The Blindfolded Executioner

I recently joined Munich Public Library, which as it is based at the Gasteig Music Hall has a huge collection of classical and modern music CDs, as well as a huge range of English language books. Very useful for a music loving English speaker such as myself. Much to my delight they have a large collection of novels and essays by Martin Amis. Whatever you think of him, he's always a good read and leaves you thinking at the end of whatever you read of his, even if all you think is "what a smug, chauvinistic so and so."

I've started reading "Visiting Mrs Nabakov", a collection of essays he wrote for the Observer and other journals during the 1980s. One of them, "Nuclear City: The Megadeath Intellectuals", deals with a visit he made to Washington D.C to learn more about Nuclear Politics as they stood circa. 1987. I always find it fascinating to read articles on Nuclear War from the 1980s, as they almost always have a certainty of doom about them. For a member of the unimaginatively named "Generation Y" it is like reading foreign literature, especially given we are a generation with no memory of the Cold War nor any recollection of a time when 'google' was not even a noun let alone a verb. I found his conclusion quite powerful

"We must fix our kids so that they will have nothing to do with anyone who has anything to do with nuclear weapons, with instruments of blood and rubble. The process with begin at the moment of mortal shame when we acquaint them with the status quo, with the facts of life, the facts of death. So come on. In an inversion of filial confession, we will have to take deep breaths, wipe our eyes and stare into theirs, and tell them what we've done."

Amis's comments raised an interesting point for me. I've said elsewhere that the phrase "Never Again" sometimes rings hollow when we remember that to the names Auschwitz and Sobibor we must add Rwanda, Cambodia, Bosnia-Herzegovina. What Amis makes clear in his article is that the shame of the Nuclear Age must be clarified as well, for it was a gamble of our peace that the planet only narrowly managed to emerge from. There are memorial sites for the Holocaust that happened, yet nothing for the Holocaust that very nearly did occur and for which the world waited with inaction.

One of the topics Amis returns to often is the nuclear experts he meets and the way in which they all acclimatise to dealing with casualty lists and statistics beyond comprehension. Coming up to twenty years since the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, it appears that an entire generation has no idea how close they came to being cooked to death at temperatures hotter than the Sun or being slowly eroded through radiation poisoning. From Kate Bush to Genesis, the 1980s is full of music, television series and novels written with the bomb always present. Generation Y is the first generation to have no conception of what it feels like to be threatened by extermination.During the Holocaust the Executioners knew exactly who they were murdering; during the Cold War, the "Red Button" served as a blindfolded executioner, who aimed straight and fired.

I am not saying that reading the latest nuclear statistics in The Guardian while living a relatively comfortable 1980s western existence is in any way similar to being treated like a subhuman before being rounded up and put into camps. They were two different scenarios. However where the sanctity of human life, tolerance and understanding are our educational aims, both histories can offer important lessons and enrich other's message. I have previously commented on the purpose of Memorial Sites both as a place of remembrance and a place of learning, yet it took almost half a century before people were able to face the Holocaust in this manner. Perhaps a similar process of coming to terms with the past must occur for the previous generation as regards the cultural fear of nuclear weapons before we may also learn their lessons on the culture of fear that can produce unimaginable outcomes.

Why Concentration Camp Memorial Sites can look attractive

Sorry for the inconsistency of blog posts in the last couple of weeks. I've taken on a new (and very worthwhile) position with the Education Department at the Jugendgästehaus (Youth Hostel) once or twice a week, which meant that last week I had a two day seminar to attend on top of my usual work. It was an amazing experience getting to hear what fifteen year old Hauptschüler (Secondary Modern students) knew about the Holocaust, as well as discovering their willingness to learn.

Anyway, as those of you in the UK probably realise by now, Snow is the order of the day across Europe. Technically it snowed in Dachau last week for the first time, but it soon turned into sleet and thus didn't really count. Yesterday however, the snow finally hit town in English terms, by which I mean a dusting enough to turn everything white.

This morning I took a few of the Memorial Site on my way into work at the Versöhnugskirche. The snow made everything seem pure and beautiful, particularly with the winter sun shining brightly, almost unsettlingly so. I've read articles before about the 'problem' with memorial sites looking clean and attractive, Dachau being a very prominent example. People are often surprised how nice the site looks, coming as they do with the film Schindler's List in mind. It often has to do with memory- is KZ Gedenkstätte Dachau's primary function to remember the dead, in which case the site can be made to look attractive like most graveyards, or is it supposed to be educational and look exactly as it was? KZ Dachau was a housing estate for longer than it was a Concentration Camp, thus much of the original site had been torn down, replaced and redecorated in the time between the end of the war and a public cry for a memorial site.

Obviously both are correct answers, though it makes the question of how to make the camp seem 'real' to someone and not turn the site into an historically accurate version of a Madame Tussauds attraction a very prominent one.

The sociologist Gerald E. Markle wrote a short book on Holocaust memory called 'Meditations of a Holocaust Traveler', in which he looks at his personal journey to answer the impossible "Why" that the Holocaust demands an answer to. His work is far too personal to my taste, his necessarily emotional tone sometimes bordering on the melodramatic, but he makes a good point about the place of trees at Dachau.

The Lagerstraße, the main street of the camp, these days has a long row of Poplars which makes the camp look quite attractive. Markle would argue that this is disconcerting for the visitor, which admittedly it is, but then again they have not been grown for the visitor. We forget sometimes that the memory of the Holocaust does not belong to us, it is merely entrusted to future generations in order that we do not forget. The bodies of 41,500 people rest here at Dachau; its first function should be its most human, as a burial site and final resting place.

Apologies...and a clue

Sorry for the lack of posts of late. I've been adjusting to an increased workload: challenging stuff but if it all comes through it could have a lasting impact. As a consequence of one aspect of my work this song has been in my head for a while. There are far worse people to leave you in the company of than Neil Diamond...

RIP Henryk Górecki (1933-2010)

It was announced some time yesterday afternoon that the Polish composer Henryk Gorecki has died aged 76. One of the few contemporary composers to make a mark on a wider public, he is best known for the 1992 recording of his Symphony No.3 Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, dedicated to the victims of the Holocaust.

I first came across Gorecki's music on BBC4's excellent series Sacred Music, in which they compared his compositions with Arvo Paert's, another composer who used sacred music as a means of expression during the years of Communism in Eastern Europe. You can see a clip of Simon Russell Beale discussing Gorecki's success here.

Its popularity in the UK was helped along by its regular play on the newly opened Classic FM at the time, but its long term success lies in its simple, haunting melody that lingers long after the piece has ambled to its conclusion and faded out, sustaining one mournful note - no optimism, no catharsis, just a gentle ebbing away into memory. Like John Tavener's Song for Athene and even Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings the simplicity of the piece has allowed it to take on a life of its own.

We Will Remember Them

Last Thursday, the 11th November, people in the UK people remembered those who had fought, and sometimes fallen, in conflicts since WWI. It is a day on which people from across the political divides unite despite any misgivings about the need to fight or whether their cause was just; the sheer scale numbs all into silence. Two minutes of silence at 11am, the exact time the Armistice was signed on the same day in 1918 and ended hostilities.

I find remembrance cultures fascinating, though November 11th is no time to analyse it too deeply. Having said that, though I didn't observe the formal silence (Germany remembers the dead on 9th November for reasons I've previously mentioned) something did occur to me over the course of the day. On Thursday I began working at the Dachau Youth Hostel, which was developed in recent years in order to deal with the number of young people coming to the memorial site and provide a location at which educational work could take place. I was informed as I went through the door that there was going to be a Zeitzeugsgespräch (lit. Witness-talk) from a survivor and that I was warmly invited. Such is life in Dachau!

While the talk was interesting, it suddenly occurred to me, surrounded by a group of young people from Switzerland, that ours will be the most significant generation for WWI and WWII remembrance. We are the last generation to hear the veterans of WWI and will quite possibly be one of the last to hear the victims of WWII while they are active in telling their stories. Quite worryingly, we need to find a better reason for remembering the dead of these wars beyond 'He was my Grandfather' or 'it was in our lifetime'. Certainly the ephithet 'Never Again' has been shown to have been an empty promise in the twentieth century and these days feels more like a plea than a demand.

One final thing. One of my jobs on Thursday was to scan some photos for an upcoming workshop on the concept of Volksgemeinschaft, a word which denotes a kind of unified culture. Amidst the photos I found one of some men constructing one of the Autobahns that were developed during the Nazi era. They were British POWS. It was at that point that I remembered my countrymen who fought to liberate Europe. We Will Remember Them.

Kristallnacht and the Present

Twenty one years ago tonight, one of the most unexpected, and significant, events in modern European history took place. The fall of the Berlin Wall, and the consequent collapse of the German Democratic Republic (DDR), was an event that took almost everyone by surprise and as such remains full of emotionally charged memories. Footage of men with mullets in leather jackets weeping for joy at being able to traverse the few metres of the Death Zone unabetted is not easily forgotten.

I've written about the rather horrible cooincidence of history that means Germans must commemorate both one of their proudest moments with one of their most shameful in a previous post, so I won't go into much detail here. On Sunday I laid a Rose at the memorial to the unknown prisoner as part of a service of remembrance organised by the German Trade Union Congress, at which the representative for Munich, Matthias Jena, pointed out the similarities between the events of Kristallnacht and the current political 'hot potato', integration.

In late August a German Social Democrat politician, Thilo Sarrazin, published a book entitled Deutschland schafft sich ab, or "Germany does away with itself", in which he argues that immigration is slowly destroying Germany through a lack of social integration. He highlights in particular the negative impact of Islam on German culture. This is not a surprising view for him to hold given the group most associated with post war immigration is Turkish workers.

These views hit a raw nerve in Germany, and over the past three months or so it has been a huge topic of national debate. There are many who sympathise with his fears, and there have been many television debates relating to the topic. In fact one of the themes to arise from the publication of the book is the freedom of Germans to discuss questions of racial and cultural integration without being dismissed as 'Nazis'. When the SPD discussed the possibility of terminating Sarrazin's membership on the basis of holding views that were 'not compatible' with the party, many construed this as an attack on his right to speak freely.

It's an extremely difficult situation. There are many Germans who fear immigration and are angered at the seeming unwillingness of immigrants to integrate, yet they are instantly told by those who are supposed to represent them that there is no problem. They thus think that there is a problem and that they are now a surpressed majority. The history of many nations tells us that a 'silent majority' that feels marginalised is a very dangerous force indeed.

At the service on Sunday Matthias Jena was quite clear as to where the comparisons lie. He was quick to point out the poignancy of the memorial service coming in the middle of such a public debate, and that the current debate over integration was developing into a debate over selection.

These are topics that all nations find extremely hard to discuss openly. We in the UK are no different; just substitute 'Turkey' with 'Pakistan'. However as Germany commemorates the night on which the persecution of the Jews finally left the law court and erupted into the streets, they will continue to keep in mind where misunderstanding and intolerance can lead, as well as what happens when one marginalises the problem rather than dealing with it face to face.

Br Raphael

As things go this has been a very good week. I've got quite a bit of work done, made progess in some other areas of my work and generally things seem to be taking shape quite nicely.

One of the bext things to move forward this week was my work on a Biography for the 'Memory Book', a collection of detailed histories of over 120 former inmates of Dachau Concentration Camp. This is a project with which the Versöhnungskirche is closely aligned and as such we spend one day a week at the office in Münchnerstraße, Central Dachau, helping with things from translation work to administering the accompanying travelling exhibition "Names Instead of Numbers".

However, it is often considered important for volunteers to get involved with the production of a biography of their own, so as to understand better the personal nature of the work we do. I think I have mentioned the Carmelite friar Br. Raphael Tijhuis in a previous post (later pilfered by the website of the Biritsh Province of Carmelites!). His Dachau diary, Nothing Can Stop God From Reaching Us is a moving account of his experiences as a prisoner of the Nazis from his arrest in Mainz in 1940, to his incarceration in the camp at Dachau in 1942, right up to his liberation in 1945. I would recommend you read it yourselves rather than me bother to try and sum it up in a couple of paragraphs here.

However, my only complaint about the Edizioni Camelitani edition is that there is very little on his life after Dachau. This information is of vital scholarly importance, not only to a biography of his life but to an understanding of the post war lives of religious prisoners in general who were interned in Dachau. I have learned from various sources, not least friars who lived in Rome with Raphael in the 1960s and 1970s, that he was a deeply traumatised man with mental scars from the horrors he once saw.

What is less well known, and not remarked to in the book at all, is that he did come back to Dachau in the 1960s. I have seen photos in the Memorial Site Library of Raphael with other former prisoners at the opening of the memorials in around 1965. There is also a picture of him in audience with Pope Paul VI and a number of other survivors, suggesting that however painful the memories were he was involved in the remembrance culture of the day.

These are all preliminary thoughts, very broad brush strokes of his life. In December I will hopefully visit the Carmel in Mainz where he was arrested and begin to piece together something of his pre and post war life. If you have any information on Br. Raphael that may be relevant to a short biography of his life, or indeed have any queries pertaining to this work, please do not hesitiate to contact me at roy.scivyer@gmail.com

The image is of the Camp Chapel, attributed to Raphael, and was drawn as a gift for Bl. Karl Leisner on his ordination. Photo courtesy of http://www.schoenstatt.de/news2004/12dezember/4t1252de-d---leisner.htm

Gräbersegnung

Yesterday afternoon at around 4pm, a small group gathered at the Agony of Christ Chapel at the Memorial Site for a service to bless the mass grave of those who had died here in Dachau, one that was mirrored in countless cemeteries across the world on the feast of All Souls. Following a simple liturgy, which included a Service of the Word and a Psalmody we processed from the Chapel to the Crematorium area, where the mass grave of thousands of Dachau prisoners was blessed with holy water.

The homily, preached by Fr. Klaus Spiegel OSB, one of the two Catholic chaplains to the site, was a reflective one, pointing out that although Dachau was a site of particular pain to Catholics for the deaths of thousands of religious prisoners, the attitude of Catholicism had in many ways helped to build the camp in the first place.

As with many of these services held at the site, one feels sometimes like performing animals at the Zoo. Visitors to the site stop and take photos, peering in before wandering on to see the 'real' parts of the site. The Versoehnungskirche has two walls made of glass, which sometimes makes us feel like we are in a fish bowl. I wonder if visitors do feel that we are also a relic of the age remembered by the site, when most people professed faith.

Either way the service was an appropriate way of commemorating the lives of those who are no longer remembered by name, but by quantity. It was also nice to speak with members of the Carmelite Convent who live on the site as a sign of atonement. They were all very keen to talk about their experiences of Britain, which thankfully had kept them firmly in the safety of the South!

"The Key to Holiness"

In the foyer to the Church of the Assumption there were copies of a quotation of St Edith Stein, printed especially for the Feast of All Saints. As I have quite a few Carmelite readers (or at least I got the impression I did!) I thought it might appreciate it being quoted in full. The translation is a combination of Google Translate and my untangling its incomprehensible sentence structure:

"No one can say 'Holiness is out of my reach'.

It doesn't hang on some remarkable feat, belong to a specific age, require a certain relationship or a dead serious manner.

On the outside one notices very little, although with time it will begin to take shape.

God in heart and God in mind- there lies the key to Holiness"

Feasts of All Saints and All Souls

Happy Feast of All Saints for those of you who celebrate such things. Yesterday I was on the rota for the Mesnerdienst, the process of setting up for the Sunday service at the Church of Reconciliation. I had forgotten that the 31st October is actually a very important day for the German Lutheran Church, as it is the anniversary of Luther's Nailing of the ninety five Theses to the door of the Church in Wittenberg: Reformation Day. The sermon, preached by a local priest, was very much an attack on the Roman Church in the early sixteenth century and Luther's courage in standing up to the authorities.

Whilst in England and Wales the calender shifts prominent Feast Days to the nearest Sunday, here in Germany we get a Feiertag on which people head out for walks wearing traditional Bavarian hats and generally enjoy a little extra time with the family. It's been quiet, which has given me the chance to get some work done for a change. Tomorrow's Feast of All Souls will be marked at the Memorial Site with a particular focus on the victims of the concentration camp. More to follow.

In the meantime, I went for a wander yesterday around Theresienwiese, the location every September of Oktoberfest, and as you can see from the photos they're still trying to clear it all up just shy of a month since the festival ended!

It seems a very Bavarian thing for there to be images of the Madonna and Child on random buildings. Wandering towards Theresienwiese U-Bahn Station, I found a particularly striking one

The joys of wandering aimlessly on a Sunday afternoon...