When a Jew and a Christian say hello, it can even interrupt genocide

February 2, 6:27 PMSpiritual Life ExaminerRabbi Ben Kamin

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The recent discussion on this site of Holocaust denial and the role of the papacy brings the following to mind, in the name of healing.  Here is a true account set ironically in the midst of the European insanity against the Jews that took six million, from 1933-1945

A rabbi lived in the Polish village of Danzig as the storm clouds began to bring in the Nazis in the late 1930s.  It was the rabbi’s custom to take a daily morning walk in the village and to greet every person he met.  At the outskirts of the town, he would greet a rather unfriendly Polish Volksdeutche (an ethnic German) named Muller.  “Gutmorgen, Herr Muller,” the rabbi would declare.  “Gutmorgen, Herr Rabbiner,” would come the reply.  This happened every day, until the war came, and Herr Muller donned an S.S. uniform and the rabbi, like almost every single Polish Jew, would be engulfed by the night.  The fact is that the rabbi lost every member of his family in the death camp of Treblinka, and eventually wound up being deported to Auschwitz.

Now the rabbi was herded off the ghastly cattle train and, wearing a striped uniform, his head and beard shaven and his eyes sick with starvation and disease, he stood in the die / live line.  It was morning.  A man wearing white gloves and a crisp uniform sat at a desk and pointed each Jew in a direction: “Right! Left, left, left!”  Right was life, left was immediate death.  So it was in the grisly, pitiless “selection.”

The rabbi drew near the table, and saw the S.S. officer who did not look up momentarily.  Gathering all his remaining strength and courage, the rabbi said: “Gutmorgen, Herr Muller.”  The officer looked up.  A faint smile of recognition was visible under the cap adorned with skull and bones.  “Gutmorgen, Herr Rabbiner.”  The hand went up and pointed—right.  The rabbi lived to tell the story.

This is a most exceptional case, obviously.  But it tells us that when a human face and a human voice intervene in the Christian-Jewish dialogue, then Christians and Jews will more likely live together.  We will never share the same theology, but we will always share our humanity.  We can and will look out for each other when we finally accept that God created the world, but people are creating it.