I focus my experiencing and awareness on being
"a pioneer of Evolution in
learning to feel":
I let my Body vibrate and my Heart 'womb'
pain, shame, fear, boredom, powerlessness,
so feelings can >heal >guide>fulfill>evolve,
and ~~~ offer ~~~"goldmines"~~~ to us all!! "I
want you to feel everything, every little thing!"
A magnificent
full rainbow appeared above
the barbed wire of the once deadly fence,
when 57 people from 8 nations crossed this gate to BirkenAU on
November 3, 2003.
Outside - under the birches, then bare and bleak, since any leaf
would be instantly eaten,
women and children were herded together before being sent to the
close gas-chambers.
Inside - the remnants of Crematorium IV, blown up by the "Sonder-Kommando"
in 1944.
It was at a time, when 400 000 Jews from Hungary were exterminated
within 2 months.
Those who were forced to do " the job " were mostly
Jews from Salonikae in Greece,
who started their life-span of three (!) months "fresh",
i.e. not yet emaciated by hunger. "If someone refused, the head
of his wife would be knocked into the fire and burnt."
Witnessed and told to me today - 2003_11_28 - by Helena Hammermesh~~
in Israel.
"We were
four women in the camp resistance,
Three of us worked in the ammunition factory.
It was the women, who were hanged,
for they had smuggled the materials
to the Sonder-Kommando
for making the bombs.
"Tell the world, Rachel, save Jewish dignity!
We were not sheep dragged to slaughter,
we were human and we were humane."
Already in 1986 I taped Helena's stories
about the small lights in the darkness,
resistance and support for each other,
self-respect and self-determination.
AU-schwitz-Birken-AU Retreat - November 2003_11_3-10
The
rainbow joins earth and sky ~ merges rain and sun,
and displays multiple, distinct colors of the ONE Light !
It is the sign of the Covenant between YHWH and Noah,
that never again will there be intent to blot out humans.
But there was this intent! There still are such attempts! "God"
and Wo/Man need to heal, grow, evolve,
towards
aligning with the Rainbow Covenant.
Harmeze
- Harm&Harmony
My personal journey and completion of the AUschwitz "Bearing
Witness" group retreat
On our first way to the double concentration camp of AUschwitz-BirkenAU
we passed a sign:
"Harmeze" . "What is this!" I asked Yanina,
instantly haunted by this name.
She said: "It's just the name of a village,
I think."
But the letters H A R
M had already imprinted themselves in my mind and soul.
In English these four letters mean "damage or injury",
In German they imply even more pain:
"Harm" means "deep sorrow".
Then, one evening, the group was brought to Harmeze.
We were to see Marian Kolodzieja's Labyrinth.
Old
Marian is carring young Marian under the pole of the cross amidst
the barbed, electrifying fence
The last morning - which would be the day of "Harmonic
Concordance", Nov. 8, 2003- I got up at six,
for the first people were to leave us at 6:30.
Again I wanted to photograph the sad- beautiful sculpture at the
entrance of "the International Place of Encounter in Auschwitz",
three figures holding hands around a cut-off trunk , but with their
backs to each other, leaning outward into the world.
But like my first effort on the first morning the photo presents
not the people but the colors of sunrise...
At 8 o'clock I parted from Yanina, my friend,
who went to see once more Mariza, that woman
who had saved her as a little child from the ghetto,
into which the Kattowitz Jews (60
km from Auschwitz) had been squeezed.
She also visited her only surviving cousin
and her Polish non-Jewish husband.
This one added information to the figure of the Saint Maximilian
Kolbe,
towards whom I felt so ambivalent
before I came to live in Harmeze for 2 days.
"He was a terrible antisemite
and if he did anything by offering himself
to die for someone else in the hunger-bunker,
it was to attone for what he had done to the Jews."
Kolbe was a fervant missionary
within and outside the Church.
His magazines reached up to 250 000 readers,
who were confirmed by Kolbe in their belief,
that the Jews had murdered Christ
and that it wouldn't be a bad idea to get rid of them.
Here's the picture and quote on a
German brochure I found that day:
Kolbe: "Only love builds"
or "only love is constructive".
How I hate phrases like this... especially when they include
"love".
Never should such a statement about love be made,
unless the condition for being able to feel love towards
another is added,
and unless the danger of unwhole love is mentioned.
"Only Love is constructive"
"This is so sad",
I heard Yanina say 60 years later, with a trace of tears in her
voice.
She is so scarce in words, and this understatement pained me much.
She referred to a sign under the beautiful birches, which said: "women and children were gathered here
before being send to the gas-chambers"
Then I joined some people who walked to Auschwitz
again, to the Roma and Sinti Museum.
During the walk I tried to convey "my" message and felt,
that this time there was an echo:
Be Sounding - not silent.
AU-schwitz/Birken-AU in Nov. 2003 screams "AU-AU-AU" or
moans "OI-OI-OI".
Scream or moan with the dead, give them the voice they couldn't
raise then,
give yourself a voice,
sound your feelings,
moan, cry, scream, sob, whine, whimper your pain or fear or shame,
jubilate, cheer, shout, sing, dance your love, your satisfaction,
your joy.
BE ALIVE, BE WHOLE.
LOVE THAT IS NOT UNCONDITIONAL IS
DANGEROUS,
BUT IF YOU DO NOT LOVE YOURSELF UNCONDITIONALLY,
[and you don't , as long as you ignore, deny parts you do not like
in yourself],
how can you love anybody else unconditionally?
If I do not vibrate my feelings physically,
by breath, by sound, by movement,
I can not bear my "hard" feelings and therefore must ignore
or deny them.
If I screen off my "hard" feelings,
one ( !) outcome is, that my "happy" feelings cannot pass
this screen either.
I'll become deader and deader and deader.
The most terrible result of this lifelessness is,
that - in unwittingly groping for feeling a feeling, - I may utilize
a situation like ...
where getting a kick out of torturing others is legitimate.
One of us, a Polish man, maybe in his fifties, told in our small
group: "I am not a survivor of
Auschwitz,
but I'm the descendant of a generation of violence.
When we were boys,
our favorite game was to catch a fly, and then to rip of its legs,
examining all kinds of things, like Mengele did with his victims.
I'll spare you, what we did with frogs and cats...
I did not feel anything then. "
If you feel ready to open up to this Copernican
Re-volution,
please read at least the first pages of "Right
Use of Will",
a series of books which preceded www.Godchannel.com.
I photographed a
page of my illustrated edition of the book,
which "by chance" shows the shore of my Salt-Sea-Springs.
At 1:30 the major part of the group parted.
Again I came to the bus to hug everybody.
There was love and joy, and there was pain.
The one, whom I saw as my closest potential partner,
had the courage to tell me: "I can't see myself working with you.
YOu have too much anger, too much power."
"Anger, I understand, but too much power?"
"Overpowering", he corrected himself.
Then Josh hugged me to say Good-Bye,
and I - in pain - misunderstood his words voiced behind my neck,
as if he had said something humerous about me "a trouble-maker".
Ginni laughed, hugged me and stressed: "Do not change one bit, Christa-Rachel,
you hear me?
There is a need for trouble-makers! Do not change!"
Another half hour with Genine, who had screamed
with me at the pond.
Her listening and support and encouragement followed me,
when Pater Manfred came to fetch me.
He first brought me to his Catholic
Center for Dialogue and Prayer
on the other side of the concentration-camp.
We entered the Carmelite church and I saw something extraordinary:
the cross , yes, at its usual place, yes,
but not the Crucified was hanging there,
but the Resurrected hovered there, still at the cross,
but not attached.
It was the last photo available
in my digital camera.
I had discovered too late, that its function "erase"
had vanished,
I would have been less lavish in photographing all through
this journey.
But it was meaningful, that exactly that resurrected Jew
was to be the last.
Though I don't know yet, what it means.
Manfred now pointed to the painting
of a nun in full Carmelite habit. "It's based on her last
passport photo!" he
said.
It was meaningful, that there was no photo left for Edith
Stein.
Though , what this means, I don't know yet either.
Edith Stein. too, has become a symbol.
Not for a Christian who sacrifices him/herself,
but for a Jew who is sacrificed.
Never mind that she was a Christian with all her heart,
life and work .
A German Jewish professor of philosphy who had become
a Carmelite nun.
Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross Discalced Carmelite
"He who raised
himself from death to life,
He has also awakened me to new life
From the sleep of death. " (From
a poem of hers)
Oh, really? I want to say, and my sarcasm strangles my
throat with tears..
For me she has been the metaphor for what I so terribly
missed in the Christian ideology,
in which I was brought up and brought up myself.
The symbol of my breaking-point between Christianity and Judaism.
And I sob again, as I have done over and over again, remembering
her.
When the hunting hounds scorned her Christianity,
she hid in a Carmelite nunnery in Holland.
But they hunted her down there too.
Twenty years later her co-sisters edited a book about her,
and this is what I remember having read there then:
"We were all crying, when they shoved her out of the door,
one or the other put a sandwitch in her pocket,
and we cried and cried."
I did and do not judge the action of anyone in such a situation.
But I do judge the fact, that 20 years later none of these nun asked
herself:
"Why didn't we all go with her?"
The
law of the ancient Jewish Sages was: "Let's assume, gentiles say to a group
of people: 'deliver us one of you, so that we kill
him. If not , we'll kill all of you.' In this case all should let themselves
be killed, but never hand over one soul of Israel
The same law applies to women,
let's assume gentiles meet a group of women and demand to deliver
one of them, so they can rape her,
then rather all women should let themselves be raped, but "never
hand over one soul of Israel."
I was told recently, that in a Dutch village there were only 2 Jewish
families.
"We wanted to hide them, but they wanted to go with their people..."
[Of course, in the light of these
and numerous other teachings,
the claim, that Jesus was extradited by the Jewish priests into
the hands of the Romans, looses even more of ground,
though I had no motive whatsoever to prove this application]
It is astounding, that Kolbe became a hero for having sacrificed
himself FOR someone else.
I have not heard of a single Christian who became a hero, because
s/he joined someone else in solidarity,
though I assume there were many unknown Christian heros like this.
Just like there were Jewish cowards or scoundrels, who did not follow
the law of solidarity.
IF the perpetrators would have scorned Kolbe's offer
and said: "You want to die? Good so! Come along
together with the man you wanted to save"
would he also have become a hero?
But then, of course, the real reason for Kolbe's
having become a hero, is
that a hero was desperately needed.
He vicariously saved the dignity, the self-respect, of the 75 000
Poles,
who were murdered in AUschwitz-BirkenAU,
and of Marian and a few others who survived,
and of the whole Polish nation, which has to live with AUschwitz-BirkenAU
just like Israel.
On the website www.ariga.com,
from which I daily draw the most concise and helpful information
about Israel for my work for peace, a book has been recommended
for the last 2 weeks, Journey
of Hope,
about Ilan Ramon, the aestronaut, a father of 4 children
who lived right here in my town Modi'in.
The commentator on "ariga" talks exactly about
this need for heros, all humans share, and especially at
a time, when self-determination and self-respect keep declining
faster and faster.
" There have
been very few people in the last decade -- and perhaps longer
-- who managed to be heroic for all or almost all
Israelis, religious, secular, Right, Left, Jewish,
Arab, Sephardi, Ashkenazi, new immigrant or fifth generation.
Too many issues divide too many people here. But Ilan Ramon,
the somewhat baby-faced air force colonel selected as the
first Israeli to go into space on board the American shuttle
craft, was one of those heroes whose deed fired the imagination
of Israelis across every spectrum. Even the most cynical and
skeptical had to admire not only his ascension to that vaunted
gallery of people who had the 'right stuff' to go into space,
but the grace with which he did so, the almost childlike joy
he so generously gave of himself during those live broadcasts
from space on board the shuttle, and the faith in science
and humanity that he expressed during his broadcasts. And
then the shuttle crashed, and with it, another hero
was gone. So much hope was pinned on Ramon's trip
and in a way, the shuttle disaster tragedy was more than the
loss of an Israeli hero, but like the Rabin assassination,
the loss of the hope for heroes. 2009_10_06 - I'm re-reading
this - 3 weeks, after Ilan's son, Asaf Ramon, has fallen from
the sky, too....
"When
the commentators met a historical and influential figure,
who lacked the basic solidarity with the community,
and, as a result, lacked also responsibility,
they sometimes chose to falsify the record,
in order to settle the man with the character of an emissary.
Such a falsification did occur already in the Bible,
in regard to King David. [His abominal anti-solidary
behavior against one of his soldiers, Uriyah,
whose wife Bat-Sheva he coveted,
was in later additions to the books of Samuel
mutated into David being an example of solidarity,]
In Talmudic literature an unknown author has created
a masterpiece of falsification
in regard to Eliezer, the son of Rabbi Shim'on bar Jokhai.
A man who was ostentatiously lacking solidarity in life,
became THE emissary of Israel in the Agada.
The mere absurdity of this falsification is, perhaps, a
better proof
than a description of a truly solidary emissary
of what was expected by the generations of Israel
from an outstanding personality:
to accept Israel's suffering through identification and
solidarity,
and to translate the feeling of solidarity into active responsibility,
in order to have their nation avoid suffering.
I accept Marian's hero Maximilian Kolbe, I bow my
head,
I even believe, that Kolbe did, in fact, atone for teaching the
liquidation of Jews.
I do not accept, though, that the Catholic Church relishes in the
saintlihood of the man,
without ever mentioning, that atonement was/is needed for both,
Kolbe and his Church.
Isn't it time for all those who adhere to the belief
in that crucified Jew,
to admit to the horrendous absurdity and inconsistency
of enjoying the benefits of this Jew's self-sacrifice on the one
hand,
and of condemning and persecuting THE Jews who helped him produce
this self-sacrifice, on the other hand?
And I agree with Kiergegaard, that a wo/man must take responsibility
for not letting him/herself be killed,
because see, what was done to those "lost sheep", to whom
alone the Nazarene's service was dedicated.
I must be angry, furious, raging vicariously for all those who tidy
it over,
and do not stick consistently to this one relevant question for
all humans,
be they Europeans or Americans, Israelis or Palestinians:
Why is it, that we humans, all of
us, need other people, groups, nations,
to project on them what we do not like in ourselves?
Why do we need a black foil, in order to see our own light shine
a bit?
Isn't it because we all have not yet learnt
and not even grasped that we need to learn,
how to cope with the Cain
in us?
With feeling unworthy,
with lacking in self-respect,
with being unable to love ourselves?
And why are we unable to love ourselves?
I shall spell it out again and again and again:
Because we do not breathe and
move and sound those terrible Cain-feelings physically,
and therefore need to deny them,
and therefore need to project them on others
and therefore need to kill others in order to protect ourselves,
or so we believe.
"
Our hero , Maximilian Kolbe, Nr. 16670, has given
us self-respect, has given faces to those numbers.
But this is a small and short-lived "good" feeling.
It is a projection, not more.
I remember 2 lines of a German drama: "Woe to the land that has no heros",
and someone responds: "Woe to the land that needs heros!"
For
the sake of uniting
the Holy-One-Blessed-be-He and his Shekhina
(Divine Presence in female gender) to unite Y-H with W-H in complete/whole unity
in the name of all Israel and let's say: Amen.
These Aramaic
words are said
before blessing over the fulfillment of
certain kinds of commandments.
YHWH is the so-called name of God,
but is actually a verb: he who happens
"