Sermon: 32407 + 34902 by Rev. Julie Lombard

Flashing back to a solidarity march for immigration that happened in August for families being separated at our borders and caged children, at a time when some parents were dropping off a kid at college where they will live on a campus- a planned community with a focus on learning- we are here to hear about another planned community with a different sort of focus- work camps that became a death camp for Jews in Poland and Gulags in Siberia.
We are here to talk about the book: The Tattooist of Auschwitz and Cilka’s Journey by Heather Morris. I am not here to give a book report and you are not part of a book group. I am a UU minister and you are followers of this faith we share. This is a shared ministry where we employ our values to guide us on every action we take.
This shared ministry called some to join with the effort and one special artist from this area to create a children’s casket to be carried on that journey to demand reform. Some folks provided food for the marchers, others broke bread at a meal with them at one of their many stops on the trail from Boston to Dover, NH, and many marched. This takes courage. UU’s know how to side with love in the face of controversy but sometimes that is not so easy to do.
The Tatooist of Auschwitz tells the story of one of those less than easy times when too many allowed awful things to happen. It’s a novel and it says so on the book. But the story Heather Morris weaves is not some story she has made up.
Morris wrote the story Lale told her after his wife had died and he himself was on death’s door. It was his story of their time in a concentration camp and how he became the tattooist, labeling his fellow human beings with scars they would take to their graves that said in a numeric fashion- I was here. It’s where he met Gita, the love of his life and their friend Cilka who’s story is told in the book: Cilka’s Journey.
Lale, number 32407, was held in the camp with many others- some Jews, some not, but all were seen as enemies of the regime in control. Not all were prisoners, some were workers that were free to leave daily to eat dinner at home with their families. They returned to work and build the camp and all it would become. Lale did not have elaborate training to become the tattooist… you could say he survived with the respect of many others and that got him his first interview for the job.
Shortly after arriving in the camp, Lale became very ill with Typhus and almost died. When he awakened from that illness he found himself being nursed back to life by Pepan, a prisoner wearing a red star, a French Economy Professor from Paris who had the title- the tattooist of Auschwitz.
Pepan said to Lale, “I saw a half starved young man risk his life to save you. I figured you must be someone worth saving. You intrigue me, Lale. I was drawn to you. You had strength that even your sick body couldn’t hide. It brought you to this point, sitting in front of me today.” Pepan offered that Lale become his tattooing assistant and that is how he became the Tattooist of Auschwitz. It didn’t hurt that he spoke many different languages or that he arrived early in the camp’s existence- he arrived in 1942 when it was a work camp, before its mission became a place to terminate Jewish lives. Speaking many languages helped get Cilka a desk job in the camp and later a nursing gig in a Gulag.
Lale arrived with many young Slovakian Jews. Also there was number 34902, Gita. She worked in a warehouse named Canada sorting confiscated belongings. The Tattooist of Auschwitz is their love story, how they survived camp life, and how they eventually found freedom. Cilka’s Journey tells her own path to finding freedom and love.
There’s a difficult journey that is full of sadness from the horrors they had to endure, being separated, being asked to do unimaginable things, and it is about how Lale and Gita reunited afterwards, married, and started a family. Cilka’s Journey also includes a reunion later in life between Cilka and Gita.
Back to Lale’s story, he stole things to survive, he traded the stolen items to help feed his fellow prisoners, and he was almost beaten to death by a friend not because his friend didn’t trust or like him, but because that was the world they were both forced to live in. It was an uncertain time and place where values weren’t always what guided someone to act. But even in that kind of hell, resilience, love and hope emerged.
It’s hard to image an Auschwitz love story, but I am certain Lale and Gita’s was not the only one. We think of love dying there, families being separated and put to death. Anne Frank’s story comes to mind, Daniel’s Diary, and Schindler’s List reminds us that we’ve heard these stories before.
Lale waited a lifetime to share his story. He didn’t begin to tell it until after Gita died a ripe old age. He couldn’t write it himself, so he told his story to someone who could. Critics have tried to say parts of his story are untrue, but so many parts have been confirmed.
Stories like Lale’s shape our minds and can be powerful tools that reduce prejudice and help persuade the open-minded listener. There’s a Native American proverb that says, “The one who tells the story rules the world.” Lale’s mantra was, “To save one is to save the world.”
Stories have the power to change how we relate to one another. Psychologists believe that assimilation is where the listener or reader takes on the qualities of another group. This can be a fictional character like Harry Potter or a real life person like Lale, Gita, or Cilka.
What stories do to us is numerous. Transportation and identification are some of products stories offer. Transportation is when the listener loses themselves in the story world while identification is where we take on the perspective and identity of a character. Research suggests that transportation and identification may be related to the ability to empathize with others. Anthony Horowitz believes that reading is not just relaxation. He thinks it helps us build new world full of people and it can allow us to unlock secrets.
Neuroscientists from the University of Cambridge are looking what happen to the brain when we read. Dr. Olaf Hauk is studying the idea of when you read a word like “jump” how it stimulates the brain area that commands the body to jump. There’s a theory that mirror neurons that are triggered inside our brains which help create empathy and that this might also be what’s going on when we hear stories. This emersion allows us to feel sad when we read about someone who is sad, or smile when we hear about happy people. When we connect with characters, they become a social surrogate for us. Scientists call this forming a para-social relationship. It can make us feel less lonely, buffer self-esteem, and improve our mood. It’s difficult to thinks reading about a concentration camp or gulag could improve our mood- but it can.
We already know the importance of friendships, but what scientists are finding out is these friendships don’t have to be with real people. If you are trying to change people’s opinion about a controversial topic such as the holocaust, immigration, or same sex marriage, stories have been a lot more effective tool in producing this kind of change.
Researchers led by Psychologist, Loris Vezzali have shown that children who have read Harry Potter reduce their prejudice towards immigration. Children love to hear stories, but aren’t we all children at heart? Stories help us understand the world we live in and ourselves better. Dr. Zoe Walkington the Open University thinks that these stories can increase empathy, reduce prejudice and loneliness, and can be a very persuasive tool.[1]
Let’s look at another prisoner’s story to affirm that there are positive things we can learn from these kinds of stories. Terry Waite believes one can learn about happiness from being held hostage. For 1,763 days, almost five years, Terry was held hostage. He was the Archbishop of Canterbury’s special envoy held against his will in West Beirut. He was there trying to negotiate the release of hostages when he became one himself.
Terry says he had nothing, he never saw the sun, sky, or felt the wind on his face. He slept on the floor as he was kept in a cell in bombed out buildings or in basements. He thought to himself, “How am I going to utilize this time? What am I going to do?”
What he did was write a poem about anger because he thought he had to learn how to master it. This is his poem:
Anger is like a consuming fire Seeking all whom it may devour Do not extinguish the flames totally But calm yourself by the gentle glow of the embers.
What he meant was that if he allowed his anger to get the better of him, it would destroy him. Anger is a natural human force that we all have. He believes we cannot obliterate it totally. Rather our aim is to take that force and utilize it constructively. You might find yourself with restrictions or having limited circumstances, you may not know what the future holds in store, but he urges us all to remember one thing- this is life now. Terry says, “In this moment, don’t be defeated. There’s no reason to feel sorry for yourself…” and what I think he is trying to say is pity won’t help us get to where we ultimately want to go.
At first, Terry thought his years in captivity were totally wasted, but he came to realize that they weren’t. There, he was forced to use his imagination. He thought up all sorts of things. He wrote his first book in his head and we’ve already heard his poem. Today, it is his great regret that the arts, music, literature, poetry are seen as not being all that necessary. This saddens him because he believes our minds need something to draw on, something to refer to, something that will fill out the fullness of our lives. Nietzsche said, “We have art so that we shall not die of reality.”
Terry feels there’s so much suffering in the world; people suffering from mental illness, from strain, from stress, from having so much pressure forced on them. Therefore, he believes we need to increase more than ever this ability to be at peace with ourselves and within. He’s uncertain one ever reaches a state of complete happiness. Yet, we can strive to have a greater degree of inner contentment which he believes is part of the road towards happiness.[2]
Perhaps you do not need to have experienced captivity like Terry, Lale, Gita, or Cilka’s to find the happiness, resilience, hope, and love behind the walls that separate. All you need to do is to live this day, utilize this moment, and live out Lale’s mantra- save one life and you save the world.
May it be so. Amen