With brotherly love,
D.
29. May 1969, Haifa
L
ETTER FROM
H
ILDA TO HER MOTHER
Dear Mother,
Yesterday Daniel and I went to the Golan Heights with a group of German tourists from Cologne. It was the first time I had been there and it was staggering—the ancient ruins, the scenery, and the signs of war. Absolutely everything there, even the ancient history, is evidence of warfare, destruction, and an endless barbaric militarism. Since ancient times everything that has been ruined here has not just collapsed from being old or becoming decrepit. It has been smashed and destroyed by enemies. It’s probably the same everywhere in the world, but here you really notice it. That, though, is not what I am writing about. You know Daniel worked as an interpreter in the Gestapo during the war, and when he was arrested for helping the partisans he was saved by his superior officer who let him escape. They were on very good terms, and this Gestapo officer had children who were Daniel’s age, and even a son born in the same year. Perhaps it was thinking about his son that made him treat what he thought was a Polish youth so well.
Can you believe it, in the German group there was a man, he was one of the oldest because most of them were young, and he turned out to be the son of that same major. As the sightseers ask their questions, Daniel always invites them to give their names, and the man said he was Dieter Reinhold. Then Daniel said, “The father of Dieter Reinhold saved my life during the war.” They shook hands and embraced. Nobody knew what was going on, and this German knew nothing about the story. His father died on the Eastern front in 1944 and all he knew was that he had been a major and served in the Gestapo, so he was a war criminal. Such a silence descended. Nobody asked any more questions. They were all silent and only Daniel and Dieter Reinhold talked together quietly. I don’t know what they said. Of course I was thinking about our own family, you, your father, and grandfather. It struck me that this simple division of people into Fascists and Jews, murderers and victims, evil and good is just too straightforward. These two men, I mean the major who was killed and Daniel, stood on the very borderline where things are not that simple.
Daniel told me that when he is remembering those who died, he always prays for that major. I found that meeting so moving that I can’t tell you everything that is in my heart. I want to learn to pray like that, too, for everybody, but not in the abstract, really and truly.
Love from
Hilda
Oh, I forgot to write that there is an ancient monument here on the Golan Heights which looks like Stonehenge in England. It is the place where the legend of Gilgamesh was acted out! They are excavating it at present and Daniel knows the archaeologist in charge and has promised to show me over it some time. He says that there is evidence of the most ancient civilization in the world and even, perhaps, of the presence on Earth of people from other planets! Everything here is like that. No matter where you turn you just gasp in amazement.
30. June 1969, Haifa
S
ERMON OF
B
ROTHER
D
ANIEL AT
P
ENTECOST
My dear friends, brothers and sisters!
Every festival is like a bottomless well. You look into it and see down into the depths of human history and the depths and antiquity of relations between man and his Creator. The Jewish Feast of Shavuot, or “Weeks,” predates the Feast of Pentecost historically. It is entirely possible that the festival existed even in the pre-Christian, pagan world. Then, too, people brought the first fruits of their harvests in thanksgiving to the Lord. On this day Jews commemorate the giving of the Torah, the ten commandments. In the Christian world, Pentecost acquires an additional significance. The first fruits of the harvest are still brought, and that is a reminder of the ancient sacrifice of thanksgiving. But we also remember another event, the pouring out of the Holy Spirit of the Lord upon Christ’s disciples. The disciples heard “a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind” and they saw “cloven tongues as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues.” The Acts of the Apostles go on to list the tongues which were heard from the lips of the disciples: the languages of the Parthians, Medes and Elamites, of dwellers in Mesopotamia, Judaea and Cappadocia, in Pontus and the province of Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, in parts of Libya, and in Rome, Crete, and Arabia. In effect this was all the languages of the ecumene, the known inhabited earth. It was a prototype of the world in which you and I live now. Today Christ’s disciples speak all the languages of the world, and you and I celebrate the Feast of Pentecost in the language of our Master.
There is one more thing I would like to say on this day: tongues of fire appeared above each of the disciples, but what happened to the tongues after that? Is there a vessel in man, a receptacle in which he can retain that fire? If we do not have that receptacle within us, the Divine Fire departs and returns to where it came from, but if we have that vessel within ourselves, it will stay.
Jesus in his human life was a vessel which fully received the Holy Spirit poured into it. The Son of Man became the Son of God.
Human nature combines with Divine nature following just this recipe. Each of us present here today is a vessel for receiving the Spirit of the Lord, the words of the Lord, Christ himself. That is all theology has to tell us. We are not going to be asked for our thoughts about the Divine nature, but we will be asked, “What did you do? Did you feed the hungry? Did you help those in trouble?” May the Lord be with us all.
31. November 1990, Freiburg
F
ROM A TALK BY
B
ROTHER
D
ANIEL
S
TEIN TO SCHOOLCHILDREN
I lay there and waited for darkness to fall before coming out. I wandered to a shed, went in and fell asleep. Later, at around five o’clock in the morning, I heard protracted shooting. It was Operation Iodine. They were shooting the people who had remained in the ghetto. It was the most dreadful night of my life. I wept. I was destroyed. Where was God? Where in all this was God? Why had he hidden me from my pursuers but not had mercy on those five hundred children, old people, and invalids? Where was divine justice? I wanted to get up and go back there to be with them, only I had not the strength.
I later recollected blundering through the forests not far from the town for three days, but then I lost track of time. I desperately wanted not to be, just to cease to exist, but I never thought of committing suicide. I had a feeling of having been killed five hundred times already, of being lost between earth and heaven and, like a ghost, belonging neither among the living nor among the dead. At the same time, the instinct of self-preservation was alive in me and, like an animal, I started back at the slightest threat. I must have been close to madness. My soul was crying out, “Lord! How could you allow this?” There was no reply. He was not in my mind.
I was wearing a police uniform. It made me a target for everybody: the Germans who had announced my escape; the partisans hunting down stray Germans; and any local villager wanting to claim the reward for turning in a Jew and a criminal all in one.
For three days I ate nothing. I remember at one time drinking my fill from a brook. I did not sleep either. I stumbled deep into a place to hide, among bushes, fell asleep for a minute but immediately leapt up when I heard the rattle of machine gun fire. Again and again I had flashbacks to that moment when I realized the inhabitants of the Emsk ghetto were being executed. From time to time I heard real shooting. One evening I came out to the edge of a village which I had saved from the executioners but even there I could not count on refuge. I sat down on a fallen tree and no longer had the strength to go on. Anyway, where should I go? For the first time in three days I fell asleep.