#479: Auschwitz 75--A Pilgrim's Memory

This week’s 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz has revived an indelible image from my long–past (but not lost) youth. I wrote this piece 5 years ago, and it continues to shock me that my first encounter with the Nazi genocide came barely 20 years after it was ended. Some of those survivors, now old, were then in their 20s and 30s. But this memory must outlive all our lives.

One November day in 1968, during my college year in Paris, I killed time between classes by wandering the area around Notre Dame Cathedral. After a few minutes exploring the Pope John XXIII garden behind the church, I noticed a low stone wall at the far end of a small green across the street, and crossed over to get a closer look at the words carved into the stones.

My French was still pretty basic, but I managed to figure out that the wall commemorated 200,000 French deported by the Nazis who occupied France during WWII. Actually, it was not a wall at all, but the roof of a (mostly) underground building, with stairways cut into it leading down into a courtyard.

This was the Mémorial de la Déportation. I had never heard of it, but I was about to experience it for the first time. I would emerge convinced it was the most powerful monument in all Paris---and I would emerge a changed person, someone whose personal pilgrimage had taken a sudden unseen turn.

The roofline rose around the narrow stairs as I descended, squeezing me between the stone walls. The same high wall enclosed the deep-set courtyard itself, blocking any sight of the city beyond. The Seine’s waters just below showed through one small grated opening, topped by the jagged points of a plate-iron sculpture that looked like barbed-wire enlarged 100 times. It felt like I was standing in a prison yard.

Turning back toward the stairs, I saw two massive stone slabs splitting a narrow space leading inside.

I squeezed through and found myself in an underground crypt softly lit by faint light coming from its four corners. In each corner I found a barred doorway to a stone jail-cell; the light came from windows one could not see from outside the locked empty cells. Carved into one stone wall is a poem reflecting the spiritual anguish of the camps:

I've dreamt so much of you

I’ve walked so much

Talked so much

So much loved your shadow

That there is nothing of you left for

     me—

What’s left for me is to be

The shadow between the shadows

The shadow that will come

And come again 

Into your sunlit life.

Returning to the center, I stood before a fifth set of bars blocking entrance to a low, long, tunnel-shape corridor. 

It led, like a horizontal black hole, to an invisible destination, but along both sides I saw thousands of tiny, faint-white lights, and instantly knew each one represented an individual lost to the Nazi genocide machine.

 

 Just beyond the bars, at my feet, was a raised coffin-shaped black stone, to mark the resting-place of an unknown deportee. Just behind me, in the middle of the floor, burnt an eternal flame.

And as I turned to go I saw, carved over the huge slabs leading out, the plea:  “Pardonne, n'oublie pas”—“Forgive, but Don’t Forget.”

When I climbed up the cramped exit stairs to ground level, cold drizzle greeted me like a refreshing breath of life after the stunning, symbolic specter of so many deaths. The few minutes I had spent inside had marked me, and shadowed the rest of that day and the weeks that followed.

I remained in France another eight months, and returned to the Mémorial every three or four weeks. In a city unrivaled for its cathedrals, monuments, places of historical significance and breath-taking beauty, this obscure, almost invisible memorial became my own personal place of pilgrimage.

Three years later I returned to Paris, and made time one morning to visit the Mémorial. After a few minutes of reflection I noticed the guard on duty approaching me.

“Excuse me, Monsieur, I do not mean to intrude. But I was wondering—you have been here before, non?”

I admitted I had.

“But it was some time ago, was it not? Two, maybe three years? And more than once?”

Yes, I agreed.

“You see, Monsieur, most people who come, they are just on tour—they walk in and walk out, maybe they take a photo or two. After five minutes they are gone, and have already checked this place off their list of sights to see. But you would come and stay, spend time, and you would return again.”

“Yes, it’s true,” I said. “But I was studying here, not on tour. I was here a whole school year.”

“That is what is even more striking, Monsieur. You see, the people who live here, the Parisians? They do not come at all. Most of them don’t even know it exists. And frankly, Monsieur, many would not care to know.”

He then added that I was not the only pilgrim who returned, telling me of the US officer who led the first US liberation of a Nazi death camp in January 1945.

“He saw what there was to see, Monsieur, and immediately said, ‘Ike (Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower) has gotta see this.’ He got Eisenhower to come, and (Generals) Bradley and Patton with him. The man was marked for life, and every year, when he returns there to observe the anniversary, he also comes here to pay his respects.”

“You see, Monsieur, I can tell the pilgrims from the tourists! That is why I remember you.”

My first visit came only 23 years after the camps were liberated. It shocks me to think how near that awful history was to me then, and how fast the time since has passed.

Now, this week, we observe the 70th anniversary. That old guard is gone (as are, of course, most of the holocaust survivors), but the Mémorial remains.  It is still mainly seen by tourists who traipse in and out and check it off their lists. It is still largely invisible to, and ignored by, the average Parisian.

In 1995, on the 50th anniversary of the Holocaust, Boston erected its own Holocaust Memorial, an evocative rendering of 6 glass chimneys symbolizing the 6 major death camps, each one etched with 1 million numbers—one for each of the victims. It is a haunting venue, and I am grateful to have it near my home.

The New England Holocaust Memorial, Boston

But whenever I return to Paris, I still make sure to go back to the Mémorial. Often I bring someone along: in 1971 it was with the woman who became my wife; another year, it was a Parisian friend seeing it for the first time; in October 2013, it was my daughter.

And more than once I have returned to my old American school in Paris to arrange an official tour of the Mémorial for the students. This tour includes an upper level inside the building containing a great deal of historical documentation.

On one occasion, several English–speaking tourists tagged along with our group. Realizing this, the tour leader, who spoke only French, asked me to act as interpreter. For half an hour I translated her remarks for the tourists. So once again this place touched me in a personal way.

In the last 10 years, however, the Mémorial de la Déportation has been largely displaced by the new Holocaust Memorial, only a few hundred meters across the Seine, which is the largest center for Holocaust research in Europe.

So when I go back to this place—and I do, as often as I can—I know it will probably be quiet, or even empty, and unchanged. It will still urge me “Pardonne, n’oublie pas”—Forgive, but Do Not Forget.

For our generation, this has become a sacred duty. We face a time when, more than ever, faith and violence seem linked by emerging Holy Wars waged by global crusaders. The horrifying prospect: genocide may not yet be buried in our past, as long as fanatics seek a “final solution” for their fears by liquidating the hated evil enemy.

 As former President Jacques Chirac said in 2005 at the Holocaust Memorial’s opening: “The refusal to forget is all the defense we have against the renewal of barbarism.” And part of what we remember is that Nazi genocide emerged, not from a historical vacuum, but from the history of Christian anti-Semitism.

The holocaust was, indeed, mass murder—but it was more than that. It was a deliberate, intentional program aimed at making the Jewish people extinct. And it was carried out by people who claimed the Christian faith as their heritage, and a “Christian” view of Jews (as, for example, “Christ-killers” guilty of “deicide”) as their justification.

So, as we journey out of the shadow of the 20th century (history’s bloodiest century) into this new century of terror and revenge, our refusal to forget—our determination never to forget, to remember always—may be all that determines, for each of us, whether we are mere tourists or genuine pilgrims.

“Am I Tourist or Pilgrim? Just sightseeing, or sharing a journey?” If we ignore this question, we cannot give the right answer.

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2020

#476: Why Notre-Dame de Paris Matters

A simple building fire provokes world-wide grief.

Mere minutes after the spire of Notre-Dame toppled in flames, a TV journalist asks a by-standing historian about the importance of the cathedral’s treasures.  During her reply he suddenly interrupts: “We’re just getting some sobering news.  The firefighters now say they may not be able to save the cathedral.”

“What?!?” Is the stunned reply.

He repeats himself; what follows is deep long silence.  The eyewitness is literally struck dumb by the prospect of losing Notre-Dame de Paris.

In the end, the building was saved after the roof was lost.  And no one died. 

Objectively, this was not the worst tragedy of recent days.  The Sri Lanka Easter Sunday attacks, the Christchurch mosque shootings--these cost human lives.  France’s Yellow Vests even protested the idea of spending one billion Euros to rebuild Notre-Dame while they struggled to pay their monthly bills in an unequal society.  One commentator even complained about people “whining over an old church.”

This begs a basic question: why such an outpouring of grief over this fire?  Why so many Facebook posts proclaiming a broken heart?

It has taken me more than a week to name why.  The answer is less objective but no less real. Global communications frequently gives us horrific images of tragedies happening halfway round the world, but that suffering and loss--even the deaths--mainly touch those who know the people or places involved.

Notre-Dame is different:  as a simple matter of fact, millions of people took it personally. They took the fire itself as a personal emergency, took the prospect of losing the whole building as a personal tragedy, and took the building’s final rescue as a personal existential relief.  And even so, for millions the sight of the smoking ruins remains heartbreaking. As one American Paris resident put it: “I felt as if I were losing a loved one, member of my family.”

Such global personal reactions are rare.  In my memory, only a sudden shocking loss of life has triggered such widespread heartache:  The assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr.  The death of Princess Diana.  The collapse of the twin towers on 9/11—not because the buildings were destroyed, but because of horror for the people inside.

How could a simple “building fire” have a similarly profound emotional impact on millions?  What is this building’s power?  Why did its threatened loss provoke such personal grief?

For French Catholics, of course, the answer is obvious: Notre-Dame is the center of their nation’s faith life.  For other French, the cathedral represents their national identity across centuries--no other building rivals it.  For others, the reasons are more varied.  No one visits Paris without visiting Notre-Dame.  Few people return to Paris without returning to it. It attracts some by its history, others by its symbolic power, still others by its sheer beauty. For some it is an expression of faith, and for others a marvel of medieval construction and creativity.  As one observer said: “No one encounters Notre-Dame and walks away in different.”

For me too, the fire caused a heartsick reaction echoed by only a few moments in my life.  But in my case a personal attachment to the cathedral is easier to explain.  As a student in France, Notre-Dame de Paris became my home church (it was a ten-minute walk from my school) and it has left me with a parade of personal memories. 

My first Mass in Paris was at Notre Dame, a 6:00 p.m. liturgy following a concert by the world-renowned organist Pierre Cochereau. His playing drew a near-capacity crowd, and I was chagrined when, after the music, most people promptly exited to avoid Mass. I suddenly found myself surrounded by a scattered remnant of worshippers, mostly little old ladies in black. Not only that, the Mass itself was in French (the recent fruit of Vatican II’s liturgical reforms)—I still did not know how to worship in French.

Overall, this first visit reinforced my sense of shifting values: the Church was become more pluralized, and the culture was becoming more secular. I also saw that church beauty was not limited to the white-steeple, plain-glass Protestant churches I grew up with in New England.

My second visit was an entirely different matter, an affair of state. My landlady was a WWII widow, and in October she received an invitation to celebrate the Solemn Mass and Te Deum marking the 50th anniversary of the 1918 Armistice with President Charles De Gaulle on November 11. Since she planned to spend the holiday at her sister's in Caen, she gave me the invite, and I invited a classmate along.

We entered Notre Dame by the south transept door, walked entirely around the backside of the altar, and squeezed into a spot on the other side, against the main column at the intersection of the transept and the sanctuary (one of the four columns bearing the weight of the spire that collapsed!).

There happened to be a spare wooden barrier leaning against the column, and I climbed atop it so see over the masses assembled for the Mass.

When De Gaulle arrived up the nave through the arched swords of the Garde Républicaine, he was enthroned against the column diagonally opposite us.  Several moments during the ceremony, de Gaulle, who faced us squarely, was looking directly at me—a young student perched on a barrier mere weeks after the protesting students’ barriers had been removed from the streets of the Quartier Latin! He did not look amused.

At ceremony’s end dignitaries recessed beneath the arched Garde swords. I noticed the sanctuary gates to the nave remained open, so I led my classmate across the sanctuary to the head of the nave and WE passed under the arched swords to the amazed stares of many lesser dignitaries still in their seats.

Needless to say, the experience left a permanent mark, and 11-11 remains a significant date for me. I regret not making it making it to Notre Dame this past November for the 100th anniversary--but I regret more that the US now observes "Veterans Day" as a generic honoring of soldiers, rather than observing the historic moment, on "the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month” in 1918, when the world began to think that the real enemy is war itself. What was begun as a day to reject war has become, for us, a day to praise warriors. Which makes this memory that much more precious: for me, November 11 will always be about the ending of war. And my lasting image will always be of Notre-Dame on November 11, 50 years ago.

Over the years I have returned many times, often for the pleasure of introducing Notre Dame to those close to me. I brought Anne there during Christmas break 1971-1972. In 2003 we brought our son Tim into the city during his birthday break from studies in Barcelona. Exiting the metro station I deliberately chose the stairway that made the facade of Notre-Dame his first sight of Paris. He never forgot that moment, nor the tour we made around and inside, and he recently returned with his own girlfriend to share his pleasure as I had shared mine.

In 2005 I brought my brother Jay and his wife Janice there. Later Jay said he found Paris more charming than expected (high praise from someone then working in Venice!), in no small part thanks to Notre-Dame.

In 2010 I organized a reunion of Paris classmates, and my visit ended with dinner on the Ile Saint-Louis with the widow of my old school’s director. Walking away afterward, Anne and I found ourselves directly behind Notre-Dame. The photo conveys some of the cathedral's contagious glow.

In 2011 I returned for November 11, but instead of the traditional Armistice ceremonies, I found the cathedral jam-packed for the annual Paris celebration in honor of the French overseas dioceses of Antigua, Martinique, and Guadalupe. The congregation was largely black, mostly women, and many in the bright colors of traditional tribal garb. This was the first time this Mass was celebrated at Notre Dame, and the Archbishop of Paris presided.

The main area was blocked off, so tourists could only pass around the side aisles. I made my way up the aisle with the tourist flow, circled counter-clockwise round behind the altar, and stopped on the far edge facing back across the sanctuary to the nave.

It was exactly the spot I had occupied on November 11, 1968!

The entire Mass was punctuated by the loud, rhythmic, drum-driven music of a large choir singing upbeat multi-part hymns in both French and the creoles of their respective countries.  Most of the hymns were high energy island melodies, with the exception of a gloriously harmonized Creole lyric set to the tune of “Amazing Grace.” The “honor guard” consisted of women bearing breads and fruits typical of their native lands.

The tourists flowing around the side aisles looked puzzled and even a bit stunned to witness the cathedral full, and in active use, and literally vibrating with the pulse and clapping of this “world music” version of folk Mass

As Mass ended, three bishops rose to briefly address the crowd.  The first drew loud applause and warm laughter by noting that, without doubt, this was the first time a black bishop had spoken to his people from the sanctuary of “This beautiful cathedral of Notre Dame of Paris.”

As I listened to these bishops—just minutes after holding black hands on both sides of me during the Our Father, exchanging signs of peace with these French Africans, and filing up with them to receive Communion in this great monument to Catholic faith—I found the moment almost unbearably moving. This cathedral is no museum—it is a living house of faith!

This cathedral is, after all, the crowning product of medieval Christendom, an era when Catholic tradition achieved a remarkable integration of imperial customs (inherited from the Roman Empire) and popular culture.  The resulting Gothic architecture created spaces that soar heavenward with impossibly “light” stoneworks in which walls and pillars are but bit players supporting the real stars: the fragile, flamboyant stained glass windows covering most surfaces. Notre Dame and its sister cathedrals across Europe are thus among the chief glories of Latin Christendom.

On this day I got to witness something new: a vibrant liturgical celebration from three third world cultures--here, in this bosom of Christendom!  Far from violating the wondrous gothic beauty of Notre Dame Cathedral, this heartfelt celebration lifted hearts much as the flying buttresses lift the stone--and the brilliant bright costumes seemed fitting reflections of the brilliant blues and reds, yellows and greens of the cathedral’s great rose windows.

Imagine: this space, built eight centuries ago, embracing anew these resurgent people still crafting a home-grown expression of their faith in the 21st century. In all its years Notre Dame of Paris had never witnessed anything quite like this. 

In 2013 I toured the cathedral with my daughter Melissa and in 2017 with Anne, her sister Patti and her boyfriend Fred. I planned our walking tour so we turned a street corner to suddenly reveal the cathedral in full sunlight.

Patti gasped with sheer pleasure, and Fred marveled (from his longtime work in construction) that such a building could even exist before steel girders and iron frames. After their tour, over dinner, he proposed marriage.

No surprise that for all these people, and for millions of others, the sight of Notre-dame in flames provoked rare pain. For them, Notre-dame matters—and the matter is personal.

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2019

#451: Why France—and Europe—Need a New Future

The triple crisis of terror attacks, refugees, and Brexit (Britain’s possible exit from the European Union) show that the EU’s original dream of a unified “Christian Europe” is over.  But a truly Christian vision could be key to building the kind of future these crises call for. 

PARIS--As the French government this week extends France’s state of emergency for two more months, the tension persists in this city following two major attacks in 15 months. 

As my bus approached Charles De Gaulle Airport last week, the driver announced a “bomb alert” that forced him to skip my terminal (A shuttle train and lots of walking got me back).  Airport security was also a good deal more rigorous than usual.  The day I flew authorities announced that last month’s Brussels attacks were originally aimed at two Paris locations--specifically, the commercial center at La Defense and an “unnamed Catholic association.” And one restaurant owner acknowledged that his business had dropped dramatically since the attacks, as tourists traffic is down.

Yet mostly Parisian life remains remarkably normal.  Clusters of Tourists toting smart phones on selfie-sticks still trudge up and down the Champs Elysees.  The famed monuments are still open and still attract long lines.  The streets and subways are still laced with pickpockets, panhandlers, and the homeless.  The Metro itself displays no obvious extra security beyond measures dating from the 1995-1996 subway bombings.  On Friday night in the Latin Quarter, at the same hour as the November attacks, young people still jam outdoor cafes and line up outside clubs. 

Some parks had extra security (the Jardin du Luxembourg was briefly locked down), as did the University of Paris (no entry to the Sorbonne’s courtyard without a student ID), but all that was for the most Parisian of reasons: widespread student street protests (this time, over a new work law threatening to alter their future working conditions). 

On the surface, then, Paris carries on largely as if nothing has happened--but everyone knows that things will never be the same. Parisians persist in their routines lest they hand victory to the terrorists by allowing them to dictate how Paris lives.  But they also know that a future fraught with constant tension and risk is not acceptable. 

So what is next? 

No one here talks of banning or restricting Muslims.  The Muslims I spoke to feel accepted, not stigmatized-- but I spoke to people already assimilated into the core of French life: shopkeepers, restaurant owners, and servers.  And obviously many Muslims in Europe have not been assimilated--not because they are Muslims, but because they are Arabs or Berbers or Turks, who carry a culture that does not match European ways.  And clearly some places--like Molenbeek, the Brussels neighborhood that proved a breeding ground for both the Paris and Brussels attackers—have become deep pockets of isolation, alienation, and resentment.  This has left some young people easily influenced or even “inspired” by those who justify violence by fraudulently invoking Islam

What has gone wrong?  Why is that resentment and anger bubbling over now? 

One opinion I heard came from a woman with decades of experience observing policymakers in both France and Europe.  Her connections include high level academic and business institutions, NATO, the EU, and the UN. 

Her response to my questions: the process of decolonization was badly managed, or even bungled. 

As she spoke I recalled my own school days in the late 1950s when every addition of “My Weekly Reader” (a current events newspaper distributed in my elementary classes) contained another story about a newly independent nation.  These included, of course, many former French Colonies, especially along the Mediterranean coast of Africa and the Middle East which the French call “The Maghreb.”

According to my French commentator, the long-term effects of ending colonialism were never really thought through.  Most Europeans agreed that independence for their former Colonies was necessary, though the mechanisms and timing were controversial and provoked both polarization and violence in France, including assassination plots against Charles De Gaulle. 

But the long-term consequences were not understood or prepared for--probably because they were never considered.  In the former colonies, this led to conflict between those content to maintain the previously imposed colonial (i.e. European) culture, and those insisting on a return to traditional, pre-colonial ways.  This included returning to a reliance on traditional religion--Islam--in lands where French-styled secularization (“laicité”) had been established for decades. 

For the colonizers, the process also brought profound change: a steady influx of formerly colonized peoples into the home country.  In France, this meant a huge influx of both blacks from central and western Africa, and an even larger influx of Arabs and Berbers from all over the Maghreb.  This process began around 1960 and continues today, accelerated by the disruptions of Al Qaeda, the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the Syrian civil war, the Arab Spring, and the rise of ISIS.

The effects on France cannot be overstated.  France has been a unified state longer than any other European country.  For centuries its monarchy worked long to impose the French language and national identity on the country’s regions.  Thus the Celts in Brittany, the German speakers in Alsace, the southerners who spoke Occitan or Italian, and even the Basques, all acquired a single official identity.  This veneer of homogeneity survived the Revolution and remains a cornerstone of French Life.  For most French, the nation’s unifier is the state itself--whether that means Louis XIV or Napoleon or De Gaulle or the current leadership. 

The assumption was that such unity would apply even to migrants from former colonies.  After all, France considered all its colonies part of France itself, and brought the French language, culture, and religion to every colonial outpost.  (To this day, residents in the remaining French possessions vote in French elections.) 

But 60 years into decolonization, France has millions of residents with colonial origins who are too young to remember colonial days.  They cannot say if colonial life was good or bad--they only know that they continue to be considered and treated as outsiders.  They learn French in school but speak Arabic or a tribal language at home and among their peers.  They have their own food, music, and customs—and their own religion.

 All this has broken through France’s veneer of homogeneity. For all the public rhetoric about recent arrivals “becoming French,” the fact is that decolonization has introduced social, cultural, and religious pluralism into a country that is neither experienced with nor committed to the kind of pluralism we already know in the U.S. 

The failure to develop an adequate process for integrating the post-colonial peoples means that many of them remain unassimilated into “the nation.” Decolonization gave them juridical freedom, but it did not give them a place in French life (much like Emancipation failed to give U.S. blacks their rightful place in American Life).

One further problem: since 1905 France has been officially a secular nation, where religious practices are subordinate to public policy.  There is no premium on religious liberty, as in the U.S.  Over the last century, the Roman Catholic Church has learned to accept this restriction, but Muslims might naturally contrast this with the open or even established practice of Islam in their lands of origin.

What can be done?

As I explained in CrossCurrents #350, the European Union has its roots in a Catholic, personalist vision for a peaceful, unified, Christian Europe.  My recent trip confirms that it is time to recast that vision before Europe breaks down.  This will take several steps.

First, the problem must be acknowledged. The legacy of colonialism is that Europe is no longer simply a “Christian continent,” even in its cultural underpinnings (let alone its actual religious practice, which has long been in decline).  Personalism can still ground a vision of European unity and peace--but not by presuming a “Christian” system.  While Europe’s heritage is undoubtedly Christian, its culture is now largely secular, and its population is now both religiously and ethnically diverse.  A new vision must include them all.  Failure to do this will perpetuate violence.

Second, public expectations of migrant populations must change.  Unlike the U.S., Europe has not been a land of immigrants--but it is now.  Not only must Europe find out how to welcome them into their midst, it must also find ways to help them belong and give them a stake in the dominant culture around them.  If they see no benefit in that culture, they will have nothing to lose by attacking it.  Thus Europe must not only accept newcomers, but also make them feel at home.

Third, integrating new peoples will be neither easy nor simple.  The New York Times, profiling the Molenbeek neighborhood, distinguished two groups of Muslims.  The Turks feel little connection to Belgian culture but also expect little, and lived in stable, mostly peaceful isolation.  But the Berbers from Morocco inherit the effects of French colonialism, speak French, understand the prevailing customs and culture, but do not feel welcomed or accepted. So their isolation is resentful and dangerous—and the attackers come from this group.

In their recent book Why Muslim Integration Fails in Christian-Heritage Societies, scholars Claire Adida, David Lattin, and  Marie-Anne Valfort argue that “anti-Muslim discrimination is a significant social phenomenon,” in France, Belgium, and the rest of Western Europe. It will take new, different policies to correct the situation.

Fourth and finally, this all means that recasting the new vision for Europe will require careful and creative planning about how to promote better integration of these new people.  This will have to include altering attitudes on sides, creating opportunities for disaffected people to invest in the surrounding culture, and inviting these people to identify as Europeans.  This in turn challenges traditional Europeans to simultaneously acknowledge their Christian heritage but then demonstrate radical Christian hospitality by welcoming their “Muslim neighbors” with open arms into a new, pluralized vision of a shared and peaceful future.

   © Bernard F. Swain PhD 2016