Pebbles of remembrance for the Holocaust
A gate at the Nazi prison camp at Dachau bears the infamous words "Arbeit macht frei" ("Work makes you free"). Credit: Fred Schramm
As Holocaust Remembrance Day approaches each spring, I am glad we as a society never forget. The event begins this evening, April 15.
We recall the 6 million Jews killed in Nazi camps, along with so many others. We give thanks for the miracle workers, heroes who saved Jews and others from the Nazis before and during World War II through acts of kindness -- Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish humanitarian who worked in Budapest; German industrialist Oskar Schindler, of "Schindler's List" fame; and various diplomats, medical workers and clerics. These people were inspired deep within to behave like saints when saints were desperately needed.
In 2009, my husband and I traveled to the Dachau concentration camp just outside of Munich. I collect rocks from wherever I go as souvenirs, so I can touch, feel and remember places. I picked up not one or two, but three rocks from the grounds at Dachau, where from 1933 to 1945 more than 200,000 people endured hardship and pain and some 41,500 were put to death.
I put the stones in my coat pockets, but later on I regretted it, wondering why I needed three rocks -- or any rocks -- from a place of such darkness, untold suffering and sorrow. I didn't have the heart to toss them in the garbage. I made a snap decision: On our tour through Germany, Austria and Switzerland, I would throw one onto the Alps when a cable car brought my husband and me up to the top, then another in the lake in Lucerne where swans swim. The Alps signified the neutrality of Switzerland and the swans signified peace. Leaving the rocks there, in my mind, would neutralize their negative energy.
That left one final rock. I imagined putting it onto the altar in the one of the many churches and cathedrals we'd visit on our trip.
Each time I turned a corner there was another church, but I couldn't get up my nerve to put a rock on an altar. I was afraid someone would disapprove. You coward, I thought to myself.
This went on for the next seven days. We must have gone through 20 churches.
On the last day, we went on a horse-carriage ride through the Tyrolean countryside outside of Innsbruck, Austria. I had almost forgotten about the rock in my pocket. The carriage driver stopped to show us the most beautiful church in the area -- the Pilgrimage Church of St. Peter and Paul in Götzens village. It was a pink-and-white building with a cemetery. The interior was magnificent and vast. Six side altars flanked the aisle to the main altar. I impulsively plopped the rock down on the first side altar on my right.
Done! Relief.
I noticed a black-and-white portrait of a priest hanging from a brass, life-sized crucifix next to that altar. Outside, a carriage driver told me the priest was killed in a concentration camp. My research told me it was the Rev. Otto Neururer, who who was carted off to Dachau when he refused to perform a wedding for a parishioner's daughter and a friend of a local Nazi official.
According to records, he was injected with malaria in Nazi experiments after having been tortured. He eventually was hanged at the Buchenwald camp. He is considered a martyr and is on his way to canonization by the Vatican.
Out of all the churches we had been to, it had to be that one. The coincidence of leaving a rock from Dachau gave me a feeling of joy, and of the presence of God.
Reader Gloria Schramm lives in North Bellmore.
