My Polish gentile friends' fathers and mothers were not incarcerated in "Polish death camps." They were Nazi camps. Nazi from the start to the finish.
Because the Nazi's put their death camps -- Auschwitz, Treblinka, Majdanek, Birkenau -- out of their way on Polish soil,, it has become common to speak of the "Polish death camps."
Let's say this altogether: Nazi death camps. Nazi death camps. Nazi death camps.
The Polish experience of the death camps was death, not authority. They did not administer, run, rule or in any way have responsibility for what the occupation German forces did on their territory.
President Obama made the mistake again yesterday and we're up in arms. It has been such an uphill slog to gain respect for the Righteous Gentiles who saved Jews, who paid with their own lives. There was as much, and as little, anti-Semitism in Poland as in Spain, France, Norway and most certainly in Germany, but this does not broad-brush the Polish people with the blame for these hideous wreckers of humanity and challenges to the human condition.
The camps were conceived in Germany, executed by Nazi officials, and set on Polish soil only for proximity to the victims (and to keep from offending the German sensibilities).
I was shocked to find my Polish gentile friends and their parents with the same blue tattoos on their arms as my Jewish friends in Chicago. Poles were kept in the death camps as long as they were useful for hard labor. Then they were summarily killed too.
The Nazi's --- I am so tempted to return evil for evil and simply call them German's --- had a plan to annihilate the majority of the Polish population to leave it as "living room" for their own people.
So let us be clear: The Polish people, Jewish and Gentile, were victims of the Nazi plan of genocide. The Poles were victims of the war, not (any more than elsewhere) collaborators.
If you want to talk about collaboration, let's sit down and talk about Vichy France. Why are we not still outraged and preoccupied, prejudiced about that? It is time for history to tell its story with integrity and honesty.
Peace to the memory of the victims of the Shoah, and to all those Polish gentiles who also died at the hands of the Nazi's and their death camps.
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Decoration Day
My mother taught me to drive in the cemetery.
It was the one place, she said, that I could not kill anybody. Also, she joked (she actually made a few jokes from year to year) that if I made a terrible mistake, well, we were already in the place where we would end up after all. She did not make me laugh often but this was her scandalous joke and she told it often, to anyone who would listen. I sometimes wonder if there was some secret humor she was keeping to herself, her last laugh at the dead.
At any rate... Generations of Andersons, Swansons, and Ericksons were buried in Linn Grove Cemetery. In Colorado we mean, by generations, at the most four or five but we went all that way back. My great-great grandfather August was out here for the post-gold rush gold rush by the 1860's. He was a miner in Gilpin County, Central City, long before Colorado became a state and he is listed with his brother in the 1870 census. Fortune failed them in gold country so they became "sod-busters" on the dry, desert plains north of Denver and were attracted later to the county north of Greeley between the Cache le Poudre and South Platte Rivers. Irrigation was invented and farms began to spring up.
C.V. and August wrangled the earth successfully, had bushels of children and children's children and managed to yield fine crops of sugar beets, potatoes, corn and hay.
When I was a kid, before learning to drive, we went to the Linn Grove Cemetery on Memorial Day and it was called Decoration Day. We put petunias on some graves and geraniums on others. If you want to know the truth, my cousins and I wandered around and played. As years went on, I became amazed at just how many Andersons and Swansons and Ericksons had been laid carefully to rest forever in this dry clay dirt.
I don't go to the cemetery anymore. I have learned to drive. I don't need it for that. And I have lost the sense of connection with all those ancestors too. Some I would just as soon forget forever. I inherited some weird DNA, there are some petty stories that bother me, and I just don't feel like I belong.
Some day this summer, though, I will find myself drawn to Linn Grove and stand over those graves and wonder about the ancients who came west on horseback and in wagons and on primitive trains. They came with guts and pick axes and shovels and Singer sewing machines like the one in our dining room. They could have stopped but they kept on coming. They could have found an established city or town to settle in but they kept on moving.
So maybe that line of connection is unbroken after all. I don't forge new ground with a pick ax or dig up much dirt with a hoe -- my garden is modest -- but that impulse to forge new adventures, push into the unknown, break new ground is still alive and compelling.
So maybe I'm no dirt farmer. But I belong.
It was the one place, she said, that I could not kill anybody. Also, she joked (she actually made a few jokes from year to year) that if I made a terrible mistake, well, we were already in the place where we would end up after all. She did not make me laugh often but this was her scandalous joke and she told it often, to anyone who would listen. I sometimes wonder if there was some secret humor she was keeping to herself, her last laugh at the dead.
At any rate... Generations of Andersons, Swansons, and Ericksons were buried in Linn Grove Cemetery. In Colorado we mean, by generations, at the most four or five but we went all that way back. My great-great grandfather August was out here for the post-gold rush gold rush by the 1860's. He was a miner in Gilpin County, Central City, long before Colorado became a state and he is listed with his brother in the 1870 census. Fortune failed them in gold country so they became "sod-busters" on the dry, desert plains north of Denver and were attracted later to the county north of Greeley between the Cache le Poudre and South Platte Rivers. Irrigation was invented and farms began to spring up.
C.V. and August wrangled the earth successfully, had bushels of children and children's children and managed to yield fine crops of sugar beets, potatoes, corn and hay.
When I was a kid, before learning to drive, we went to the Linn Grove Cemetery on Memorial Day and it was called Decoration Day. We put petunias on some graves and geraniums on others. If you want to know the truth, my cousins and I wandered around and played. As years went on, I became amazed at just how many Andersons and Swansons and Ericksons had been laid carefully to rest forever in this dry clay dirt.
I don't go to the cemetery anymore. I have learned to drive. I don't need it for that. And I have lost the sense of connection with all those ancestors too. Some I would just as soon forget forever. I inherited some weird DNA, there are some petty stories that bother me, and I just don't feel like I belong.
Some day this summer, though, I will find myself drawn to Linn Grove and stand over those graves and wonder about the ancients who came west on horseback and in wagons and on primitive trains. They came with guts and pick axes and shovels and Singer sewing machines like the one in our dining room. They could have stopped but they kept on coming. They could have found an established city or town to settle in but they kept on moving.
So maybe that line of connection is unbroken after all. I don't forge new ground with a pick ax or dig up much dirt with a hoe -- my garden is modest -- but that impulse to forge new adventures, push into the unknown, break new ground is still alive and compelling.
So maybe I'm no dirt farmer. But I belong.
Monday, May 28, 2012
Memorial Day 1982: New Fantasies
The afternoon was warm and gentle and I walked for hours among groves of graceful, whispering birches, listening to the joyful songs of birds well nurtured by nature, soaking up the warm restoring rays of an early summer sun.
All of this elegant beauty shouted aloud to me of the promise of God's goodness, the promises of new life, of resurrection. It was the presence of a new creation and the sure, constant presence of God's "fresh every morning" love.
Only one thing was wrong with this scene: I was walking through a cemetery. And not just any cemetery at that. 470,000 bodies lay in the ground under those gentle birches, most all of them in mounded, unmarked graves -- huge mounds of verdant fresh green grass as far as the eye could see. They were marked only with plaques that gave the year of death: 1942, 1943, 1944.
What began as an ordinary city cemetery became, in the years of World War II, a bloody shrine of Russian pain and humiliation. Leningrad, as it was then, was surrounded by Nazi troops for 900 days. Hitler's plan was to lay siege to the city and to starve and shell it into submission. At that he did not succeed. But for those 900 days, through two bitterly cold winters, the people of Leningrad endured daily bombings and struggled to survive and feed families on rations of two grams of bread -- the equivalent of one communion wafer -- a day.
In the end, hundreds of civilians died. More died from starvation and disease than from the bombs. All of them were victims of war. They were buried together, sometimes 5000 a day, a tangle of pain and loss under those mounds of now fresh earth. Now it was eerily quiet except for the song of birds and breath of breeze, and, ironically, beautiful except for those ugly grave markers.
Among my companions on that day long ago, a German friend. Three others were Soviets. Udo was in the most poignant position. Not only was he German, from Nurmberg, the designated 'enemy of the day,' his own uncle, a conscripted Nazi soldier had died on the other side of the lines at Leningrad. His body was buried who-knows-where in the countryside outside the city. Or was he buried here too? German blood mixed with Russian? He confessed his sense of guilt, even as a member of the new, young generation, the children of the war soldiers. He also expressed fear -- that we would blame him. And frustration, that the war ever happened, and dread: could it happen again? In those Cold War days, THE WAR was not so far behind us and yet another loomed as Europe filled up with warheads pointing every direction.
The moment came as Udo poured out his vulnerable soul to his friends, to us, that our Soviet friends came to surround him and put their hands first, tentatively, on his shoulders. Then it became a hugging, tears all around, and reconciliation. One generation forgiving the child of another. It was a moment I will never forget. Of forgiveness.
Forgiveness. Reconciliation. New thinking. Memory, not forgetting. But memory not beholden to the past.
As I look out on this Memorial Day, I remember that walk in the cemetery, Piskarovskoye. It is a hopeful memory. Poignant and tragic as it is, none of which can be washed away, it is yet a place where a new reality took root. A "new thinking" of peace, of understanding, letting go.
Beginning anew. We who are Christians call this resurrection. All of us who are human call this new possibility, fresh every day. We can wake up and be different. We can wake up and forgive. Let go. We can all be new.
The Soviets eventually, under Gorbachev, gave it a new word, "Perestroika." Remember those heady days? It is easy to lose heart but it is still possible, every day, each one doing our bit. Perestroika. New thinking. New fantasies of how it can be.
New doing.
May the memory of all who died be blessed and redeemed. And may we find a new fantasy that catches fire so the killing will end.
Peace.
All of this elegant beauty shouted aloud to me of the promise of God's goodness, the promises of new life, of resurrection. It was the presence of a new creation and the sure, constant presence of God's "fresh every morning" love.
Only one thing was wrong with this scene: I was walking through a cemetery. And not just any cemetery at that. 470,000 bodies lay in the ground under those gentle birches, most all of them in mounded, unmarked graves -- huge mounds of verdant fresh green grass as far as the eye could see. They were marked only with plaques that gave the year of death: 1942, 1943, 1944.
What began as an ordinary city cemetery became, in the years of World War II, a bloody shrine of Russian pain and humiliation. Leningrad, as it was then, was surrounded by Nazi troops for 900 days. Hitler's plan was to lay siege to the city and to starve and shell it into submission. At that he did not succeed. But for those 900 days, through two bitterly cold winters, the people of Leningrad endured daily bombings and struggled to survive and feed families on rations of two grams of bread -- the equivalent of one communion wafer -- a day.
In the end, hundreds of civilians died. More died from starvation and disease than from the bombs. All of them were victims of war. They were buried together, sometimes 5000 a day, a tangle of pain and loss under those mounds of now fresh earth. Now it was eerily quiet except for the song of birds and breath of breeze, and, ironically, beautiful except for those ugly grave markers.
Among my companions on that day long ago, a German friend. Three others were Soviets. Udo was in the most poignant position. Not only was he German, from Nurmberg, the designated 'enemy of the day,' his own uncle, a conscripted Nazi soldier had died on the other side of the lines at Leningrad. His body was buried who-knows-where in the countryside outside the city. Or was he buried here too? German blood mixed with Russian? He confessed his sense of guilt, even as a member of the new, young generation, the children of the war soldiers. He also expressed fear -- that we would blame him. And frustration, that the war ever happened, and dread: could it happen again? In those Cold War days, THE WAR was not so far behind us and yet another loomed as Europe filled up with warheads pointing every direction.
The moment came as Udo poured out his vulnerable soul to his friends, to us, that our Soviet friends came to surround him and put their hands first, tentatively, on his shoulders. Then it became a hugging, tears all around, and reconciliation. One generation forgiving the child of another. It was a moment I will never forget. Of forgiveness.
Forgiveness. Reconciliation. New thinking. Memory, not forgetting. But memory not beholden to the past.
As I look out on this Memorial Day, I remember that walk in the cemetery, Piskarovskoye. It is a hopeful memory. Poignant and tragic as it is, none of which can be washed away, it is yet a place where a new reality took root. A "new thinking" of peace, of understanding, letting go.
Beginning anew. We who are Christians call this resurrection. All of us who are human call this new possibility, fresh every day. We can wake up and be different. We can wake up and forgive. Let go. We can all be new.
The Soviets eventually, under Gorbachev, gave it a new word, "Perestroika." Remember those heady days? It is easy to lose heart but it is still possible, every day, each one doing our bit. Perestroika. New thinking. New fantasies of how it can be.
New doing.
May the memory of all who died be blessed and redeemed. And may we find a new fantasy that catches fire so the killing will end.
Peace.
Sunday, May 20, 2012
"And I think to myself, what a wonderful world"
Trees of green, skies of blue
And that is only the beginning.
Gratitude.
Today.
Walking into our funky untraditional church holding hands, a minute late because of the spectacular tennis match we had to finish watching first.
"Jesus prays for us."
Realizing how far I've come, through hellfire and damnation and I'm still here.
A survivor. Thriving (some days).
But not overcome with bitterness or hate. I may have got angry and I still fantasize the best pranks on the planet but I don't hate and I'm not preoccupied with evildoers.
I'm recovering from the trauma.
Still a bit perplexed at the power of evil unleashed in this world but not beholden to it.
Plus, an amazing partner who stood by me through ten years of hell and fear and threat.
He didn't have to have stayed. Most partners don't, I've learned. Most marriages break up.
And two daughters who, despite it all, are healthy and whole.
I have not become an addict --- also an exponential likelihood for folks like me.
I love to watch too much tennis and I don't exercise enough but that is fixable.
Besides all this, I have a closet full of clothes I love to wear.
And earrings and jewelry I like.
I like my hair.
I look better than I have in years.
I have a beautiful home to be steward of and share with whomever will come over.
I have books and books and books to stretch and tickle my mind.
I have a computer that works. And I know something of how to use my iPhone.
My world is full of gorgeous music all the time.
Our yard looks wonderful and gives us something to tend and nurture.
I have a piece of Polish china that thrills me more than it should.
I saw a moose --- three, in fact --- the other day.
I have a car that I love and loves me back as it takes me on terrific adventures.
I have a piano with almost all of the notes that play just fine.
And, as of today, I even have a leaf-blower, the sign of being a true grown-up.
I have an extended family, brother, sisters, in-laws that love me for who I am.
I have a community that is fragile but fresh and inspiring.
I am learning a completely new skill at this advanced stage of life and doing not half bad.
I have something meaningful to do with my time and skill and imagination.
I have time.
I have laughter.
I have lots of love in my life.
I could go on and on and that alone is something to say "Yay!" about.
But most of all is this, I have a grateful spirit.
Today. And hopefully, tomorrow.
I am a blessed woman, so very lucky, fortunate.
That is what fills my mind and my heart today.
It's not all perfect. It never will be. Like an amputee, I lost something important. But like a survivor, I am learning how to live without what is gone and to be joyful about what is here. I am learning how to cope with nightmares, panic attacks, memory loss. I am learning that I may be traumatized but I am also strong enough to manage it, if not immediately, then ultimately.
Jesus prays for me. I like that. He prays that I not succumb to hatred and a hard heart. He prays that I not return evil for evil. He prays that I have courage and kindness and peace. And he prays that I will be free. Free indeed.
I find Jesus' prayer taking shape within me, every day, up and down, over and out, around and around. But some way or another, Jesus' is still taking shape within me.
And for that, most of all, I am very very grateful.
And that is only the beginning.
Gratitude.
Today.
Walking into our funky untraditional church holding hands, a minute late because of the spectacular tennis match we had to finish watching first.
"Jesus prays for us."
Realizing how far I've come, through hellfire and damnation and I'm still here.
A survivor. Thriving (some days).
But not overcome with bitterness or hate. I may have got angry and I still fantasize the best pranks on the planet but I don't hate and I'm not preoccupied with evildoers.
I'm recovering from the trauma.
Still a bit perplexed at the power of evil unleashed in this world but not beholden to it.
Plus, an amazing partner who stood by me through ten years of hell and fear and threat.
He didn't have to have stayed. Most partners don't, I've learned. Most marriages break up.
And two daughters who, despite it all, are healthy and whole.
I have not become an addict --- also an exponential likelihood for folks like me.
I love to watch too much tennis and I don't exercise enough but that is fixable.
Besides all this, I have a closet full of clothes I love to wear.
And earrings and jewelry I like.
I like my hair.
I look better than I have in years.
I have a beautiful home to be steward of and share with whomever will come over.
I have books and books and books to stretch and tickle my mind.
I have a computer that works. And I know something of how to use my iPhone.
My world is full of gorgeous music all the time.
Our yard looks wonderful and gives us something to tend and nurture.
I have a piece of Polish china that thrills me more than it should.
I saw a moose --- three, in fact --- the other day.
I have a car that I love and loves me back as it takes me on terrific adventures.
I have a piano with almost all of the notes that play just fine.
And, as of today, I even have a leaf-blower, the sign of being a true grown-up.
I have an extended family, brother, sisters, in-laws that love me for who I am.
I have a community that is fragile but fresh and inspiring.
I am learning a completely new skill at this advanced stage of life and doing not half bad.
I have something meaningful to do with my time and skill and imagination.
I have time.
I have laughter.
I have lots of love in my life.
I could go on and on and that alone is something to say "Yay!" about.
But most of all is this, I have a grateful spirit.
Today. And hopefully, tomorrow.
I am a blessed woman, so very lucky, fortunate.
That is what fills my mind and my heart today.
It's not all perfect. It never will be. Like an amputee, I lost something important. But like a survivor, I am learning how to live without what is gone and to be joyful about what is here. I am learning how to cope with nightmares, panic attacks, memory loss. I am learning that I may be traumatized but I am also strong enough to manage it, if not immediately, then ultimately.
Jesus prays for me. I like that. He prays that I not succumb to hatred and a hard heart. He prays that I not return evil for evil. He prays that I have courage and kindness and peace. And he prays that I will be free. Free indeed.
I find Jesus' prayer taking shape within me, every day, up and down, over and out, around and around. But some way or another, Jesus' is still taking shape within me.
And for that, most of all, I am very very grateful.
Thursday, May 3, 2012
To wait, perhaps to putter
Waiting is not an empty time.
I am writing this with some fear and trepidation, to reveal the inner life of a family waiting for a holy and good death. We wait. We are waiting. We are simply waiting.
How do we wait? The one who waits for death is quiet, acquiescent, kind, humble, and exceptionally gracious.
I want to write honestly about this. He knows we are hovering around, busying ourselves with many things, mostly for his comfort, yet we are just waiting. How can he be so kind, so loving, so merciful to the ministrations of a family that is existing simply to serve him?
I see him in his chair, as comfortable as one can be in the circumstances, and listen to his measured answers, "that would be good;" "yes, that would be nice;" "Okay, it is okay." He answers questions with an equanimity that would fail me completely.
As I, the daughter-in-law, the 'spare part,' as I jokingly called myself, watch these loving ministrations and hear the considerate questions, I am stunned by his grace.
"Go away and leave me alone," is what I feel I'd be likely to say.
He waits, knowing he waits, knowing we are waiting, knowing he knows we know he knows we are waiting, waiting, for one inevitable outcome. There is but one.
He waits, knowing that we who are a thousand miles from home are here for one reason, to wait. To watch. To make the most of the time we have. But finally it comes down to this, we are waiting. Time out of time.
It feels like holy time. And it feels like ordinary time. We are busy with things like flower arranging, baking, cooking, the ongoing press of business. Yet it all stops to wait at least once an hour. We look for signs.
It all feels morbid. And it all feels sacred. And there we have it. As the sages have said, there is no divide. All of life is holy. And, frankly, all of life is at least a bit morbid.
Those of us who plan to go on living for awhile are worrying about blood pressure and growing moles on our cheeks. Morbid, if you ask me. Long-term care insurance, morbid. Reminders of our morbidity. But we wonder too about college choices and shoes and soccer matches and savor the exquisite flavors of Luce's artichoke dip. We play the piano. We sing.
Waiting is a holy ordinary time. There is no other.
I am writing this with some fear and trepidation, to reveal the inner life of a family waiting for a holy and good death. We wait. We are waiting. We are simply waiting.
How do we wait? The one who waits for death is quiet, acquiescent, kind, humble, and exceptionally gracious.
I want to write honestly about this. He knows we are hovering around, busying ourselves with many things, mostly for his comfort, yet we are just waiting. How can he be so kind, so loving, so merciful to the ministrations of a family that is existing simply to serve him?
I see him in his chair, as comfortable as one can be in the circumstances, and listen to his measured answers, "that would be good;" "yes, that would be nice;" "Okay, it is okay." He answers questions with an equanimity that would fail me completely.
As I, the daughter-in-law, the 'spare part,' as I jokingly called myself, watch these loving ministrations and hear the considerate questions, I am stunned by his grace.
"Go away and leave me alone," is what I feel I'd be likely to say.
He waits, knowing he waits, knowing we are waiting, knowing he knows we know he knows we are waiting, waiting, for one inevitable outcome. There is but one.
He waits, knowing that we who are a thousand miles from home are here for one reason, to wait. To watch. To make the most of the time we have. But finally it comes down to this, we are waiting. Time out of time.
It feels like holy time. And it feels like ordinary time. We are busy with things like flower arranging, baking, cooking, the ongoing press of business. Yet it all stops to wait at least once an hour. We look for signs.
It all feels morbid. And it all feels sacred. And there we have it. As the sages have said, there is no divide. All of life is holy. And, frankly, all of life is at least a bit morbid.
Those of us who plan to go on living for awhile are worrying about blood pressure and growing moles on our cheeks. Morbid, if you ask me. Long-term care insurance, morbid. Reminders of our morbidity. But we wonder too about college choices and shoes and soccer matches and savor the exquisite flavors of Luce's artichoke dip. We play the piano. We sing.
Waiting is a holy ordinary time. There is no other.
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