By J. Boe Ellis
BOSTON — The steam rose through metal grates in the ground at the base of each column. As it reached about waist high, this mist, it began to merge with a damp, steady drizzle outside and with the welling up of disbelief in my own eyes. My Christian, church planting mission trip to Boston, October 2 through 9, 2010, had just been frozen in time; interrupted by history and the breath of six million people murdered in concentration camps during The Shoah. The Holocaust.
We were headed for the T station on our way back from the North End. It was our second day in Boston; actually our free-day, the day we would break into smaller groups and explore the more touristy side of town. Our team, of course, chose the famous Mike’s Pastery (mikespastry.com) where we joined folks in adding some cannolis to our walk along the Freedom Trail.
As we moved south along Hanover and over I-93, I suggested we take a quick shortcut down Union Street, a neatly preserved look at ole Boston. We passed in front of the Union Oyster House, which opened in 1826 and is the oldest constantly open restaurant in America. And as we turned North onto Congress St., I looked left and said to Dr. Mike Dodson, and to Brian Smutz and Paul Mermilliod who were with me, “hang on, I want to get some pictures.”
I walked across the street and over to the six, 50-foot high glass columns that create the New England Holocaust Memorial experience. I arrived at the north end of the Memorial. I started reading.
Etched on a monolith there was the famous quote from Pastor Martin Meimoeller:
“They came first for the communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a communist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was Protestant.
Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.”
Woh. Wait a minute. I am here in Boston as part of a church planting service and reconnaissance team. We are here to engage people with the Gospel of Jesus Christ and assist church planters who are either coming to Boston, or are already here starting Gospel centered churches. Here, in 2010.
Why did I have to stop at this memorial and read that quote?
As I moved forward into the first tower (which is probably about six-foot square) , I noticed a couple of things, 1) each tower represents one of six death camps (Majdanek, Chlemno, Sobibor, Treblinka, Belzec, and Auschwitz-Birkenau) and 2) on closer inspection, the white haze in the glass panes covering all four sides of each tower is actually six million different numbers etched into the glass to represent the estimated six million who died such horrible deaths there.
I turned to my left:
“At first the bodies weren’t burned,
they were buried.
In January, 1944, we were forced
to dig up the bodies
so they could be burned.
When the last mass grave had been opened,
I recognized my entire family
– my mother, my sisters and their kids.
They were all there.”
– Motke Zaidl deported from Lithuania and forced to work the death detail at Chelmo
Gulp. Pause. I turned around and continued reading:
“I remember stooping down and picking up a piece of something black near the crematorium.
I realized it was a bone. I was going to throw it down and thought, Oh God, this may be all that’s left of someone.
So I wrapped it up and carried it with me. A couple of days later, I dug it out of my pocket and buried it.”
– George Kaiser participated in the Liberation in 1945
By this time, my steps slowed. I forgot even that the guys were waiting on me. I continued through the memorial:
In one transport, people refused
to be taken to the gas chambers.
A tragic struggle developed.
They destroyed everything in sight and
broke the crates filled with gold
taken from the prisoners.
They grabbed sticks and anything
they could get their hands on to fight.
But the guards’ bullets cut them down.
When the morning came, the yard was still full of the dead.”
– Jacob Wiernikconstruction worker forced to build the gas chamber
“I was chosen to work as a barber outside the gas chamber.
The Nazis needed the women’s hair.
They told us, ‘make those women
believe they are just getting a haircut.’
We already knew it was the last place they went in alive.”
– Abraham Bomba, barber who escaped and survived in hiding
“Ilse, a childhood friend of mine,
once found a raspberry in the camp
and carried it in her pocket all day
to present it to me that night on a leaf.
Imagine a world in which
your entire possession is
a rasberry and
you give it to your friend.”
– Gerda Weissman Klein, deported from Germany as a teenager; later married a US Army officer
“I was assigned to work outside digging ditches.
We dug in the freezing cold and rain,
wearing only the thin,
striped dresses issued to us.
The ditches weren’t to be used
for any particular purpose.
The Nazis were merely trying to work
us to death. And many did die
of sickness,
cold, exhaustion
and starvation.”
– Sally Sander, dress maker who was forced to make uniforms for German flyers
“From our barracks we could see
the gas chambers.
A heart-rending cry of women and
children reached us there.
We were overcome
by feelings of helplessness.
There we were, watching, and
unable to do anything.
We had already worked out
a plan of escape.
But at that moment I decided
‘We must not simply escape.
We must destroy the fascists
and the camp.'”
– Alexander Pechersky, captured Russian soldier who led the prisoner revolt at Sobibor
“My younger sister went up to a
Nazi soldier with one of her friends.
Standing naked,
embracing each other,
she asked to be spared.
He looked into her eyes and
shot the two of them.
They fell together in their embrace – my sister and her young friend.”
– Rivka Yosselevscka, young mother who witnessed the murder of her entire family
“When my parents were sent off to the camp,
I gave my good shoes to my father
because I thought he’s need them
if he did physical labor.
When I saw my mother for the last time
I hugged her and said I hoped
she didn’t have to work too hard.
I never dreamed they’d be dead within such
a short time of their departure.”
– Jack Polak, captured by the Nazis in Amsterdam
“Some Catholics, including Father Amyot,
invited me to join them in prayer.
Seven or eight of us gathered,
secretly of course,
in the shed used as a lavatory.
In prayer we laid before God
our suffering,
our rags, our filth, our fatigue,
our exposure, our hunger,
and our misery.”
– Aime Bonifas, French resistance fighter who later became pastor of the French Reformed Church
“The transports arrived every day,
mainly from Poland,but also from
other European countries
Germany, Austria
Czechoslovakia, and others.
In one transport there was
a Ukrainian woman.
She possessed documents
proving she was a genuine Aryan,
and yet, she went to the gas chamber.
Once you crossed the gate to the camp,
there was no chance to get out of there alive.”
– Chaim Hirszman, metal worker imprisoned at a Belzec
“Nothing belongs to us anymore.
They have taken away our clothes,
our shoes, even our hair.
If we speak, they will not listen to us.
And if they listen, they will not understand.
They have even taken away our names.
My number is 174517. I will carry the tattoo on my arm until I die.”
– Primo Levi, a chemist living in Italy captured while trying to join the partisans, became an author after the war
And that was it, a sledge hammer to my chest, and what, I am supposed to do, just turn around? I am supposed to just walk right out of Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List and back into the reality of my Boston mission trip? Well, yea. And as soon as my head turned toward the T Station, the images on my phone and in my head were packed away neatly for another day.
That day is not today. I have included these thoughts and images here now because I couldn’t not share them. As a follower of Jesus Christ, I was so jazzed about enthusiastically engaging lost people in Boston. And I did indeed do that. But, little did I know that the Lord would use this Memorial and some of the really dark places in Boston, the grounds at Tufts University for example, to remind me that in many places in our country, in our world, the ground we stand upon can feel very hot, as if we are standing upon a very thin layer of earth precariously just above a very real evil.
