Unknown higher beings

Sundown tonight marks the start of Yom HaShoah, Israel’s annual commemoration of the Holocaust. Amongst other ceremonies throughout the 24-hour period, tomorrow at 1000 local time, air raid sirens will sound and everyone in Israel will come to a halt for two minutes to reflect on the systematic attempt by Nazi Germany to eradicate the Jewish people on an industrial scale.

It seems to me that the entire world ought to be reflecting on this, given the rise of right-wing extremism who are becoming louder and more confident in their championing of racism, misogyny, xenophobia, christofacism, anti-Semitism, wealth inequity, homophobia and authoritarianism.

Well, today’s entry for National Poetry Month is ancillary to Yom HaShoah. Johan Wolfgang von Goethe’s “On the Divine” enjoins us to follow the better angels of our nature, which we all too frequently do not. But the poem was an initial thread between two people from different worlds, and the tapestry it wove became a love that bridged those worlds and endured for decades.

Gerda Weissman, a Polish Jew, was not quite 21 in May 1945 when she and 150 other young women—last survivors of a death march that initially included 2000 concentration camp inmates—were discovered in Czechoslovakia by American soldiers. She could barely stand up, but that put her in better condition than her companions, so she greeted the Americans. As she gestured to the interior of an abandoned factory where they lay, she said, “Edel sei der Mensch, hilfreich und gut!”

Kurt Klein, the soldier to whom she spoke was struck by the emaciated, barely-alive girl quoting Goethe, “Noble be man, merciful and good!” As she was treated in a field hospital (where 30 of her companions died), Klein visited her and a friendship grew, which blossomed into romance. Klein and Weissman married the following year, and built a life for decades in Buffalo before retirement took them to Arizona. They had three children, eight grandchildren and 18 great-grandchildren. Klein (a Jewish immigrant whose parents were murdered in Auschwitz) died in 2002; Weissman on 3 April of this year.

They are an example of Goethe’s noble humanity, and I hold on to them as I look around me at the work of those who would destroy them.

“On the Divine”

Let man be noble,
Generous and good;
For that alone
Distinguishes him
From all the living
Beings we know.

Hail to the unknown
Higher beings
Of our intuition!
Let man resemble them;
Let his example
Teach us to believe in them.

For the realm of nature
Is unfeeling;
The sun sheds its light
Over evil and good
And the moon and the stars
Shine on the criminal
As on the best of us.

The wind and the rivers
The hail and the thunder
Storm on their way
And snatch one victim
After another
As they rush past.

So too does blind fortune
Grope through the crowd, now
Seizing a young boy’s
Curly-haired innocence
And now the bald pate
Of the old and guilty.

As great, everlasting,
Adamantine laws
Dictate, we must all
Complete the cycles
Of our existence.

Only mankind
Can do the impossible:
He can distinguish,
He chooses and judges,
He can give permanence
To the moment.

He alone may
Reward the good
And punish the wicked;
He may heal and save
And usefully bind
All that strays and wanders.

And we revere
The immortals, as if
They were human beings
Who do on a great scale
What little the best of us
Does or endeavors.

Let the noble man
Be generous and good,
Tirelessly achieving
What is just and useful:
Let him be a model
For those beings whom he surmises.

                        Translated by David Luke