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Sermon | August 30, 2020 |Rev. Julie Lombard
Cilka (From Cilka’s Journey by Heather Morris) 
Lale & Gita (From The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris)
Flashing back to last August 2019, I was in a solidarity march for families being separated at our borders at a time when some parents, such as myself, were dropping off a kid at college where they would live on a campus- a planned community with a focus on learning- we gather to hear about another planned community with a different sort of focus- work camps that became a death camp for Jews in Poland and the Gulags in Siberia.
I gather us here to talk about the books: 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 fantasy book group. I am your 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 solidarity march and a UU artist to create a mock children’s casket which was carried on that journey demanding immigration reform. Some folks provided food and housing 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 so many took turns marching. This takes courage. Thankfully 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.
She wrote the story Lale told her after his wife had died and he was at the end of life. It’s 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, there were workers that were free to leave daily. They returned to work with the prisoners like Lale to build the camp and all it would become.
Lale did not have elaborate training to become a tattooist… you could say he survived with the respect of others and that got him his first interview for the job. 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.” With that, Pepan offered Lale to chance to become his assistant. That’s how Lale became the Tattooist of Auschwitz. It helped that he spoke different languages and that he arrived early in the camp’s existence when it was a work camp, before its mission became a place to terminate Jewish lives. Speaking many languages helped Cilka get a desk job there and later become a nurse in a Gulag.
Lale arrived with many young Slovakian Jews. Also there was number 34902, Gita. She worked in a warehouse sorting confiscated belongings. The Tattooist of Auschwitz is their love story, how they survived imprisonment, and how they eventually found freedom. Cilka’s Journey tells her own similar voyage.
Theirs was a difficult journey that was full of sadness from the horrors they had to endure, being separated, being asked to do unimaginable things, yet the stories offer hope since it is about how Lale and Gita reunited afterwards, married, and started a family. Cilka’s Journey is her own freedom tale.
Back to Lale, he stole things to survive, then traded the stolen items to help feed his fellow prisoners. 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. These were uncertain times where values weren’t always what guided people. 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 and Schindler’s List reminds us that we’ve heard these stories before.
Lale waited a lifetime to share his story with us. He didn’t begin to tell it until after Gita died at a ripe old age. He knew 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 affirmed.
Stories like his shape our minds. They are powerful tools that reduce prejudice and help persuade the open-minded. 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 understand that assimilation is where the listener takes on the qualities of another group. This can happen with a fictional character like Harry Potter or a real person like Lale, Gita, or Cilka.
Transportation and identification are more by-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. Researchers believe that these abilities are related to the ability to empathize with others. One of these researchers, Anthony Horowitz, thinks that reading is not just for relaxation because these stories help us expand our worldviews and it can help us to unlock secrets.
Neuroscientists at the University of Cambridge are looking what happens to the brain when we read. They’re studying how reading stimulates the brain areas. Think of the word- jump. Your brain waves reflect that action. There’s a theory that mirror neurons that are triggered inside our brains that help create empathetic pathways when we hear such stories. When we connect with characters, they become a social surrogate. Scientists call this forming a para-social relationship. They can make us feel less lonely, buffer self-esteem, and improve our mood. It’s unimaginable to think that reading about a concentration camp or gulag could improve our mood, but it can.
We already know the importance of friendships here, and what scientists are finding out is that these friendships don’t have to be with real people. If you are trying to change opinions about a controversial topic such as the holocaust, immigration, or LBGTQ rights, stories are a very effective tool in producing this kind of change. Researchers 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 says that these kinds of stories increase empathy, reduce prejudice and loneliness, and can be a very persuasive tool. 1https://www.bbc.com/ideas/videos/how-stories-shape-our-minds/p07h9t70 08/17/2019
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, nearly five years, he was held hostage. You may know him as 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.
He tells how he had nothing, he never saw the sun, sky, or felt the wind on his face. He slept on the floor in a cell in bombed out buildings or in basements. While there, 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 his anger. 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, not his captors. Anger is a natural human force that we all have. He believes we should not obliterate it totally. Rather, our aim could be to use it constructively. In this pandemic, you might find yourself with restrictions or having limited circumstances, you may not know what the future holds in store, but Terry urges us to remember one thing- this is life now. He 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 to get to where we ultimately want to go- freedom.
At first, Terry thought his years in captivity were wasted, but he came to realize 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, we’ve already heard his poem. Today, it is his great regret that the arts, music, literature are seen as not being all that necessary. This saddens him deeply 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 agreed by saying, “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 and he thought this before the pandemic started. He believes we need to increase our ability to be at peace with ourselves. I believe we need this more than ever. I’m uncertain one ever reaches a state of complete happiness. Yet, we can strive to have a greater degree of inner contentment which Terry thinks get us on the road towards happiness.2https://www.bbc.com/ideas/videos/what-being-a-hostage-taught-me-about-happiness/p06yyqzx 08/17/2019
We do not need to have experienced captivity to find happiness, resilience, hope, and love. Liberation and freedom can be found in many ways. We need to remember to ‘live this day’, utilize this moment, and live out Lale’s mantra- save one life and you save the world. (1853)
May it be so. Amen
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