Hitler Youth
M1, D1
Isa. 42:1-9
Ps. 89:1-29
Acts 10:34-8
Mk. 1:7-11
Jordan Day
“See the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth, I tell you of them.” Isaiah 42
My first church secretary Marianne was a Hitler Youth. I don’t mean this pejoratively or metaphorically, although she really could be a bulldog to callers trying to sell me copying machines or Sunday School curricula. Marianne grew up during the 1930’s in Germany and thoroughly enjoyed the campouts and singing and camaraderie with other Hitler Youth. The Hitler Youth she talked about and the one you read about in the encyclopedia (“a paramilitary organization… [that] served as a recruiting ground for new storm troopers”) sound entirely different.
Marianne lost both her parents in World War Two. I will never forget the frightening stories she told me about being an orphan in post-war Germany. What you sensed she was leaving out made the stories even more terrifying. I’ve been thinking so much about Marianne this week as I read Hans Erich Nossack’s book Der Untergang written three months after the Battle of Hamburg.
Nossack tries to write about an experience that simply cannot be expressed, about memories that are too difficult to recall. On July 27, 1943 in the midst of 8 continuous days of bombing, Allied forces trapped fire fighters in the city center while detonating incendiary bombs on the periphery of the city. This created a Feuersturm, a firestorm with 150 mile per hour winds and 1500 degree Fahrenheit temperatures which burned up 8 square miles of the city. Street asphalt burst into flame, tens of thousands of people were incinerated or asphyxiated in bomb shelters. In that week sixty thousand people were killed and one million people lost everything they owned.
We are used to seeing images of horror on our television screens. The remarkable thing about Nossack’s account is how different it seems from news coverage of Iraq or from a normal crime drama. Nossack writes about the interior experience, the alienation and shock that despite the terrible situation does not seem discontinuous with normal life.
He poignantly describes the abyss separating those who lost everything and those who could help them, why even a generous hand can tire of giving and why it is even more difficult to receive (20). He writes, “Who could blame the helpers for being disappointed when they [realized] that what they offered [clothes, shelter and food]… basically didn’t make any difference at all” (20).
A refugee would walk through a strange room, “touch an object, hold it and look at it absently. The host would follow him with his eyes and expect a statement like: We too once had something like this… But instead… the unspoken question would fill the room: What is the use of still having such things” (20). “Those who were known to have experienced unimaginably frightful hours, who had run through fire with their clothes burning, stumbling over charred corpses… in whose arms a child had suffocated; who had seen their house collapse right after their father or husband had gone inside… why didn’t they cry and lament? And why this indifferent tone of voice when they spoke of what they had left behind…” (21).
“So it came to pass that people who lived together in the same house and ate at the same table breathed the air of completely separate worlds. They tried to reach out to each other but their hands did not meet. They spoke the same language, but what they meant by their words were completely different realities” (22).
This terrible divide between people who showed by their actions that life goes on and those who cast doubt on the meaning of life made each individual an island. It might seem odd to you but writing in the heat of the moment, Nossack focused less on the loss of life and property than the annihilation of self that he saw in these isolated survivors.
This week I have also been reading another book. At first the two seemed like total opposites. A classmate from high school named Franz Wisner recently sold the film rights of his book Honeymoon with My Brother for something like a million dollars.
Franz begins by telling how his long-term girlfriend left him a few days before a lavishly planned wedding at Sea Ranch. In the aftermath of this total disaster he and his brother decided to go on the honeymoon - together. Traveling suited them and they visited 53 countries over the course of two years.
The book shows me the ways people both change and remain the same over time. It helps me to better understand feelings that I could not articulate about people I used to know. Sony Films is probably more interested in it because Franz was the press secretary for former governor Pete Wilson and they see potential for the story as a buddy film.
I think Franz tries to show that this experience changed him from being a political manipulator to a person who recognizes what really matters, that through his travels he became someone capable of really being close to another person. But I don’t know if he succeeds.
Visiting another high school friend in the Czech Republic Franz meets Jana “an aspiring singer and model.” He writes, “She wore a black miniskirt that barely covered the tops of her stately legs, a snug mocha-colored sweater… She was gorgeous" (102). Franz describes Jana’s underwear and the joy of sex with her (I’ll spare you the details). But then he devotes the next page to how boring she was afterwards and how he couldn’t get her to leave until he faked his own departure from the city. In Franz’s stories people only seem to have importance in proportion to their usefulness to him.
On the surface this book about a wealthy clever, often cynical Californian traveling the world with his brother could hardly seem more different from the refugees who lost everything in the firebombing of Hamburg. But both books left me with the same kind of sadness, the loneliness of disconnection. In Nossack’s words they are both about “people who lived together… and… breathed the air of completely separate worlds.”
The people in Hamburg did not know who they were because losing everything made them question their existence. My classmate seems similarly isolated because, strangely enough, it takes a lot of energy to have everything. I guess the problem with having everything is that even then there is still always more.
There is a kind of darkness that engulfs us when, for whatever reason, we cease to see beyond ourselves. Every one of us knows this feeling. Today the church celebrates the first Sunday of Epiphany. The word epiphany comes from the Greek word epiphano which means to shine. On this day we give thanks for the light that God shines in us and that the darkness around us cannot extinguish it.
In Bulgaria they call Epiphany, Jordan Day because that was the river in which Jesus was baptized. In some cities there, after the Epiphany church service, the priest takes the statue of Jesus in a procession out of the church and through the city. When they arrive at the river, they break a hole in the ice and drop the statue into the depths. The young men of the city make larger holes, strip down to their swimming trunks and dive in. Deep under the ice and water, without air, sound or light they grope around until one of them finds the statue and brings it up.
These young men must really love Jesus or the fame associated with finding him. I love this image of looking for Jesus in a world of darkness. We all do this. I am grateful that Jesus is not that hard to find.
At Christ Church we find Jesus together. To use Nossack’s words we reach for each other and our hands touch. We speak the same language. We use words that refer to the same experiences. Church growth experts recommend that churches segregate the congregation. They claim that programs and church services should keep younger people and older people apart so that they don’t bother each other.
But we as a community have made a conscious choice. We decided that we would be one body in Christ, that we would either succeed or fail together, that we would do our best to make room for everybody. Although it seemed impossible at the time, we have met with remarkable success.
But this isn’t always easy. A few weeks ago a small group of older people were wondering how they could help make coffee hour easier to host. One or two of the ladies thought that they should ask parents to rein in their children so that they don’t devour all the snacks before the service is over. Other older ladies hoped that they themselves could provide coffee hour snacks for kids so that this wouldn’t be necessary.
When a few moms realized that some older women were prepared to make food for their children every single Sunday, these young ladies immediately began an email conversation about how they could make coffee hour better for both younger people and older people.
I am not naïve. I realize that a very small number of people see the glass as half empty and that it is human nature to distrust people who are different from ourselves. The remarkable thing to me is the extent to which we as a community get it. Jesus is with us. We are doing out best to embody his teaching of unconditional love.
The light God shines is the light of this community. Ultimately we see it because this is a place where you are accepted. If you are married or divorced or single or gay you are accepted here. If you are an inconsiderate younger person or a cranky older person, you will find love here. If you are not sure that you believe, if you think that you are unforgivable this can be a place where God is present for you. You are accepted here if you are a refugee who has lost everything or if by every measure you seem to have it all.
When my secretary Marianne lay dying of emphysema in her hospital bed, she was part of a church that even accepted former Hitler Youth. I spent many hours visiting her in those days and one of her greatest gifts to me was this Epiphany prayer from her childhood written in German.
Lord, let me hunger now and then,
Because being always full makes us dull and sluggish
And struggle moves us to strength.
Hang the crown of glory
Higher among the stars…
And let the light of Epiphany shine brightly in our hearts and our actions
That seeking Jesus we will find him.
Amen.
________________________
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_Youth.
Hans Erich Nossack, The End: Hamburg 1943. Tr. Joel Agee (University of Chicago Press, 2004).
Franz Wisner, Honeymoon with My Brother: A Memoir (NY: St. Martin’s Press, 2005).
From Frederick Buechner, The Hungering Dark, 61.
Isa. 42:1-9
Ps. 89:1-29
Acts 10:34-8
Mk. 1:7-11
Jordan Day
“See the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth, I tell you of them.” Isaiah 42
My first church secretary Marianne was a Hitler Youth. I don’t mean this pejoratively or metaphorically, although she really could be a bulldog to callers trying to sell me copying machines or Sunday School curricula. Marianne grew up during the 1930’s in Germany and thoroughly enjoyed the campouts and singing and camaraderie with other Hitler Youth. The Hitler Youth she talked about and the one you read about in the encyclopedia (“a paramilitary organization… [that] served as a recruiting ground for new storm troopers”) sound entirely different.
Marianne lost both her parents in World War Two. I will never forget the frightening stories she told me about being an orphan in post-war Germany. What you sensed she was leaving out made the stories even more terrifying. I’ve been thinking so much about Marianne this week as I read Hans Erich Nossack’s book Der Untergang written three months after the Battle of Hamburg.
Nossack tries to write about an experience that simply cannot be expressed, about memories that are too difficult to recall. On July 27, 1943 in the midst of 8 continuous days of bombing, Allied forces trapped fire fighters in the city center while detonating incendiary bombs on the periphery of the city. This created a Feuersturm, a firestorm with 150 mile per hour winds and 1500 degree Fahrenheit temperatures which burned up 8 square miles of the city. Street asphalt burst into flame, tens of thousands of people were incinerated or asphyxiated in bomb shelters. In that week sixty thousand people were killed and one million people lost everything they owned.
We are used to seeing images of horror on our television screens. The remarkable thing about Nossack’s account is how different it seems from news coverage of Iraq or from a normal crime drama. Nossack writes about the interior experience, the alienation and shock that despite the terrible situation does not seem discontinuous with normal life.
He poignantly describes the abyss separating those who lost everything and those who could help them, why even a generous hand can tire of giving and why it is even more difficult to receive (20). He writes, “Who could blame the helpers for being disappointed when they [realized] that what they offered [clothes, shelter and food]… basically didn’t make any difference at all” (20).
A refugee would walk through a strange room, “touch an object, hold it and look at it absently. The host would follow him with his eyes and expect a statement like: We too once had something like this… But instead… the unspoken question would fill the room: What is the use of still having such things” (20). “Those who were known to have experienced unimaginably frightful hours, who had run through fire with their clothes burning, stumbling over charred corpses… in whose arms a child had suffocated; who had seen their house collapse right after their father or husband had gone inside… why didn’t they cry and lament? And why this indifferent tone of voice when they spoke of what they had left behind…” (21).
“So it came to pass that people who lived together in the same house and ate at the same table breathed the air of completely separate worlds. They tried to reach out to each other but their hands did not meet. They spoke the same language, but what they meant by their words were completely different realities” (22).
This terrible divide between people who showed by their actions that life goes on and those who cast doubt on the meaning of life made each individual an island. It might seem odd to you but writing in the heat of the moment, Nossack focused less on the loss of life and property than the annihilation of self that he saw in these isolated survivors.
This week I have also been reading another book. At first the two seemed like total opposites. A classmate from high school named Franz Wisner recently sold the film rights of his book Honeymoon with My Brother for something like a million dollars.
Franz begins by telling how his long-term girlfriend left him a few days before a lavishly planned wedding at Sea Ranch. In the aftermath of this total disaster he and his brother decided to go on the honeymoon - together. Traveling suited them and they visited 53 countries over the course of two years.
The book shows me the ways people both change and remain the same over time. It helps me to better understand feelings that I could not articulate about people I used to know. Sony Films is probably more interested in it because Franz was the press secretary for former governor Pete Wilson and they see potential for the story as a buddy film.
I think Franz tries to show that this experience changed him from being a political manipulator to a person who recognizes what really matters, that through his travels he became someone capable of really being close to another person. But I don’t know if he succeeds.
Visiting another high school friend in the Czech Republic Franz meets Jana “an aspiring singer and model.” He writes, “She wore a black miniskirt that barely covered the tops of her stately legs, a snug mocha-colored sweater… She was gorgeous" (102). Franz describes Jana’s underwear and the joy of sex with her (I’ll spare you the details). But then he devotes the next page to how boring she was afterwards and how he couldn’t get her to leave until he faked his own departure from the city. In Franz’s stories people only seem to have importance in proportion to their usefulness to him.
On the surface this book about a wealthy clever, often cynical Californian traveling the world with his brother could hardly seem more different from the refugees who lost everything in the firebombing of Hamburg. But both books left me with the same kind of sadness, the loneliness of disconnection. In Nossack’s words they are both about “people who lived together… and… breathed the air of completely separate worlds.”
The people in Hamburg did not know who they were because losing everything made them question their existence. My classmate seems similarly isolated because, strangely enough, it takes a lot of energy to have everything. I guess the problem with having everything is that even then there is still always more.
There is a kind of darkness that engulfs us when, for whatever reason, we cease to see beyond ourselves. Every one of us knows this feeling. Today the church celebrates the first Sunday of Epiphany. The word epiphany comes from the Greek word epiphano which means to shine. On this day we give thanks for the light that God shines in us and that the darkness around us cannot extinguish it.
In Bulgaria they call Epiphany, Jordan Day because that was the river in which Jesus was baptized. In some cities there, after the Epiphany church service, the priest takes the statue of Jesus in a procession out of the church and through the city. When they arrive at the river, they break a hole in the ice and drop the statue into the depths. The young men of the city make larger holes, strip down to their swimming trunks and dive in. Deep under the ice and water, without air, sound or light they grope around until one of them finds the statue and brings it up.
These young men must really love Jesus or the fame associated with finding him. I love this image of looking for Jesus in a world of darkness. We all do this. I am grateful that Jesus is not that hard to find.
At Christ Church we find Jesus together. To use Nossack’s words we reach for each other and our hands touch. We speak the same language. We use words that refer to the same experiences. Church growth experts recommend that churches segregate the congregation. They claim that programs and church services should keep younger people and older people apart so that they don’t bother each other.
But we as a community have made a conscious choice. We decided that we would be one body in Christ, that we would either succeed or fail together, that we would do our best to make room for everybody. Although it seemed impossible at the time, we have met with remarkable success.
But this isn’t always easy. A few weeks ago a small group of older people were wondering how they could help make coffee hour easier to host. One or two of the ladies thought that they should ask parents to rein in their children so that they don’t devour all the snacks before the service is over. Other older ladies hoped that they themselves could provide coffee hour snacks for kids so that this wouldn’t be necessary.
When a few moms realized that some older women were prepared to make food for their children every single Sunday, these young ladies immediately began an email conversation about how they could make coffee hour better for both younger people and older people.
I am not naïve. I realize that a very small number of people see the glass as half empty and that it is human nature to distrust people who are different from ourselves. The remarkable thing to me is the extent to which we as a community get it. Jesus is with us. We are doing out best to embody his teaching of unconditional love.
The light God shines is the light of this community. Ultimately we see it because this is a place where you are accepted. If you are married or divorced or single or gay you are accepted here. If you are an inconsiderate younger person or a cranky older person, you will find love here. If you are not sure that you believe, if you think that you are unforgivable this can be a place where God is present for you. You are accepted here if you are a refugee who has lost everything or if by every measure you seem to have it all.
When my secretary Marianne lay dying of emphysema in her hospital bed, she was part of a church that even accepted former Hitler Youth. I spent many hours visiting her in those days and one of her greatest gifts to me was this Epiphany prayer from her childhood written in German.
Lord, let me hunger now and then,
Because being always full makes us dull and sluggish
And struggle moves us to strength.
Hang the crown of glory
Higher among the stars…
And let the light of Epiphany shine brightly in our hearts and our actions
That seeking Jesus we will find him.
Amen.
________________________
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_Youth.
Hans Erich Nossack, The End: Hamburg 1943. Tr. Joel Agee (University of Chicago Press, 2004).
Franz Wisner, Honeymoon with My Brother: A Memoir (NY: St. Martin’s Press, 2005).
From Frederick Buechner, The Hungering Dark, 61.
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