www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West A visit - just a story

This may not be the proper area for this story. And I will understand if the moderator remove it.

A friends asked me to stop by because the lady who lived near him needed an electrician. I agreed to do that. I knew who she was but had never met her.

She is a Polish woman who survived Auschwitz - or something like that. I was not sure.

When I arrived there, my friend introduced us. She is shy and her husband had died several years ago, and she lived alone. The electrical task turned out real easy. A piece of cake� and so I did not charge her full for the hour.

While we sat at the kitchen table as she was making out the check I said �You are on a fixed income.. The usual price is $40 - but you can pay me what you can afford.� and then I could not resist anymore �So your husband was a friend of Maximillon Kolby (the saint)?� Sh4 said �Yes� and motioned for me to follow her. She showed me a picture of Kolby and a picture of her husband �They look alike don�t they� she commented in her accent.

Her husband and Kolby shared the same barracks. And they became friends. It is rumored that it was indeed, her husband George, that Kolby replaced on that day when Kolby had stood forth from the line and said �Take me instead. I am a Roman Catholic priest.� but I dared not ask her.

We wandered back into the kitchen and she began telling me about the war. Of how, while standing in line for the soldiers they had noticed that she (a young girl) was clinging to her mother and when the guards had asked �Are you related?� - they had answered �Yes� and so they were separated. The family next in line, seeing what had happened, had lied �No.. we do not know each other� and had gotten to stay together.

She and her husband to be did not meet until after the war. In 1940 she was sent to concentration camp - her crime? She was a Catholic. The war began in 1939 and in 1940 the Nazis were rounding up - gypsies, Christians, Jehovah�s Witnesses, mentally or physically handicapped - for death. Two years later was when they came for the Jews.

As she was telling me all this.. I noticed that she was actually physically shaking. I was concerned and so I wanted her to stop� so I interjected �Yes.. And now - you are in America.� She know what I was doing, trying to calm her� and said �It is good for me to talk about it.� And she carried on.

Her husbands �crime� was being a male and 25 years old. That was why he was arrested. She told me how the Natzi had announced that all educators should meet in this certain school - and begin discussing how education should take place under the occupation - but it was a trick and every teacher who had come - was arrested and sent to concentration camp.

The things she had seen, are impossible for us to imagine. During the Nazi extermination of the Warsaw ghettos - mothers would wrap their babies in featherbed mattresses and throw them out of the windows to the ground (at the perimeter of the ghetto) but the Nazis came and killed all the babies.

All in all we talked for about two hours.. I will not relate all she said except to end that when the American troops and the Russian toops meet at the Elba River line - she was in Antwerp (on the American side of the river) and the Russians were on the other side of the river. They had no radios.. Nothing.. And they were not told what was happening - but they sent strong swimmers across the river to bring back news.

The news - was not good. Russians were committing atrocities. Like the Nazis - the population had to do such as hide their sisters and daughter anyway they could. The Polish people feared the Communists as much as they feared the Nazis. They would do such things as board them up in attics.

They were unaware that the Americans were trying to obtain a portion of Berlin (which lay within the Russian zone) and that the Russians finally agreed� but only if they were given Antwerp! Two days before the dealine of Russian troops moving into Antwerp - the Americans quickly evacuated - everyone - thus the Russains o=btained Antwerp - but the clever Americans denied the Communists - the people of Antwerp.

As I began to leave - she followed me to the kitchen door and the talked turned to Iraq. I said �I can not understand how it is that some people are against the war there.. And say we should not be there. That we should not be defending Iraq from the terrorist who have come there.� Her face got stern and she said �One less tyrant in the world (Saddam) is always - good.� I said �There are some people who think all killing is wrong.� and she said something strange for such a frail little lady who was a teenage girl when all this happened to her ��Don�t think that I could not have - killed.� and I could see in her face that if we had been there to experience the reality of the horror - we too would have come to reality - that there are times when to kill in defense against such people as the Nazis who were destructive of anything we humans hold dear - is a necessary defense of the human race� and what good there is in being human. The command is �You shall not murder� and not you shall not kill in self defense.

When a person is faced with the reality that there are people - who despise all human values of love, family, honesty and honor - and make it a crusade to eradicate all these �impurities and weaknesses� by purging a portion of humanity� in the name of a better social order� all intellectual arguments against killing in self defense - are washed away. Beneath the intellectual arguments and debates - there is an innate human desire to hold onto and embrace - what it is to be human - what it is to remain human - and what it is to finally reach such a position as to put violence to work in order to stop those who would murder all that is human.

And so I left her. But knowing that I was welcome to come back and visit. She does not take visitors. Her life is around her family, her sons and daughter who visit often. She and her husband has made only an archival recording of their war experiences for the government - but other than that - she and he - had always refused to discuss the war - as much as people wanted to hear of her experiences and especially about Father Kolby - she had told only the government and the investigators from the church (the offcial investigation into Kolby).

It was an honor for me to know that - I was invited to visit, and talk with her, again.

I do not think I have ever met a sweeter girl within the body of an aged Polish grandmother.

I had never read the books on Kolby, but I knew the general story. What I was so grateful to know is that Kolby did not just substitute himself in some generic way on religious principles. Rather - Kolby substituted himself for a friend. Kolby hear the voice in his heart and did not deny it out of fear. It was the voice of God in the movement of human love. Kolby substituted himself for a friend. He know - the guards, upon hearing that he was a Catholic priest, would gladly jump at the moment to murder a priest who came forward displaying such a human movement as to go to death to save a friend. That is something the guards did not want in camp� human love� it is something they did not want in the world. These guards saw it as the - cause - of the world�s troubles� and we see it as the goal of what it is - to be human. It is not a principle. It is not a rule. It is not even a religious act - it is a movement - a life - something which is felt in the soul that is greater than mind.

One last word. One thing that really stuck within my mind as - wisdom. When we talked about being in America now for so many years (this I had done when she was shaking and I wanted her to stop telling me the stories that reminded her of that time in her life) - I was trying to bring the discussion around to something like (�Ah� but that is all over and you have had years of American life, a nice home, many children, etc..�)� she knew what I was trying to do and she said to me �The blessing that I count is the blessing of being able to die in a bed with clean sheets.�

A blessing which we - take for granted� and so many others around the world are denied.

Thank you for reading.

-ray

Dear RayK:

A poignant story as is the story of many survivors of the holocaust: Christians, especially Catholics, and Jews alike.

Amado

P.S. I am just wondering WHY are you posting with a different handle? A new "leash" on life?

I lost my hotmail account in which I kept the copy of the email with my orginal password. For the life of me (after I deleted my cookies) I have no idea what it was.

So yes, you must be refering to my evil twin brother.

-ray

Dear Ray,

Thank you for that story. It is good sometimes to read about the evil that can exist in the world, especially when hearts turn away from God. Hopefully, we Christians will make sure that our land will always be focused on Him.

Zenovia

Dear Ray,

People can't seem to realize that the war in the Middle East, is against a political system, equal to Nazism and Communism. The religious/political system of Islam, believes that the individual must give its all for the state.

If it were not so, these Islamic extremists would not be sacrificing their people to poverty, and their youth to death. Evil reigns in that part of the world, and hopefully we will combat it in its bud, and not wait for it to fully bloom.

We waited too late in the last century, at the cost of probably one-hundred million lives.

Zenovia

Ray,

Thanks for that story and good to see you back posting, even if we do have to recognize your evil twin by a new nick . Prayers that all continues well with you.

Many years,

Neil

Dear RayK:

Now, you tell me!

During the proliferation of ISP-provided email accounts, I had ALL of them with different handles and PWs. I simply lost count!

I have long decided to abandon my multiple, split personalities and stick to only one. I hate arguing with myself!

Amado

P.S. Can't our Administrator solve the technical problems? I miss the "continuity" of your posts: you come like an orphaned ghost of your evil twin brother!

Ray,
Thank you so much for posting this for us!
I am glad it is here so that I will be able to read it again later.
Sincerely,
CS

PS It is spelled "Kolbe"

Ray

Beautiful post , thank-you

Thank you, Ray.

The Slavic world has suffered so much for centuries- much, but not all of it, at the hands of other Slavs.

I hope and pray that all of us, Catholic and Orthodox, will have a better future.

I found it interesting that this story about Father Kolbe (who was canonized as a martyr by John Paul II in 1981) came up on the board, because when our Holy Father passed, I couldn't help but remember a quote of Kolbe's. I'm not sure if this is exact, but it's close...

On Earth, I work with only one hand, but in heaven, I will work with two.

I thought, now JP II also works with two hands... and imagine what he did down here with one tied behind his back! More good things to come?

Ooooh! I found Kolbe's actual quote on the 'net. I was close:

�On earth, we can only work with one hand, since with the other we have to hold fast to the hand railing, in order not to fall. But in heaven it will be different! No danger of slipping or falling, and we will work far more, using both hands!�

Thank you for posting this.
Let us pray for their intercession, as well as that of all the holy ones there in heaven!

Wow.