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July 2003

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Sylvia: a Survivor’s Story

by Mina Cohen, USA

Sylvia told us how she tried to hold on to her mother when the Nazis came to take her to the gas chamber. Sylvia and her two sisters were rescued from the camp by Mme. Rothschild, and eventually made it to the United States. In 2001 Sylvia returned to Berlin, where her parents lived before the war, and demanded citizenship. “When I went to pick up my new passport, I told the policewoman that I am a Jew who has returned to live in Berlin, and we both cried.”

It is quiet in the room when she is finished speaking. Those of us with survivor parents get a hug and we thank her. Sylvia reaches for Beate’s hand and extends her other hand to Stephan. He makes a fist and won’t take her hands. His eyes are closed tight.

She gets up, faces him and gets down on her knees in front of him. She forces open his hands and works her way up to his face. She wipes the tears that are now there. One woman is now crying hysterically across the room. Many others have tears as well... After a time we are quiet. We make a tight circle around Sylvia and sing for peace. Stephan, by far the tallest in the group, looks down at Sylvia. She looks so fragile and bird-like next to him. He asks her to take off her glasses, he takes off his and they look at each other in silence as we encircle them.


Jews were forced by the Nazis to sew a yellow Star of David to their clothing.	Sylvia, a child holocaust survivor, encircled by participants after her listening session	Former S.S. Soldier, Otto, receives hugs from the group after his session

Listening to a Former Nazi

by Brian Berman, Jewish facilitator

In Berlin we listened to a former SS soldier. Several years ago, Otto dreamt that he was being kicked by people chasing after him, calling him “dirty swine”. Realizing he needed to face his past, he began to share his story. He received support from his men’s group at church and eventually went to Plum Village in France to study with Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh. Riveted, we listened to his story: his older brothers joined the Nazi party before him. One of his brothers became a resister after realizing what Hitler was doing, and eventually took his own life. His other brother was killed in Russia, where Otto himself was in many battles and was severely injured in a tank battle. His best friend died in that battle, alongside him.

Otto told us that he now has cancer, and doesn’t know how much longer he has to live. One by one, after his story, we embraced him. He told us he had never been in a room with so much love. Suddenly a Jewish participant, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, began to sob loudly in the corner. Soon she began to scream, releasing the deepest pain I have ever heard. She began to shout: “It’s NOT all right! It’s NOT all right! You cannot make this all right! Don’t tell me it’s all right! It’s not all right!” Otto stood in our circle as a small group of us surrounded her. Waiting until she calmed down, he took her hand and told her he had no way to ease her pain; he had never been in the presence of such pain. He knelt down on the ground in front of her, held her feet, and said, “I bow to your pain.”

Afterwards, her face was so soft. She smiled at us like a small child. She said she didn’t know where that emotion came from – that she had been to Auschwitz three times and had not experienced anything like this.

Gabrielle & Eve

“It is not possible to express in words, how I feel supported in what I always believed in: that it is necessary to face strong feelings, to express them, to face trauma, even when it is as overwhelming as the Holocaust. And to participate when a whole group of more than 30 is carrying this idea - that was more than I ever expected life would offer to me.

Writing this, there is a little concern inside, wondering if I listened enough, if I had room enough for the stories of the Jewish side. Or maybe it is my wish to hear more, because so many questions are still in my heart, waiting for you.”— Eve B. Rennebarth, Germany

“This was the most wonderful, loving, important project I have ever been a part of. I leave full and connected to myself, to Jewish-ness, to Jews and Germans. I feel proud to be part of the human race!”

Lord’s Prayer in Lebensgarten

by Miriam Bassuk, Jewish Participant

Lebensgarten:

Attic room full of light,
the Lord’s prayer written
in careful German letters
on the back wall.
Vater unser im Himmel

Lebensgarten, once a munitions
factory, now a community
devoted to peace.

Our circle is thirty-five strong,
half Germans, half Jews. We
hold hands, pass the peace feather
to speak what is most alive in us.

Sound of German translated to English, English to German.
Make space for the wound, now layered by several generations, a curse that wants to be
forgotten, yet keeps leaking out.

Together we move the first grief cry
afraid for so long to release it.
Hold me sister, hold me
brother. Embrace the child in me
who still can’t understand.

Berlin:

One swastika scrawled on a wall
coexists with the many brass plaques
to recall the names of Jews lost in the
Holocaust. Jewish schools gated and
guarded. Site of a synagogue now gone,
remembered with rows of empty seats.

In an alley, high up on a building
an artist’s rendering of a vulture,
opens and closes its wings for a coin.

We listen to witnesses
recount their stories:
Otto, an SS officer, who fought on the
Russian front; Sylvia, a Jew who lost her
mother at three. Ingrid and Lilo.
Impossible to remain unmoved.

A Jewish woman screams, an animal
sound that shudders on and on. Her
words, It’s not o.k. It was never o.k.
Otto moves toward the circle around
her, offers his comfort from a distance
with such soft eyes.

I watch a German man as he
listens to Sylvia with his fists
clenched. He doesn’t know
what he would have done,
and cannot forgive himself.
Close my eyes, he has boots,
a shaved head, steel stirrups.
Open my eyes. He is in pain.

Bergen Belsen:

Cemetery with mounds for thousands.
No smoke stack, no ovens, no smell.

I walk alone while the
trees stand by and watch. The
sun, radiant earlier is
shaded by smoky clouds.

Return to Lebensgarten:

Making love through soft face
and ready hug. Come home.
Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive
those who trespass against us…
Deliver us from evil.
Our Father in the Fatherland.

We merge two candlewicks into one
flame, dance to the sweet song
we make together.
Shalom, Salaam, Peace.

In Bergen Belsen, I thought
I saw a dogwood bloom,
low on the forest floor.

“This was the most wonderful, loving, important project I have ever been a part of...”