tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31623341496092161902024-03-05T19:28:37.521+01:00ASF in DachauReflections on volunteering for peace at Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site.Roy Scivyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00485688727709344791noreply@blogger.comBlogger85125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3162334149609216190.post-61155433009209536412011-09-09T20:42:00.007+02:002011-09-09T21:44:41.212+02:00Finding freedom in Dachau: Thanks and Goodbye</p><p>So here we are, the final post I will make on this blog. Technically the title is now an historical point, as last Wednesday my ASF year drew to a close with a final seminar in Berlin. I am writing this in a dark room that was once my bedroom and is now a walk in wardrobe/Twilight shrine. I have been back in the UK for nine days now, and the day after tomorrow I'll head to Aylesford for the next chapter. As lovely as it has been to see friends and family, this has not been an easy time, as it means ending a part of my life that was so fruitful and full of amazing, life changing experiences.</p><p>I miss Germany a lot, not least because of the freedom I felt there. It is true that my next step is intended to be a way towards a freedom of self, but the loss of physical freedom, the ability to leave the house and not have to feel like my parents will worry about where I am, is a harsh one. Also, I did feel during the last few months a freeing of the mind as I began to become more aware of my own potential, which in turn has made my decision to reject a lot of that physical freedom to go out when I like, to do as I please, that much harder.</p><p>So my final feeling about Dachau is a paradox. Through doing something that was not pleasant, not easy and at times painful, I found freedom in a place where for twelve years it was denied to so many. There have been opportunities, chances that I missed or turned away from that with hindsight I would have faced differently, yet I have learned that to regret is to hold on to something that is no longer there, which makes it all the more painful. There will be other times; life is precious and will go on whether I stay on as a friar at the end of this coming year or leave for another adventure.</p><p>This is the final post on this blog. I'd also like to take this opportunity to thank all of you who have read this blog at some point or another. It has been nice to hear such positive feedback about my blogposts. I find it interesting to see how as the months have gone on the purpose of this blog has changed. While first it was all about the work and my place in it, as the months have gone on it has become rather introspective and reflective on how all this will affect me in the coming months. To see whether all my cynicism and fears about the novitiate were justified, you'll have to head over to my new blog at royscivyer.blogspot.com. I've set it up as a place for me to post bits and pieces sporadically, as I am not sure how often I will be able to use the internet, or if I will want to. It's called <a href="http://royscivyer.blogspot.com">STORK</a> for reasons explained on the site. Go check it out from time to time.</p><p>This is where I say goodbye and thanks again for sharing the past year with me. To quote Ferris Bueller from <i>Ferris Bueller's Day Off</i> (1986)<blockquote><i>Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop to look around once in a while, you could miss it.</i></blockquote></p><p>Peace,</p><p>ROY :)</p>Roy Scivyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00485688727709344791noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3162334149609216190.post-23561457943916472832011-08-26T14:43:00.004+02:002011-08-26T16:24:07.159+02:00Dahoam is Dahoam, wherein Roy rants...</p><p>It has been a while. We had the International Dachau Youth Meeting (IJB) in early August, at which approximately 90 young people from 24 different nations came to confront the history of National Socialism. With so many nations come just as many national myths and remembrance cultures, and yet the event passed smoothly. On the last evening of the IJB I also marked a rather significant, if soon to be inconsequential, milestone: one month until I am due to arrive at Aylesford Priory in Kent for the Carmelite Novitiate.</p><p>The days tick by now as I await what should be a joyful and glorious event. Indeed, plenty of people have told me how I will make a wonderful friar and I do not doubt that. Being a friar <i>per se</i> is not terribly difficult if you have good people skills and can shut up long enough to let someone speak. Yet the novitiate becomes more daunting and more foreboding as time passes and it comes ever nearer. That evening I got drunk, played a few songs on the guitar and tried to enjoy the heady feeling of being drunk and alive with young people. It is one I have only really begun to appreciate this year in Dachau.</p><p>It's ironic that I have only truly appreicated vitality and youth, or indeed the fact that I am young, while in a place that robbed that from so many people. My volunteer cohort with ASF has been a young bunch, including a number who undertook voluntary service in their late twenties in the hope they may divine some kind of way forward. I wonder if stability and job security are alien concepts for Europeans in their early to mid twenties. After all, a German who goes to University can expect to spend 5 years on an MA course, and that is after finishing school at 18/19 and spending a gap year somewhere. Other countries are different, though I know one volunteer in my situation (i.e recent graduate) at the age of 27, and others who are in their early 30s. Of course all this talk of possibility and uncertainity makes me rather jealous, as I prepare to take a small room, techinically called a cell, at a Priory.</p><p>At the end of the day, this is my main problem. I have spent the past six months defending my decision to so many different people, trying to convince them that I am not crazy or am going to disappear. This is made doubly difficult with Germans because of the following (illustrated below):</p><p><a href="http://www.wdr.de/tv/fernsehfilm/sendungsbeitraege/2011/0219/img/2_pfarrer_braunuverdacht400.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://www.wdr.de/tv/fernsehfilm/sendungsbeitraege/2011/0219/img/2_pfarrer_braunuverdacht400.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>
<br /><a href="http://www.lovefilm.de/lovefilm-de/images/products/screenshots/2/78222-1-large.jpg?section=gallery&sub-section=screenshots/2/78222-1-small.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 640px; height: 428px;" src="http://www.lovefilm.de/lovefilm-de/images/products/screenshots/2/78222-1-large.jpg?section=gallery&sub-section=screenshots/2/78222-1-small.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>
<br /></p><p>The first photo is of Pfarrer Braun from the eponymous TV show loosely based on G.K Chesterton's fictional detective priest, and the second is from the Bavarian housewive's favourite soap <I>Dahoam is Dahoam</i>. Now it is not the fact that these two examples of the priestly vocation are rather large in stature - though being someone with weight issues myself that does rather rub salt in the wound - but the rather twee, conservative small town existences they lead. Indeed, the very...<i>Bavarian</i> lives they have. The Catholic Church in this part of the world is in decline, as everyone by now knows. We can point to 1.5 million screaming young people in Madrid last week and say there's still life in the Church yet, but I can't help but think gathering all engaged young Catholics into one spot to get high on crowd mentality is a rather desperate measure to give them self assurance. In Bavaria (and in Germany as well) the perception of the Church is not strong among young people. They respect those who choose the path of religious life, knowing that perhaps at some point they may rely on a rite of passage that inevitably involves the old institution, but it does appear extremely escapist, as if you are rejecting mainstream culture</p><p>When I first officially applied for the Novitiate last September it was out of a desire to find a family and make a difference in the world. The kind of Catholicism the Carmelites and much of the progressive wing of the Church emphasizes, i.e that God lives inside every human being and thus it is our duty to make sure they <i>are</i> loved and that they <i>feel</i> loved, is actually quite a radical one. I still respect it today and I pray I will live up to this ideal. However it's far easier to be cynical. I remember being in Aylesford in May and hearing a prominent Carmelite talking on the topic of 'Contemplative Prayer and hearing the cy of the poor'. I was speaking to another friar about it later and he jokingly pointed out this particualr friar could probably deliver the same talk in his sleep. This apathy is beautifully summed up in the images above of the jovial parish priest sipping his Weißbier and popping up in parishioners' lives every so often when they need some advice.</p><p>Every so often there are glimpses of opportunity, and the potential this vocation has is huge. I have spent time in Walworth, a South London parish maintained by the Carmelites where despite all the poverty and trouble there is real hope and joy. In Lourdes I have sat with people who have every reason not to carry on, yet do because they feel the love of God inside them. Simply speaking with them and making them feel loved is a noble vocation in itself. Yet am I prepared to give up everything to live with a bunch of middle aged gentlemen in middle England?</p><p>I wish I were less cynical, and there are other reasons why I am cynical that I will not say here, but it is a very disconcerting feeling to have when a lot of my friends are off to enjoy life and I will be in a priory discerning if I should stay or go. For them it also seems an easy option, an escape from "real" problems like where the rent money will come from, ho I will get a job, how will I stay in the country. I will literally have everything on a plate - Aylesford as a pilgrimage site has its own catering. All I need to do is think and pray, which is not as easy or enticing as it sounds.</p><p>Either way, I shall begin in 16 days time, and time will tell if I have made the right decision or not. There are second chances, that is clear.</p><p>Roy Scivyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00485688727709344791noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3162334149609216190.post-76328443003476829052011-07-25T22:16:00.004+02:002011-07-25T23:12:46.080+02:00If a man can walk on sunshine...HE CAN RUN!</p><p>My good friend Chris Harrison is currently training for the York 10K Run on Sunday 31st July. I have had the privilege of completing the Battersea Park Santa Run 2009 with this great man, and can attest to his ability to run and my ability to pant the words and actions to "Rise and Shine". In fact, here is photographic evidence:</p><p><iframe width="425" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/0hjTa1BDDck" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p><p>He is putting himself through the indignity of running through York wearing a bright orange hat for <a href="http://www.hcpt.org.uk">HCPT</a> (the Handicapped Children's Pilgrimage Trust), also known as Helping, Caring, Playing Together. Since 1956 the Trust has given thousands of young people of differing abilities the opportunity to travel to Lourdes for a week's holiday. Lourdes is a small town in southern France, best known as a place where the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared to 14 year old Bernadette Soubirous in 1858. Since then people have come from all over the world to see the spot where Mary appeared to Bernadette, and it has developed a reputation as a place of healing, with a particular emphasis on those who are ill.</p><p>I have been travelling to Lourdes for the past three years with the Catholic Association after the Carmelites (who else?) gave me the opportunity to travel with their pilgrimage. It is a place which at first glance is a Catholic parody, filled to the brim with nuns, rosaries, fluorescent figurines of the Virgin Mary and everything in between, yet the place attracts people from all backgrounds and places, many who come to serve the elderly, disabled and/or ill people who come and receive hope. It really has to be experienced to be believed. This year I am gutted I will not be able to travel with them as I end my time here in Dachau, though I am comforted by the fact they will be there praying for me.</p><p>But enough of me. Chris is running to raise money for HCPT Group 122, from York and the region. I ask that you ignore the strong tingling sensation that the sight of Chris kissing his biceps may arouse in your loins, and channel that sexual energy into donating to his Just Giving account at <a href="http://www.justgiving.com/Chris-Adam-HCPT122-10k">Chris & Adam's HCPT 122 10k</a>.</p><p>To quote the man himself:</p><p><blockquote><i>Come on guys, in the words of Delia Smith "Let's be Havin' You!!!"</i></blockquote></p><p>P.S This is what Chris is running for. It is awesome to see.</p><p><iframe width="425" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/RS9TfsyOkmI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>Roy Scivyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00485688727709344791noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3162334149609216190.post-167059812054831592011-07-21T17:48:00.007+02:002011-07-22T00:07:07.090+02:00Tolerance, or "A Reading from the Gospel according to John (Hughes)"</p><p>Following on from my last post, here's a moving scene from an 1980s classic film (aren't all films from the 1980s classics?!) <i>Planes, Trains and Automobiles</i> (1987). If you haven't seen it, go watch it now. From John Hughes, the genius behind some of the greatest teen films ever made, essentially Steve Martin and John Candy attempt to get home for Thanksgiving in inclement weather conditions, and must put up with each other's negative behaviour traits along the way. This scene is near to the end, when Steve Martin has had enough and explodes in anger at John Candy clearing out his sinuses.</p><p><iframe width="560" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Q05p-5TWcj8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p><p>Let's read that again:</p><p><blockquote><i>"You wanna hurt me? Go right ahead if it makes you feel any better. I'm an easy target. Yeah, you're right. I talk too much; I also listen too much. I could be a cold-hearted cynic like you, but I don't like to hurt people's feelings. You think what you want about me. I'm not changing. I like, I like me, my wife likes me, my customers like me because i'm the real article. what you see is what you get."</i></blockquote></p><p>To go all sunday-school-Guardian-reading-wishy-washy-'now-seriously guyz'-priest on you, that is the essence of tolerance; learning to deal with people who annoy the hell out of you, because you realise they must learn to deal with you too. John Candy's character is no saint, and John Hughes' genius in this film is to show them both as flawed human beings, yet in this scene we see Steve Martin realise that to criticise John Candy he must also accept his shortcomings too. A little more tolerance and a little more patience with others might go a long way.</p><p>Here endeth the lesson.<p>Roy Scivyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00485688727709344791noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3162334149609216190.post-76580829187238509392011-07-19T09:19:00.000+02:002011-07-21T17:44:46.706+02:00The Big Fat Gypsy Joke</p><p>Throughout my year in Dachau there has been an emphasis on acknowledging the suffering of the Sinti and Romani communities during the Nazi persecutions. Over 500,000 were murdered, many of them in extermination camps such as Auschwitz-Birkenau, yet persecution continued right up to the present day. Continues. As such I have attended many remembrance services this year at which Sinti and Romanis have told their stories, each as harrowing as one would expect. There was Zoni Weisz, who addressed the Bundestag on Holocaust Memorial Day this year and spoke of a 'forgotten Holocaust'. There was the opening of an exhibition at the Church of Reconciliation led by a local Sinto artist. There was an abridged version of the Stations of the Cross prayed round the memorial site alongside a Romani musical group, focussing on the suffering of Karl Wacker Horvath, a Sinto from Austria killed in 1942.</p><p>All of these services were profoundly moving, particularly when I consider the difference in what the word "Zigeuner" (Gypsy) would mean if I used it in the United Kingdom. In Germany the group is clearly racially defined - those who come to memorial services have dark skins, though no longer live the nomadic lifestyle commonly associated with their past. Often people associate them with the prolific number of Romanian beggars here in Munich, who are often of Sinti and Romani origin. When I was at the Kirchentag last month I spoke to a couple about the plight of Romanis being forcibly deported back to Kosovo. As soon as I mentioned the word 'Romani', they began to talk negatively, pointing out that there had been thefts in a local chemists by Romanis, and that all they do is steal and beg. The lady held out her cupped hand and uttered well known words, "Bitte, kleine Spende": </p><p>The fundamentals of prejudice against those labelled as 'Gypsy' in Europe are similar to those in the UK, but with a very large difference. British and Irish 'Gypsies' have two origins. The first is similar to Continental Europe; as Romanis originating ethnically in India but coming to Europe in around the 16th century. The most famous example of a member of this community is Heathcliff from <i>Wuthering Heights</i>, who is defined as a Gypsy by Charlotte Bronte in order to evoke a supernatural, mystical element of his character. However the second group, known as Irish travellers, are unique to this part of the world. Having their roots in Celtic travelling communities, today the popular perception of the word 'Gypsy' comes from this group. This is partly thanks to the following:</p><p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtmFYz_KKsQ&feature=related">Click here for 'My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding'</a></p><p><i>My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding</i> was first shown on Channel 4 in 2008 to record TV audiences, and inspired a follow up series of five episodes last year. First of all, I should say I watched the show with the same voyeuristic glee as everyone else. The show portrays itself as a serious documentary on gypsy and traveller life, while really it simply confirms commonly held prejudices against the Irish traveller community. For example, I remember watching it with my parents. Everytime one of the men was introduced, we laughed, as the names and descriptions were almost interchangeable - "Paddy is a labourer" - "Mick is a builder" - "Kieran is a labourer". These were the men who come and offer to tarmac your drive, then leave having done the job badly. Possibly the worst example of this caricature is conversely one of the show's most like-able 'characters', "Paddy the labourer who has retired after a successful career in bare-kuckle boxing." Aggressive in manner, staunchly traditionalist though ultimately very friendly, he talks with foul mouthed candour and honesty, at the same time reinforcing every negative stereotype imaginable. His wife does the cleaning, indeed cleans for his sixteen year old son in a neighbouring caravan as well. Yet as we progress through the series, we learn that Paddy has had ten children, four of whom have died during childbirth and one in a car accident.</p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01828/Paddy-Doherty_1828155c.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 460px; height: 287px;" src="http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01828/Paddy-Doherty_1828155c.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><p>It's worth remembering that this was prime time viewing in the UK, and remains a popular talking point. The show attempts to portray itself as a serious look at traveller culture, yet no sooner had the show been broadcast hundreds of people who identify as Scottish Romanis or English Gypsies called up Channel 4 to complain. An entire community had been portrayed as loud mouthed, backward, sexist, violent and undesirable. Those involved in the making of the show are actually a small minority from the North West of England, defined racially in the UK as 'Irish Traveller'. A Liverpool dressmaker is referred to often as an 'expert' on traveller culture, yet her experience is based in the contact she has had when producing the notoriously extravagant wedding dresses for those families with the money to pay for them.</p><p>Ultimately the show treads on extremely thin ice. It attempts to cast itself as a candid documentary on a persecuted culture, yet ends up offering a one-sided reinforcement of all existing negative stereotypes of travellers in the UK. We are thus led to believe that the producers have given those in the show just enough rope to hang themselves. There is constant talk of a proud heritage, yet we hear nothing of it other than fleeting references to the Appleby Horse Fair and a few establishing shots of traditional Gypsy caravans by a motorway lay-by.</p><p>In German the word is <i>Antiziganismus</i>, literally 'anti-Gypsyism. There is no such word in English, and there is possibly a reason why. It is in many ways the last accepted prejudice in the UK. Tinkers, Dids, Pikies, these are just a few words that you will hear used more often than most people would care to admit. They do not pay taxes, they steal anything not tied down, they come tarmac your drive, do a bad job and disappear with the money. All this is accepted parlance. The root of the problem may be in the fact it is difficult to imagine 'Irish Traveller' as a race; putting it bluntly, they're white like most people in the UK. In Europe it is easier to imagine Sinti and Romani as a minority because they look the part.</p><p>Last month, I was reminded of this prejudice once more. The Church of Reconciliation was host to two choirs, one German, the other Israeli. While directing cars wishing to park near the church, a white Ford Transit van pulled up in the middle of where cars were moving. A small girl got out with her mother, both wearing tank tops and tight-fitting trousers. A man got out the driver's side, well built and wearing a miraculous medal round his neck. My first thought was 'Irish Traveller', and when he approached us and asked in a booming Irish drawl whether Mass was being said that evening, my suspicions were realised.</p><p>About twenty minutes later I wandered back to the Church to see him perched on a ledge on the roof of the building (half the Church is underground, so this is not difficult) shouting questions at the Israeli choristers, who hurried down the steps into the Church avoiding eye contact. I approached him in an attempt to explain the significance of the concert, and ended up having a long discussion with him about the site and it's legacy. He spoke loudly, often very directly and coarsely, but he was friendly enough, simply passing by on holiday with his family.</p><p>I have no word for this behaviour other than 'in-your-face', though this has negative implications I wish to avoid. My mind wandered back to Paddy, the friendly bareknuckle boxer from the TV show. Here was a people whose society was based around traditional models of masculinity and femininity which, although not always set in stone, remain influential. He meant no harm, and for all I know was not a traveller. Yet the suspicions and my initial reaction worried me. That event occurred the day before I travelled to Oświęcim and visited the Auschwitz Memorial Site.</p><p>Two of the most vital things in breaking down stereotypes is communication and honesty; the ability to ask questions of each other without feeling hindered or silly in the process. In many communities this has already shown results, for example in London and Liverpool relations between different communities have drastically improved in the last thirty years as Police have encouraged consultation in the area. The traveller community can appear both secretive and aggressive, even when in actual fact it is not. This breakdown leads to prejudices that begin with what seem like reasonable points ("I have nothing against them if they just pay their taxes like everyone else") and develop into hatred ("They steal anything in your drive you don't nail down").</p><p>Cultural difference is often a difficult problem to overcome, but it is essential we do so to avoid prejudice becoming the norm. When prejudice becomes normal, people lose their individuality and their dignity. They are Tutsi. They are Kulak. They are Jewish. They are pikies. I used to think this was exaggerating. Frankly, I'm not so sure anymore.</p>Roy Scivyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00485688727709344791noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3162334149609216190.post-3348222987442550532011-07-16T18:52:00.002+02:002011-07-16T19:00:05.279+02:00Normal service...</p><p>...will be resumed in the next couple of days. Last week was filled to the brim with tours and I was in the Netherlands for a few days researching the life of Bernard Tijhuis (more on that later!)</p><p>In the meantime here's something I made earlier. It's a playlist I compiled with a website called <a href="http://www.8tracks.com">8 Tracks</a>, which allows you to make snazzy playlists and send them to friends/post them on blogs and social networking sites. As I prepare for a transitional period (this time in two months I'll be wearing a religious habit - how the hell did that happen?!) I'm going into 1980s-music-contemplation mode, so the music is all soft stuff from that golden era.</p><p><object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,28,0" width="300" height="250"><param name="movie" value="http://8tracks.com/mixes/351317/player_v3"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://8tracks.com/mixes/351317/player_v3" pluginspage="http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="300" height="250" allowscriptaccess="always" ></embed></object></p><p>See what you think! Incidentally, the image is from Harvey Edwards' collection of photos of Ballet Dancers he produced c.1986.</p>Roy Scivyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00485688727709344791noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3162334149609216190.post-39471313340032818192011-06-29T20:05:00.011+02:002011-07-02T17:51:26.648+02:00The Religion of Auschwitz I: Pilgrimage<p>This time there is a good reason for the absence of posts, if I do say so myself. I have been in Poland/Berlin for the past week or so on a study seminar, during which we spent four days in Oświęcim and two days afterwards in the absolutely gorgeous city of Kraków. Oświęcim is better known by its German name, Auschwitz. That name, used primarily for the concentration camp and outlying extermination camp, has come to represent many things for many people, and the word now has an almost religious aura about it, like 'Armageddon' or 'Exodus'. It is in actual fact a name, not a word, but during the four days we spent in Oświęcim we came to understand just how powerful that name and what it represents has become.</p><p>Much has already been written about Auschwitz, its conception, operation and modern existence as a museum/memorial site. One such response, from a former volunteer in Dachau now living in Wrocław, Poland, can be found at his <a href="http://wroclawworkshops.blogspot.com">Wrocław Workshops</a> blog. I do not yet feel ready to go into much depth about my personal response to the site here on the blog. We were given a small black notebook by our organisation, ASF, to write our thoughts in, and I'm not sure yet how (or if) I wish to present them to the world. We'll see. However, what I would like to consider is the almost religious status the site has developed into.</p><p>Chances are if you think of the Holocaust, you will instinctively think of Auschwitz, or at the very least the Birkenau site and it's now iconic image of those perpendicular train tracks drawing you in to the mouth of the gatehouse. Of course there is good reason why Auschwitz/Birkenau holds such iconic status. 1,500,000 people lost their lives there, 90% of them Jews. That is a number that should shock us to the core, and merits at the very least its place in our collective memory as people of western Europe. However, Auschwitz has taken on a different dimension entirely.</p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXN3qw50TsX_U_TPsSnbJ_Yg6y6gQ1GAOb85-ydVR-KJOZcfFRQF00iPPSZ-hsc1UDyaiZIlC2jY0CZ2gqQ2lz-oYmSfqg_P9EqPPvlJSJamGxKOZeG0FJ9wANMvvw7EAtUXS_NJ9B9JA/s1600/DSCF9445.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXN3qw50TsX_U_TPsSnbJ_Yg6y6gQ1GAOb85-ydVR-KJOZcfFRQF00iPPSZ-hsc1UDyaiZIlC2jY0CZ2gqQ2lz-oYmSfqg_P9EqPPvlJSJamGxKOZeG0FJ9wANMvvw7EAtUXS_NJ9B9JA/s320/DSCF9445.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5623737162715460290" /></a><p>A few weeks back, my colleague delivered a tour of Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site to a group of fourteen year olds, who were left rather nonplussed. The memorial site Dachau, being in a convenient commuter region for workers in Munich, is now bordered by a housing estate, an industrial shopping complex and a community with its own school and nursery. It's not very big. At the end of the tour, one of the schoolkids said, "Well, if it was Auschwitz...". What? Would it be worse? Would you break down in tears? Not to put too fine a point on it, is the death of 41,000 people therefore too low a threshold to illicit an emotional response? I understand this is an extreme response to one throwaway comment, though I get the impression a lot of people feel the same. Auschwitz was different, Auschwitz was...evil.</p><p>At this point, we enter a realm into which History as we understand it may not enter. It is difficult to ask the question "How could this happen?" and "Why did this happen?", because no-one can give a sufficient answer, and it's difficult asking a question over and over again and not getting anywhere close to the response we as a curious species need. This is where the sacred begins to merge gruesomely with the profane, as the inexplicable is responded to with an unhealthy and dangerous religious awe. The big questions are thus explained away with mystery, because the answers appear unattainable.</p><p>All this of course sounds rather hypocritical coming from someone two and a half months away from a religious habit. However there is a difference between saying 'I don't know the answer' about existential questions, and turning a man-made tragedy into something sacred in order to suit the context. The former is the grounds for debate; the latter shuts an issue off with far reaching consequences.</p><p>Take the steady stream of visitors who come to Auschwitz. In order to travel to the Auschwitz Muzeum (the term 'memorial site' is not used in Polish) one must plan a trip to Krakow and then travel at least an hour north-east. The majority of Israelis who come to Auschwitz see the site, perhaps a bit of Krakow and go home (more on that later). When I traveled with the Holocaust Education Trust back in 2007, we had one day to see both memorial sites before being shipped back to Blighty. Costs aside, Poland was treated as the unfortunate occupier, where the graveyard lies but nothing more.</p><p>On the journey to Poland I considered whether I would be going back had I not been given the chance to go with ASF. Would I go back. If I did, why? Nothing is there anymore except traces, a few barracks and the ruins of the gas chambers in which thousands were sent to their deaths. I wondered if this was a sort of pseudo-Pilgrimage. The night before we went round the site, we were given an article from TAZ, a left-leaning German newspaper. Entitled "Pilgrimage to Auschwitz", it discusses the way in which the Holocaust has been sanctified to enable certain political narratives to prevail. Israeli journalist Iris Hefets says how</p><p><blockquote><i>"...before a young Israeli begins his military service, he must have experienced sex, booze and an Auschwitz trip at least once [...] Not a few Germans have come to a nice little arrangement with the past. They explain the crimes of their forefathers as something so bad, that it becomes quasi-mythic in nature. The topic is removed from the present and the realm of politics, and placed firmly in the realm of the Sacred. As long as one follows the rituals of this religion, one is placed firmly beyond reproach and can, as the case of Angela Merkel and the SSPX affair has shown, hold themselves as more holier than the Pope. It's no wonder one meets more engaged advocates of Israeli politics in Germany than in Israel itself.</i></blockquote></p><p><i>The full article (in German) can be found at <a href="http://www.taz.de/1/debatte/kommentar/artikel/1/pilgerfahrt-nach-auschwitz">here</a>.</i><p><p>That last line is important to bear in mind, as the article deals primarily with the implications of Auschwitz's sanctification for current German-Israeli relations, and it certainly does seem to have its place in the German process of <i>Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung</i> Yet the sanctification of Auschwitz has far reaching consequences for our understanding both of the site, and of what it represents.</p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEJ-74qjfq23U7tgBGbmechlg7wGxlLQomjWJ_itQdaJMaUfWHDfL2SK2UDfN01pCPRN0wpbBjERGnkp_OK3TTsqtHnM6LbjhVzMcgxWLRUunsqHq8HpBfMpeFMa4YadqBzGi2DZU2Mm0/s1600/DSCF9384.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEJ-74qjfq23U7tgBGbmechlg7wGxlLQomjWJ_itQdaJMaUfWHDfL2SK2UDfN01pCPRN0wpbBjERGnkp_OK3TTsqtHnM6LbjhVzMcgxWLRUunsqHq8HpBfMpeFMa4YadqBzGi2DZU2Mm0/s320/DSCF9384.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5623737155608409330" /></a><p><i>Memorials are living things involving an uncontrollable dialogue between the past and the present, though is a figure of Mary appropriate in a section of wall on which hundreds of prisoners were shot?</i></p><p>It is a commonly held fallacy that 'even the birds do not fly over Auschwitz'. I know it seems pedantic to pick on what is clearly poetic metaphor, but I think a lot of us were surprised how full of natural life the Birkenau memorial site was. A lot of tourists possibly come expecting a field full of mud, of barracks, of trains, of the traces of death. What you see is a slightly overgrown field with barracks (some reconstructed, others not) as far as you can see. It is a cemetary, not an extermination camp, yet people expect to see the latter. The site is also teeming with wildlife, whether it be ants and bugs scuttling between the cracks of the memorial, rabbits making staccato dashes across the grass by the ruins of the third and fourth gas chambers, or indeed the birds themselves, singing away as if nothing happened.</p><p>That is of course a description of Birkenau. Auschwitz I, which is best known for the <i>Arbeit macht frei</i> sign over its gate, is filled with birds singing away. In fact, Auschwitz I was the biggest upset of all for our group. It is a museum, the barracks in which men were forced to live in sub-human conditions that resemble a 19th century workhouse now converted into a series of national exhibitions. A lot of people in our group were annoyed by that. One sighed, saying that perhaps it wasn't their fault that she had such high expectations of the site.</p><p>We filed around, taking photos, asking questions now and again of the tour guide, absorbing what we saw. We remained silent, and at the end of the day it was clear that none of our expectations had been met. What was worse was that the question of 'why' was not addressed once. Not a word on the perpetrators (though it's debatable whether Auschwitz is the time or the place for that) or the role of millions of people as bystanders. Facts were delivered as we looked at piles of human hair, suitcases, pots and pans, the relics of mass murder.</p><p>I already know the horrifically simple answer to the 'why' question; because human beings are capable of dehumanizing other people to the point that they are no longer human. That is the terrifying legacy not only of the Holocaust, but of mass murders that took place thoughout the twentieth century. Auschwitz simply occupies a place as the most well known and the one that most people will come across. When Auschwitz becomes a site of pilgrimage, we lose that sense of our own responsibility as members of humanity, that the Nazis were not merely a 'mistake' of history but the consequence of events and circumstances which are not exclusive to Europe in the 1930s. We are related to Nazis.</p><p>I will end this post with a final point on Birkenau. As we walked over to the fifth crematorium, a Polish friend of mine pointed out a Stork, wandering the freshly cut grass. As well as being a national symbol for Poland, Belarus, Estonia among other northern European nations, Storks are also a common metaphor for the arrival of new-born babies. My friend told me of how when a stork landed on her house her sisters wondered who it was who would be having a baby soon! There is something quite comforting in the symbol of new life walking among the remnants of mass murder, a small sign of hope returning to a place where once it was lost and given up on an industrial scale.</p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgmxXXpE0GLtzG8yUSvmh6lj7aAcfLv0F4CSPcBoXIMYYhAPAFefzSvY8oCZOpdm4QJqd6xZxsTdjPzBAjVOLi7PPK88kR9Is67xIjisAVeg3hoaWhp-XC6axPK4inQUDtCoRitWAx2VM/s1600/DSCF9463.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgmxXXpE0GLtzG8yUSvmh6lj7aAcfLv0F4CSPcBoXIMYYhAPAFefzSvY8oCZOpdm4QJqd6xZxsTdjPzBAjVOLi7PPK88kR9Is67xIjisAVeg3hoaWhp-XC6axPK4inQUDtCoRitWAx2VM/s320/DSCF9463.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5623737178593114914" /></a><p>Auschwitz-Birkenau is a mass grave, a field where millions of names and identities lie forgotten. Life goes on, and it is our responsibility to remember them and move on, not turn the site into something more horrible than it actually is.</p><p><i>N.B In a previous version of this post I erroneously said that 'only one person cried in our group'. This of course should have been 'I only saw one person cry in our group', as someone kindly pointed out to me that the person I identified was not the only one to be affected in this way, just the only one I had seen. With this in mind, I have decided to delete the line altogether. I apologize to anyone I may have offended.</i></p>Roy Scivyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00485688727709344791noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3162334149609216190.post-60186255551910471982011-06-17T09:00:00.000+02:002011-06-15T23:26:12.518+02:00Summer Nights...<p></p><p>There's nothing, and I mean nothing, better than a warm, balmy summer evening. As a child I loved to sit outside until 9, 10pm just enjoying the magic of the sunset and the temperature failing to drop. I still love them. I'm sitting here writing this at my desk, window wide open just enjoying that...that smell. I cannot describe it; it's as if you can smell the humidity.</p><p>I think this is why I love the 1980s so much. I've already written at length of my love of <i>Miami Vice</i> and 80s power ballads and soft rock, and both of these things are absolutely, gloriously and shamelessly of their time. There is a reason why cultural epicentres of that great decade were LA, Miami, New York, places that become almost unbearably warm in summer and when the night cools down just enough to remain outside but not roast. I think the first summer in which I was 'awakened' to this twilight beauty was around 2003, when I was 14 and in the Air Training Corps. A kind of scout group attached to the RAF, we undertook field exercises on Friday evenings in Verulamium Park. That was a great summer, one of the warmest on record, and even though I hated the ATC, I loved being out in Verulamium until the 10pm sunset.</p><a href="http://www.davesworld.org.uk/MOVIES/Miami%20Vice%20the%20Movie_files/image005.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 303px;" src="http://www.davesworld.org.uk/MOVIES/Miami%20Vice%20the%20Movie_files/image005.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><p style="text-align: center;"><i>Crockett and Tubbs brooding over a summer night...</i></p><p>There's a freedom that comes with summer, and it's a common motif in films and music. Loads of songs have in their title 'summer nights', not least the Grease soundtrack, Richard Marx, Miami Sound Machine...I could go on. I often associate freedom with summer. My best memories of first love were in summer, sitting once more in Verulamium watching the sky get darker, lying next to someone I wanted so much to be with. It was liberation, the ability to be out late and roll in at midnight. Cycling back was a pleasure, and later when working in a bar walking home as the sun rose was equally satisfying. The world sort of reveals itself. The vast majority of people can be themselves again, released into tennis, jogging, evening walks, or just heading out to the pub.</p><p>But of course this all sounds like bullcrap to you, true golden Roy prattle. Well, here's a list of songs I associate with summer and summer only. They were written to be played while driving down South Beach with the top down, wearing a pair of Ray Bans and...just...thinking. Not complete, but the ones that make up my canon:</p><p>****</p><p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5C4N7UwVS4&feature=related"><b>In the Air Tonight - Phil Collins:</b></a> Let's start with perfection. One song that still has the ability to make me stop cold in my tracks, and that was before I saw it in its most famous context, during this scene from the pilot episode of <i>Miami Vice. </i>I've linked to the scene for that reason.</p><p><b><a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2q7f_toto-rosanna_music">Rosanna - Toto</a>:</b> in fact, anything off the 'Toto IV' album is gold for this time of year. I first heard this on a 'Summer Sounds' CD from the Daily Mail. Yup, fifteen year old Roy was <i>that </i>cool...)</p><p><b><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCdOsdZ-kcQ">Zamba - Bryan Ferry</a>:</b> Once again, the man is a summer savant. From 1985 onwards, having guided Roxy Music to perfection, he writes the kind of songs you just have to feel. I can't name a single lyric from Zamba, but it just <i>feels </i>soooo good! Much softer than the rest, but one definitely for the season.</p><p><a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1wvvv_michael-mcdonald-no-lookin-back_music"><b>No Lookin' Back - Michael McDonald:</b></a> One here from the King of Smooth music, now retrospectively christened the father of 'Yacht Rock'. This one was discovered last year just after I'd finished my finals at York. I was ready to move on and this just became my anthem. If I ever produced an 80s style cop comedy-drama, this would be the song that played as the credits rolled over a shot of me and my partner joking around. Yup, I think too much.</p><p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-4XsDQYDi4"><b>Mighty Wings - Cheap Trick:</b> </a>This is a personal one from that summer of 2003. I'd seen Top Gun about five times by this point, and I remember playing the cassette soundtrack until it warbled. This song is awesome.</p><p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nR7n7a9xKic"><b>E.S.P - Bee Gees:</b></a> Now I was twelve when I first heard this. It must have changed my life, and ten summers later I still long for the moment I can drive with the window down and absolutely blast this song out. Still proof that you <i>can </i>judge an album's quality by its cover, so long as it has at least one guy with a bi-level and a trench coat on it.</p><p><b><a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1t7si_lostprophets-last-summer_music">Last Summer - LostProphets</a>:</b> Around 2005/6 I went through a phase in which I hated the side of me that relied on 80s music. Why was I different from the other kids? Actually this is a slight exaggeration. Essentially I turned on Xfm for the first time and heard this, and despite myself quite liked it. I still do, even if LostProphets are for fifteen year old girls who have fringes, chains and 'Team Edward' T-Shirts.</p><p><a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2j5s_alice-cooper-poison_news"><b>Poison - Alice Cooper:</b></a> For some reason I associate this with another summer activity of mine- Church Bell Ringing. I still have absolutely no sodding idea why, but I remember walking home from school listening to it on my faithful Walkman. I miss cassette tapes, I really do...</p><p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRzIDvb7QPY"><b>Self Control - Laura Branigan:</b></a> A song about the night and how it comes alive, by a tragically underrated singer, this was a club hit in the summer of 1984. Laura Branigan sadly died of a brain aneurysm in 2004, but she lives on through this haunting, passionate song.</p><p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9rT2hZwk2k"><b>Endless Summer Nights - Richard Marx:</b></a> Last song on the list is about the eternal memory of Summer Nights., the ones that remain magical even when both the summer and first love has run its course. I first discovered Richard Marx about a week after breaking up with...let's call her Nena Girl (incidentally I ended the relationship in mid-September: how about that for pathetic fallacy!) and even though this song is now devoid of those post break-up feelings, it's still intensely personal. </p><p>****</p><p>Here's to those endless summer nights. Looking over the list, they seem to have proved great markers of time, of the passage towards something resembling maturity. There are lots of songs I'd also like to include, but these are the ones that always arrive on my iPod as soon as the nights get warm. Enjoy these summer nights while they last...</p><p></p>Roy Scivyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00485688727709344791noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3162334149609216190.post-12635232106286235612011-06-14T12:28:00.004+02:002011-06-14T12:56:37.075+02:00Sinti and Romani Rights in Germany: A Declaration</p><p><i>On two occasions in the Church of Reconciliation's history, in 1980 and 1993, Sinti and Romani peoples have maintained a hunger strike in the Discussion Room of the Church in opposition to the German government's attempt to deport them back to nations where they have been persecuted for centuries. I have just had the opportunity to look through some of the press cuttings and official statements from that time when I saw a familar name on one of them...</i></p><p>DECLARATION</p><p>1. Recognising our duty to protect and promote the dignity of peoples, we place ourselves agains any form of discrimination of people, and thus also against the discrimination of Sinti.</p><p>2. We want to do everything in our respective churches, wich which we can deconstruct this aforementioned prejudice and awaken understanding for the particular situation of these, our people living among us.</p><p>3. At the same time we request that in this respect both the Bavarian State government and the government of the Federal Rupublic of Germany produce an explanation with respect to the situation soon.</p><p>Munich, the 10th September 1980</p><p>Johannes Hanselmann, Regional Bishop of the Lutheran Church in Bavaria</p><p>Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Archbishop of Munich and Freising</p><p><i>Given that ASF were in Dresden two weeks ago campaigning for the rights of those Romani from Kosovo who fled here during the Civil War, it's a shame that the issue is still here, over thirty years later. Incidentally, His Holiness has spoken out quite often to protect the rights of migrants and refugees. It's nice to see it is not merely a Vatican position he's defending but one he's had for many years since...</i></p><p>Roy Scivyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00485688727709344791noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3162334149609216190.post-51767479070253173652011-06-13T12:07:00.008+02:002011-06-14T12:28:24.258+02:00Thoughts on Violence II: Auschwitz and Kolyma<p></p><p>This time next week I will be in the small Polish town of Oświęcim, better known by its German name of Auschwitz. A quick skim over the Wikipedia article on the town shows it to be both a nice little town, not dissimilar to Dachau, and strangely enough the hometown to a number of professional ice skaters. So, similar to Dachau, this town has settled into a sleepy existence, awoken uneasily by the steady number of international tourists coming to see the place down the road where 1.1 million were gassed, tortured, beaten and worked to death.</p><p>I have been before. When I was eighteen and in the Upper Sixth at school I was invited to take part in a Holocaust Education Trust project to send two students from every school to the memorial site in Southern Poland. The day was intense thematically, though the time pressure was the worst; we made the trip in a day, which included return flights from London Luton Airport to Krakow, bus transfer from Krakow to Oświęcim, then the two memorial sites of Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II (Birkenau). There was no lunch break, and we met no Poles with the exception of our guide round the site. Our teacher at the time, Ms Piavanini, had chosen us specially for the trip, and in an act beyond the call of pedagogical duty had bought us both copies of the book <i>The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas</i> to read on the journey.</p><p>I and my friend, OB, spent much of the day being forcibly cheerful, unsure of what to expect. There had been a preparation seminar in Cambridge a couple of weeks before, at which we discussed the reasons for visiting a memorial site. Of course back then I had no idea that within five years I would be an active part of the Holocaust tourism industry, but the response was rather unified: seeing is believing. Yet looking back, I can remember both of us feeling uneasy at the fact neither of us wanted to weep, or break down, or be removed having fainted. We went round the exhibitions, piled with human hair and belongings, as well as the (horrifically) familiar black and white photos, and yet despite all this neither of us was particularly moved.</p><p>Since then I have put this down to our historical distance from the Holocaust and its story of the 'Other', the European, or at the very closest, the immigrant. Had ASF not given me the opportunity to go back, I would not do so. I have seen it once; to go more than that seems extravagant, almost perverse. However, there is somewhere I have a strange longing to go, to see, despite its unfathomable historical and geographical distance: Kolyma.</p><a href="http://www.geschichteinchronologie.ch/SU/Pinkus_judenverfolgung-in-russland-u-SU/11-1949-d/003-russland-m-pos-Kolyma.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 569px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 288px; CURSOR: hand" border="0" alt="" src="http://www.geschichteinchronologie.ch/SU/Pinkus_judenverfolgung-in-russland-u-SU/11-1949-d/003-russland-m-pos-Kolyma.jpg" /></a><p>Our impending seminar in Oświęcim is taking place at a time when my mind is looking eastwards, at the neighbours who have baffled us since the days of the Tsars. I recently came across Martin Amis's <i>Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million</i> a sort of literary exploration of the Purges in the Stalin era Soviet Union. It is Amis's own attempt to understand how his father, Kingsley, came to be a member of the Communist Party in 1940s Britain as well as a journey through the statistics, testimony and facts of the Gulag. Of all this, the place that shocks him most is Kolyma, a small outpost in the far reaches of the Arctic circle where Stalin sent over 3 million people to work and, so he hoped and expected, die. They mined for raw materials and built roads in sub zero temperatures. Nearby are some of the coldest inhabited regions on Earth. The journey there often took weeks, months even, as people were transported thousands of kilometres from their places of birth. Once there, they were kept and forced to work for as long as the government deemed fit. Some were within the Gulag system for upwards of twenty years.</p><p>Probably one of the best ways to illustrate Soviet deportation is in Budapest's House of Terror, a museum in the former Secret Police building. I was there in the summer of 2007, with friends after exams and before university, a period of teenage flux when the world feels like it has nothing on you. We went inside completely unaware of what to expect, and one of the first exhibitions was on deportation. The room was covered in a rug with a map of Eurasia. About a fifth of the rug was Europe, then a little further on was Moscow, Leningrad and the Urals. Then there was a huge expanse of 'land'you had to walk over to reach the other side of the room and the information on Siberia and the Gulag. Four years on, that time feels a lifetime away but the memory of that room and the realisation of that unfathomable distance has haunted me ever since</p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjibY0j8Frr-6cHZEjPAUzeV-1IPaNAV_0U8Wbp5uUNbWTJZSsM8uvVeBLFGNGjnyTrW9XpASWqNksPWQ_Tq2ZC_ewjtIRohAalXYW5Ws-xxTD7w3nC59tGUfLrjR36hBJzEsJQoJqpVaOa/s320/IMG_3797.JPG"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjibY0j8Frr-6cHZEjPAUzeV-1IPaNAV_0U8Wbp5uUNbWTJZSsM8uvVeBLFGNGjnyTrW9XpASWqNksPWQ_Tq2ZC_ewjtIRohAalXYW5Ws-xxTD7w3nC59tGUfLrjR36hBJzEsJQoJqpVaOa/s320/IMG_3797.JPG" /></a><p>To read all this leaves a kind of natural silence. Not a clamouring of agony, or cries of that weak plea of humanity, "Never Again", now engraved on countless memorials to Holocaust victims, but an emptiness, an acceptance of a reality we cannot control. It is perhaps similar to the images of hundreds of thousands of dead Tutsis in Rwanda, massacred Muslims in Bosnia, or millions of dead workers in Mao's China. The numbers are horrific, but nameless and far too foreign for us to want to comprehend. We let ourselves sit in ignorance. Let me quote you a section from <i>Koba</i> in full:</p><blockquote><i>In 1997, during an interview with Le Monde, [British Historian] Robert Conquest was asked whether he found the Holocaust "worse" than Stalinist crimes: "I answered yes, I did, but when the interviewer asked why, I could only answer honestly with 'I feel so'"</i></blockquote><p>I feel so. The Holocaust remains far more shocking because it is something that a) was a fundamentally populist movement, if a German one, b) was an industrialised and economically driven exercise and c) aimed to exterminate entire ethnic groups entirely in cold blood. Stalins Purges were, in some ways, still rooted in that old fashioned view of violence as impulse. They are not 'particular' like the Holocaust was. They get lumped in with mass murders. Notice Amis, in quoting Conquest, refers to 'Holocaust', a highly emotive word, and 'Stalinist crimes'.</p><p>It's most likely a western thing. Thousands of those families came to live in Britain during and after the war. At our preparation seminar for Auschwitz back in 2007, we were introduced to Kitty Hart Moxon, who survived Auschwitz and came to live with relatives in England. She spoke eloquently and in perfect English before a large banner with her looking defiantly into the distance. Her story was one told many times over, worked through into a narrative that no longer hurts. I've noticed the same with other 'regular' Holocaust survivors who talk about their experiences. The Ukranian, Belarusian and Russian survivors who visited Dachau a few weeks ago were, in some cases, telling their stories for the first time. They had spent their entire lives in the Soviet Union, mistrusted as collaborators after spending so long in German captivity, and only in the last few years had they been invited to tell their story. Some of them had little contact other than this visit. Imagine that: the most contact and friendship you get in an entire year being a visit back to a concentration camp.</p><p>Auschwitz is a place now synonymous not only with violence, but with evil as well. Other mass murderers don't have that same emotional pull. Noone says 'I feel so' about Rwanda, or Cambodia, or Siberia. That's what I'm going to have to contend with when I set foot through that iconic gatehouse and see the traintrack again, where the selections took place, where people were left hoping that 'Left' or 'Right' meant surviving that day. At the same time though, I still carry with me this question, why it is that we 'feel' the pain of the Holocaust yet can read and discuss other acts of twentieth century mass murder almost unmoved? I am not trying to move attention from the dead of Auschwitz, and we have still lots to learn from this example of Western European genocide.</p><p>Perhaps (ironically enough given how separate many ofus feel from this history) our familiarity is the root cause of all of this; the victims of the Holocaust were often westerners from the land that produced of Hegel, Kant, Freud, Luther, Einstein, Beethoven, Wittgenstein among so many others. We thought we knew the Germans. We didn't expect them to massacre an entire section of their population. But the 'Russians'? Communist purges fit into a millenia of massacres, tyrannical governments and oppression that has taken place in Eurasia. Perhaps Stalin merely lived up to a western stereotype, as did those in Rwanda, Cambodia and Bosnia. It's a horrific prospect, but one I suspect has an element of truth to it.</p><p>If only everyone could see Auschwitz, Dachau and other places with their own eyes. They would realise it is not the coldness and distance that should shock us, but how familiar these places are, how recognisibly human. To send an opponent away to solve the problem. To use people as tools to build a regime. The maxim of 'No person, no problem.' The next step, is to go to Kolyma, see the remains of human bones lying half buried and know that that too was carried out by the same kind of human.</p><p>If my views change in the next week or two (which they might just do) I'll let you know.</p>Roy Scivyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00485688727709344791noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3162334149609216190.post-65766409910400461022011-06-12T18:18:00.009+02:002011-06-12T21:35:15.780+02:00Kirchentag with old friends (and two new ones...)</p><p>Last week I had the pleasure of representing Action Reconciliation Service for Peace (ASF) at the <i>Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchentag</i> in Dresden. As I appear to have inadvertently written three Carmelite posts in a row, I thought it might be nice to let you know about what is going on right now in my life, an event that's quite a big deal in Germany from the looks of things...</p><p>On 1st June I spent five hours on a coach full of young people, all geared up for five days of talks, reflections, dramas, concerts and workshops. This is the Kirchentag, a religious festival with a surprisingly secular reputation, held once every two years. Bringing 120,000 people along with it, the festival takes over any host city and for the duration the east German city of Dresden was overrun with a curious mix of ages. The closest thing I can compare it to in the UK is Greenbelt, which although hosting a similar mix of liberal theology, dread-locked acoustic sessions and everyone-is-welcome-and-it's-awfully-nice-to-come-togetherness comes nowhere near this scale. Or this level of respectability. The German Chancellor Angela Merkel was speaking at an official event (her father was a Protestant minister in the GDR at a time when it was the only way to speak out against the regime), as was Leader of the Opposition Sigmar Gabriel. For all Greenebelt's good intentions, the platform they offer is for a minority audience; this had regular updates on N24, Germany's version of BBC Parliament.</p><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBatvuv6AdA1419ui2dg8AJHPBUEHY_T0MEMSo9tA_6HyzR1KyXiW6k-Txycbe9jeSsEn6IUVivbE1ckAnlpZfGqTT4YZz7LETC41Q3uBR69mDCw8OpyJNyYV51eRC5J3OwI0ufOg_n1o/s1600/DSCF9205.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBatvuv6AdA1419ui2dg8AJHPBUEHY_T0MEMSo9tA_6HyzR1KyXiW6k-Txycbe9jeSsEn6IUVivbE1ckAnlpZfGqTT4YZz7LETC41Q3uBR69mDCw8OpyJNyYV51eRC5J3OwI0ufOg_n1o/s200/DSCF9205.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5617414704534854322" /></a><p>So what was my place in this miasma of good feeling and middle age? Over the course of three days ASF had a stall in the Markt der Moeglichkeiten, or "Market of Possibilities", in which we had the chance to speak to young people wandering around, thinking about what to do after school. In Germany the 'Gap-Yah' concept is not so much frowned upon as a luxury as actively encouraged, particularly given the need to learn English and at least one other foreign language. Up until January all eighteen year old boys had to undertake either six months military or eight months voluntary service. ASF is just one of hundreds of organisations that support volunteers.</p><p>We also had a serious political purpose for being there. As yet another measure of the Kirchentag's political importance, the Secretary of the Kirchentag was invited to report to the Bundestag with a number of resolutions supported by at least 3,000 Kirchentag participants. ASF's was a petition against the imminent deportation of 10,000 Romany people from Kosovo who immigrated to Germany during the war in Kosovo in the late 1990s. This is not a particular popular issue in Germany, where most people associate the Sinti and Romany communities with thieves, beggars and criminals. We're not above this of course, as anyone in the UK who saw <i>My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding</i> can attest to. Needless to say, we reached our goal of 3,000 on the first day, such was the strength of our team, and our Resolution gained the most support.</p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEHx-85znr1m8TZRESi6kXH0O55fwLIAebC0sgDPjiltYo2dwBnyRinMobypXLjOh9VK9Sbeo1bBtdsk9ffrkdTLyExAXSuL7R4Oqh5aRdBEHQnvzJtcQYYhB0TJ-QpNTCWTOVwYzk9DE/s1600/DSCF9170.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEHx-85znr1m8TZRESi6kXH0O55fwLIAebC0sgDPjiltYo2dwBnyRinMobypXLjOh9VK9Sbeo1bBtdsk9ffrkdTLyExAXSuL7R4Oqh5aRdBEHQnvzJtcQYYhB0TJ-QpNTCWTOVwYzk9DE/s200/DSCF9170.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5617414714261692834" /></a><p>And we sold buttons, or badges as we Brits call 'em. Lots of them. German teenagers can't get enough of the iconic East German 'Ampelmann' (traffic light man) and his 'Go Think' catchphrase!</p><p>Much of my free time was spent as ever with friends, as a number of ASF volunteers from Berlin had popped down from Dresden to help out. We wandered the reconstructed streets, relaxed along the banks of the River Elbe and generally enjoyed the early June sunshine as well as the gorgeous sunsets they produced. As an Englishman in Dresden, I searched long and hard for the memorial to the almost 30,000 who died during the Allied Bombing Raid and the resulting fire storms in February 1945. There was an altar dedicated to the victims of National Socialism in the Catholic Cathedral of the Trinity, though little else. I assume this has something to do with Dresden's place as the focal point for far-right anger. In February there were violent clashes between Fascist and anti-Fascist demonstrators, as there have been ever since the wall fell. In the words of Kurt Vonnegut, "So it goes".</p><p>***</p><p>On the last night we were told there would be attending something called a <i>Russendisko</i> at the German Hygiene Museum. All the ASF volunteers were invited, so we duly arrived an hour early at a (ironically enough for a Hygiene Museum) clinical-white bulding to find that hundreds of people were also vying to get in. We were the lucky ones, and we settled down to two and a half hours of Eastern european club anthems, all mixed by the self appointed master of <i>Russendisko</i>, Vladimir Kaminer. A Russian of Jewish ancestry who came to Berlin in 1990, he developed the <i>Russendisko</i> during Berlin's fledgling years of post-Communist growth. His club nights became immensely popular and are today a mainstay of the German club scene. Today he is as famous for his collections of short stories as he is for his club nights. He writes primarily about his own experiences as a Russian in Germany, as well as about modern Russian culture, all in his own sarcastic and self deprecating style. He writes in German (something I consider very impressive!) and narrates his audio books himself, with trademark Russian accent. I'll let you know how I get on with his books.</p><p>***</p><p>One final thing before I end this rather rambling account of Kirchentag. I met two young bears during my time in Dresden. They are Rudik (Rudolf) and Moosh (Mashambanzou), and they were helping out at a stand on HIV/AIDS relief (they are HIV positive). I asked them where their rather interesting names came from; Rudik is named after Rudolf Nureyev, who danced through his illness before dying of AIDS in 1993, while Moosh is short for <i>Mashambanzou</i>, which means 'The darkness before the dawn', or simply 'hope' in Zimbabwean and is the name for a hugely successful HIV/AIDS education project near Harare. We got chatting and they mentioned that they hadn't seen Bavaria yet, so I invited them to come stay with me for a while. Here they are, having cleared everything with their project and smuggled on to the bus back to Dresden with me.</p><p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8y8098wxbfffPmwoF_9cgdnD8Sb-MQJHnefwVxRfkNSrYrW2hTwglndg-mWYzfB-U0Q_rbcPqz5-BvFKqC9hY2ZuyqL6BS91-EFTx-wB6jdreeutkvOgwUtMXtx4oGoho2TfZRJqmIJg/s1600/DSCF9303.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8y8098wxbfffPmwoF_9cgdnD8Sb-MQJHnefwVxRfkNSrYrW2hTwglndg-mWYzfB-U0Q_rbcPqz5-BvFKqC9hY2ZuyqL6BS91-EFTx-wB6jdreeutkvOgwUtMXtx4oGoho2TfZRJqmIJg/s200/DSCF9303.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5617413927866546514" /></a></p><p>They will stay with me and remind me of a great few days, and in particular of the surprising ways in which faith and politics can sometimes interact with mutual respect.</p>Roy Scivyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00485688727709344791noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3162334149609216190.post-64337186040645277662011-06-10T15:31:00.004+02:002011-06-10T16:08:21.191+02:00Carmelites in Dachau<p></p><p>Yesterday I finally sat down and made a list of all the Carmelite friars who were interred in Dachau Concentration Camp. It required spending an hour going through Egon Weiler's authoritative <i>The Religious in Dachau</i>, which contains information on all three thousand priests, brothers and religious. There really were priests and religious from all denominations, though 94% were Latin rite Catholics.</p><p>In total there were 11 Carmelites in Dachau, eight from Poland and three from the Netherlands. Six of them would survive their time in Dachau, some for almost four and a half years; the other five did not. Two of them were beatified, Bl. Titus Brandsma and Bl. Hilary Januszewski.</p><p>Where both names were given, I have included their profession name in brackets. They are:</p><p>Brandsma, Anno (Titus) Died 1942 in Dachau</p><p>Buszta, Antoni: Died 1942 in Dachau</p><p>Januszewski, Pawel (Hilary): Died 1945 in Dachau</p><p>Koza, Michel (Leon): Died 1942 in Dachau</p><p>Majcher, Pawel: Liberated 1945</p><p>Makowski, Pawel: Died 1942 in Dachau</p><p>Nowakowski, Franciszek: Liberated 1945 </p><p>Rypma, John (Desiderius): Liberated 1945</p><p>Tijhuis, Bernard (Raphael): Liberated 1945</p><p>Urbanski, Zenon (Albert): Liberated 1945</p><p>Wszelaki, Adam: Liberated 1945</p><p>From the information given, as well as then Prior General Fr. Joseph Chalmer's <a href="http://ocarm1.org/ocarm.org/en/content/liturgy/bl-hilary-januszewski-priest-and-martyr-m">letter on the Beatification of Hilary Januszewski</a>, it seems that four of the Polish Carmelites were arrested on the 18th September in Krakow, before being sent to Sachsenhausen or Auschwitz Concentration Camps for approximately month. They were then transferred to the <i>Priesterblock 28</i> in Dachau in mid December 1940. </p><p>I felt it important to compile this list, as I haven't seen it anywhere before, not even in books about Bl. Titus. Six of these men, four Polish and two Dutch, went back to their Carmelite way of life having gone through the most horrific treatment. With the exception of Br. Raphael and Fr. Albert Urbanski (who held a Curia position later in his life if I remember rightly) their lives seem to have been forgotten. Both Raphael and Albert wrote of their experiences as well. The identities of the other seven were a mystery to me. I was aware of their existence, as I knew that Bl. Hilary's story involved the deportation of at least four brothers from Krakow, but if there is anything this year has taught me it is the value and meaning of a name to one's identity as a person. </p><p>Next week I will be visiting Auschwitz and Krakow for a seminar, one of the final events in my time here in Dachau; I will try and remember their names as I go around.</p>Roy Scivyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00485688727709344791noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3162334149609216190.post-15735545483141377532011-06-06T12:20:00.002+02:002011-06-06T12:46:43.770+02:00R.I.P Fr. David Waite, O.Carm</p><p>I had hoped to first blog about the amazing few days I just spent in Dresden during the <i>Deutscher Envangelischer Kirchentag</i>, but that will have to wait. This morning, the 6th June 2011, Fr. David Waite died in his sleep at Aylesford Priory, Kent.</p><p>The interview process to join the Carmelites has meant I have visited Aylesford three times this year, each for a couple of days at a time. On these occasions I had the pleasure of getting to know David, even if through just a few conversations in the community room. Everyone who spoke to me about David at this time always said how much he was at peace with the cancer which eventually killed him, and how much they admired him for it. The last time we spoke, a couple of weeks ago just after I had been accepted into the novitiate, I asked him cheerfully how he was. He replied, equally cheerfully, "I'm just taking each day as it comes."</p><p>At the age of twenty two those are not easy words to hear or to accept. I doubt they were any easier for him to say at the age of sixty four. I can only pray I may have that kind of acceptance and comfort in God's love if I am ever in the same situation. If you do, pray also for the Carmelites and the community at Aylesford, who have now lost two of their brothers in less than a month. A family is grieving.</p><p><i>For a short obituary go to the news page of the <a href="http://carmelite.org/index.php?nuc=news&func=view&item=461">British Province of Carmelites</a></i></p>Roy Scivyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00485688727709344791noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3162334149609216190.post-10796029763318960232011-05-24T20:33:00.003+02:002011-05-24T21:24:03.456+02:00Carmel: Why it has happened to me</p><p>I've been in the UK the last few days, visiting my family in St Albans and Portsmouth. It's strange returning home after being in Munich for so long; everything is normal, understandable and familiar, from places I've been to the newspapers I read. I enjoy the strangeness of living in Germany and being immersed in a different culture, but at the same time it's nice to be home.</p><p>There's a very potent word/concept right there. Home. For many people it is the place you grew up, or where your family live. For others, it is something more complex. I remember hearing somebody ask a Methodist friend of mine rather casually "Where's home for you?", obviously not expecting the long, soul searching answer they received in reply. Over the past few years, the idea of home and where I feel at home has been going through my mind. More often than not, I refer to places where I am living as home, such as York, Konstanz and finally Munich. Sometimes, I may even refer to St Albans or London as home. Yet these thoughts are occurring at a deeper level than thinking superficially of a location.</p><p>I consider home to be where I am most comfortable, where I am able to grow and where I feel loved. This of course transcends concepts of place and finds its meaning in relationships and personal worth, in communities, in family. At twenty two years old, I believe it's normal to be considering "What's home for me?" I believe I may have found it. In September 2011, I will enter the Carmelite Order as a novice friar.</p><p>For some people who read this blog (some of you Carmelites) this will have been pretty clear from previous posts about Carmelites in KZ Dachau, about my growing faith and other such things that people who think about religious life dwell on too much. For others this may be a bolt out of the blue. Either way, this is a way of life that has tempted me from my first months at university. At York I developed a close relationship with the Carmelite friars and laity in the city, and they accepted me, bad music taste, cynicism and all. I met friars visiting York, I began to attend Carmelite Spirituality Group meetings and found myself with a group of imperfect but honest and good people. In April 2009 I began to visit friar communities in the UK, wondering if I could really live with these people. Essentially, it has now taken me almost four years to say, "Yes, let's try."</p><p>Many things have gone through my mind, including many fears and worries. Am I simply trying to escape the 'real' world of student debt and dead-end jobs, running away from responsibilities? Do I really want to give up the chance of having children? Why not 'live' a few years, and allow God to pull me back in with G.K. Chesterton's proverbial 'twitch upon the thread' once I've had a few years of libertine living? These are worthwhile questions, and ones to which I cannot answer certainly 'No.' However, there are two more questions which the Carmelites consider more important. They are "Can you grow with us?" and "Are you comfortable with us?". To these I can answer with a sheepish, "Yes, possibly."</p><p>The novitiate isn't intended to be an everlasting commitment. It is an opportunity to taste and see, to try the lifestyle. Of course I would like to believe that I will remain for longer, but I will not know that until I have tried religious life, experienced its rhythm of prayer become routine, been forced to live with the dynamics of community.</p><p>In 1930, a week after his conversion to Catholicism, Evelyn Waugh wrote an article for the Daily Express entitled "Converted to Rome: Why it has happened to me." (the title of this blog should now make more sense as a literary reference no-one understands. Go me.) Conversion begins with a contradiction of that statement, the willingness to stand up and accept an invitation to grow. The rest of the experience is however often passive. Carmelite spirituality sometimes feels like that. I did not wake up one day and say "Today I will be a Carmelite", it just happened that I realised I felt at home with a bunch of imperfect, middle aged men and that they might be able to teach me something about who I really am.</p><p>That may change, maybe not. All I know is that right now I feel at home with them. I feel no need to perform, no pressure to impress them, no desperation to fill an awkward silence. I can be me. Even better, I might be able to learn who 'me' is. That journey, the one we all take, continues in a new way in September.</p>Roy Scivyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00485688727709344791noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3162334149609216190.post-19596147021663240372011-05-16T22:42:00.008+02:002011-05-24T20:32:54.352+02:00The Lessons of Chernobyl<p></p><p>On the 26th April 1986, twenty five years ago this year, the name Chernobyl entered our lexicon as a byword for nuclear disaster. After a power surge caused by a failed experiment to make the plant run more efficiently, a number of explosions erupted in the plant's fourth reactor. The resulting fire led to huge quantities of radioactive material being spread for thousands of miles and across most of mainland Europe. The Soviet authorities didn't tell the world what had happened for almost three days, and the nearby town of Pripyat, not far from the border between the Ukraine and Belarus and the 'worker's town' for Chernobyl, was only evacuated days after being irradiated with highly dangerous levels of fallout. Pripyat was a ghost town by the end of the year.</p><a href="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2220/2446391227_e51457b0e9.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 500px; height: 328px;" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2220/2446391227_e51457b0e9.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><p>In Germany the Chernobyl disaster is being commemorated with a travelling exhibition called <i>Tschernobyl: Menschen - Orte - Solidaritaet</i>, People - Places - Solidarity. The official opening for the Munich leg of the tour was in Munich Central Station this afternoon, a low key affair with one of the city's mayors and representatives of various groups involved with the exhibition. There was a lot of press there, a few religious as well, but only a few members of the public.</p><p>Today, for better or worse, Chernobyl stands for two things in Germany: Nuclear Power and Government Silence. Ask most Germans about Chernobyl and they will talk about the disastrous consequences of nuclear power when it goes wrong. German energy and environmental policies were shaped for decades afterwards by the amount of fallout that covered much of East and West Germany. Germans only learnt that they had been irradiated by the radioactive material from Chernobyl three days after the event. The weather had been unseasonably warm the days before, and thousands of southern Germans had been playing, eating and working outside as the fallout began to settle.</p><a href="http://tonbak.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/atomkraft_nein_danke_1.jpg?w=150&h=150" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 150px; height: 150px;" src="http://tonbak.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/atomkraft_nein_danke_1.jpg?w=150&h=150" border="0" alt="" /></a><p>In the exhibition there are news reports showing Geiger Counters reacting to playgrounds in Bavaria. There are Vox Pops with people in Munich city centre weeping with anxiety. They had been eating lunch in the garden, their children playing outside as the radioactive material fell. They speak in rushed, high pitched voices, not believing a word they hear from the government and not knowing exactly how badly they have been affected. This had a direct impact on the role of Nuclear power in Germany. The <i>Atomkraft Nein Danke</i>'s smiley red sun has become a stalwart of environmental movements the world over, and the German Green Party has been the most successful in the world, power sharing from 1997-2005 with the Social Democrats.</p><p>Secondly, the Chernobyl disaster is a lesson in government secrecy. There is a reason why the Soviet authorities kept quiet about their tests and the ensuing explosion, and it had everything to do with politics and nothing to do with the health of millions of people. The explosion came a year after Gorbachev's promise of <i>Glasnost</i>, Openness. Many were left dumbfounded by their silence, and it was no coincidence that less than five years later the system that kept the world ignorant would have toppled, not least because of the estimated 18 Billion Ruble cost of the clean up for an already limping Soviet economy.</p><p>However, there is another side which has been primarily forgotten by the West. Chernobyl left a huge humanitarian crisis in its wake as over 350,000 people were evacuated from their homes. Many can only return once a year to visit the graves of their relatives. Some returned a few years later, many of them old and prepared to bear the risk of radiation in order to die where they had spent the best years of their lives. Thousands of children are still affected by Chernobyl, many of them deformed, afflicted with cancer among other illnesses and abnormalities. According to some estimates, as many as 900,000 cancer deaths between 1986-2004 could be attributed to Chernobyl.</p><p>The emphasis there is on the "could be". Conditionals are all we have in this situation, as it is almost impossible to accurately attribute somebody's death to radiation poisoning twenty five years later. It is this state of unknowing, of ignorance of the facts, that has left people confused and anxious in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster.</p><p>The exhibition is well laid out and considers a number of angles. One is first introduced to the story itself, the explosion, the cover up and the international outcry. Then there is a section looking at the international response, the <i>Atomkraft, Nein Danke</i> movement and government aid to the nations most affected (Did you know 60% of radioactive material fell on Belarus? I didn't.) Finally we see the current situation, the rebuilding of homes and communities as well as the search for alternatives to nuclear power. There is a panel with a number of different words. We. 24,000 Years (the time it will take Pripyat to return to normal levels. Three Mile Island. Cancer. Hope.</p><p>One word is absent from the list, but is all the same very much present at the opening: Fukushima.</p><p>The name is now used in the same breath as Chernobyl, and indeed it has led to a resurgence of <i>Atomkraft Nein Danke</i> protests and public anger at the current CDU/CSU-FDP alliance's attempt to postpone the decommissioning of Germany's few remaining nuclear power stations. Yet to me, at a commemoration of the Chernobyl disaster, this seems almost perverse. No doubt many have suffered in Fukushima and in northern Japan, and their suffering is something we must not ignore as it slips off the front pages, but in comparison to Chernobyl few people have been directly affected by nuclear meltdown. Only one person of the thousands dead in the earthquake was killed directly by the meltdown at Fukushima, and the prognosis is good for the community around the plant. Even George Monbiot, a man revered with a demigod-like aura by environmentalists and metro-liberals <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/21/pro-nuclear-japan-fukushima">now actually supports nuclear power as a result of Fukushima</a>. This is not to dismiss out of hand the fear felt by people when they saw the images of evacuations and smoking reactors. A witness to the events present at the exhibition opening this evening said it felt like Chernobyl was occurring all over again. That is a perfectly understandable fear, and safety issues should never be ignored. Thousands of peoples lives were altered by the earthquake in Japan earlier this year.</p><p>Yet Chernobyl acts as a spotlight on a number of other issues, and they are clouded out when we link it with other nuclear disasters and turn it solely into an environmental issue. It is as much an environmental issue as a Central/Eastern European cultural and social issue. To have learned from Chernobyl isn't simply to slap a green badge on your lapel, but also to look at the wreckage the Soviet Union left in its wake.</p><p>Over 60% of all the fallout ended up in Belarus, and over 6,000 children are currently diagnosed with thyroid cancer linked to radiation exposure. Reactor 4 still isn't completely covered, as the Ukrainian authorities still haven't raised enough money to fully encase the reactor in lead. In the Ukraine there is only one clinic in Kiev for the entire country dedicated to looking after those born with Chernobyl-linked abnormalities and cancers. This is a humanitarian issue, largely forgotten by the rest of the world.</p><p>Those responsible for organising the exhibition were <i>Naturschutzbund Bayern</i> (Envionmental Protection Association of Bavaria), <i>Tschernobyl Kinderhilfe Muenchen e.V</i> (Munich Help for Chernobyl Children) and Renovabis, a Catholic organisation with responsibility for Central/Eastern European Solidarity. It was the last group, Renovabis, who at the exhibition opening put the most emphasis on helping those in Central and Eastern Europe. They acknowledge the fact that the transition into a post-Cold War society has not been entirely successful and that many areas experienced economic and social turmoil when the Soviet Union collapsed. I have been interested in their work for a while now, as there is no similar group in the UK to speak of.</p><p>You've already noticed from previous posts how I feel about Central and Eastern Europe after these nine months in Dachau. Listening to what I have heard from colleagues of mine, coupled with the experience of spending those precious few days with the Dachau survivors from the former Soviet Union, it has made me think about our attitudes to Eastern Europe. I strongly suggest you have a look at <a href="http://www.renovabis.de/">Renovabis </a>, or at the very least their <a href="http://www.renovabis.de/sites/default/files/Kurz-Info_Renovabis_englisch.pdf">Information in English</a>. It is perhaps the only organisation I have seen that faces the poverty that lies right under our noses.</p><p>Everything I have done here in Dachau seems to be forcing my attention in one direction: East. It is a part of the world that has always remained, in the words of Winston Churchill, "A riddle wrapped up in a mystery inside an enigma". He, like all Englishmen, likely said "Russia" when he meant "The Soviet Union". Chernobyl continues to bring people's attention to the Ukraine and its neighbours, and should force us to face up to our responsibility as European neighbours to work in solidarity with their poor. Yes, Nuclear power can be dangerous and yes, we should look to find renewable alternative energy sources that will mean we never have to take such a risk with people's lives again. However this should not be done at the expense of forgetting the local issues that arose from the Chernobyl disaster, which millions in Eastern Europe still live with today. If we turn away from the millions affected in Eastern Europe, then we really haven't learned anything from Chernobyl</p><a href="http://img.webme.com/pic/m/mini-gruppenstunde-dgf/renovabis.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 189px;" src="http://img.webme.com/pic/m/mini-gruppenstunde-dgf/renovabis.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><p style="text-align: center;"><i>Renovabis: An Act of Solidarity of German Catholics with the people of Central and Eastern Europe. The name comes from Psalm 104 "You (God) will renew the face of the Earth".</i></p>Roy Scivyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00485688727709344791noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3162334149609216190.post-63371639547607625142011-05-13T18:44:00.003+02:002011-05-14T15:13:51.925+02:00Thoughts on Violence 1: Cocaine Cowboys<p>On my 14th Birthday I received <i>Grand Theft Auto: Vice City</i>, a computer game for the Playstation 2. The GTA series has always been popular among teenage boys for the freedom it creates in this virtual world to do as you please. There are missions that you complete to open up new functions, but otherwise you are in charge of gameplay. In such games, you often discover that when given the chance, you like to be anti-social. You can perform drive-bys, beat pedestrians to death and steal cars. The thing that received most media attention at its release was the fact you could pick up prostitutes and have sex with them - you see the car rock and your money slowly disappearing - then kill them afterwards.</p><p>For me this was fun (and yes, I am aware of the difference between virtual reality and the real world!), but it wasn't my favourite aspect of the game. With GTA: Vice City, you were set loose on the glamorous, neon-lit world of South Florida in the 1980s. Men with Hawaiian shirts and white slacks roam your estate with pistols; sports cars motor past every few seconds and the sunset is always a mixture of purple and orange shades. This culture fascinated me. Every song on the radio was solid gold, and then on came <i>Crockett's Theme</i> by Jan Hammer. The first time I heard it, I put the game on pause and simply listened. It remains to this day my favourite song, and kick-started my interest in the social and cultural history of the 1980s. Eight years on from that fourteenth birthday gift and my interest is undiminished. I have now seen every episode of <i>Miami Vice</i>, which was a groundbreaking television show in its use of colour, violence and music to tell a story. Jan Hammer's soundtrack became a character in itself.</p><p>However, it is only really in the past couple of years that I have begun to look at the history of the South Florida Drug trade in perspective, separating the fact from the fiction. Although life did begin to imitate art in that people began wearing light Armani jackets and Ray Ban sunglasses, the show was of course a work of fiction. The reality was far more violent, as you will discover when you watch the superb documentary <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXJZpjjDmco&feature=related"><i>Cocaine Cowboys</i> (2006)</a>.</p><p>In 1981, <i>Time</i> produced a cover feature called "Paradise Lost?", looking at the horrendous homicide levels in Miami at that time. Most people measure homicide in deaths per hundred thousand people. The UK is about 1 death per 100,000, a very low figure. In the United States as a whole, the figure hovers around 4-5 deaths per 100,000. For Miami in 1981, the figure was 70 per 100,000. Given many historians name Medieval Oxford as the most homicidal city in history with 40 deaths per 100,000, this sounds like a city out of control. </p><p>A number of factors contributed to this figure. Firstly, the drugs. The cocaine trade was at its peak and Miami was the gateway to the USA for most South American countries. Thousands of kilos, known in the trade as 'pieces' or 'keys', were brought in by boat or dropped along the West Floridian coastline by planes. The city was brimming with the white stuff. Obviously, when so much money is in play, there comes guns and violence. Many of the foot soldiers of this war came over in 1980, when Fidel Castro sent hundreds of thousands of Cubans from Mariel Harbour to Miami. A significant proportion of these were murderers, rapists and thieves (the film <i>Scarface</i> is based on this) but not all of them were. However there were enough to begin the Cocaine Wars between rival factions.</p><p>Why do I write all this? Recently I have been once again mulling over the nature of violence. I had a few seminars on violence as part of my degree course, and from that I realised that violence was more often than not either something done when in the heat of the moment or something coded and controlled to prevent deaths. In Dachau, we consider one of the historical deviations from this theory, i.e the cold blooded, systematic execution of violence to control, humiliate and often kill political opponents. The violence of the Nazi persecutions was perpetrated with a particular aim in mind. Mass murder was committed in the most economic way possible.</p><p>The situation in Miami in the 1970s and 80s was actually quite old fashioned compared to the Holocaust. Rival groups of Cubans and Columbians had feuds, which escalated until somebody, normally the Police, said 'enough!' and stopped them. There were triple homicides, multiple homicides of six, seven, ten people, but the murder of women and children was always frowned upon. Codes of honour exist and control the 'distribution' of violence. Miami was a city unable to control its violence, and thus thousands of people died. However, it is surprising how so many of those involved seem to have come to terms with the violence. It is often justified either by their refusal to pay, insulting the head of a rival family, or defaulting on a delivery. Those involved accept there is a price to the wealth and glamour that comes with dealing cocaine, and that is often death.</p><p>In some ways however, the situation depicted in Miami is also amoral in a modern way. Many involved with the trade at that time blame Hispanic culture and their 'hot-bloodedness' for the number of people dead, yet all acts of violence were more often than not codified. Every death was an execution for getting in someone's way. There was even 'collateral damage', people who were sprayed with bullets for being at the same table as a person with a 'hit' on their heads.</p><p>Yet I find this kind of mass murder inconsequential. I watch <i>Miami Vice</i> still, aware of the erroneous image of a neon paradise it portrays, and cannot equate the images I see with the reality. Murder is accepted as a given in the case of Miami c. 1981. Although this was not death for death's sake such as was the case in Europe 1942, there does seem to be a similar attitude towards those who are killed - "Somebody's gotta die!". There is also a justification behind their deaths on both sides of the law. While the Columbian gangs kill for a contravention of an honour code, the FBI, DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) and the Miami-Dade Police Department by the end were ready to shoot first and ask questions later. Extremely few episodes of <em>Miami Vice</em> ended in arrest; more often than not there was a shoot out. The Police were prepared to admit that their system of justice was failing and that murder was a justifiable alternative, an attitude best expressed in the 1972 film<em> Dirty Harry </em>for example. </p><p>Miami in the 1970s and 1980s is a curious middle ground between the old world of violence as something committed in the heat of the moment and resorted to so that order may be maintained, and the new in which violence is mindless and indiscriminatory. I actually find the violence of Miami quite comforting, or at least thinking about it.</p><p>before you close this page and mark me down as a sociopath, let me explain. People deal with violence and their capacity to commit violence by explaining it, by codifying it in order to control its limited use. Watch <i>Cocaine Cowboys</i> and you'll eventually come to the case of Jorge "Rivi" Ayala, who became the chief hitman for Griselda "The Godmother" Blanco. He speaks often of killing people, but only when he talks about the 'accidental' murder of a dealer's three year old son does he see his actions as horrific. He refuses to kill women and children, only those involved in the war. As far as he is concerned, he is justified. When watching the documentary, looking at the history, it is clear that the vast majority of those who died in Miami in those years were involved intimately with the drugs trade. In one sense, they deserved it.</p><p>I work daily with the history of a place where violence had a purpose and a function, but is nowhere near as easy to explain. People were systematically murdered and maltrated for their nationality, their ethnicity. The Holocaust challenges every preconception we have about violence there is, particularly our ability to control and justify its implementation for the greater good. The cocaine fuelled violence of the late 1970s and early 1980s in some ways makes sense to me. It scares me that it does, because under the same precepts the Holocaust made perfect sense to millions of people. When we accept that violence is justifiable 'in some cases', we need to accept that we are not the only ones who determine what those 'cases' can be.</p>Roy Scivyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00485688727709344791noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3162334149609216190.post-68166093566552539732011-05-08T15:31:00.002+02:002011-05-10T15:50:34.484+02:00Witnesses through their wounds...<p>One of the pleasures of my work is being able to practice my translation skills, and during the Liberation Day commemorations one of my tasks included translating a couple of speeches into English. This homily was delivered by Mr. Ludwig Schmidinger on the 1st May 2011 at an ecumenical service to commemorate the liberation of Dachau Concentration Camp. The Gospel reading for the day was from John 20: 19-31.<br /><br /></p><br /><p><em><span >"Two-thirds of a century has now passed and more than two, almost three, generations have been born since Dachau Concentration Camp was liberated by American soldiers on the 29th April 1945.<br /><br />Once more we remember this day of liberation, which brought a long sought after freedom to the approximately 30,000 people who up to then had been incarcerated here. From that day on they would no longer have to live without rights, without protection or without dignity.<br /><br />From this day on they knew they would no longer be used and abused as expendable and worthless tools, and then thrown away like rubbish and exterminated. It was the day on which those who had already died would be recognized for what they were: the remains of people who each had their own story and personality, and each of whom had a unique dignity.<br /><br />It was the day on which life once more had a chance, on which hope could blossom anew.<br /><br />For those who survived it was a long hoped-for miracle, that after so many years of deprivation, of need, of humiliation, of abuse and of arbitrary murder, they should receive another chance at life; that after many years experiencing complete abandonment – by God and the World – finally there was the expectation that they would be able to live in peace and security, and above all with dignity.<br /><br />Today is also the day on which we were all called, including those born later, to remember what happened; the day on which we also remember why our Constitution begins with a quote that is both a proposition and at the same time a passionate call to attention:<br />In Article 1, Line 1 it reads: “The dignity of humanity is untouchable. To respect and protect it is the duty of all state force.”<br /><br />One year before the liberation, Edgar Kupfer Koberwitz, who was interred in Dachau Concentration Camp on the 8th November 1940, wrote:<br />„So the war cannot last much longer…“</span></em><a style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3162334149609216190#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1"><em><span >[1]</span></em></a><em><span > and: „Everything is in expectation of the invasion, we are all on edge: will they come, or won’t they?-“ </span></em><a style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3162334149609216190#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2"><em><span >[2]</span></em></a><em><span >. and “I myself have premonitions of death, but I do not know whether they are ideas or from a desire to die. – I am so tired, emotionally as well. –“… “I feel so miserable, that I am incapable of anything. – I cannot sleep at night, and I want everyone to just go away. –however I believe I will not leave the camp.<br />- Nothing makes sense anymore. –But I would have liked to have organised everything in my life, paid my debts, made my work ready for print. And there is still so much unwritten in me. – I have absolutely no right to begin to write. – I am also not happy, neither in life nor in love.<br /><br />It would be easy for me to die, I almost long for it. – Only the things left unfinished unsettle me, that I will be unable to pay my small debts and that my manuscript will still be so incomplete. – Were everything published or awaiting publication in secure hands, I would feel more at ease- but the power, that power that creates, brings forth from us that which can take away from us and take away that which has been given us, will know better what is good.” </span></em><a style="mso-footnote-id: ftn3" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3162334149609216190#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3"><em><span >[3]</span></em></a><em><span ><br /><br />On the day of liberation in a long entry he then describes which thoughts and feelings plague him. He observes exactly what is going on around him and what is going on within him.<br />The day is over, this 29th April, - I will remember it my whole life long, celebrate it as my second birthday, as the day when life was presented to me anew. - Is it is too hasty, to accept this date so? – The battle rages on, and the fortunes of war can easily change. –<br />It was a lovely and yet such a bloody Sunday. – Funny that everything should end the way it began. Everything began bloodily, and so it will end. –<br />The Americans entered the camp at 11:45am.”</span></em><a style="mso-footnote-id: ftn4" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3162334149609216190#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4"><em><span >[4]</span></em></a><em><span ><br /><br />And three day later he wrote: “I must see what the camp now looks like, -I want to see with my own eyes how much it has changed. –I would also see old comrades, my polish and other comrades from Präzifix, take them by the hand, then apart from the Germans and the Russians see if they are really all there. –However above everything else it is important that I take the manuscripts, the diary, the book about Dachau from their hiding place, and that I do it in the presence of the Americans, so that no one can say later on that it might not have been written here. – “ </span></em><a style="mso-footnote-id: ftn5" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3162334149609216190#_ftn5" name="_ftnref5"><em><span >[5]</span></em></a><em><span ><br /><br />Yes, it also dealt with bearing witness, already then, even today: bearing witness to that which had happened – also with the wounds that had been inflicted upon them in the years gone by, to an extent that many people did not want to believe. They had many wounds – some visible and permanent, and some that were not so obvious – that remain despite it all – as signs burned irrevocably into memory.<br />Externally their incarceration was at an end – yet how long and how strong they would remain imprisoned in their memories. Often survivors needed thirty years or more before they could show this and, in addition, their deeply buried psychological injuries. How long the after effects had a hold on them.<br /><br />„I suffered greatly from the after-effects of my imprisonment in the concentration camp.” Princess Irmingard of Bavaria, among others, expressed her experiences as such. Paintings she made from around 1980 onwards of her own recollections are impressive and moving witnesses to the horrors and the fears she had to go through. You can still see these paintings on display in the Lecture Room of the Church of Reconciliation.<br /><br />Just as it happened to many people, it happened to the majority. The inner liberation took much longer – even now in the present it is not entirely possible.<br /><br />Memories of the pain, of the longing for fathers, mothers, siblings and friends make themselves apparent right up to the present day in the thanks and feelings, the dreams of the survivors.<br /><br />As well as this, not a little of the segregation and degradation by the majority in society carried on once the Nazi Terror had ended: The Sinti and Romany communities in particular, who in the same way were exposed to wicked persecution and extermination for racial reasons just the same as the Jews, had to experience it again and again.<br /><br />In today’s Gospel it says that the disciples had shut themselves away because they were afraid of the Jews. As we know, the young church saw itself threatened by various and, in part, very complicated circumstances and, above all, by the Jewish establishment. This historical experience and circumstance unfortunately found its enduring expression in the form of polemical attacks against Jews in general, above all in John’s Gospel. Again and again this polemic, which hinges entirely on historical context, would be the basis and cause of anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism within society, and within the Church itself.<br /><br />As recent as the Second Vatican Council, and once more through the proclamations and actions of John Paul the 2nd, such interpretations have been categorically and undeniably decreed as false.<br /><br />The message which lies in this Easter Gospel really shows us exactly the opposite: it is the Resurrected One alone, who despite his own wounds proclaims peace. Indeed the disciples come to Him through their fear and despite their caginess, He who went through anxiety, torture and death. He reveals himself with his wounds as the one through whom the Spirit brings freedom.<br /><br />The Spirit, that is so free that it can overcome hatred and forgive sin. No wonder there is somebody there who doubts it.<br /><br />The miracle is that this is possible: to be mortally wounded and despite everything express no hatred. To have to suffer death himself and then forgive those who have let him down.<br /><br />We should not allow ourselves to misunderstand this: No-one today can and may demand that the survivors should forgive kindly. No, the opposite is true: we who did not have to suffer all of that, can and may see and experience with amazement and gratitude how many of the survivors have overcome a justifiable and comprehensive hatred, or did not even see it as an issue in the first place;<br /><br />The extent to which they see contemporary Germans entirely blameless and have only one wish themselves: that they recognize and take seriously the responsibility that arises from their history.<br /><br />The extent to which survivors are prepared to do that which Jesus also did for Thomas: show us the wounds and the suffering that they put Him through. And the extent to which they are prepared to trust us to take on board and carry on their witness, their message.<br /><br />The biggest misunderstanding of National Socialism was to think that only those without wounds, the unwounded, are authentic people. The Good News of Christianity, which in German is identified with the greek word “Evangelium", contains the exact opposite: in the person of Jesus, who had to suffer death on the Cross, who confronted us with his wounds, we meet with God alone. The worth of Man does not lie in being a perfect and pain-free specimen, it is through finding whilst in great pain the opponent from which he must not hide or conceal himself, but instead take on and bear, as he also bore his pain.<br /><br />We are encouraged by the Good News: to go with the witness of the survivors along the path of freedom and of peace, and to construct our institutions, our societies, our unions and our nations accordingly, that people will never again dehumanize and segregate other people just because they do not conform to their idea of perfection.<br /><br />We pray that the Spirit of God fills us and makes us passionate witnesses to the worth of humanity!<br /><br />Amen." </span></em></p><br /><br /><p><br /><a style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3162334149609216190#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1">[1]</a> Edgar Kupfer-Koberwitz, Dachauer Tagebücher, Die Aufzeichnungen des Häftlings 24814, Mit einem Vorwort von Barbara Distel, München 1997, ISBN 3-463-40301-3, S. 290 (Eintag vom 28.4.1944)<br /><a style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3162334149609216190#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2">[2]</a> ebd. (Eintrag vom 30.4.1944)<br /><a style="mso-footnote-id: ftn3" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3162334149609216190#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3">[3]</a> ebd. S. 291 f (Eintrag vom 8.4.1944)<br /><a style="mso-footnote-id: ftn4" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3162334149609216190#_ftnref4" name="_ftn4">[4]</a> ebd. S. 449 (Eintrag vom 29.4.1945)<br /><a style="mso-footnote-id: ftn5" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3162334149609216190#_ftnref5" name="_ftn5">[5]</a> ebd. S. 459 (Eintrag vom 2.5.1945)<br /><a name="_msocom_1"></a><br /></p>Roy Scivyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00485688727709344791noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3162334149609216190.post-34143979038505144902011-05-05T17:10:00.004+02:002011-05-10T15:28:42.747+02:00Liberation Day: Random Thoughts on a Busy Few Days...</p><p>I'm not going to apologize for the gap between posts, because I'm not really sorry. I'm perhaps slightly miffed with myself, maybe even mildly annoyed, but I don't feel so remorseful that I need to apologize here. Also, I was too busy experiencing what had been going on over the last few days in Dachau.</p><p>Firstly, we have a group of Dachau survivors currently staying at the Jugendgaestehaus. They come from the Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, all countries once in the former Soviet Union, and are able to come here thanks to the tireless work of the Foerderverein (Supporters Union) in Dachau, in particular Nicole Schneider and Irina Grinkevich. They spent the last few months arranging Visas, contacting as many people as possible to give them the opportunity to come and arranging a series of events to make them feel as welcome as possible. They also have the opportunity during their stay to receive a medical checkup and get some new clothes.</p><p>As with so many things during this year, I felt a distance between this group of visitors and myself, partly because of the language barrier and also because of their shared history. Many of them spent two, even three years in Nazi captivity and in a number of different camps. What's more, they were almost all in their mid to late teens when they were taken into custody. After the war they simply had to get on with their adult lives. Often they were also ignored by others as, for many, they had failed by being captured. Returning Soviet POWs were treated with suspicion by the authorities.</p><p>On Friday 29th April, the 66th Anniversary of KZ Dachau's liberation, Prince William of Wales and Ms. Catherine Middleton were married at Westminster Abbey. As the family assembled on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, the couple kissing for the first time in public, a Lancaster, Spitfire and Hurricane flew over. The Battle of Britain Flypast was a crucial part of the day's events, and an extremely telling one. Perhaps I am being cynical, but it seemed to me that the organisers sought something that was uniquely British, and Nationalism in the UK was never stronger than during World War II.</p><p>I was excited to see it all. I admit it. My family were gathered round the TV at home and I felt rather left out of the national celebrations. I hung a commemorative Union Flag my parents sent me out the window of my flat. Later on I began to think. My flatmate had not taken this well. She felt that it was an insult to fly a flag of celebration on a day of such importance for the eight men she was currently looking after in Dachau. In many ways she was right. I had put my own interests ahead of the victims, whose memory I am here to keep alive and whose warning I am supposed to spread.</p><p>Even worse, it was pure nationalism that seduced me. However benign a form of nationalism it may have been, it is still worrying to know how weak you are to it.</p><p>***</p><p>On the Saturday evening I delivered a speech to those gathered at the Death March memorial in Dachau. It was not difficult to decide what to talk about, and I was reminded of this when I saw the ex-Soviet survivors in the front row, their translator packs in their ears, sitting with a quiet but understated dignity. I spoke about the distance I felt, how foreign Eastern Europe remained the 'Other' to us and how, step by step, I was becoming aware of issues that affected them. I think a lot of people felt the same way, and I am grateful for the positive feedback I received, particularly from those from the former East. One of the survivors came up to me in the Landtag a few days later and said, in broken German, "You did a nice speech." That meant far more than any of the other comments previously, and I thought back to that moment on the 29th April when I rushed home to see the Royal Wedding. I felt quite ashamed, and grateful for second chances.</p><p>On the Sunday there were thousands of people present at the site for the many services of remembrance going ahead, as well as a Russian Orthodox service in the Chapel of the Resurrection. The liturgy was alien to many people watching, and seemed to be operating in its own vaccuum as the main memorial service led by the Comite International Dachau (CID) went ahead. Here were small, Russian women in headscarves and cheap coats genuflecting every so often, bowing and hushing their children. It was a completely different attitude towards Church. I had helped distribute the order of service for the ecumenical service at 9.30am, in which much was explained, there were lots of read out prayers and the entire liturgy hung on the Word. For the Russian Orthodox service the Liturgy was something else and women chatted in hushed tones among each other as the Priest incensed the Scripture. I had seen something similar in Jewish Sabbath services. Here Liturgy was not only something in which people could participate in, but something the people seemed to be breathing.</p><p> I wandered to the other end of the site for the main commemoration. We stood and listened to the main speeches being delivered in German and French before embassies, consulates and other organisations laid wreaths at the International Memorial. Survivors peppered the audience. Later, when we were at a commemoration at the SS Shooting Range in Hebertshausen, a few miles away from Dachau, they were in the front row, listening in silence and through a translator. One or two dabbed their eyes every so often with a handkerchief. None wept strongly. Here Irina delivered her speech to those present, focussing on the fact that for decades these survivors were forgotten, their courage and suffering not recognised in Soviet times. Hers was the most moving speech, perhaps also because of her contact with the survivors staying in Dachau. There were members of the Communist Party of Germany present, who laid their red roses by the memorial before making a salute, their fists clenched and their eyes closed.</p><p>***</p><p>It was a moving few days, and very disorientating as well. It was wonderful to meet so many survivors, particularly those from the former Soviet Union, but at the same time the cultural difference was painfully apparent. In Dachau there were people speaking in Russian, translated into German, then I had to translate that into English (I have not yet learned to think in German). In the process something gets lost, and I found myself often wondering what I sould say. How should I say it? I wanted to make small talk, but that's something that doesn't really exist in former Eastern-bloc countries. I also didn't exactly want to interject with 'So tell me about your time in Buchenwald!" or something similar. As a result, I often shied away from them, unsure of my place in their presence.</p><p>This is not to say I didn't have good moments. One of them came up to me outside the Landtag and got my attention. Through an interpreter he said, "What was your aim from meeting us?" I replied I didn't have one. Perhaps I should have had one, the chance to meet this generation so rare. "Did we meet your expectations?" I replied it was wonderful to meet them. He then extended his arm and gripped my hand in appreciation.</p><p>It is hard to write about these experiences here, and as I shook ther hands and said goodbye to them on the last night, I wondered if I would ever have the chance to meet anyone from the East from that generation again. They had lived hard lives within a system that had not treated them well and yet we communicated as human beings. They had the scars of the century, and they were willing to share them with someone like me, young and with no clue whatsoever what it means to suffer.</p><p>I'm very conscious of the number of times I've used the word 'grateful' in this post. 'Gratitude' sums up the last few days for me really. For the chance to share this history; for the patience of those who bear the modern scars of the camps in their societies, for the opportunity simply to be present and watch them as they spoke with each other; for the second chances we receive and the ability to learn from mistakes. For all this, I will always be grateful.</p>Roy Scivyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00485688727709344791noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3162334149609216190.post-7804346574737754112011-04-26T22:23:00.005+02:002011-04-27T23:45:13.853+02:00FILM REVIEW: Francesco und der Papst (2011)<p></p><p>On Easter Monday I said goodbye to my Berlin ASF friends and was left to my own devices. Wandering by Rosenheimer Platz, I spotted a new film title in one of Munich's many independent cinemas - even though you rarely get a film ticket for less than €6.50, there's a great range of films to see. <i>Francesco und der Papst</i> (Francesco and the Pope) looked, from the posters, like a glorified "Let's look around the Vatican" documentary turned into a feature film, and in some ways it turned out as such. The flyer was full of quotes from German Bishops, one from Peter Seewald, whose interview with the Pope last year caused controversy, and the film seemed to be supported by the Vatican. From what I gathered it was a film about a choir boy who meets the Pope, so with the buzz of Easter still about me I decided to give it a go.</p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.vip-infotainment.de/Grafik/Filmplakat/Francesco_und_der_Papst.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 270px; height: 382px;" src="http://www.vip-infotainment.de/Grafik/Filmplakat/Francesco_und_der_Papst.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><p>In one sense, I was right. To most people it will look like an attempt to show a few bits of private footage of the Pope with his faithful secretary Msgr "Gorgeous" Georg Gänswein. Theres a shot of him watching what appears to be an HDTV demo screensaver, then eating with a Dominican, walking through the Vatican Gardens with a body warmer and slippers among other clips of the Pope's official visits, yet this isn't enough to make a film. This is where the story of Francesco comes in.</p><p>Francesco is a boy chorister with the Sistine Chapel Choir. He loves to sing, and has a profound grasp of the responsibility he has as a member of the choir that sings for papal liturgies. His home life can be as stressful as his life at the Choir's school; his brothers subject him to the usual rough play, he has little time for homework and, hardest of all, he lives in a single parent family. His father arrives at the end, but it is clear this is a broken home and his mother finds it hard to cope.</p><p>We are treated to his own observations on the Vatican and its seemingly timeless world, and his childlike views are a real treat, as well as being extremely timely. For example, we see the opening of the Synod of African Bishops with an African choir and band, to which Francesco says, "I wish they were here every week; then at least we would have more fun at Mass!". Given the fact that this film must have been shown to (and approved by) the Holy Father at some point means this irreverent take on the modern church is actually far more daring than you might think a Vatican film possible.</p><p>Finally Francesco's moment comes and he is asked to sing for the Pope. The moment comes, he sings beautifully and clearly and the two finally meet, Francesco and Benedict in a moment that seems to last an age. The final note is sung, Benedict raises a warm smile and is the first to clap the boy's performance and gets up to greet him.</p><p>In any other film it would be horrible that I gave away the last moments then, but that's not what this film is about. Besides, it's all in the trailer below. It is, similar I suppose to <i>Into Great Silence</i>, a meditative film, but about the Church in the world rather than the microcosm of the monastery. You watch it knowing that all will turn out OK, but you see how these two lives affect each other, not only on Francesco's side but on Pope Benedict's responsibility as head of a changing Church. The plot begins to lose its importance as you are gripped by this childlike look at a Church structure that has to many people lost its innocence. That, and how much the Pope smiles. He smiles a lot.</p><p>In typical Vatican style (Yesterday's technology, tomorrow!), this excellent film is only on limited release in Germany, and it doesn't look like there's been much press coverage about it at all beyond the usual diocesan newspapers. What a shame. If you do have the chance to see it, go, if only to see something completely different.</p><p><iframe title="YouTube video player" width="640" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/yCegN5eokfU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></p>Roy Scivyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00485688727709344791noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3162334149609216190.post-28126194207621186152011-04-25T21:22:00.010+02:002011-04-26T22:19:47.311+02:00Easter, or "How to combine the Regina Coeli and 'Sweet Transvestite' in the same blog post"<p></p><p>First of all, I hope you all had a good Easter. Mine was spent in the company of some ASF volunteers currently working in Berlin based projects, who had decided to use the four day weekend to break out of their Berlin bubble!</p><p>I attended the Triduum, the three part Easter liturgy which begins on Thursday evening and concludes with the Saturday night/Sunday morning Easter Vigil Mass, in two locations for the first time. On Good Friday I attended the Good Friday service at the Carmelite Convent on the KZ Dachau Memorial Site grounds. I had been looking forward to this for a while (if such a thing is possible!) as I felt there was something quite difficult about commemorating, even celebrating the Passion of Christ in a Concentration Camp Memorial Site. In a place where senseless violence irrevocably altered the lives of over two hundred thousand people, even more if you include their families, the commemoration of what was (to Christians) a necessary act of violence for salvation took place is quite hard to take.</p><p>However the liturgy was led superbly by Pastoral Chaplain Mr. Ludwig Schmidinger and Fr. Klaus Spiegel, O.S.B. It was kept simple, using only a few chants sung by the Carmelite nuns, and did not shy away from the contemporary context in which they celebrated the liturgy.</p><p>On Saturday I attended the Vigil Mass in the Jesuit run Michaelskirche, where I attend Sunday Mass more regularly than anywhere else. It is the closest thing I have to a parish here. At 8.50pm, ten minutes before the start, the place was packed with people, many bringing with them stools and baskets of food to be blessed. Clocking in at 2 hours and 35 minutes, it was an experience I will likely never forget, especially celebrating the liturgy in another language and culture. Afterwards my Polish friend and I were on a religious high. She sang a traditional ending hymn in Polish, and I asked what it was. She replied "Himmelskoenigin", or "Queen of Heaven" in English. In response I sang the Latin <i>Regina Coeli</i>, the traditional closing Marian antiphon for Carmelites during Eastertide. If you're interested, it goes like so:<blockquote><i>Regina caeli, laetare, alleluia:<br />Quia quem meruisti portare. alleluia,<br />Resurrexit, sicut dixit, alleluia,<br />Ora pro nobis Deum, alleluia.</i></p><p>(Queen of Heaven, rejoice, alleluia.<br />For He whom you did merit to bear, alleluia.<br />Has risen, as He said, alleluia.<br />Pray for us to God, alleluia.)</blockquote></p><p>It must be said nobody even batted an eyelid. The streets were full of people holding half burnt-out candles and blessed baskets of bread for the Easter feast the next day, so our actions were clearly the norm. Such is life in Munich!</p><p>We joined our group in a Thai restaurant just round the back of Odeonsplatz, where I had discovered there is a thriving Karaoke community. We went in to find half the clientele looking at us, and one of the singers in the middle of a Thai pop song. My friend had been there an hour and still not had a single request played, though the place began to empty by 1am as the time for the last S-Bahn drew ever nearer. The group considered their position, and decided that they would commit to the night. What followed was the best Easter ever.</p><p>The set list was as follows: <i>Bohemian Rhapsody, Flashdance, Rocket Man</i> (in the style of William Shatner), <i>Sweet Transvestite, Time Warp, I Wanna Dance With Somebody</i> and to conclude, <i>I Had The Time of My Life</i>. It really was a glorious evening, and though many of our group were not convinced it was worth getting back to Dachau at 6.20am for, I am very grateful to them for giving me the chance to do so. We even got to see the sunrise on Easter morning from Petershausen station, as we waited for the first S-Bahn of the day. I have some wonderful friends, I really do...</p><p>Roy Scivyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00485688727709344791noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3162334149609216190.post-2522389795285785432011-04-16T10:25:00.007+02:002011-04-16T20:15:14.675+02:00Europe’s Last Dictatorship<p style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 10pt" class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">On Monday evening, the BBC News Website announced that there had been an explosion in the capital of Belarus, Minsk, on the Metro at Oktyabrskaya Station. As the week progressed, we found out that twelve people were killed, hundreds injured and that it was a terrorist attack. President Alexander Lukashenko promised to leave 'no stone unturned' in finding the terrorists who carried the attack out. Two days later, the KGB (Yes, they still exist) arrested two men, an electrician and a lathe operator, who 'admitted' to the bombing eight hours later. They also admitted to responsibility for a bombing in Minsk in 2008, as well as a previous attack in the eastern Belarusian town of Vitebsk in 2005. There was a day of mourning on Wednesday. Case closed.<!--?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /--><o:p></o:p></span></p><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span><p style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 10pt" class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">You most likely didn't read this story, as it was at first one of the minor stories on the page. Then it was the third most important story in the 'Europe' sub-category. Now it's hidden among the other stories in the Europe category, the graveyard slot on the website. I understand that events in Libya and Syria fit the popular news narrative of the 'Arab Spring' right now, but still this is surely highly offensive to those from Belarus, whose suffering goes unnoticed in much of the world’s media.<o:p></o:p></span></p><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span><p style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 10pt" class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Admittedly, I wouldn't have noticed it if it wasn't for the fact I live with a Belarusian. The project likes to have English and Russian mother-tongue volunteers, and we have worked together in the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site for almost eight months now. Her view of history is very different to mine. A third of the population of Belarus, which lies between Poland and Russia, was wiped out during World War II, and this war on the Eastern Front from 1941-1945 is still known by the title 'The Great Patriotic War'. She concerns herself not only with this history, but the history of what we call 'the former East', all that lies beyond Germany.<o:p></o:p></span></p><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span><p style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 10pt" class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">On Monday night she returned home from work, where she had been helping co-ordinate the visit of a number of survivors from Russia, Belarus and the Ukraine for the Liberation Day memorial ceremonies. I asked her how she was, and whether she had seen the news. She said she was fine, and no, what was up? I picked up my laptop and showed her the screen, the BBC News report on the explosion in Minsk. I didn’t want to be the one to tell her. What followed were an evening's nervous Skype chats and phone calls to check that friends and family were not affected. Minsk is her home. Oktyabrskaya Station is one of the most central, where the two lines cross over (like Termini in Rome), and thousands of people must pass through during the rush hour every day.<o:p></o:p></span></p><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span><p style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 10pt" class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">However unlike the news, her mind saw the bombing in perspective.<o:p></o:p></span></p><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span><p style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 10pt" class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">On December 19th 2010 President Lukashenko was re-elected in a landslide victory, in a election that regulators say had ‘serious irregularities’. There were a number of opposition candidates, seven of whom are now in prison along with over six hundred protestors. Many of them are still waiting to be charged. President since 1994, some support Lukashenko for giving the country stability. Others echo Condaleeza Rice's sentiments and have named him 'Europe's last dictator'.<o:p></o:p></span></p><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span><p><span class="Apple-style-span"><a href="http://diepresse.com/images/uploads/2/d/4/426708/thumbDi_04_lukaschenko20081031102533.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 425px; CURSOR: hand" border="0" alt="" src="http://diepresse.com/images/uploads/2/d/4/426708/thumbDi_04_lukaschenko20081031102533.jpg" /></a> </span></p><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span><p><span class="Apple-style-span">Brings back memories doesn't it!</span></p><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span><p style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 10pt" class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-US">This is the story we know in the West so far. What hasn't been reported are the empty shelves in the shops. The new </span><span lang="EN-US">laws </span><span lang="EN-US">that make it impossible for citizens to change their Belarusian Roubles for Dollars, and harder for overseas money transactions to take place. The ways in which President Lukashenko is, bit by bit, buckling down for a war of attrition against the West, in which it will be the people of Belarus who will suffer the most. Some even wonder whether the terrorist attack on Monday wasn't a little...convenient for the President. Lukashenko has good diplomatic relations with Libya and Cub,a among other similarly authoritarian regimes. As one citizen pointed out, "Who could have carried this out? We are friends with all the regimes that fund the terrorists!"<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span><p style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 10pt" class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">I cannot claim to know if this is more than suspicion, however it is very challenging to me as a ‘Westerner’ to know that we have already forgotten this story. It might be that Belarus does not fit our idea of how Europe looks, especially given how much money the EU has pumped into programmes on ‘Tolerance’ and ‘Solidarity’ in the past twenty years since the end of the Cold War. Equally it might be that we have forgotten a European neighbour at the expense of the 'Arab Spring' and other nations where the poverty and oppression is admittedly more obvious. I can't see many Beard-and-Sandals PEACE activists leaving the Middle East for a while and making their way to Belarus any time soon, or any Bring-and-Buy sales sending proceeds their way. The word 'Solidarity with the poor' has come to envision helping somewhere far off and exotic, where we can send our money and our middle class Gap Yah students to rebuild a school and take endless photos of gorgeous smiling kids. No Gap Yah student wants to go to Belarus, where it’s both foreign and disconcertingly familiar.<o:p></o:p></span></p><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span><p style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 10pt" class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">I'm not painting myself any better; I only know more about the situation because I have friends affected. I am as bad as the rest when it comes to political apathy. Yet what is going on is not unconnected to my work here in Dachau. My friend has pointed out how she cannot stop linking the arrest of people in Belarus with the Nazi policy of 'protective custody', a euphemism for those interred in Dachau. This is no longer just about history; for her, and in turn for me as her friend, it is painful reality. Next time you see Libya, Syria, Egypt or any other of the 'Arab Spring' nations on the news, remember Belarus as well. Just because their government isn't weak enough to topple with a few protests and well placed air raids doesn't mean their situation isn't newsworthy. If anything, they are our neighbours and if we truly believe in European solidarity, they deserve more than just the support of EU diplomats.<o:p></o:p></span></p><a href="http://www.novinite.com/media/images/2011-04/photo_verybig_127243.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 480px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 330px; CURSOR: hand" border="0" alt="" src="http://www.novinite.com/media/images/2011-04/photo_verybig_127243.jpg" /></a>Roy Scivyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00485688727709344791noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3162334149609216190.post-62018745928606186272011-04-11T13:33:00.002+02:002011-04-11T13:52:21.917+02:00The sun is shining...</p><p>...and temperatures are rarely below 20 degrees at the moment, which means I am not spending as much time indoors as I was. This coupled with a large number of tours and the final preparations for the exhibition's shipment to the United States has meant little time for blogging.</p><p>That and I've just been lazy. I'm sure there are thousands of internet URLs out there with blogs that have fizzled out after a few posts, and thousands more with 'sorry for the lack of posting' apologies like this one. That's an interesting point actually; how do you end a blog? I'm not planning on ending this one until September when my project ends and I start a new challenge (more on that in due course), but how does one end it? Goodbye? End of transmission?</p><p>*****</p><p><p>Either way, I'll quickly tell you about one of my procrastination tools. I have been watching 'Long Way Down' on YouTube, the series in which Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman travel through Africa on their way from John O'Groats to Cape Town and gawp at tribes in post colonial wonder. It's nice escapist TV, the kind of thing you get on the DAVE channel in the UK (motto: "Home of witty banter") designed especially for 'blokes'. Anyway, alongside their ride they also visit a number of UNICEF projects, which often make for the most moving parts of the journey. </p><p>Of interest to me was their stop-off in Kigali, Rwanda, where they had to deal with the consequences of Genocide. The Genocide in Rwanda saw the Hutu majority massacre the Tutsi ethnic minority, who had been most associated with previous colonial governments. It is a very different genocide from the one I work with, for although both the Nazi Holocausts and the Rwandan genocide involved the systematic persecution of a minority, they are shocking in different ways. The Nazi Holocaust shocks us because of its cold blooded calculation, the way in which murder had a price, the cheapest and most efficient ways of exterminating people the better. The Rwandan Genocide shocks us, and I think more so in the west, because of the personal nature of the massacre. People were chopped to pieces with machetes and bludgeoned to death with hammers. This was incredibly warm blooded brutality, entirely irrational and charged with emotion.</p><p>Charley and Ewan visit a church in which five thousand people were murdered. Their bones are laid inside, along with their bloody clothes, left hanging from the ceiling. Ewan asks the girl who takes them around the question that is on everybody's mind as they watch, "So are you a Hutu or a Tutsi?"</p><p>"Back then I was Tutsi; now I am a Rwandan."</p>Roy Scivyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00485688727709344791noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3162334149609216190.post-77857269536780016362011-03-28T21:03:00.002+02:002011-03-28T21:18:44.286+02:00Because I haven't posted much recently...</p><p>Here's Act 1 Scene 2 from <i>Kat'a Kabanova</i>, one of Leoš Janáček's mature Operas. Janáček wrote a lot of Operas with women as his preferred protagonists, and this one is amazing in its portrayal of a woman clearly oppressed by the world around her.</p><p>I love this part, where Kat'a tells her friend and maid Varvara of how free she felt as a child, beginning with "I wondered why people can't fly!". She feels caged, and spirals out of control as the oppressive atmosphere of the Kabanov family household drives her insane.</p><p>In this production at Glyndebourne Kat'a is played by American Soprano Nancy Gustafson, who seems to act the role entirely with her eyes in such a way that you really believe she's about to do something crazy!</p><p><iframe title="YouTube video player" width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/DWxL4Pc-k1Y" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>Roy Scivyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00485688727709344791noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3162334149609216190.post-89474823362301446602011-03-28T11:12:00.002+02:002011-03-28T11:48:55.545+02:002011 Romero Lecture</p><p>The Archbishop Romero Trust held an ecumenical service at St. Martin-in-the-Fields Church in Trafalgar Square, London at the weekend to commemorate the 31st Anniversary of the Martyrdom of Oscar Romero. It is hard not to be moved by Romero's story, in particular his work in the last four years of his life leading up to his assassination on March 24th 1980 during the Celebration of Mass. A lot of what he said regarding the 'option for the poor' is profoundly challenging for our western society and continues to inspire many religious in their work today.In many ways Romero has already been unofficially, and it must be said, ecumenically, canonized, which I am sure is one of many reasons why his Cause for Beatification has not yet begun.</p><p>The phrase 'Justice and Peace' has tragically been taken over by a stereotype of geriatric impotence in recent years. A friend of mine from the Leeds Diocese once said to me that his father (in his mid-sixties) was always the youngest person at J&P meetings in the parish. Romero's example reminds us how vibrant, and urgent, the message is, as well as how unbelievably radical it really is to suggest that there is something wrong in an increasingly globalised society of abundance where millions still go hungry. It is lethargy on the part of everyone that allows it to continue.</p><p>Either way, here is the text of<a href="http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.romerotrust.org.uk%2Fdocuments%2Fromero%2520lectures%2Fjphlecture2011.pdf&h=db369">the 2011 Romero Lecture</a>, delivered by Fr. Juan Hernández Pico, S.J. and combined with the service at St. Martins. It really is worth a read.</p>Roy Scivyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00485688727709344791noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3162334149609216190.post-21908286773631893382011-03-25T20:17:00.003+01:002011-03-25T20:25:52.513+01:00Leitenberg Stations of the Cross: 2</p><p><b>2. JESUS TAKES UP HIS CROSS</b></p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjQDtSZaZZ1moneZSJW2KGoagb6LhoTU7gmz1SExAQSmeAho_CezrDCHMHyLTMi9LHmiJDd1__JAEHGZrpB8VrjmTANdwQbEhMoU6drHjdMf9AqSAvFhAy5dYEKJS84JLXea89HHmyUDc/s1600/DSCF8472.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjQDtSZaZZ1moneZSJW2KGoagb6LhoTU7gmz1SExAQSmeAho_CezrDCHMHyLTMi9LHmiJDd1__JAEHGZrpB8VrjmTANdwQbEhMoU6drHjdMf9AqSAvFhAy5dYEKJS84JLXea89HHmyUDc/s320/DSCF8472.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5588099642159782450" /></a><p>V: We adore you O Christ, and we praise you</p><p>A: For through your holy Cross you have redeemed the world</p><p>Not a few who were taken into so-called ‘protective custody’, or even murdered, were aware of the danger of persecution and readily accepted arrest as a consequence – also as a consequence of warning and attempting to rescue others. Because they cared more about humanity and the truth than their own need to survive, they were persecuted, arrested, abused and murdered. Take the case of Fritz Gerlich for example: in his newspaper Der gerade Weg (The Straight Way) he warned of the dangers of National Socialism to Germany and the wider world even before their came to power. He was fully aware of the risk he took with his own life.</p><p>How difficult it is often for us to deal with unpleasant goings on, to call out Injustice by name, to put ourselves out for others. How easy it is for us to avoid such burdens and justify our behaviour by assuming others will deal with the problem for us. Lord Jesus, you willingly took the Cross and carried it yourself. You did not avoid the suffering that is developed through lies and contempt.</p><p>A: Lord, have mercy on us and on the whole world...</p><p><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2X8i0wDayZKo0Dht4MGAEIJMK4q9e_KSVfpHVnJwFWT7wU_7M4lN5p8jbl-HK3A99H3VDGX4P4do9gFyhLGDOck5o2zrBN4TUFJ2rtX5K-Y_H5oqfANZLkiVmVjw6KlvgEOE53lVs2A8/s1600/DSCF8474.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2X8i0wDayZKo0Dht4MGAEIJMK4q9e_KSVfpHVnJwFWT7wU_7M4lN5p8jbl-HK3A99H3VDGX4P4do9gFyhLGDOck5o2zrBN4TUFJ2rtX5K-Y_H5oqfANZLkiVmVjw6KlvgEOE53lVs2A8/s320/DSCF8474.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5588099649663009842" /></a>Roy Scivyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00485688727709344791noreply@blogger.com0