Editor's notebook
Baumann, Paul
Jew would go back to Germany? You don't go in a lion's den." But on...
...able to survive...
...Number two, we did not like the Russians...
...they do...
...Holocaust Memorial Museum, as further reflec- women of other races and religions, organizers of the event downtion on the difficulties of placing these horrors in any kind of played its Catholic roots, and embraced an agenda promoting moral context...
...That was ideal...
...Neither one of us is REPORT FROM ALBUQUERQUE very religious," he added...
...Our chances to survive would be better if we someShe grinned and walked on...
...He We were able to fool just about everybody...
...le seemingly insurmountable social problems My in-laws are reticent when speaking about their experi- including sexism, racism, violence, and poverences during the war, and I do not press them...
...Even ger of using the Holocaust "to affirm some transcendent ideal...
...There was no way [he'd Commonweal 4 June 1993: 5 have known...
...We knew how to handle the erable, might not have been possible...
...If we behind...
...The word `Catholic' I was brought up in a world where cruelty was confined to in this context denotes religious imperialism...
...I have little experience of persecution or of suffering, There was little talk about Jesus Christ or loving one's enelet alone of desperation and killing...
...thrust three items, rescued were able to beat the system in Poland for three or four years, from the gutter, into Bob's hand: his date book, his checkbook, we should be able to beat the Germans...
...a Jew in your apartment we'll burn your house down...
...When asked for a percentage breakdown of not the content of a testimony, but rather the product of repro- Catholics and non-Catholics in attendance, Sylvia Cancio, a conduction...
...He gushed...
...There is a tendency among all people in the world-people are cruel, not just BANG THE DRUM-NOT the Germans...
...But we weren't sure his address book...
...Religion, he added, was part of history, that's all...
...Jesus' parents, Mary and Joseph, were Jews...
...In an effort to include on the U.S...
...The Polish population then was were hidden until finally rescued by British forces in 1945...
...A young woman (17...
...He was the only one who "The first step was to get out of the ghetto...
...Austrian he lived in and around Warsaw from '38 until 1944...
...Not at all, I assured him...
...As the war continued and the eventual German "I know you didn't think about it then, but now in looking defeat and Soviet conquest of Poland became more and more back at it...
...validated his citizenship because his biological father had been "There was still some religion," added my mother-in-law...
...get a sixth sense...
...at least] we hoped they would like Initially confined to the Jewish ghetto, he and his wife bribed Easter," she laughed...
...They were of parf f there was a German coming or not, or ticular value because he was 4-F...
...I can see my father-in-law raising a very skeptical eyebrow at this...
...liked us, that was the funny thing...
...And he did...
...at Fifth Avenue and 59th Street, our friend Bob-not yet dod- "Number one," he went on, "we didn't want to get caught in dering, not quite spry-felt his elbow and shoulder grabbed from an uprising...
...The fact of the existence of these children in this world of "Sesame Street," Cub Scouts, and Bill Clinton, makes the Incarnation and the Massacre of the Holy Innocents more, not less, real...
...I asked...
...women and nuns, mostly middle-class and middle-aged), yet Beyond silence there is, I think, the Jewish theologian Franz there was a marked discomfort with Catholic identity, symbols, Rosenzweig's often quoted remark: "The belief [of a Jew] is and language...
...checked our papers [on the train...
...No less daunting a question was asked by tion above, which I recorded several years ago, was the only the organizers of "Women-Church: Weavers time we've talked in any detail about how they survived...
...I'm just trying to understand the fact of it...
...Their answer was unity...
...But what else could Egypt...
...my father-in-law said excitedly...
...We thought it would be a wonderful time to leave, and it Deported from his native Germany in 1938-the Nazis in- worked out perfect, because they would be in a festive mood...
...very anti-Semitic...
...Russian occupation all the transcripts [identification papers] that "Your shoelaces aren't tied, you're going to stumble," said the we had wouldn't be of much value...
...We only thought, you know, With determination, money, and plenty of luck they were you don't stage an invasion in the middle of a hurricane...
...Could they sur- "You mean the connection with the Jews coming out of vive in Poland once the Russians arrived...
...The Jew, engendered by a Jew, attests his belief by ference planner and Cuban-American from Cincinnati, Ohio, continuing to procreate the Jewish people...
...who topped it...
...It was the regular train from Warsaw to Berlin...
...He was killed by the Nazis in the very last days of the war...
...so, it did not avoid controversy...
...their way out, and, having learned to speak Polish, passed as "We bought a ticket, first class," he went on...
...It is not my place to make a religious or transcendent claim about this...
...We had connec- checked us...
...Some people start to see someMELLOW MANHATTAN Just after getting out of a cab thing suspicious...
...Yet silence, as Gediman explains, risks a kind of idolatry as The majority of the 2,500 participants were Catholic (la)cwell...
...I must tell you, that most of these people were Catholics...
...We knew plenty of people in Berlin," my mother-in-law AN EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK added...
...did they think it was particularly ironic that their escape was "They used to say," my mother-in-law interjected, "if we find accomplished on Easter...
...There were still some good people in Germany...
...You of diligence on the part of the German authorities...
...n Warsaw, when we walked on the "He gave me his own military papers and the regular permit streets, I could make out behind me if to pass the border," my father-in-law said...
...We realized that should Poland come under Timmy on his shoulders, Mike was stopped by a young man...
...ties of "The Wide World of Sports" and the "Dick Van Dyke That deity dwells within women, heals and empowers them...
...No one suspected...
...That was the thing...
...He smiled...
...Each and every life is rescued from a tumult of impossibilities, and some lives, mysteriously, are rescued again and again...
...It seemed that along with the much publicized decision a fact, not a metaphor or an idealization, that my wife's par- by the organizers not to celebrate a Catholic Mass, a more trouents walked into a lion's den, were thrown into a fiery furnace, bling and perhaps less conscious decision had been made to and quite unexplainably walked out again...
...And yet it does seem to me mies...
...Ninety-nine percent...
...ESCAPE TO BERLIN But the crucial, life-saving connection in Berlin was a relative by marriage, a Lutheran, who first gave them the necessary identification papers to travel, and then hid them in the attic of his house for the last ten months of the war...
...tions outside, we knew people and we did have money...
...Germans...
...That's where the problem is...
...No, no," my father-in-law said...
...Was it Passover...
...Jesus was a Jew, right...
...I don't want to offend you," he said...
...in discussing what kind of conference this is...
...Without them life would not have been tol- we could beat the Russians...
...So the Once in Berlin, they made their way to the suburb where they problem was to find shelter...
...We had other problems...
...And it was very dangerous to cover up for 1 asked if in looking back on their decision to return to Berlin, Jews...
...It is also a fact that avoid expressing Christian beliefs...
...To me this is a fairy tale...
...But on Easter Sunday in 1944 they did...
...I offer of Change," a conference held in Albuquerque, New Mexico, it now, in conjunction with Paul Gediman's splendid essay (p.13) April 16-18...
...In some real sense, my very ordinary American children, like their mother, have also been plucked from the oblivion the world once intended for their grandparents...
...we didn't like the Russians...
...there is certainly nothing otherworldly about it...
...Didn't you know that...
...We were treatPoles while living in a small rural community thirty miles out- ed very well...
...PAUL BAUMANN 6: 4 June 1993 Commonweal...
...What "I wouldn't know, " he said quickly...
...if that was a Polish step," my father-in- They chose the four-day Easter weekend, anticipating a lack law told me...
...Here, I'll tie them...
...The conversa- ty...
...The rethe inadequacy of "representation" and metaphor and the dan- sult was a politically correct and spiritually bland weekend...
...Where could hunted Jews go...
...I am sympathetic to Gediman's worries about the "spirituality of women" and liberal social change...
...side of the city...
...I can't imagine anybody knew...
...battles over toys or games, and where the possibilities of human In an attempt to appeal to everyone and offend no one, ritugoodness and evil seemed exhausted by the moral complexi- als, prayers, and worship services focused on an undefined deity...
...That's all...
...The easy thing is for any government in trouble WOMEN-CHURCH IN THE DESERT to pick on someone...
...He went on...
...After a certain time, people do run out of luck...
...We were not before the war and we certainly didn't become religious after the war...
...ET CETERA "I realized our luck couldn't last forever," my father-in-law said of the prospect of staying on in Poland...
...The Gestapo "Nobody knew," he said...
...obvious, a different problem presented itself...
...The question was how to get out...
...He was very friendly...
...Walking on Broadway near 100th Street, his boy We had connections...
...We were in Berlin in the morning...
...Bob told the story to son Mike, how were able to return to Germany and hide for one more year...
...Overnight...
...We didn't like the Nazis, man...
...The Nazis were very EASTER SUNDAY, 1944 antireligious...
...So you tell me, where does the Virgin Birth come How can women roll back patriarchy and tackin...
...Hitler didn't like the Catholics...
...His belief is not in said: "We refuse to use the terms `Catholic' and `non-Catholic' something: he is himself the belief...
...they were as miraculously preserved from the flames as Daniel, Women were encouraged, however, to bring drums from as inexplicably brought back to life from certain death as home and to learn from the spiritual journeys of those differLazarus, and as improbably summoned to America, and into my humdrum suburban existence as was Mary summoned by that importuning angel...
...When I look at my children, I know in a most tangible way what Rosenzweig meant by the persistence of belief...
...People liked Easter...
...Show...
Vol. 120 • June 1993 • No. 11
