matthewclind

Stutthof Concentration Camp, Poland

Ramah

What rough beast, indeed, slouching toward Stutthof to be born...

Behold, a church:

Brick and mortar.

But what strange tint

That mortar!

What diabolical alchemist

From the depths of hell

Mixes the blood of mothers and children

With lime and sand?

Behold, a history:

Tales of the martyrs

Singing from burning buildings

Reaching a saving hand

Into icy waters.

But now, an interloper

Enters our house of mirrors

And whispers unspeakable accusations

At our men and boys.

Behold, a peace:

Or is it a desert,

Or merely silence?

Silent bones.

For now the wailings

Have long ago leapt

From six million mouths

And ascended to the heavens

Beseeching a god

In the vastness of space.

Leaving peace behind.

Or silence.

Silence, my flock:

For we will do nothing,

That gives

Even the faintest

Appearance

Of opposition

To our new God.

Mother, what keening song

Is on the wind?

“They separate the Jewish women

From their children.

Now hush, my love,

The wolf knows his purpose.”

And Rachel?

She refuses to be comforted.

Because they are no more.

Notes:

–The Second Coming, by William Butler Yeats:

"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

–Stutthof was a Nazi concentration camp built near Mennonite settlements east of the city of Danzig in what is now Poland. It was the first German concentration camp set up outside of Germany in World War II. According to Gerhard Rempel (“Mennonites and the Holocaust: From Collaboration to Perpetration.” Mennonite Quarterly Review 84, Oct. 2010), a Mennonite builder, Gerhard Epp, served as a general contractor to the SS to construct buildings on the premises. Rempel notes, “It is not much of an exaggeration to say that a Mennonite built the barracks for the first concentration camp on non-German soil." Some Mennonites served as guards at Stutthof. Some Mennonite farmers used Stutthof inmates as slave labor.

–The poem is structured around the general myth of the Mennonite church as a "Historic Peace Church."

–"House of Mirrors" refers to the book, Martyr's Mirror, the prominent book found in Mennonite & Amish homes, first published in 1660 by Thieleman J. van Braght, documenting the stories and testimonies of Christian martyrs, especially Anabaptists.

–In 1940 the West Prussian Mennonite Conference publicly declared: ‘The Conference will not do anything that gives even the faintest appearance of opposition to the policy of our Fuehrer.’ (from Danzig Mennonites section of Lisa Schirch’s Anabaptist-Mennonite Relations with Jews Across Five Centuries - Mennonite Life 2020)

–"In 1944, while my father was imprisoned, my mother worked for a time as a dressmaker for my father’s Mennonite aunts who had a farm at Tiegenhof, close to the old border between Prussia and Danzig. This farm was located close to the railway line that led to the Stutthof Concentration Camp. At one point my mother heard terrible, distressed screams. When she asked one of the aunts about the screaming, she was told, 'They are separating the Jewish mothers from their children.' When my mother protested that this could not be right, the aunt responded, 'Hitler must know what he is doing.'" (Christiana Epp Duschinsky. “Mennonite Responses to Nazi Human Rights Abuses: A Family in Prussia/Danzig.” Journal of Mennonite Studies, 2014)

–Ramah is from the book Matthew 2:18 (also Jeremiah), referencing Harrod's massacre of the innocents.

A voice was heard in Ramah,

lamentation, weeping and great mourning,

Rachel weeping for her children;

she will not be comforted,

because they are no more.

Google Sites

Report abuse