Interfaith Insight - 2022
Permanent link for "Current violence and remembered atrocities, bring us to tears" by Doug Kindschi on April 26, 2022
These continue to be challenging days in Grand Rapids and in our world.
The shooting of Patrick Lyoya by a police officer in Grand Rapids
has brought to our city the long history of racial profiling and use
of excessive force against Black persons. In this case it was a
refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo who after 11 years in a
refugee camp finally came to the United States for freedom and safety.
His killing has brought days of protest in our city and beyond,
as well as national and international attention. His funeral last
Friday was held at Renaissance Church of God in Christ, with its
pastor, Bishop Dennis McMurray, presiding. Lyoya’s
special religious commitment and how he found community through
his faith were noted. Lyoya’s death shocked his parents, siblings, and
two young children, along with the Congolese community.
In Ukraine this past Sunday, the Eastern Orthodox celebrated
Easter. But for those under attack it is also a day of mourning for
the thousands who have been killed by the invading armies seeking to
destroy this free country.
This coming week is also a reminder of past atrocities with the
Jewish community’s observance of Yom Hashoah or the Holocaust
Remembrance Day. It corresponds to the 27th day of Nisan in the
Hebrew lunar calendar and thus varies from year to year, as does
Passover. Two decades ago the United Nations designated January 27,
the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp
in 1945, as the International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
As a music lover, I recently became aware of Alma Rosé, one of
Europe’s greatest and least known musicians. She was born into a
musical family with a father who led the Vienna Philharmonic and
founded the Rosé Quartet, famous throughout Austria. Her mother was
the younger sister of the great composer Gustav Mahler.
Alma Rosé founded a women’s orchestra in Vienna and was a master
violinist who toured throughout Europe in the 1930s and 40s. While
Mahler converted from Judaism to Christianity in order to preserve his
life and career as a conductor, Rosé tried to blend in with the
Christian culture. As Nazism became rampant and Jews were fleeing,
Rosé chose to remain and tour throughout Europe. In 1943 she was
arrested in France and later that year sent to Auschwitz.
Musicians with talent were often used to entertain German guards
and Nazi leaders who took a kind of perverse pleasure since they
actually had control over whether they would live or die. Rosé’s
talent gave her a place in the women’s orchestra and soon she became
its leader. She saw this as an opportunity not only to save her own
life but that of others who were a part of the orchestra’s success.
Very few of her players were professional musicians but Alma
realized that the only way they could survive was by playing music at
a high standard. She began recruiting new players and having lengthy
rehearsals. She placed special emphasis on hiring Jewish women for the
orchestra as a way to save their lives in the camp. After a lifetime
of denying her Jewishness, Alma now embraced her fellow Jews and
worked feverishly to save their lives.
Realizing that being a part of the orchestra saved lives, she
created many positions for even those who were less talented by giving
them jobs as assistants and score copiers, thereby expanding the size
of the orchestra’s operation. She died unexpectedly by unreported
cause at age 38 in April 1944, prior to the liberation of the
Auschwitz camp later that year.
Reviewing the atrocities of the past and grieving the unnecessary
deaths in our own community as well as around the world drew me to the
latest editorial in a recent issue of Christian Century titled, “A
Gift of Tears.” Peter Marty tells of a visit to the Room with Four
Thousand Shoes at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The
room includes a sign reading, “We are the shoes, we are the last witnesses."
Marty saw a lone woman sitting there sobbing. As he observed her,
he also teared up “in the presence of all those shoes. Those baby
shoes!” He then writes of the tears of Jesus in the presence of Mary
who was grieving the death of her brother Lazarus.
He continues with the observation that humans are the “only
animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and
what they ought to be.” Tears, he writes, “put us in touch with
essential things that we know to be dear or wrong. And those things
have a way of taking up residence in our hearts, often drawing us
inadvertently closer to God. Giving ourselves permission to cry is valuable.”
In our current situation and as we remember our history, perhaps
our tears are the only response we can make. As Marty writes, “tears
remain a biological gift from God.”