James Cargas - Holocaust Memorial Service (April 10, 1986)
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| - | Webster University at St. Louis. | 0:03 |
| There he is the professor of Literature and Language | 0:06 | |
| and also a professor of Religion. | 0:08 | |
| He is known as one of the leading authorities | 0:10 | |
| on the Holocaust. | 0:12 | |
| Calls himself a post-Auschwitz Catholic. | 0:14 | |
| And he studied the Holocaust for nearly two decades. | 0:18 | |
| He's been stimulated by his friendship with Elie Wiesel, | 0:22 | |
| and he has co-authored a book with him. | 0:24 | |
| He has written at least 22 other books, | 0:27 | |
| including "A Christian Response to the Holocaust," | 0:30 | |
| "When God and Man Failed: | 0:33 | |
| "Non-Jewish Views of the Holocaust," | 0:35 | |
| "The Holocaust: An Annotated Bibliography." | 0:38 | |
| His numerous articles on the Holocaust | 0:41 | |
| have also appeared in hundreds of newspapers | 0:43 | |
| around the country. | 0:46 | |
| We are very pleased to have him with us today, | 0:48 | |
| and we will have an opportunity after the service | 0:50 | |
| to continue an informal dialogue with him | 0:53 | |
| in the chapel basement, | 0:55 | |
| where you are all invited for a reception. | 0:56 | |
| I would also ask you at the conclusion of the service | 0:59 | |
| to please leave your programs | 1:01 | |
| on either balustrade as you exit. | 1:03 | |
| Thank you. | 1:05 | |
| (papers rustle) | 1:06 | |
| (footsteps walking) | 1:09 | |
| - | We begin our service in remembrance | 1:20 |
| of the Holocaust in silence. | 1:22 | |
| Let us surround our worship, | 1:26 | |
| our community in prayer, with silence. | 1:28 | |
| Silence in preparation for the presence of God. | 1:31 | |
| And after silence, let us stand and give expression | 2:04 | |
| personally and communally to the proclamation | 2:07 | |
| of God's name to the world. | 2:10 | |
| - | Praise and proclaim God's name, | 2:18 |
| to whom all praise is due. | 2:20 | |
| - | Praised and proclaimed be the name of God, | 2:22 |
| to whom all praise is due, now and forever. | 2:25 | |
| - | Out of silence and darkness, | 2:35 |
| the creative word of God was spoken. | 2:37 | |
| It first took the form of wind, of ruach, | 2:41 | |
| God's spirit hovering over the waters | 2:44 | |
| of chaos to control them, | 2:47 | |
| to hold them back, and to make possible | 2:49 | |
| the goodness of creation itself. | 2:51 | |
| - | "When God began to create the heaven and the earth, | 2:54 |
| "the earth being unformed and void with darkness | 2:56 | |
| "over the surface of the deep, | 2:59 | |
| "and a wind from God sweeping over the water, | 3:00 | |
| "God said, | 3:03 | |
| "Let there be light. | 3:05 | |
| "And there was light. | 3:06 | |
| "God saw how good the light was, | 3:07 | |
| "and God separated the light from the darkness. | 3:10 | |
| "God called the light day, | 3:12 | |
| "and the darkness he called night. | 3:14 | |
| "And there was evening, and there was morning, | 3:16 | |
| "our first day." | 3:19 | |
| - | "And God said, | 3:26 |
| "I will make man in my image, | 3:27 | |
| "after my likeness. | 3:29 | |
| "They shall rule the fish of the sea, | 3:31 | |
| "the birds of the sky, the cattle, the whole earth, | 3:33 | |
| "and all the creeping things that creep on earth. | 3:37 | |
| "And God created man in his image. | 3:40 | |
| "In the image of God he created him. | 3:42 | |
| "Male and female he created them. | 3:45 | |
| "God blessed them, and God said to them, | 3:47 | |
| "Be fertile and increase. | 3:50 | |
| "Fill the earth and master it, | 3:52 | |
| "and rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, | 3:54 | |
| "and all the living things that creep on earth." | 3:57 | |
| - | "God said, | 4:05 |
| "See, I give you every seed-bearing plant | 4:07 | |
| "that is upon all the earth | 4:09 | |
| "and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit. | 4:11 | |
| "They shall be yours for food. | 4:14 | |
| "And to all the animals on land, | 4:16 | |
| "to all the birds of the sky, | 4:18 | |
| "and to everything that creeps on earth, | 4:20 | |
| "in which there is the breath of life. | 4:23 | |
| "I give all the green plants for food. | 4:25 | |
| "And it was so. | 4:29 | |
| "And God saw all that He had made and found it very good. | 4:32 | |
| "And there was evening, and there was morning, | 4:36 | |
| "the sixth day." | 4:39 | |
| - | "Heaven and earth were finished in all of their array, | 4:42 |
| "and on the seventh day, God finished the work | 4:46 | |
| "which He had been doing. | 4:48 | |
| "And He ceased on the seventh day from all the work | 4:50 | |
| "which He had done. | 4:53 | |
| "And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, | 4:55 | |
| "because on it God ceased from all the work of creation, | 4:58 | |
| "which He had done. | 5:02 | |
| - | But there can be another type of silence, | 5:10 |
| and another kind of wind. | 5:13 | |
| At a time of horror, in the middle of the 20th century, | 5:15 | |
| the silence of the world made possible | 5:19 | |
| the monstrous crime of genocide, | 5:21 | |
| the attempted murder of a whole people, | 5:24 | |
| for no other reason than that they were | 5:26 | |
| a particular type of people, | 5:28 | |
| a people called by God, | 5:32 | |
| the chosen people, | 5:33 | |
| the Jews. | 5:35 | |
| - | In the heart of civilized Europe, | 5:40 |
| aided by the silent acquiescence | 5:42 | |
| of so many of the nations and peoples of the world, | 5:44 | |
| a wind of abomination and racial hostility, | 5:47 | |
| a wind of evil whipped a continent | 5:50 | |
| into a frenzy of senseless killing. | 5:52 | |
| In Hebrew this destructive event, | 5:55 | |
| the Nazi murder of two thirds of European Jewry, | 5:57 | |
| is likened to the Shoah of the biblical text, | 6:00 | |
| a devastating, diabolic wind | 6:03 | |
| that scours the earth of all life, | 6:05 | |
| leaving only chaos and death in its wake. | 6:08 | |
| - | Six million Jewish men and women, | 6:15 |
| one million children among them, | 6:18 | |
| were taken by other human beings to die in gas and fire. | 6:20 | |
| Their very ashes spewed from the chimneys of Auschwitz | 6:23 | |
| to mingle with the soft breezes of the air in full, | 6:26 | |
| nameless and graveless, spread over a continent | 6:29 | |
| that had itself become a graveyard. | 6:32 | |
| - | Not only did Jews die, | 6:42 |
| caught in the eddies and swirls of the Holocaust, | 6:43 | |
| millions of Poles and Gypsies, Russians, and other Europeans | 6:47 | |
| also ended their lives | 6:51 | |
| as victims of Nazism's diabolically | 6:52 | |
| efficient technology of death. | 6:56 | |
| But to be Jewish in Nazi Europe, of itself, | 6:59 | |
| meant alienation and death. | 7:02 | |
| - | Martin Niemoeller, a pastor | 7:10 |
| in the German Confessing Church, | 7:11 | |
| spent seven years in a concentration camp. | 7:13 | |
| He wrote, "First they came for the Jews, | 7:16 | |
| "and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. | 7:20 | |
| "Then they came for the socialists, | 7:25 | |
| "and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. | 7:26 | |
| "Then they came for the trade unionist, | 7:31 | |
| "and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. | 7:33 | |
| "Then they came for me, and there was no one left | 7:40 | |
| "to speak out for me." | 7:42 | |
| - | Pope John Paul II, a Pole who knew well | 7:50 |
| the heel of Nazi inhumanity, | 7:52 | |
| prayed during his pilgrimage to Auschwitz in 1979, | 7:55 | |
| "I kneel before all the inscriptions | 7:59 | |
| "that come one after another, | 8:00 | |
| "burying the memory of the victims of Auschwitz. | 8:02 | |
| "In particular, I pause with you, dear participants | 8:05 | |
| "in this encounter before the inscription in Hebrew. | 8:07 | |
| "This inscription awakens the memory of the people | 8:11 | |
| "whose sons and daughters | 8:13 | |
| "were intended for total extermination. | 8:14 | |
| "This people draws its origin from Abraham, | 8:17 | |
| "our father in faith, as was expressed by Paul of Tarsus, | 8:20 | |
| "the very people who received from God | 8:24 | |
| "the commandment, | 8:26 | |
| "thou shall not kill, | 8:26 | |
| "itself experiences in a special measure | 8:28 | |
| "what is meant by killing. | 8:30 | |
| "It is not permissible for anyone | 8:32 | |
| "to pass by this inscription with indifference." | 8:33 | |
| - | We now light six candles in memory of the six million. | 8:45 |
| As we light these candles, | 8:50 | |
| we commit ourselves to responsibility for one another, | 8:52 | |
| to build on this earth a world that has no room for hatred, | 8:55 | |
| no place for violence. | 8:59 | |
| Together we pray for the strength to fulfill this vocation. | 9:02 | |
| Please stand. | 9:07 | |
| - | "My God, my God-- | 9:13 |
| - | "Why have you abandoned me? | 9:15 |
| "Why so far from delivering me from my anguished worry? | 9:17 | |
| - | "My God, I cry by day, you answer not. | 9:25 |
| "By night and have no respite. | 9:29 | |
| - | "But you are the Holy One, throned, praise of Israel. | 9:33 |
| "And you our fathers trusted, | 9:37 | |
| "they trusted and you rescued them. | 9:39 | |
| "To you they cried out. (muffled recitation) | 9:42 | |
| "In you they trusted." (muffled recitation) | 9:45 | |
| - | Jewish voices were heard in reciting prayers | 9:54 |
| in biblical text on the trains to the concentration camps, | 9:56 | |
| at the doors of the gas chambers, in hiding, | 10:00 | |
| in fighting the enemy, manifesting grief, hope, | 10:03 | |
| despair, trust in God, faith. | 10:06 | |
| One of those voices, Moshe Flinker, | 10:09 | |
| an adolescent hiding in Belgium, | 10:12 | |
| expressed his religious fervor and commitment | 10:14 | |
| in verse and prayer. | 10:17 | |
| One afternoon he wrote in his diary. | 10:19 | |
| - | "I am sitting at the window | 10:25 |
| "and readying myself for the Minhah prayer. | 10:27 | |
| "I look out, and I see that all is red, | 10:29 | |
| "that the whole horizon is red. | 10:32 | |
| "The sky is covered with bloody clouds, | 10:35 | |
| "and I am frightened when I see it. | 10:37 | |
| "I say to myself, | 10:39 | |
| "Where do these clouds come from? | 10:41 | |
| "Bleeding clouds, where are you from? | 10:43 | |
| "Suddenly everything is clear to me. | 10:48 | |
| "Everything is simple and easily understood. | 10:50 | |
| "Don't you know? | 10:53 | |
| "They come from the seas of blood. | 10:55 | |
| "These seas have been brought about by the millions of Jews | 10:57 | |
| "who have been captured, | 11:00 | |
| "and who knows where they are? | 11:01 | |
| "We are the bleeding clouds, | 11:03 | |
| "and from the seas of blood have we come. | 11:05 | |
| "We have come to you from the place where your brothers are, | 11:08 | |
| "to bring greetings from your people. | 11:11 | |
| "We are witnesses. | 11:13 | |
| "We were sent by your people to show you their troubles. | 11:15 | |
| "We have come from the seas of blood, | 11:18 | |
| "we were brought into being by an inferno of suffering, | 11:21 | |
| "and we are a sign of peace to you." | 11:24 | |
| Young Moshe, who died in Auschwitz, | 11:26 | |
| was able to find in his faith in God | 11:29 | |
| and in continuity of the Jewish peoplehood: | 11:31 | |
| a Jew in thought. | 11:34 | |
| - | A Jew in deeds. | 11:36 |
| - | A Jew in trouble. | 11:38 |
| - | A Jew in (mumbles). | 11:39 |
| - | A Jew in speech. | 11:41 |
| - | A Jew in silence. | 11:42 |
| - | A Jew in arising. | 11:44 |
| - | A Jew in sleep. | 11:46 |
| - | Jew in God. | 11:48 |
| - | A Jew (mumbles). | 11:49 |
| - | A Jew in life. | 11:51 |
| - | A Jew in death. | 11:52 |
| - | A Jew you were born. | 11:54 |
| - | A Jew you will die. | 11:55 |
| (papers shuffling) | 11:58 | |
| - | Congregation is invited to join in singing. | 12:14 |
| (guitar plays sad music) | 12:17 | |
| ♪ Hear, O Israel ♪ | 12:24 | |
| ♪ The Lord our God, the Lord is one ♪ | 12:28 | |
| ♪ Hear, O Israel ♪ | 12:34 | |
| ♪ The Lord our God, the Lord is one ♪ | 12:39 | |
| ♪ Hear, O Israel ♪ | 12:45 | |
| ♪ Two thousand years have we been in exile ♪ | 12:52 | |
| ♪ Two thousand years have we been suffering ♪ | 12:57 | |
| ♪ Two thousand years have we been hoping ♪ | 13:03 | |
| ♪ For a long delayed salvation ♪ | 13:08 | |
| ♪ Two thousand years have we been wondering ♪ | 13:13 | |
| ♪ Two thousand years have we been moving ♪ | 13:18 | |
| ♪ Two thousand years have we been yearning ♪ | 13:23 | |
| ♪ For a long delayed salvation ♪ | 13:29 | |
| ♪ And now we are standing here ♪ | 13:34 | |
| ♪ Hear, O Israel ♪ | 13:39 | |
| ♪ The Lord our God, the Lord is one ♪ | 13:44 | |
| ♪ Hear, O Israel ♪ | 13:49 | |
| ♪ The Lord our God, the Lord is one ♪ | 13:54 | |
| ♪ Hear, O Israel ♪ | 14:00 | |
| ♪ Standing here, we yearn for your help, O Lord ♪ | 14:08 | |
| ♪ Shall you help us ♪ | 14:14 | |
| ♪ Yes, our Lord shall help us ♪ | 14:18 | |
| ♪ Hear, O Israel ♪ | 14:28 | |
| ♪ The Lord our God, the Lord is one ♪ | 14:32 | |
| ♪ Hear, O Israel ♪ | 14:38 | |
| ♪ The Lord our God, the Lord is one ♪ | 14:42 | |
| ♪ Hear, O Israel ♪ | 14:48 | |
| ♪ Yes, our Redeemer, you shall redeem ♪ | 14:56 | |
| ♪ You have forgotten, shall remember ♪ | 15:01 | |
| ♪ You have neglected, and you shall return ♪ | 15:06 | |
| ♪ Hear, O Israel ♪ | 15:15 | |
| ♪ The Lord our God, the Lord is one ♪ | 15:20 | |
| ♪ Hear, O Israel ♪ | 15:26 | |
| ♪ The Lord our God, the Lord is one ♪ | 15:30 | |
| ♪ Hear, O Israel ♪ | 15:36 | |
| ♪ Hear, O Israel ♪ | 15:42 | |
| - | You may be seated. | 15:50 |
| - | Christian witness in this time of degradation | 16:01 |
| was barely heard. | 16:04 | |
| While many were silent, some spoke with their deeds. | 16:06 | |
| Let us listen now to a few of their stories. | 16:10 | |
| - | From Germany. | 16:16 |
| (distant, muffled speaking) | 16:17 | |
| In August 1941, he declared in a sermon | 16:24 | |
| that he would include Jews in his daily prayer | 16:27 | |
| because their synagogues had been set on fire, | 16:31 | |
| and Jewish businesses had been destroyed. | 16:36 | |
| (muffled speaking) | 16:39 | |
| A brief announcement in the newspaper | 16:44 | |
| informed his followers that he had been arrested | 16:46 | |
| for subversive activity. | 16:49 | |
| He was sent to prison, and after serving his term, | 16:53 | |
| sent to a concentration camp for re-education. | 16:57 | |
| (muffled, distant speaking) | 17:02 | |
| - | From Poland. | 17:25 |
| Abraham H. Foxman was born in Poland in 1940, | 17:26 | |
| a few months after the Germans had occupied the country. | 17:30 | |
| His parents fled to Vilna in an effort | 17:34 | |
| to keep ahead of the Nazis. | 17:36 | |
| But in less than a year, the German armies occupied Europe, | 17:39 | |
| and rounded up all Jews in the ghetto. | 17:43 | |
| The first step (coughing drowns out speaker) | 17:46 | |
| to concentration camps. | 17:48 | |
| A maid from (mumbles) | 17:50 | |
| offered to hide the baby. | 17:53 | |
| In a few months he had a new name and baptismal certificate. | 17:55 | |
| His mother and father were together | 17:59 | |
| in the Vilna Ghetto for one year | 18:01 | |
| when his mother escaped, managed to get false papers, | 18:03 | |
| and moved in with the baby, | 18:07 | |
| as her sister, and the baby's aunt. | 18:09 | |
| His father, liberated in 1945, | 18:12 | |
| made his way back to Vilna at this time. | 18:15 | |
| The whole family was smuggled out of Poland (mumbles). | 18:19 | |
| Austria. | 18:25 | |
| They reached the United States in 1950, | 18:27 | |
| when Abe was ten years old. | 18:30 | |
| - | From Denmark. | 18:37 |
| - | (distant, muffled speaking) | 18:39 |
| An outstanding biblical scholar. | 18:45 | |
| (distant, muffled speaking) | 18:48 | |
| - | From Belgium. | 19:58 |
| In May 1943, Mme Marthe de Smet of Dilbeek, | 20:00 | |
| in the countryside near Brussels, | 20:04 | |
| received a telephone call from Sister Claire, | 20:07 | |
| a nun of the Convent des Soeurs du Tres-Saint-Sauveur | 20:10 | |
| in the city. | 20:14 | |
| Was she willing to hide | 20:16 | |
| another Jewish child, the caller asked. | 20:17 | |
| The situation was desperate. | 20:20 | |
| The nuns had hidden 15 little Jewish girls | 20:22 | |
| until their hiding place was betrayed by the Gestapo. | 20:26 | |
| Just hours before the Gestapo's truck | 20:30 | |
| arrived to take the children to their death, | 20:32 | |
| the nuns had somehow gotten through to the underground. | 20:35 | |
| The children had been hastily moved | 20:39 | |
| under cover of darkness, | 20:41 | |
| and then placed in safe but temporary (mumbles). | 20:43 | |
| Now it was essential to find a permanent hiding place | 20:47 | |
| for each of them. | 20:50 | |
| Sister Claire knew the De Smets, | 20:52 | |
| Georges, his wife Marthe, and their children, | 20:55 | |
| Marie-Paule, Andre, Eliane, and Francis, | 20:58 | |
| were already hiding a Jewish child, | 21:04 | |
| three year old Ginette Monk. | 21:06 | |
| Nonetheless, she was confident Mme De Smet | 21:09 | |
| would not turn her down. | 21:13 | |
| She was right. | 21:15 | |
| A few days later, | 21:17 | |
| three year old Yvette Lerner | 21:18 | |
| came into the De Smet household | 21:21 | |
| to be safely sheltered there | 21:23 | |
| until the liberation of Brussels, | 21:25 | |
| in September, 1944. | 21:27 | |
| Shortly after her arrival, the De Smets took a third child, | 21:30 | |
| then an infant, Lily (mumbles). | 21:34 | |
| At the risk of their own lives, and those of their children, | 21:38 | |
| the De Smets embarked in the course of active opposition | 21:42 | |
| to the Nazis' plan for the extermination of all Jews. | 21:45 | |
| In this, they were motivated by their deep | 21:49 | |
| religious conviction, and by a strong love of children. | 21:52 | |
| After the war, the De Smets refused all remuneration | 21:56 | |
| and asked only for the continued friendship | 22:01 | |
| of the families to whom they had given so much. | 22:04 | |
| - | From France. | 22:10 |
| Important rescue work was carried out | 22:12 | |
| by a Catholic missionary organization, | 22:15 | |
| the Fathers of Our Lady of Sion. | 22:17 | |
| At the head of this group | 22:20 | |
| was the Reverend Father Superior | 22:21 | |
| (cough obscures sound) Devaux, | 22:23 | |
| who is credited with saving | 22:25 | |
| 443 Jewish children and 500 adults. | 22:26 | |
| At the end of 1942, Father Devaux organized | 22:31 | |
| temporary shelter for his wards | 22:35 | |
| on rue Notre-Dame des Champs. | 22:37 | |
| From here, he sent the children | 22:40 | |
| to many parts of the country, | 22:41 | |
| where they found temporary homes | 22:44 | |
| with workman's families, | 22:45 | |
| among peasants, | 22:47 | |
| in convents and monasteries. | 22:48 | |
| The expenses were provided for by the group. | 22:52 | |
| When the relief work proved beyond their modest means, | 22:55 | |
| they solicited and received money from individuals, | 22:58 | |
| Jews and non-Jews alike, | 23:03 | |
| and from various organizations. | 23:05 | |
| The Gestapo heard about the clergyman's ceaseless activities | 23:08 | |
| on behalf of the Jews. | 23:11 | |
| They summoned Father Devaux and cited a long list | 23:14 | |
| of his offenses. | 23:15 | |
| (mumbles), an SS officer known as a hangman of French Jews, | 23:19 | |
| personally dealt with Devaux. | 23:24 | |
| He slapped the priest's face as an initial warning, | 23:27 | |
| and cautioned him to cease helping Jews | 23:30 | |
| or accept the consequences. | 23:33 | |
| Father Devaux returned to his rescue work. | 23:36 | |
| In 1945, the brave priest was interviewed | 23:39 | |
| by a Jewish journalist, who asked him whether | 23:43 | |
| he had not been aware of the great danger involved | 23:45 | |
| in his rescue activities. | 23:48 | |
| Father Devaux's answer was simple. | 23:51 | |
| "Of course I knew it. | 23:54 | |
| "But this knowledge could not stop me | 23:56 | |
| "from doing what I considered to be my duty | 23:58 | |
| "as a Christian and a human being." | 24:01 | |
| - | From Italy. | 24:08 |
| The city of Assisi, home of Saint Francis, | 24:10 | |
| turned itself into a place of kindness and refuge for Jews. | 24:13 | |
| Organized by priests of peasant stock, (mumbles) | 24:19 | |
| hundreds of Jews were hidden in the town's | 24:24 | |
| ancient monastery and convent, | 24:28 | |
| and provided with fake identity papers. | 24:31 | |
| The Germans raided the village's houses, | 24:35 | |
| searching for the Jewish refugees, | 24:37 | |
| who were dressed in religious (mumbles), | 24:40 | |
| temporarily transformed into monks and nuns, | 24:42 | |
| piously saying their prayers. | 24:48 | |
| A small printing press in the town's pharmacy | 24:51 | |
| at night cranked out false documents, | 24:55 | |
| which were then smuggled to Jewish survivors | 24:58 | |
| throughout Italy. | 25:00 | |
| In all, some 32,000 Italian Jews, | 25:02 | |
| representing 80% of Italian Jewry, | 25:06 | |
| and thousands of foreign Jews, | 25:10 | |
| were hidden successfully | 25:12 | |
| by Christian laymen and religious alike. | 25:14 | |
| - | From Holland. | 25:20 |
| After the Nazi invasion of Holland, | 25:23 | |
| a program to train Jewish youths in agriculture | 25:25 | |
| prior to sending them to Palestine, | 25:28 | |
| boldly moved underground to smuggle Jewish children | 25:31 | |
| on to the Pyrenees, to Spain, and from there to Palestine. | 25:35 | |
| But the Jews needed help | 25:40 | |
| in the field of the Dutch socialist underground. | 25:42 | |
| Among those who helped with their assistance, | 25:46 | |
| was a man named Joop Westerweel, | 25:48 | |
| a principal in (mumbles) high school. | 25:52 | |
| Son of a pastor, Westerweel was (mumbles) educator | 25:55 | |
| and father of three children, a fourth on the way. | 25:58 | |
| He was eager for his first journey across (mumbles) | 26:03 | |
| borders bristling with Nazi bayonets. | 26:06 | |
| Early in 1943, Shushu Simon, | 26:10 | |
| the leader of the Jewish underground, | 26:13 | |
| was captured by the Gestapo. | 26:15 | |
| Joop Westerweel was thrust into the position of leadership. | 26:18 | |
| It was now his job to lead the Jewish children | 26:22 | |
| across the low country and mountainous peaks | 26:24 | |
| and on to Spain. | 26:27 | |
| This became part of his everyday existence | 26:30 | |
| and he dedicated himself to it fully. | 26:32 | |
| At the foot of the Pyrenees, | 26:35 | |
| where he usually took leave of the young Zionist pioneers, | 26:37 | |
| Westerweel enjoined them not to forget | 26:41 | |
| their non-Jewish comrades | 26:44 | |
| and reminded them that they were bound to all humanity. | 26:46 | |
| (papers shuffling) | 26:54 | |
| - | I think the Holocaust is the greatest Christian tragedy | 27:05 |
| since the crucifixion of Jesus. | 27:09 | |
| In our story, there was the resurrection. | 27:12 | |
| And one of the questions that we Christians | 27:16 | |
| have to ask ourselves is: can there be a rebirth | 27:18 | |
| for Christianity after what so many people | 27:23 | |
| who call themselves Christians participated in? | 27:27 | |
| The death of close to six million Jews, | 27:32 | |
| one million of them | 27:35 | |
| before they reached their teens, | 27:36 | |
| it's very likely that everyone who killed somebody | 27:43 | |
| during the Holocaust was baptized in the name of Jesus. | 27:46 | |
| There were centuries of Christian words and deeds | 27:53 | |
| which led up to this. | 27:58 | |
| Historically there's probably been three steps | 28:01 | |
| in the treatment of Jews by anti-Semites. | 28:05 | |
| Ghettoization, | 28:10 | |
| expulsion from nations, | 28:13 | |
| and finally murder. | 28:16 | |
| It's almost, | 28:21 | |
| without getting too dramatic, | 28:24 | |
| a sin to read some of these words in this kind of a setting. | 28:26 | |
| But I also think it's almost a sin | 28:30 | |
| to forget these words of background. | 28:33 | |
| Let me read these to you from Saint John Chrysostom, | 28:37 | |
| someone that the Catholic Church has canonized, | 28:43 | |
| called one of its heroes, | 28:45 | |
| and one of a group that I call | 28:48 | |
| an all-star cast of anti-Semites. | 28:51 | |
| And I want to tell you that these words, | 28:55 | |
| which so many of us now deny or abjure, | 28:59 | |
| are the very words that today you find quoted | 29:03 | |
| in the neo-Nazi literature that is available | 29:06 | |
| throughout this country and throughout the world. | 29:09 | |
| These are from Saint John Chrysostom, | 29:12 | |
| whom Father Edward Flannery called | 29:14 | |
| probably the most vicious of all Christian anti-Semites. | 29:16 | |
| 5th century. | 29:24 | |
| "How can Christians dare have the slightest converse | 29:25 | |
| "with Jews, most miserable of all men? | 29:29 | |
| "Men who are lustful, rapacious, greedy, perfidious bandits? | 29:32 | |
| "Are they not inveterate murderers, destroyers, | 29:39 | |
| "men possessed by the devil, whom debauchery and drunkenness | 29:41 | |
| "have given them the manners of the pig and the lusty goat? | 29:44 | |
| "They know only one thing, to satisfy their gullets, | 29:48 | |
| "get drunk, to kill and maim one another. | 29:53 | |
| "Indeed they have surpassed the ferocity of wild beasts, | 29:57 | |
| "for they murder their offspring | 30:01 | |
| "and immolate them to the devil. | 30:04 | |
| "They are impure and impious." | 30:06 | |
| He goes on to say more words about the synagogue | 30:09 | |
| being the house of the devil, and so on. | 30:11 | |
| And while I have them here, | 30:13 | |
| I find it, each time I try to quote them, | 30:15 | |
| very difficult. | 30:18 | |
| He ends by saying, "I hate the synagogue | 30:21 | |
| "precisely because it has the law and the prophets. | 30:24 | |
| "I hate the Jews also because they outrage the law." | 30:27 | |
| Now let me move many centuries forward | 30:32 | |
| and quote from one more person. | 30:35 | |
| And I guess I'll tell you now, | 30:37 | |
| these are the words of Martin Luther. | 30:38 | |
| And perhaps if I did not tell you that, | 30:41 | |
| you might suspect that they came from the mouth | 30:43 | |
| or the pen of a Nazi. | 30:47 | |
| "First, their synagogue or school is to be set on fire, | 30:50 | |
| "and what won't burn is to be heaped over with dirt | 30:53 | |
| "and dumped on so that no one can see a stone | 30:56 | |
| "or chunk of it forever. | 30:58 | |
| "Second, their houses are to be torn down | 31:00 | |
| "and destroyed in the same way. | 31:02 | |
| "Third, they are to have their prayer books | 31:04 | |
| "and Talmudics taken from them. | 31:06 | |
| "Fourth, their rabbis are to be forbidden henceforth | 31:08 | |
| "to teach on penalty of life and limb. | 31:11 | |
| "On penalty of life and limb, | 31:14 | |
| "they are to be forbidden publicly to praise God, | 31:15 | |
| "to thank God, to pray to God, to teach of God | 31:18 | |
| "among us and ours. | 31:21 | |
| "And furthermore, they shall be forbidden | 31:24 | |
| "to utter the name of God in our hearing. | 31:25 | |
| "No value shall be accorded the Jewish mouth | 31:28 | |
| "by us Christians so that he may utter | 31:31 | |
| "the name of God in our hearing, but whoever hears it | 31:34 | |
| "from a Jew shall report him to the authorities | 31:36 | |
| "or throw pig droppings on him. | 31:39 | |
| "Fifth, the Jews are to be deprived totally | 31:41 | |
| "of walkway in streets. | 31:43 | |
| "Sixth, they are to be forbidden lending for interest, | 31:45 | |
| "and all the cash in holding of silver and gold | 31:47 | |
| "are to be taken from them and put to one side | 31:49 | |
| "for safekeeping. | 31:52 | |
| "Seventh, the young, strong Jews and Jewesses | 31:54 | |
| are to have flail, axe, and spade put into their hands." | 31:58 | |
| It's hard to say, but Christians have created victims. | 32:06 | |
| We followers of Jesus the Jew have created Jewish victims. | 32:10 | |
| But Christians too have become victims. | 32:16 | |
| We have become victims of our own hatred. | 32:18 | |
| Martin Luther King used to talk | 32:23 | |
| about how racism, in the long run, hurts the racist | 32:25 | |
| more than it does the object of racism. | 32:28 | |
| Frantz Fanon in Algeria, | 32:32 | |
| a psychiatrist, wrote about the effect of torture | 32:35 | |
| by the French on the torturers, | 32:39 | |
| what it did to their psyches, their spiritual life. | 32:43 | |
| We must not forget the righteous in our program today. | 32:49 | |
| Several of them are remembered. | 32:53 | |
| We must honor them. | 32:55 | |
| Sister Edith Stein among them, | 32:57 | |
| Father Alfred Delp, | 32:59 | |
| Franz Jaegerstaetter, the Austrian peasant, | 33:00 | |
| who, when he was told that the issues were so complicated, | 33:04 | |
| told by his bishop that the issues were so complicated, | 33:08 | |
| they should be left to the government, | 33:10 | |
| he asked, "Why has every man a conscience, then?" | 33:12 | |
| Dietrich Bonhoeffer, | 33:16 | |
| who set a standard I think, | 33:19 | |
| for uniting theology and action. | 33:21 | |
| And Daniel Trocme is another, | 33:26 | |
| the pastor at Le Chambon, | 33:29 | |
| a community of 3,000 Christians | 33:31 | |
| who saved 3,000 Jews. | 33:33 | |
| Asked why he acted the way he did, said, | 33:35 | |
| "Because later I would not have to be ashamed." | 33:40 | |
| But unfortunately, the number of these people is quite few. | 33:45 | |
| Adolf Hitler did what he did because he could. | 33:50 | |
| After all, how many people does it take | 33:56 | |
| to kill 12 million people? | 33:57 | |
| Six million Jews, six million others. | 34:00 | |
| Not just Germans, not just Nazis, | 34:03 | |
| as our text this evening said, a continent. | 34:07 | |
| There were, for example, 3,100,000 Polish Jews | 34:13 | |
| before the outbreak of the Second World War. | 34:18 | |
| 2,700,000 lost their lives. | 34:22 | |
| Today there are 6,000 Jews living in Poland. | 34:26 | |
| How did the Nazis know who they were? | 34:30 | |
| Who pointed them out? | 34:33 | |
| Who traded their lives for a bottle of vodka, | 34:35 | |
| a carton of cigarettes? | 34:37 | |
| My point is that these were not just soldiers. | 34:41 | |
| And I think this has special meaning | 34:44 | |
| in a university setting. | 34:46 | |
| Who are the sociologists who came up with | 34:49 | |
| and supported certain racial theories? | 34:53 | |
| The judges and the lawyers who implemented the law | 34:57 | |
| that said Jews were inferior? | 35:01 | |
| The historians who said from their perspective | 35:04 | |
| the same thing? | 35:07 | |
| The theologians | 35:08 | |
| who, among other things, blamed Jews | 35:12 | |
| for the crucifixion of Jesus, | 35:15 | |
| which is both bad history and bad theology? | 35:17 | |
| The medical profession, and all the experiments | 35:21 | |
| that these people did on the Jews? | 35:26 | |
| Pharmacists and Zyklon gas, for example? | 35:31 | |
| I mean, somebody said to the Nazis, | 35:34 | |
| "There is a more efficient way of killing." | 35:38 | |
| Bullets were becoming too expensive | 35:42 | |
| as the war effort was dragging on. | 35:43 | |
| We could save money by building gas chambers and using gas. | 35:46 | |
| Somebody designed the gas chambers. | 35:49 | |
| Somebody bribed government officials | 35:53 | |
| for the privilege of getting the contract to build these. | 35:56 | |
| Who were these people who contributed | 36:00 | |
| to what our text this evening called | 36:03 | |
| the diabolically efficient technology of death? | 36:04 | |
| And indeed, we have a commitment ourselves | 36:09 | |
| to be responsible for one another, as we heard. | 36:14 | |
| Responsible, I suggest, to the past, to the present, | 36:17 | |
| and to the future. | 36:20 | |
| To the past, some of you know that earlier this afternoon | 36:23 | |
| there was a memorialization of the dead | 36:29 | |
| by the reading of many names for almost four hours | 36:31 | |
| of the victims of the Holocaust. | 36:35 | |
| But of course, the best way we can give testimony | 36:38 | |
| to the dead is with our lives. | 36:40 | |
| We must not condemn ourselves | 36:45 | |
| to repeat the errors of the past, | 36:48 | |
| as George Santayana has told us, | 36:50 | |
| and we have a responsibility to the living victims, | 36:53 | |
| the survivors of the Holocaust, | 36:57 | |
| who bear the scars, | 36:58 | |
| scars that we can never know. | 37:01 | |
| Survivors who, even now, | 37:03 | |
| commit suicide | 37:07 | |
| over what they experienced | 37:09 | |
| because so many of them have found that the promise | 37:11 | |
| that they hoped for | 37:15 | |
| wasn't realized. | 37:18 | |
| When we get out of here, the death camps, | 37:19 | |
| those of us who will survive, | 37:23 | |
| the world will be a better place. | 37:25 | |
| And when they hear what happened to us, | 37:26 | |
| they will act in another way. | 37:28 | |
| But some of us did not execute, if you will, | 37:32 | |
| our responsibility that well. | 37:35 | |
| And we have a responsibility to the future. | 37:37 | |
| Jews and non-Jews alike, all humanity. | 37:40 | |
| The quotation we heard from Martin Niemoeller, | 37:43 | |
| "First they came for the Jews, | 37:44 | |
| "and I was silent, | 37:45 | |
| and then they came for the socialists, | 37:46 | |
| "and I was silent," | 37:48 | |
| is a beautiful quote, | 37:49 | |
| and I honor the heroism of Martin Niemoeller, | 37:49 | |
| but that text must not be misinterpreted. | 37:52 | |
| We mustn't be concerned about Jews, | 37:55 | |
| because then they'll come for us, | 37:57 | |
| or about socialists because they'll come for us. | 37:59 | |
| We must be concerned for Jews because they're human beings. | 38:02 | |
| Never mind the effect | 38:07 | |
| that it will have on us if we are silent. | 38:08 | |
| Each of us is a center of the universe. | 38:14 | |
| It's a humbling kind of thing to | 38:17 | |
| understand that without me, | 38:21 | |
| the universe is incomplete. | 38:24 | |
| Without you, the universe is incomplete. | 38:25 | |
| My task is to discover my role, | 38:30 | |
| my place in the puzzle, | 38:32 | |
| if you will, to fulfill it. | 38:34 | |
| Discovering is difficult. | 38:36 | |
| But the search for my uniqueness, | 38:38 | |
| why God created me a certain way, | 38:43 | |
| is the ongoing adventure of life, if you will. | 38:45 | |
| Trying to fulfill it is an accompanying role. | 38:50 | |
| And certainly this includes responsibility to God, | 38:55 | |
| responsibility to myself, to survivors, | 38:58 | |
| and to humanity in general, as I suggested. | 39:02 | |
| We can, in fact, change the meaning of the past | 39:04 | |
| by our acts and by our inactivity. | 39:08 | |
| We could grant Adolf Hitler a posthumous victory. | 39:11 | |
| We could make the meaning of the lives | 39:17 | |
| of Jesus, and Martin Luther King, and Buddha meaningless. | 39:19 | |
| The Holocaust was an awesome event, | 39:25 | |
| but since it could have been done, | 39:29 | |
| it could have been prevented. | 39:31 | |
| Max Broad, perhaps best known as the person | 39:34 | |
| who saved Franz Kafka's manuscripts, | 39:37 | |
| wrote a book in which he talked, | 39:41 | |
| he made a distinction between noble suffering | 39:43 | |
| and ignoble suffering. | 39:46 | |
| Ignoble suffering is the kind of suffering | 39:48 | |
| that we experience | 39:50 | |
| that could have been averted. | 39:52 | |
| Children starving in Ethiopia are starving ignobly. | 39:55 | |
| We as a human race could put an end to that. | 39:59 | |
| Noble suffering, I suppose, would be natural disasters | 40:02 | |
| and so on. | 40:06 | |
| Earthquakes, tidal waves, | 40:07 | |
| oftentimes we have no control over, | 40:10 | |
| no warnings, | 40:12 | |
| but Max Broad urges us to give our attention | 40:14 | |
| to stamping out, to preventing ignoble suffering. | 40:18 | |
| What will I do with my life to prevent ignoble suffering? | 40:23 | |
| Just think for a moment of all the people | 40:30 | |
| that I can hate. | 40:33 | |
| In fact, that I am sometimes urged to hate. | 40:35 | |
| As a white person, I hate people of color. | 40:37 | |
| As a male, hate or fear, | 40:42 | |
| they may be the same thing down the line, women. | 40:44 | |
| As an American, non-Americans. | 40:48 | |
| As a northerner, southerners. | 40:51 | |
| As a tenant, landlords. | 40:53 | |
| Maybe as a teacher, students. | 40:55 | |
| As a Christian, Jews. | 40:58 | |
| The list is enormously long. | 40:59 | |
| How do I act upon these divisions? | 41:04 | |
| Do I work to eliminate them? | 41:08 | |
| Or I can go another way. | 41:12 | |
| And I wanna close with the words | 41:16 | |
| of the great Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, | 41:18 | |
| who suggests for us the way to go. | 41:22 | |
| Niebuhr wrote, "No thing that is worth doing | 41:26 | |
| "can be achieved in a lifetime. | 41:30 | |
| "Therefore we must be saved by hope. | 41:33 | |
| "Nothing which is true or beautiful or good | 41:37 | |
| "makes complete sense in any immediate context of history. | 41:40 | |
| "Therefore we must be saved by faith. | 41:45 | |
| "Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone. | 41:49 | |
| "Therefore, we are saved by love." | 41:54 | |
| (papers shuffling) | 41:58 | |
| - | We remember the six million | 42:25 |
| by reciting the Kadish, | 42:27 | |
| the traditional Jewish prayer for the dead. | 42:30 | |
| This prayer is not a funeral hymn, but an affirmation | 42:36 | |
| of God's everlasting presence and dominion, | 42:40 | |
| praising God's existence and creative love. | 42:44 | |
| It is in this spirit that we pray the Kadish, | 42:48 | |
| remembering the victims of the Holocaust. | 42:52 | |
| We also pray for the survivors, | 42:56 | |
| whose faith in life enabled them | 43:00 | |
| to rebuild in other countries their shattered lives. | 43:03 | |
| They had destroyed worlds. | 43:08 | |
| Joining together, they brought about new life. | 43:10 | |
| They raised new families in new lands | 43:15 | |
| in defiance of absolute terror and despair, | 43:18 | |
| and invincible hope. | 43:22 | |
| Exalted by that spirit of life-giving and faith, | 43:24 | |
| we pray today. | 43:29 | |
| Let us stand. | 43:31 | |
| (chanting in Hebrew) | 43:35 | |
| Hallowed and enhanced, may God be throughout the world. | 44:42 | |
| May God's sovereignty soon be accepted | 44:47 | |
| during our life and the life of all Israel, | 44:50 | |
| and let us say amen. | 44:53 | |
| May God be praised throughout all time. | 44:56 | |
| Glorified and celebrated, lauded and praised, | 45:00 | |
| acclaimed and honored, extolled and exalted | 45:04 | |
| may the Holy One be. | 45:08 | |
| Far beyond all song and psalm, | 45:10 | |
| beyond all tributes which humanity can utter. | 45:13 | |
| And let us say amen. | 45:16 | |
| Let there be abundant peace from heaven, | 45:19 | |
| with life's goodness for us and for all the people Israel. | 45:21 | |
| And let us say amen. | 45:25 | |
| God, who brings peace to the universe, | 45:28 | |
| will bring peace to us, to humanity, and to Israel. | 45:31 | |
| And let us say amen. | 45:36 | |
| Exalted, compassionate God, grant perfect peace | 45:39 | |
| in your sheltering presence | 45:43 | |
| among the holy (muffled recitation) | 45:45 | |
| to the souls of all men, women, and children | 45:47 | |
| in the House of Israel | 45:50 | |
| to the righteous Gentiles to the millions who have died | 45:52 | |
| defending the right to be different | 45:55 | |
| in a time of madness and terror. | 45:57 | |
| May their memory endure | 46:00 | |
| And inspire us to attend loyalty | 46:02 | |
| in our lives. | 46:04 | |
| In our religious commitment and tasks, | 46:05 | |
| may their memory be a blessing and a sign of peace | 46:08 | |
| for all humanity, | 46:11 | |
| and let us say amen. | 46:12 | |
| (papers shuffling) | 46:14 | |
| - | We end our worship by reciting together the words | 46:27 |
| found on the walls of a cellar in Cologne, Germany, | 46:29 | |
| where Jews hid from the Nazis. | 46:32 | |
| "I believe. | 46:35 | |
| "I believe in the sun, even when it is not shining. | 46:36 | |
| "I believe in love, even when feeling it not. | 46:41 | |
| "I believe in God, even when God is silent." | 46:45 | |
| We have proclaimed together our faith in the one God, | 46:54 | |
| ground and nurturer of us all. | 46:57 | |
| Before we go our separate ways again, | 47:00 | |
| let us extend to one another a sign of reconciliation | 47:03 | |
| expressing our-- | 47:07 |
| - | Please turn to those around you. | 0:05 |
| Share the blessing of peace, wholeness, | 0:07 | |
| and life, and wish them shalom. | 0:09 |