The Big Fat Gypsy Joke

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.

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":

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 Wuthering Heights, 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:

Click here for 'My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding'

My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding 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.

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.

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.

In German the word is Antiziganismus, 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.

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.

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.

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.

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").

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.

Normal service...

...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!)

In the meantime here's something I made earlier. It's a playlist I compiled with a website called 8 Tracks, 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.

See what you think! Incidentally, the image is from Harvey Edwards' collection of photos of Ballet Dancers he produced c.1986.

The Religion of Auschwitz I: Pilgrimage

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.

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 Wrocław Workshops 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

"...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.

The full article (in German) can be found at here.

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 Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung Yet the sanctification of Auschwitz has far reaching consequences for our understanding both of the site, and of what it represents.

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?

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.

That is of course a description of Birkenau. Auschwitz I, which is best known for the Arbeit macht frei 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Summer Nights...

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.

I think this is why I love the 1980s so much. I've already written at length of my love of Miami Vice 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.

Crockett and Tubbs brooding over a summer night...

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.

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:

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In the Air Tonight - Phil Collins: 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 Miami Vice. I've linked to the scene for that reason.

Rosanna - Toto: 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 that cool...)

Zamba - Bryan Ferry: 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 feels soooo good! Much softer than the rest, but one definitely for the season.

No Lookin' Back - Michael McDonald: 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.

Mighty Wings - Cheap Trick: 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.

E.S.P - Bee Gees: 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 can 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.

Last Summer - LostProphets: 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.

Poison - Alice Cooper: 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...

Self Control - Laura Branigan: 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.

Endless Summer Nights - Richard Marx: 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.

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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...

Sinti and Romani Rights in Germany: A Declaration

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...

DECLARATION

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.

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.

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.

Munich, the 10th September 1980

Johannes Hanselmann, Regional Bishop of the Lutheran Church in Bavaria

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Archbishop of Munich and Freising

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...

Thoughts on Violence II: Auschwitz and Kolyma

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.

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 The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas to read on the journey.

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.

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.

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 Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million 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.

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

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 Koba in full:

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 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'.

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.

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.

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.

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.

If my views change in the next week or two (which they might just do) I'll let you know.

Kirchentag with old friends (and two new ones...)

Last week I had the pleasure of representing Action Reconciliation Service for Peace (ASF) at the Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchentag 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...

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.

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.

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 My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding 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.

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!

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".

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On the last night we were told there would be attending something called a Russendisko 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 Russendisko, Vladimir Kaminer. A Russian of Jewish ancestry who came to Berlin in 1990, he developed the Russendisko 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.

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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 Mashambanzou, 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.

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.