Holocaust Remembrance Day - Two books

Holocaust Remembrance Day

Two Books to Recommend

The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million by Daniel Mendelsohn

The Himmler Brothers: A German Family History by Katrin Himmler

 

            Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day. There are things we hold in our memories because we desire to remember and other things we simply know we must not forget. Some might imagine that the Holocaust happened long ago, and so we should move on. But the Holocaust isn’t simply a one of a kind event. We know better don’t we? We know or should know of Rwanda, Cambodia’s killing fields, Stalin’s extermination of millions in Ukraine, Leopold’s slaughter of up to half the population the Congo Free State, America’s ghettoization of the Native American, and the Ottoman Empire’s treatment of Armenians. We are today confronted with actions of genocide taking place in the Middle East. The Holocaust is unfortunately not a one of a kind event unlike anything in human history. It is the highlighted symbol of failed collectivized human conscience being able to justify scapegoating and mass murders. It can be easily argued that every war reminds us how quickly we can be lead to believe that killing others is a problem solver.

            After last year’s election I decided I should read up on the Holocaust. It wasn’t that I believed Donald Trump was the reincarnation of Adolph Hitler or Pol Pot. I was concerned at his ease in scapegoating groups, and the inclusion of certain persons from the alt-right on his roundtable of advisors. I wanted to take a closer look at the holocaust not because I thought one was imminent but because it mostly easily occurs where people grow complacent in imagining such a thing could never happen here.

            These two books I am recommending for reading are like mirror presentations of the holocaust. Both books are written by authors who are descendants of persons connected to the holocaust. Both books are written because of the authors’ connections to a grandfather’s brother. In Daniel Mendelsohn’s family history not many details of the death of Mendelsohn’s grandfather’s Uncle Schmiel was known. It was only known that he, his wife, and their four beautiful daughters were killed by the Nazis. That was a sentence Daniel Mendelsohn heard without a lot of elaboration several times growing up. Daniel Mendelsohn’s book The Lost is his story of seeking to know more about that family lost in the holocaust. It was a story about six of the six million whose lives and life stories were cut off in the darkness of the holocaust.

            Katrin Himmler wrote her book with a focus on the infamous Heinrich Himmler and his brothers, one of which was his youngest brother Ernst, who was Katrin Himmler’s grandfather. She wrote as one whose ancestry had left her a painful legacy. Both authors wrote from different aspects of persons haunted by family history. Katrin Himmler begins the telling of her family history with something that happened in a German school room where she grew up, when she was 15 years old. At age 15, as the names of the role were read off and her name “Himmler” was announced, another student asked if she was related to that Himmler. She answered quietly in the affirmative. The classroom became uncomfortably completely silent. The teacher not knowing how to bring good out of the situation, perhaps herself overpowered by the moment, moved to change the subject. Later Katrin Himmler, a German who often thought about how terrible it must have been to have been a Jewish person during the holocaust met a Jewish man whose ancestor had been saved by being given an Aryan identification and hidden out from the Nazis. The Jewish man had wondered what it was like to be part of the Nazi establishment. He had enjoyed making model Messerschmitt planes, and carefully painting Swastikas on them. They understood each other in ways that few people understood them. They are now married. Katrin Himmler had spent some years trying to piece together her family’s past from family archives of letters, from conversations, and from historical details. When her son was born Katrin Himmler pondered how a day would come when her son would ask questions about why one side of his family had tried to kill and destroy the other side of her family. Her research was all the more important so she became determined to see her work brought to completion in publication.

            Katrin Himmler’s research had disturbed the myths of only limited family participation in Hitler’s National Socialist Party. It was a story of how three brothers, the sons of a respected school headmaster and a practical Roman Catholic mother, let their cultivated German nationalism be channeled into participation in Germany’s Nazi regime.

            Taken together the two books helped give me a feel of those times from both sides of the Holocaust; the oppressor and the oppressed, the innocent and the evil. The Lost by Mendelsohn is a beautiful work, including the story of his search which took place on several continents, to the discovery of more of the story of the lost family’s lives and their sad deaths; and also an interesting presentation of rabbinic contemplations from some of the seemingly parallel stories of the Book of Genesis. These features of Mendelsohn’s book are all intertwined into one of the most beautiful, moving, and powerful books I have ever read.

            Katrin Himmler’s book, because of the subject matter, can never be beautiful. It is a sobering story. We are reminded that evil is often connected to persons whose lives can be in many ways ordinary and normal. We watch the sons of a school headmaster and a practicing Catholic mother with helpful connections to the Bavarian royal family become men of their own families enjoying connections to the ruling Nazi Party that began to dominate Germany in 1932. Something happened to turn the children from every day children into willing servants of one of humanity’s most evil regimes. Between the two books we remember two lost families. One is a family lost to the Holocaust that we wish might have lived out their lives and be remembered by descendants from their elderly years. The other lost family we simply need to remember because we dare not forget them. Together the two books didn’t help me to understand the Holocaust. They only helped me feel it a little more than I once did. So now, removed from its context, I can feel part of the story because of what Daniel Mendelsohn and Katrin Himmler have labored to make certain their family stories could be told.

Where I am/reading Part One

Where I am and What I am Reading

As Lent came to an End

Part One – Where I am

            This is the first of two or probably three blogs this week on where I am in life and what I am reading. I hope you will find it as much about life as it is about what books I am reading, as my recent renaissance in reading is connected to what has been happening in my life.

            I discovered a few days before the traditional Lenten season that my life had become disoriented. I was going through the motions of life with little purpose and almost without any self-discipline. I guess everyone can discover that is where they are in life, but I think for those of us who are single that can be a problem aggravated by our being alone. If you find yourself at that place in life, you have my understanding and prayers for “all the lonely people”. If you don’t struggle with this, watch for those who do. Don’t make them a project but don’t ignore them.

            The Lenten season proved to be a good time for me to begin dealing with where I had found myself at this point in life. During the Lenten season, in addition to going through some of those ordinary strange eating changes one takes on in the season, I sought to focus on two areas where I would give myself to seek change in habits, so as to increase my opportunities to grow in grace, as a I grow in age. I was especially feeling called to place a priority during the Lenten season on consistent morning and evening devotions, and also to becoming a more consistent reader. When one is sick and seeks to recover, a first place to begin is often in eating to acquire the nutrition of life. Thus, devotions, prayers, and reading seemed a natural place to begin on the road to recovery.

            In one of my most recent blogs I wrote about how there were a couple of books I was interested in reading. My practice had been to focus on reading just one book at a time. I had started Thomas Merton’s No Man is an Island several times but never got through it, and Michael Wear had asked me to read and express how I viewed his book Reclaiming Hope. I enjoyed it and blogged about it. I am scheduled to attend an arts conference (including writing, basically a being creative conference) called the Glen Workshop later this summer. I decided to begin preparing myself for this event by reading a book by Gregory Wolfe entitled How Beauty Will Save the World. Wolfe was the founder of Image, an arts journal; and the Glen Workshops in Santa Fe are an offshoot of the creative mindset of the journal. I discovered in reading all three books at the same time that instead of each of the different styles and messages of the books distracting me, the variety helped keep me more interested in each and all of the books. Reading multiple books has also helped me avoid becoming the ardent advocate of whatever has been my latest book to read. All this is old hat and review, but I tell it because it seems to be part of a life changing discovery for this old man.

            I will speak in today’s blog only of a couple of new things. The first is that I have a whole new batch of books I am reading. They are the ones shown in the picture. I have a meditative book I am reading a few pages from after morning devotions entitled Let Your Life Speak by Parker J. Palmer. I have decided to start reading more fiction. So I am reading Wise Blood from Flannery O’Connor’s collected works. This is also connected to the upcoming Glen Workshops since Karen Swallow Pryor will be one of the speakers and she will be conducting workshops on Flannery O’Connor’s writings. How to Survive the Apocalypse by Robert Joustra and Alissa Wilkinson also has a workshop connection as Alissa Wilkinson will lead workshops on writing movie reviews. I enjoy writing about the movies I see, but I am looking forward to honing my skills at knowing how to critique movies. There is so much to consider when one is looking at a movie. How is the script? How is the acting? How about the photography? There is so much more that as I have begun writing about movies I realize that my mind is not trained to see more than a glimpse of what is taking place in a film. The other two books I am reading are The Benedict Option which I have decidedly double-minded opinions of, and an interesting book from a rare perspective on the holocaust – Himmler Brothers written by Katrin Himmler, a grand-daughter of Heinrich Himmler’s youngest brother. She writes tracing how three brothers became Nazis, who were the offspring of a conservative Catholic family, whose father was the headmaster of a school. Katrin Himmler’s book is especially interesting when you realize she married a Jewish man, and part of her reason for deciding to publish her research into her family history was her felt need to tell her son the horrible story of the holocaust as a representative of a family that contributed so much evil to the world and history into which he was born. I knew when I discovered that part of the story that I had to read this one. I will write more about these books I am reading as the week goes on.

            The last thing I want to say in today’s blog is that we are now in the Easter season. He has risen. My life is more than reading books (sigh and relief flow mingled together). Having discovered my life to be disordered I needed to get down to the basics of feeding myself through devotions and reading and prayers. Now that Easter has come up, a new emphasis is about to start. The phrase I am using for this season in my life is “Rise and Walk.” It is a good Easter theme. It means I start putting an emphasis on things like my work attitude and taking care of my house which is located under the piles I have let build up because I have been disordered. We are works in progress. We all have clutter at least metaphorically and some of us quite extraordinarily in the ordinary sense of the word. Look for some blogging on the books I am reading later in the week. Thank you for taking the time to read my thoughts today. I hope there was something you could extract from the post to enrich your own life.

How and What I've been reading

How and What I’ve been Reading

By Dan McDonald

 

            I recently changed how I go about reading books. I have always been a person who thinks constantly and enjoys writing his thoughts out. While books I have read have had an immense impact on how I consider and hopefully navigate life, I haven’t been one to read many books. In recent years I have tried to change that but with mostly partial success. I suspect that there are quite a few people who were reading more, and in addition to reading more had a stronger degree of intentional purpose in their reading program. I am writing this blog to suggest that recently I stumbled accidentally on a plan that I think will both increase the amount and the value my reading has in regard to how I use a reading program to strengthen the varied dimensions of my ability to think and also to converse constructively with others.

            In the past I have sought to focus on reading one book at a time. I figured I would be able to understand the message of the book better if I focused solely on one book at a time. I was definitely into one book relationships. Maybe it is part of a personality disorder. I tend to eat my food the same way unless I think someone is watching me. Yes I will start with one thing on my plate and work my way from one thing on the plate to another until I am finished.  Since I have heard that is a dorky way to eat if I see you watching I mix things up because I want to be cool. So anyway if an old Beach Boys song was parodied to speak of my reading style it would “Be true to your book.”

            That is okay, if you do it that way and like it. I had no plans to change my habit. At the end of last year and the beginning of this year I read a wonderful book using that method. I read The Lost by Daniel Mendelsohn. It was about family members from an older generation lost to the holocaust. The generation that knew the family best was dying and Daniel Mendelsohn wanted to know the story of his family members, the six of six million. I came home every night yearning to read more of the book. I readily recommend it as one of the finest books I have ever read.

            When you are a be true to your book sort of guy who reads only one book at a time, there is a sort of difficult time selecting the next book. You are suffering from a break up for one thing. How do you move on when you have been reading The Lost by Daniel Mendelsohn. You can’t imagine the next book will be better. You expect a letdown. That is one of the problems I have always had reading one book at a time. You want that next book to be the right book for right now. The choice of that next book is like going through a cafeteria where you only get one main entrée and you know that whatever you select you will wish you had chosen a different one by the time you sit down and say your “Bless these gifts to our use and us to thy service.” Then finishing your prayer you think I wish I had taken the manicotti.

            I went through at least a month trying to figure out the next be true to your book selection. Then Lent was coming. I try to keep Lent. I find it a deeply enriching season. I definitely wanted to read a meditative book. I had often tried to read No Man is an Island by Thomas Merton. That would be a great book to read during the Lenten season. If I read 7 pages a night for forty nights I would read it in the Lenten season. I figured I could do that.

            There was also a book written by Michael Wear entitled Reclaiming Hope. I had followed Michael Wear on Twitter. I was a Republican and a Conservative although finding I was becoming increasingly comfortable with much that can be viewed as Progressive. Michael Wear had worked with the Obama administration, but mostly I appreciated the respect he showed to most everyone with whom he discussed some political issue. This was the sort of guy that I figured we needed more of, if ever we were to see civility in our polarized national politics. He had even asked me to read his book and to express how I viewed it. I had ordered his book before it was published and I felt both an obligation and desire to read it. I added it to my forty days of Lent readings, again 7 pages for forty nights was doable for two books and not just one.

            This summer I was scheduled to go to a conference involving Christians and the Arts. It was sponsored by Image Journal, a magazine founded by Gregory Wolfe, who had also been instrumental in beginning the Glens Workshop. His book Beauty Will Save the World had been recommended to me. I decided to make that my third and final book for my Lenten Season reading program. I did add reading the quarterly Image Journal from cover to cover to my reading, although I didn’t set a specific goal of how quickly to get that one done.

            I discovered that reading more books with fewer pages as a goal for each book had some benefits. First of all I didn’t get as obsessed about the books I was reading. You know the sort of person who is always a bit too insistent that you just need to read this book. As I began reading Merton, together with Michael Wear, and Gregory Wolfe I found that each of these writers had something to say to me, and because they weren’t the same genre of literature they affected different aspects of my humanity. Obsession was seemingly minimized and I was being impacted in a more rounded out way. Perhaps I shouldn’t say that. People that know me could make a better judgment than I can. But at least I felt that this reading three different kinds of book at one time was feeding my intellect in a more rounded way.

            Perhaps I will write book reviews eventually. It was quite an accomplishment for me to get through Merton’s book. I had tried to several times before. But reading fewer pages and not feeling that I needed to get everything out of the book or I was failing to do it justice helped me to absorb what I was at this time ready to absorb. Merton is a careful thinker. He writes in a contemplative way, often pithy, but he is setting out views on great spiritual considerations. He engages the soul, and speaks to the will while contemplating the spiritual life with heart and intellect. There is a simplicity and intensity that exude from the pages of his writing.

            Michael Wear’s book proved to be as wonderful as I hoped it would be. I could wish my most Conservative friends would read his work, in order to realize that there are Democrats, who if we wish to build a more perfect union of states will be helpful to us in making our nation work better. If Benjamin Franklin were speaking to us in our day he would likely give some of the same advice he gave to those hoping to transform the thirteen colonies into one United States of America. He would tell us “We must either hang together or hang separately.” In his day if the revolutionaries failed they would likely be rounded up for treason. In our day as much as we might not be able to stand the other side, and especially the other side as we imagine them, the consequences of not being able to work together and hang together might be a preliminary to either an unworkable nation that will begin its decline into irrelevance, o we might become a nation of warring passions with enmity characterizing our politics and endangering our safety no matter much we spend on defense. Michael Wear’s book exemplifies civility.

            I have left almost no words to say about Gregory Wolfe’s Beauty Will Save the World. Wolfe had begun making his mark on the world supporting the Christian right that led to the Reagan presidential triumph. In a short time, he felt the emptiness of the victory. Part of his book is his expressing why he decided that cultures are changed and shaped more by the arts than politics. It doesn’t mean that politics is unimportant. But is our culture more shaped by our politics or by the books we read, the poems we remember, the songs we hear and sing, the crafts we find giving our hands creative outlet to express our feelings mind, body, and soul.

            As I have finished these three books, I do not feel the need to pick the one perfect book to read next. I have been long thinking about what sort of books I should read next. I know there will be variety in the sort of books I will read. I will plod through the books a few pages at a time. I have actually read slightly more than a book a month this year, which I probably haven’t done in decades. I fell into reading multiple books when I couldn’t decide which book would be my next one and only. I probably will read multiple books for the rest of my life. I hope you have enjoyed this piece. Maybe next time I will write about my newest three books I am reading, but this piece is already long enough don’t you think? Besides, I have some books I ought to be reading.

            I can recommend all these books: