwald,
but that story is too long to tell, so back to the memorial.
The idea was to create a path from the Buchenwald Camp to a
huge open air monument on the hillside which could be seen
from distance. And the place of this memorial was key - the
Nazis had buried 3000 bodies in natural depressions on the
hillside and so these depressions needed to form part of the
memorial. And so in 1954 the memorial opened, and still stands
on the Ettersburg hillside today.
You enter the memorial by walking through a beautiful arched
gateway down the hillside past a series of 7 stone panels
showing stages in the camps life from establishment to the
imaginary victory of the communist inmates over the Nazis.
The panels are remarkably good quality - the one I've included
shows the work at the quarry - with prisoners pulling a quarry
wagon up the slope being berated by SS guards.
Standout images are the SS officer with the dog (bottom left),
the dead/exhausted inmate (bottom right), and the figures on
the wagon in an imagined victory type pose!!! Although the 7
panels end in camp liberation, by this stage you've reached the
bottom of the hill, and the idea was that the camp's duration
had been a descent into the depths of hell and depravity (even
if the comrades had supposedly won!), and so at the bottom of
the steps, you arrive at the site of the three mass graves - all on
a level and linked by a wide memorial avenue pathway. The
mass grave depressions were landscaped and surrounded by
dramatic stone walls. The mass graves were huge and it was
very sobering to think about these bodies were just dumped in
pits in the woods. The wide avenue which links the 3 mass
graves at the bottom of the hillside is called the "Avenue of
Nations" and consists of 18 stone each bearing the name of a
different country whose citizens died in Buchenwald.
At the end of the avenue the 3rd mass grave lies directly below
the bell tower, so you then ascend a lot of steps back up the
hillside till you reach the central square with the bell tower and
a commemorative figural group showing the victory of the
communists over Fascism! The group is brilliantly sculpted but
the figures from child to old person are all men!!!
No women at all despite the fact there were women in
Buchenwald - albeit not that many - a very strange error I
thought. The bell tower looks just like a lighthouse and is meant
to symbolise the communist beacon of hope and victory - it is
illuminated at night and can be seen many miles away!
I couldn't help reflecting on how the memorial in its conception,
trying to convey a fictional communist struggle and martyrdom
for the rebirth of a new socialist Germany, actually served as a
brilliant metaphor for the Christian message. The elegant gate
at the start of the memorial speaks of the world being good at
creation;
the descent down the hillside past the 7 plaques showing
windows of camp life to the mass graves and avenue of nations,
spoke to me of how humanity has descended and disintegrated
on abandoning God's ways to levels of depravity which only
have one end point:
death and annihilation. Equally the descent and the communist
message of sacrifice could be applied to Christ's willingness to
die and descend to the depths to rescue humanity.
Then the bell tower looked to me like a lighthouse, a beacon of
hope and new life, resurrection and new beginnings, rising as it
did out of the "Avenue of the Nations" remembering the dead.
It appears to reflect the Christian message of Christ's
resurrection bringing new life, restoration and hope to a broken
world.
I set out to visit the memorial as a piece of history, it had played
such a huge part in the life of the DDR, but I came away
reflecting on how those who designed the memorial must have
had the Christian history of salvation in mind when they put it
together. They had dressed the memorial up as a victory for the
communists, but in truth there was not a victory for socialism.
The Nazis were defeated by superior armed forces, but the only
victory over the wickedness of the Fascists and the ultimate
evils of the world is found elsewhere. Reflecting on "God and
evil" I found it an extraordinarily fruitful place for reflection.
And that brings me to a final moment during my trip which
spoke profoundly to me about new life after the Holocaust, and
Christ’s resurrection. In the old Jewish district of Krakow where
the Jewish community thrived before the Holocaust, I visited
many of the old synagogues that had surprisingly survived. On
my last day in Krakow I visited the Remu Synagogue, the
smallest of all. But unlike several of the others it is a synagogue
where prayer and worship has returned. It is exquisite and still
used through the week. The place felt so prayerful and it was
fantastic to witness that though the Nazi's had tried to
exterminate all Jewish culture (and in Krakow alone 63,000
Jewish people died), they hadn't succeeded. From the Jewish
man wearing the Yarmulka (skull cap) at the entrance to the
synagogue itself, the place was alive. Then outside I was in for a
very special treat.
The Jewish cemetery at Remu had suffered destruction at the
hands of the Nazis, but not complete at all, as many of the old
grave stones had lain under the top soil for centuries and were
protected from the evil eyes that wanted to destroy the
heritage. Therefore when these stones were uncovered after
the war, what was left was a 50% intact cemetery, including the
untouched grave of the rabbi who founded the synagogue in
the 16th Century. But walking around something else had
caught my eye. The synagogue was full of Fieldfares, which are
really common in Poland (a type of larger thrush with a blue
head that we only see in winter here when the weather on the
continent is very cold). Well I'd seen flocks of several hundred
fieldfares flying and roosting at Majdanek Extermination Camp
in Lublin, but they were quite skittish and you couldn't get near
them, but these Fieldfares in a city cemetery were much more
used to people. One bird was so tame that I got to within 6 foot
of it and took the attached photo - I doubt I will ever take such
an incredible close up of a wild bird again.
The Fieldfares were after the worms which were easy pickings
in the damp cemetery ground. Their presence again spoke to
me of the fact that although the Nazis had wanted to kill a
whole community, life, exuberant life, precious beautiful life
remains. The Remu Synagogue is a tiny oasis of renewed and
reborn Jewish life and worship in a nation Poland, whose Jewish
population was decimated; yet that rebirth, like Christ’s victory
after the torture of the Cross, speaks powerfully again that
death is not the end.
Questions?