JUUF

Sermon by Rev. Sarah Schurr, September 19, 2010

This sermon begins with a story. It is a story from the life of Simon Wiesenthal. You may or may not have heard of Simon Wiesenthal. He was a Nazi hunter. He worked for the Jewish Historical Documentation Center, a group that brought over 1100 Nazis to trial. Simon Wiesenthal lived a long and well-celebrated life. He received many international commendations, including 16 honorary doctorates, and died at the fine age of 96. But of course, that is not where this story begins.

Simon Wiesenthal’s life began when he was born in Eastern Europe in 1908. He was a professional architect, trained in Czechoslovakia and Poland. He was working in an architectural office in Poland when the Nazi’s invaded. The Nazi’s hated the Polish people, but hated the Jews even more. As a Jew, Wiesenthal was relocated first to the ghettos, and later to Nazi concentration camps, where he lived until 1945. It is during his interment in the concentration camp that this special story begins.

The prisoners at these camps were fed so little they barely had the energy to keep breathing. But they did more than breathe, prisoners were made to work. Much of the time, Simon Wiesenthal and his fellow prisoners at the camp worked constructing the Eastern Railway. They were often assessed, or “registered” as they called it, and those too weak to be essential workers were culled out and sent to the death chambers. One day Wiesenthal was told he would not be working on the railroad. Instead, a number of them were marched into town to work at a German Army hospital. They were given the task of taking out the trash. This trash was mostly reeking basins, overflowing with blood and tissue from the surgery department. While Wiesenthal was working, a nurse approached him. She asked simply, “Are you a Jew?” When he answered in the affirmative, she ordered him to come with her. He was taken to a room and told to go inside. When he looked particularly concerned, the nurse assured him that she had made arrangements and he would not be blamed by his guards for the absence from garbage duty. No one would bother him in this room. The orders were clear. He went inside.

Inside Simon Wiesenthal found a man, lying motionless on the bed. He was wrapped in bandages so his face was obscured. His breathing was labored. The man in the bed called to Wiesenthal, asking that he come closer, since weakness prevented him from speaking loudly. The man in the bed said, “I am dying. I know that at this moment thousands of men are dying. Death is everywhere. It is neither infrequent nor extraordinary. I am resigned to dying soon, but before that I want to talk about an experience which is tormenting me. Otherwise I cannot die in peace”.

The dying man said that his name was Karl. He was brought up Catholic and had one day hoped to study theology. But in his teens he joined the Hitler Youth and turned his back on religion. Both of his parents were against his joining the Hitler Youth. His father was not in support of the Nazi’s and it pained him that their only son had joined such an organization. But in the Hitler Youth, Karl found friends and a great sense of pride. As he became more active, his parents found they had to be more and more careful what they said in his presence. When the war broke out, Karl eagerly volunteered for service and joined the SS.

Karl told his story to Wiesenthal. Everything from his devotion to his mother to the whole story of his army career, he told to Simon Wiesenthal. He told how they hated the enemy and sought revenge for their fallen comrades. The sad and sickening story included one particularly grisly account. Karl’s unit came into an abandoned town and found that there were several families of Jews left behind. These were mostly the elderly and families with young children. The Nazi’s rounded up all the Jews and forced them into an abandoned house. They then doused the house with gasoline and threw in a live grenade. As the house erupted in flames, Karl and his fellow SS men shot any Jews that tried to escape the fire. Karl particularly remembered killing a young father as he tried to save his tiny son from the blaze. That evening the young Nazi soldiers drank and sang songs of victory. But they slept poorly, many crying out in the night. In the morning the commander, noting these young men were uncomfortable, talked about their duty to save their country from the enemy, including the Jews. It was like a pep talk. But when one young man questioned the commander, he was shot through the stomach and left to die.

The image of the burning house haunted Karl. It never left his mind or his dreams. The war waged on, with all the horrors of war. While fighting in the Crimea, Karl was badly hurt. He was moved from one military hospital to another. He just wanted to go home to his mother, but the doctors would not send him home. He was dying a slow and painful death, alone with his nightmares. Karl said, “I know what I have told you is terrible. In the long nights while I have been waiting for death, time and time again I have longed to talk about it to a Jew and beg forgiveness from him… I know that what I am asking is almost too much for you, but without your answer I cannot die in peace.”

Simon Wiesenthal had listened to Karl’s story, from beginning to end. Karl had grabbed his hand for support and comfort during the most difficult moments. He did not harm Karl, who was helpless to defend himself against any attack. Wiesenthal had even brushed away a fly buzzing around the dirty bandages on Karl’s face. But when Karl, the SS man, asked Simon Wiesenthal, the Jew, for forgiveness Wiesenthal quietly got up and left the room, without saying a word.

A very detailed version of the story you have just heard comprises the first half of a book by Simon Wiesenthal called, The Sunflower. It is named for the sunflowers planted on the graves of the fallen Nazi soldiers. The first half of The Sunflower ends with this passage. “You, who have just read this sad and tragic episode in my life, can mentally change places with me and ask yourself the critical question, “What would you have done?” …What would you have done? The second half of the book consists of over 50 essays from a number of great minds, with their answer to this very serious question. Each essay deals with their answer to the question of forgiveness between these two men. The answers are various, as you can imagine and touch on key issues of justice and mercy, and the nature of humanity. Today I will share kernels of wisdom from some of these responses. But I will also try to share how Unitarian Universalist theology informs an answer to this question of forgiveness. Rather than the question “What would you do”, I hope to answer, “What would a UU do”.

Alan Berger, a Jewish scholar specializing in Holocaust Studies, reminds us that Wiesenthal did not have the right to forgive Karl. By Jewish law, there are two kinds of sins, those against God and those against another person. By tradition and law, a Jew can only forgive a sin that was committed against him personally, not against someone else. God can forgive you for failing to pray regularly. But even God can not forgive murder, since the sin was committed against a human being. This makes murder the only unforgivable sin, since the victim will never be available to offer forgiveness. Karl could only ask forgiveness of those people in the burning house. Another Jew can not forgive on their behalf.

Many Rabbis and Jewish scholars pointed out the fact that, by tradition, Jews can not forgive a sin not committed against them. But many writers also had a problem with forgiving Karl for political reasons. Essayist and French resistance fighter Jean Amery says, “Politically, I don’t want to hear anything of forgiveness! I believe that you, (Simon) who have devoted your life to investigating the political realm of Nazi crimes, will understand my position. Why does it matter to me? For one simple reason: what you and I went through must not happen again, never anywhere. I refuse any reconciliation with the criminals and with those who only by accident did not happen to commit atrocities and finally, all those who helped prepare the unspeakable acts with their words.” Those are strong and chilling statements.

There were also those who wrote about the issue of whether Karl was deserving of forgiveness, given his terrible crimes and association with the Third Reich. One response that I found really intenerating was that of Major General Sidney Shachnow. He has two unique perspectives on this issue. He is an American who has spent his career as a military man, with 32 years as a Green Beret. He himself has killed other human beings in battle and wrote that part of getting young men “combat ready” is to teach them to let go of part of their humanity. Yet Shachnow also spent his childhood in a Nazi concentration camp in Lithuania and understands the Nazi acts of violence on a personal level. He wrote, “Karl managed to overcome the voice within him that said a person cannot murder innocent men, women and children and still call himself a human being. He allowed himself to be changed into a foul beast who did the unforgivable…What he did was the ultimate and irreversible denial of his humanity. And now at deaths door, he pleads for forgiveness. That is, he asked for readmission into the human race. But his appeal is addressed to the wrong party…The SS officer should take up his case with God. I personally think he should go to hell and rot there.”

Matthew Fox is an Episcopal Priest, who specializes in interfaith understanding. His response echoed that to utter words of reassurance to Karl would have been difficult. But Fox downplayed the question of forgiveness and highlighted the compassionate presence that Simon Wiesenthal provided for the dying man. Fox said, “He gave Karl the only penance available to him to bestow: Silence…Simon let the man speak his heart…Listening is a gift; listening was his act of compassion. Simon offered Karl a morally responsible and adult response. Be with your sin. Be with your conscience. Be with your victims. Be with your God.”

Some writers, after hearing this moving tale, decided that they would forgive Karl, if they were in Wiesenthal’s position. International Peace activist and former president of Notre Dame, Theodore Hesburch said, “I am a Catholic priest. I am in the forgiving business…If asked to forgive, by anyone for anything, I would forgive because God would forgive. He reminds the reader of the story of the Prodigal Son, read earlier today. Many of the Christian scholars in The Sunflower wrote of the tradition of forgiving those who truly repent, that no sin against humanity can ever be truly unforgivable if the repentance is true. The question then for some writers was not how great was Karl’s sin, but how deep his repentance.

South Africa’s Bishop Desmond Tutu holds up a different view of forgiveness in the face of terrible wrong. He told of how Neslon Mandela had been incarcerated and abused for 27 years, but magnanimously invited his white jailers to his inauguration as South Africa’s first democratically elected president. Tutu talked about the many kinds of reconciliation needed to heal our deeply divided and wounded world. He said, “It is clear that if we look only to retributive justice, then we could just as well close up shop. Forgiveness is not some nebulous thing. It is practical politics. Without forgiveness, there is no future.”

The Dalai Lama comes straight to his point in his response. He begins his essay saying, “I believe one should forgive the person or persons who have committed atrocities against oneself and mankind”. But he goes on to say that this does not mean that we forget. Being ever aware and remembering these experiences helps us to prevent such atrocities in the future. The Dalai Lama recounted the story of a Tibetan monk who served 18 years in a Chinese prison before escaping to India. Chinese prisons in the 1940’s were known as very harsh, to say the least. When the Dalai Lama asked him what he felt was his greatest threat or danger while in prison, the monk’s answer was unexpected and inspiring. He said what he feared the most was losing his compassion for the Chinese. An interpreter for the Dalai Lama, Matthiew Ricard, also wrote a response to Wiesenthal in which he said, “From the Buddhist point of view…inner poisons such as hatred…divide us from others and prevent us from being more compassionate. True compassion must embrace all things and everyone, the worthy and the guilty, the friend and the foe.”

I promised you a Unitarian Universalist response. Unitarian Universalists do not always speak with one voice. But we do have some common values and we do have a rich history that informs and shapes our theology as a people. Our churches have a history with standing in opposition to the Nazi atrocities. In fact this opposition led to the death of Rev. Norbert Chapek, the Unitarian minister in Prague and creator of the Flower Communion Service. He was sent to die in Dachau when the Nazi’s declared him “too dangerous to the Reich for him to be allowed to live”. But we also have the legacy of our Universalist mothers and fathers. The Universalists said that God was too kind and loving to condemn anyone to eternal damnation. All of us would be equally embraced in the end. This, along with our humanist heritage, is the root of the first of our guiding Unitarian Universalist principles. “We affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every person.” Every person. The inherent worth and dignity of the saint and the sinner, the wise and the foolish, the Holocaust survivor and the Nazi. We struggle with this. When we see terrible injustice and evil done by human hands, we are hard pressed to find the inherent worth and dignity. But the same belief, that we are all brothers and sisters in the interconnected web, that moves us to help the victim, also calls us to have some measure of mercy on the perpetrator. This is part of why the Unitarian Universalists have traditionally stood against the death penalty. It is our belief that no one is disposable, no one is without some inherent worth.

Modern Unitarian Universalist theologian, Forrest Church reminds us that our faith is not without its challenges. He says, “Taken seriously, no theology is more challenging - morally, spiritually or intellectually: to love your enemy as yourself; to see tears in another’s eyes.” Yet our faith also has its own saving gift. Rebecca Parker, president of our seminary in Berkeley says, “Vengeance has grave dangers and holds out false hopes of closure for those aggrieved by violence and injustice….Our hope, rather, is in the creative act of love. Love is the active, creative force that repairs life’s injuries and brings new possibilities into being. Love speaks out in the face of injustice and oppression, calling leaders to account when policies and practices are injuring people …And in the deepest night, when our hearts are breaking, it is the discovery of a love that chooses unshakable fidelity to our common humanity that renews us and redirects us to a life of generosity.”

So what about me? What about this Unitarian Universalist who stands before you? Would I forgive Karl, the dying SS man? In ministry, we all bring our own experiences with us and they help to shape our beliefs. I am no exception. But I am not just a Unitarian Universalist, but I am also a blond haired, blue eyed, German American. I remember the venom with which a Jewish classmate in college looked at me when she asked when my family had come to America, checking to see if my family had helped murder hers. I have also had opportunity in my career to come face to face with people who committed truly evil acts. People who raped young children and great manipulators who terrorized their spouses to the point of immobility. So know that the Unitarian Universalist response you will hear is my own. Know that my own experience, as well as our UU heritage and theology, shaped my answer to this question of forgiveness.

This is what I would say to Karl, the dying SS man, if he asked me for forgiveness. I would say, “Karl, what you ask of me is very difficult to give. You gave me a gift when you told me your story, the gift of yourself and your honesty. Now you ask for a gift in return, the gift of absolution from your terrible sins. That is not possible, I am afraid. I cannot forgive you on behalf of all the Jewish people who you have wronged. No one on earth has the power or the right to do that. But I can give you this. I can tell you that I know that there is good in you. I know it with all my heart. Your sins are great and that is a reality that you live with. But your sins do not define who you are as a person. You have worth as a human being. You are a man, Karl, not just a Nazi. I cannot offer you final forgiveness and absolution, but I can say to you truly that I do not hate you Karl. Hate would not erase the wrongs you have done and it would just eat away at my humanity as well as yours. No one would benefit from that hate. Instead, I offer you this. I offer you my compassion, something so needed in the world. I give you my compassion so that it may speak to the compassion and goodness that I know is in you. Karl, I hope you die in peace.”

And I hope he did.