My Grandfather was a Dachau Holocaust Survivor

I seriously had to look up the word Holocaust before writing that title. I was not sure whether it applied only to Jewish persons. But checking with the dictionary, it applies to anyone who was a victim in Hitler's brutal concentration camps.

--- TRIGGER WARNING -- the drawings shown below are graphic and could be upsetting. ---

Denmark was occupied by Nazi troops from April 9th, 1940 to May 5th, 1945 as Hitler sought to rule all of Europe. My grandfather (born in 1906) immediately became part of an underground resistance movement.  Eventually he was caught by the Gestapo, processed/interrogated/tortured, found guilty and sent south to Dachau concentration camp near Munich as marked on the map.

There are members of my family alive today who witnessed this (in terms of his arrest and in terms of his return after the war). They could probably tell the story better than I can (I hope they do so). 

I was born just over 16 years after the war, but the stories about the Nazi occupation of Denmark, stories of his resistance work, and stories of what he went through, about Nazis and what they stood for are vivid in my memory to this day. Some were told by my grandfather himself -- mostly ones about his resistance work. He never once spoke to me of Dachau. According to family members, he did some speaking tours in the late 40s to share his experiences, and after that he never talked about it again -- that is, apart from publishing this book:

 The red triangle means political prisoner. Every prisoner had a big mark sewed on his clothing on the back, so he or she could be identified easily. A mark that was not easily removed from clothing.

This is one of his drawings of Danish prisoners from the concentration camp. He drew with pencil on pieces of cardboard from discarded boxes, scraps of paper, whatever he could find, and his drawings have survived along with him.

His own prison numbers and designations are here

My grandfather survived because the Swedes (who were neutral in WWII) made a deal with Hitler at the end of the war that they would supply medications for Hitler's troops if Hitler would let them travel down through Germany and rescue Scandinavian prisoners from the concentration camps. You can read about that here http://www.newsweek.com/count-bernadottehimmlereisenhowersecond-world-warjews-europeconcentration-604859 .

Poul Mahler, March 2, 1906 - January 19, 1981

He returned, very weak and sick to Sweden until the end of the war, and then returned home where, if I have the story right, it took him over two years leave of absence from his work to recover from the abuse, torture, neglect, disease, and general bad conditions he experienced during his concentration camp time. 

Here are some more of his drawings, which I hope speak for themselves:

My grandfather was a caretaker of sick people while he was interred. The pictures above feature 30-40  of their fellow prisoners dead from typhoid that  they had to drag out of the barracks daily. The dead were then stacked on carts and sent to the crematorium.

The chimney loomed large behind the barbed wire.

I am writing on this as the theme Neo-Nazi came up this weekend in the context of a rally that turned violent in Charlottesville, VA. It upset me greatly that our nation's leader equivocated Neo-nazis with those who are opposed to Neo-Nazis. Neo-nazis are admirers of Nazis, followers of Nazi ideology.

Nazis committed unspeakable crimes, such as were committed against my grandfather, one of the few fortunate enough to survive the horrors of the concentration camp. Not only did he survive. He was resilient enough to return home and be able to survive the abusese to his body, and also to live emotionally with what he had experienced in Dachau and Neuengamme until he died of natural causes at age 75. (Many Danish prisoners returned home and killed themselves, they could not live with the horrors they had both seen and felt on their own bodies.) 

Please, America, do not go with our current president and equivocate Neo-Nazis with those who want to resist Neo-Nazies. The two are not the same. 

Those who marched with Red Banners with Swastikas, with Confederate flags, armed with semi-automatic rifles, in Klan gear or in riot gear with shields CANNOT, SHOULD NOT, MUST NOT be equivocated with Civil Rights movements like Black Lives Matter. The counter protestors are minorities (+their allies), minorities who have been ill-treated through much of this nation's history, concerned American citizens who have multiple reasons to fear the growth of movements such as Vanguard, or Identity Evropa, Neo-Nazis, or Klansmen. The counter protesters were American citizens who themselves (or their parents) have experienced racism in America, including the scourge of Jim Crow. Understandably they want to resist the re-awakening of Jim Crow.

Lastly, let me share these two pictures of another Danish prisoner Hans Peter Soerensen, who was interred in Neuengamme. I know they are disturbing images of death and despair, but look at them, please!

 Remember, that this is the work of Nazis -- actively exterminating races and political views they deem not worthy. (To say nothing of exterminating the mentally ill, the disabled, and persons with low IQs
 https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/09/a-memorial-to-the-nazis-disabled-victims/379528/)  Their aim is --- TO PURIFY THE WHITE RACE --- to save WHITE CULTURE.  (I am white, I love white culture, but ....)

Neo-Nazis are admirers of such people. Neo-Nazis advocate totalitarianism, racism, and political eradication of views they do not agree with. --Our president said that some of the people who marched with the Neo-Nazis and Klansmen were  'Fine people'. NO!!!  I am sorry, but "fine people" do NOT march in company with Neo-Nazis, White Nationalists, White Supremacists, or Klans men. 

How I wish our churches would rise to the occasion, CALL EVIL EVIL, and how I wish they would shout this from the roof tops.

Let the beauty that you love be what you do - Rumi

I love the words

I love forming the words into meaningful tapestries

Searching for just the right phrase, the perfect sound

Projecting what’s on my heart to you, good reader

I love the words very much

But not as much as I love you

DAVID TERRY

https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/things-i-love-3/

Losing friends -- political disputes

"It is all about preserving our culture," said a friend of mine to me sometime last year around this time.  Ultimately that lead her and a fair number of other friends of mine to vote for a candidate they despised at the time, but whom they have later come to accept/support/embrace with the mantra that they voted for a leader of their country, not for a pastor to lead their local congregation -- thus elevating the standing and importance of the local church and pastor above the standing and importance of the president of the United States. --- Yes, we are holding out for Pie in the Sky in the by and by.  

That is their right, that is what democracy is all about. You choose the candidate you think is best suited, or perhaps least damaging. And then the one with the most votes (in the Electoral College) wins.

The nation chose its winner, and we moved on, or did we?

Those who found themselves ideologically compromised (weren't we all?)  during this election are stuck in a perpetual cycle of anxiety that they cannot escape. It is impossible to escape the cycle because it continues endlessly in the news, and endlessly in discourses between people. 

For those of us who just want to forget, stick our head in the sand for 4 years and hope it is over... well there is the Internet, TV, newspapers, people chatting about the latest. There is no escaping what happened or who is in charge.  

For those of us who want to think it is not so bad, that he just needs to be given a chance, a break, a space in which to show what he can do, it is the same story -- there is a relentless onslaught of people chatter and news--of everything he says, does, tweets and of everything everyone thinks about what he says, does, and tweets, of what our allies think of the sayings, doings, and tweeting. None of this gives peace. None of it assures. 

A recent op ed I read said that (slightly less than) half the voters that voted, voted for Trump because they were anxious about our culture. The other half of the voters that voted, plus a great deal of the country that did not vote, are NOW anxious precisely because he DID become president. 

We live in the age of perpetual anxiety, no matter what side we are on.

In fact I have seen several friends of mine lose all faith in any traditionally reliable news sources, convinced that all politicians are corrupt and untrustworthy. Their news sources NOW consist in YouTube searches on pet news topics, leading them ever further astray in tangled webs of conspiracies. They are beginning to doubt well established historical truths, and live on the edge of reality. 

I see other friends of mine, ardently defending indefensible character traits and actions that -- in any other person -- would have been seen as rude, misogynistic, racist, disrespectful, and immature...  aspects of character and behavior that we should not tolerate in any adult, let alone a leader. 

These friends grasp any explanations that will help him look good -- canvassing for him as if he were still running -- with the idea that... we need to give him a chance. Never mind the holes he digs himself into, never mind that in any other candidate, any ONE thing he says on ONE day would have lost other candidates their entire election.

It is maddening, and it is painful. It is divisive. 

Politics in America has always been a difficult topic-- one that is not approached in polite society. -- We hold our political beliefs near and dear. We perceive them to define us deeply, and part of that is because we have woven religion and politics together in an unholy alliance that dates back to the Reagan 80s. For the past 40 years Evangelical votes have more or less been secured by the Republican Party on account of abortion and same sex marriage -types of issues.  And so long as our vote is  said to be God's vote, so long as our political issues are said to be God's issues, we are bound to vote one way and one way only.

This past year brings a serious challenge to God's univocal vote. It may not be such a stretch to vote as a Christian unified block when a relatively normal, fairly kind, not too corrupt male of reasonable integrity decides to run on a reasonable platform that reflects Christian values. However, when a man of perpetually shocking assertions (often contradictory), a man of questionable 'locker room talk' (if such it can be termed), a man whose 'truthful hyperbole' borders on racist and misogynist sentiments, whose near companions dance on the edges of white nationalism ... when such a man is put forth as the man that God's people should vote for because of key issues dealing with morality .... we are not only making a Faustian bargain, we are dancing on the edge of what it means to have Christian integrity. 

It is maddening, it is painful. It is divisive.

And while we may in all truthfulness lose considerable sleep over what this person is doing to the country and to our foreign relations, what truly makes this situation painful on a daily basis is how this election has split churches 80% - 20% between those who did and did not vote for this phenomenon, between those who think it 'not so bad' and those who find it unbearably wrong to associate with such a man.

Maddening, painful, divisive.  

  

Compromise or Rigidity

Rigidity vs. Compromise

At the center of most serious human conflicts is rigidity, an inability or an unwillingness to compromise.

Today's political climate may be defined by this inability or unwillingness. We feel under threat (both on the left and on the right) our very ideals are under attack. The 'other side' is trying to undermine that which we hold most sacred.

That sense of threat may cause us to dig deeper trenches where we bury ourselves deeply while only speaking to those who agree with us-- and while rigidly defending and refusing to yield even an inch on any topic we deem sacred.

After all, issues X, Y, and Z are so  inviolable and personally important to us that we cannot even conceive of reaching out to the other side, conceive of doing a 'give and take' and arriving at some resolution towards the middle-- where you get a little bit of what you want and I get a little bit of what I want.

We excuse our rigidity by appealing to a higher authority or power. We know how a certain document should be interpreted, and to violate that interpretation of that document is unthinkable.

But, think of it this way. At the heart of politics is compromise. It is the very nature of our political systems that we need to give and take in order to continue co-existing peacefully in a country that exists not just for me and my ideas, but also for you and your ideas.

That could include (but need not be limited to) me paying taxes for some things I honestly do not want or need for myself and my family and my community because, perhaps YOU, voted for it and think it is a good thing for your family and your commmunity. It might also mean that you end up swallowing (figuratively, not literally) a bill on healthcare which includes a whole lot more (or a whole lot less) than what you ideally would think should be included in health care.

Politics and ideals are necessarily at odds. Our ideals describe the world we would like to live in, a world that in every sense corresponds to who we are and what we believe. Politics is the messy reality of the world we do live in, a world that somewhat (if we have a voice and use it) include some of the things we think ought to belong in our world, but it is also going to include a whole lot of things that we don't personally want in our world, but which our neighbors may have wanted in the world.

We live in one country, one state, one city or rural community, one neighborhood. But we don't live there alone. We live there with others who may differ from us  religiously, politically, ethnically, culturally, and our highest calling (in terms of our communities) is to voice our concerns, advocate for our causes, and then live with the results until next election cycle.

Politics is the art of compromise. That art has been lost, of late. Compromising politically is not akin to giving up your ideals. It is simply recognizing that when you get something, your opponent gets something too. In short, nowhere in life do you get everything you want, but with compromise you may try to achieve as much as you can .

The only substitute for politics (when the system really breaks down) is war. And in war everyone loses -- a lot!!!