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Papel Ocasional Numero 30

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Looking and Listening in Washington, D.C

by William L. May, C.S.B.

SEPTEMBER 2002

I contend that seeing and hearing are qualitatively different than looking and listening. The former are intrusions upon my senses and the latter are willed responses to what has been seen and heard.

Late in the Spring of 2002 Peter Bobkowski, a teacher at St. Thomas High School in Houston, suggested that I apply for the Bearing Witness program. Bearing Witness is an annual conference held in Washington D.C. for ethics and history teachers in Roman Catholic High Schools. The program ran from 29 July 2002 2 August 2002 and was sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League, The United States Holocaust Museum, the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). I applied and was accepted. The formal conferences were held in the John Paul II Center on the campus of Catholic University, the USCCB Headquarters, and in the Holocaust Memorial Museum. Before the conferences began in earnest we, the group of 45 teachers, were given a guided tour of the Museum. I saw many, many things, I looked at and was affected by at least three.

What I looked at.

The first was a picture of soldiers who had liberated a death camp looking at a trench full of objects that were barely recognizable as human bodies. I had seen similar pictures before, but had always looked at the dead, this time, for some reason, I looked at the living. A group of living soldiers were looking at a trench filled with the detritus of the death camp ovens; each soldier shared a common expression which was a lack of expression. Each face had an innocence to it, an innocence which can be observed in a babys face when it sees something not within its range of experience.

This trench was not within the range of horrific experience which must have been the soldiers lives as they warred their way across Europe. This trench was not war, it was something else . . . it was something more.

I looked at a shoe. There are many pairs of shoes on display at the Memorial Museum which had been taken from prisoners as they arrived at the camps. I noticed, and looked at one shoe in particular. Im sure that its mate was there but I dont remember seeing it. As I looked at the half pair of shoes I began to have an inkling of what the woman must have been like. Quite fashionable, it was not a shoe for everyday wear, it was definitely for dress occasions. Just a little flashy, nothing vulgar, but she was pretty and knew it, and didnt mind being looked at. It was a small shoe, so she was probably petite. Maybe she had seen a pair in a movie and decided to buy herself a pair just like it. Maybe she liked to go to the movies. if she did she never got to see Gone With the Wind. She stopped seeing movies before Gone With the Wind was released.

And thats the point that the shoe made. This woman never got to see Gone With the Wind, or Casablanca, or any of the motion pictures that I take for granted. She never heard The Beatles and discussed their relative merits or demerits. Never had the chance to complain about rock and roll and long for the good-old-days because her good-old-days were cut short. And she was only one of millions who never had good-old-days.

I looked at a pink triangle which was worn by a homosexual who was gassed and burned because of his sexual orientation. I thought of Matthew Shepard, a young homosexual who was murdered for the same reason less than 5 years ago. I thought of the Christians who stood outside Matthews funeral and carried signs that said he had gotten what he deserved because of his sexual orientation. I thought of the Christians who lived 60 years ago and did nothing, and I wondered what had been learned since the last Zyklon-B pellet had been dropped.

What I listened to.

It is poignant that one of my most cherished hopes, that the Holocaust was an historical aberration, was quite gently done away with. Jewish and Christian historians presented the facts to us. The facts about Christianitys complicity in the Holocaust, all of Christianitys complicity. The few and shining examples of Christian love for Jews during our shared history were bitter-sweet in their scarcity. The fact remains that the fires of the Inquisition were the sparks that started the ovens in the death camps and I am ashamed.

But we have a pope who, no matter what might be thought of his stances on other issues, has gone far to begin a conversation with the Jews of the world.

God of our fathers,
you chose Abraham and his descendants
to bring your Name to the Nations:
we are deeply saddened
by the behaviour of those
who in the course of history
have caused these children of yours to suffer,
and asking your forgiveness
we wish to commit ourselves
to genuine brotherhood
with the people of the Covenant.

Jerusalem, 26 March 2000 John Paul II

It strikes me as important that for the first time since the destruction of the Temple a leader of the Roman Catholic church stood at the Wall and prayed in the way that Jesus would have prayed, that is to say, as a Jewish man would have prayed.

I listened to a Holocaust survivor named Nesse, one of Gods children the pope mentioned, who shared her memories with us. Made a gift to us of her memories. Offered us those terrible, precious, dangerous diamonds freely; not knowing what we would do with them, she merely did what needs to be done now, because what was needed once before wasnt done. We listened now because at one time others did not listen. When the cattle cars filled with humans stopped in towns on the way to a death camp, the sounds from inside were heard but not listened to. By her gift her memories are my memories now.

And finally I listened to a Jewish man who said that because of our group, our interactions with one another and with the program, he had begun to have a glimmer of hope that if someone came for his children in the night, he wouldnt have to rely only on fellow Jews to help save them. He began to believe that he can trust Christians. His fear is well founded and I want to believe that his hope is as well founded as his fear.

What now?

The hate which is Anti-Semitism is still alive and well and available for free. And it breeds, is breeding and will continue to breed as long as it is allowed to do so. As Christian educators we have the obligation to castrate that hate. We have the obligation to know that there are other hates our there like unto Anti-Semitism which will, and do, lead to murder. We have the Obligation to know the difference between questioning the actions of the government of Israel and questioning the right of the state of Israel to exist. We have the obligation to educate our students and ourselves, whatever our particular work may be, by whatever means our institutions or we might have, about the continuing hatred that is Anti-Semitism. If we are remiss in that educational obligation we are remiss in our professed Christianity.

. . . On the first night I arrived in the camp the image that I had before my eyes was the image of the Inquisition, fire, the persecution of the Jews in the Middle Ages . . . Were such horrible things a preview, a premonition of what was to come, even if to an unimaginably greater degree? Why were the Jews abandoned by so many Christians?

Nonetheless, Christians should not develop feelings of guilt. If other Christians have failed with respect to the Jews, you should not despair in Christianity. You should not come to the conclusion that you should abandon Christianity. Try to find the Truth within your tradition and within your faith. Transform Christianity and help other transform it. Elie Wiesel

For more information on Bearing Witness please log on to the following websites. www.adl.org or www.ushmm.com