And to stay with the ‘theme’ of books I’ve been reading lately, I started this latest book, All But My Life, by Gerda Weissmann Klein, on Monday. This is a memoir written by a woman who experienced the Holocaust first-hand, and who lost her entire family at that time. It was originally written in 1957 – not so very long after the war ended, and updated by the author in 1994. Another very emotionally-charged book. It is so hard to grasp the reality of what the Nazis did, it is mind-boggling and horrifying.
There is a place in this book that I marked: It is at one point during the long, starving, death march in the freezing winter towards the end of the war, that Gerda realized she could no longer pray. She reflected on something she had learned as a child from a school play, about Egypt, and about prayer, where different people prayed for different things and “…each prayer, clean and swift, like a white bird, shot upward. In Heaven, it met with the other prayer that had asked for just the contrary. They turned against each other in bloody battle, and usually both fell back lifeless to the earth. … My mother told me to pray, but I didn’t know how. I had no wishes, so I just looked at the river that fertilized our field, at the warm sun, at the ripe fruit in our garden, and I said, ‘Thank you, God, for the warm sun, for the blue Nile, for my father and my mother,’ and my … prayer, like the others, sailed straight up to the throne of God. Nobody defied my prayer, and nobody else thanked the Maker. They were all asking Him for things.” And at this point, Gerda could no longer find anything to be thankful for.
I am not particularly religious, but I think this is an important message to remember. We all are so often full of wants and wishes, when we should simply take note of all that we have to be grateful for.
I finished this book on Friday, March 22nd. What a story – indeed because it is a true story. And what an incredible woman; she has touched the lives of many.
I quote here from the Wikipedia article about her:
On February 15, 2011 at 1:40 pm EST in the East Room of the White House, President Barack Obama presented Gerda Weissmann Klein, along with 14 other recipients, with the 2010 Presidential Medal of Freedom. President Obama announced, “This year’s Medal of Freedom recipients reveal the best of who we are and who we aspire to be.” President Obama read the following as Gerda was presented with her Presidential Medal of Freedom, “By the time she was 21, Gerda Klein had spent six years living under Nazi rule — three of them in concentration camps. Her parents and brother had been taken away. Her best friend had died in her arms during a 350-mile death march. And she weighed only 68 pounds when she was found by American forces in an abandoned bicycle factory. But Gerda survived. She married the soldier who rescued her. And ever since — as an author, a historian and a crusader for tolerance — she has taught the world that it is often in our most hopeless moments that we discover the extent of our strength and the depth of our love.” Then President Obama read a statement from Gerda which read “I pray you never stand at any crossroads in your own lives,” she says, “but if you do, if the darkness seems so total, if you think there is no way out, remember, never ever give up.”