Whilst in the United States, Ven. Nigel Edmonds was invited to
make a three-month retreat at a Cistercian monastery. He shared some
of his thoughts & experiences with friends through letters he wrote
from the monastery.
Note: During the Nazi era, concentration camp victims were categorized
as either "Night" or "Fog" prisoners. Those who were "Night" were
classified as: "Return not wanted". Those of "Fog": "Return not determined".
The "Einsatzgruppen" or "Special Squads" were poorer quality soldiers,
often East Europeans themselves, who were drafted into groups that
followed the combat troops as rear-echelon. Their task was to round
up known Jews & other "undesirables", march them out of the villages
& towns & shoot them.
March 2001
Dear J_____,
You may be wondering why on Earth I enclose such a dreadful picture
in this letter: the subject matter is painfully familiar, & this particular
shot has the questionable distinction of being one of the better known
images from The Holocaust. I have to explain - I came across this
photograph in a large book of images from the Second World War that
the monastery retains in the basement library. There was a section
dealing with The Holocaust, & its impact upon Eastern Europe in particular.
I made a copy of this photo, & found myself spending long hours in
contemplation of it. It was a practice I found difficult to accomplish
without many tears. For me, it epitomizes all that was most horrific,
most insane, most hopeless & most destructive about the whole Nazi
era. More than this - the plight of this mother & child is echoing
loudly still, in all corners of the world. Women & children of many
races, colours & creeds are still being shot down, as these were.
Studying this picture (the names doubtless lost in the mists) I
found myself at times overwhelmed by their pathos & vulnerability.
I must make the point right now that this photo-image is actually
incomplete, I abstracted this particular image from a larger one,
& out of respect for the other victims who lost their lives when the
camera-shutter clicked I must explain the image more fully. In the
wider-angled photograph, on the right-hand side as you look at it,
there is a small group of prisoners digging a substantial grave that
will no doubt shortly contain all the bodies - the diggers, the mother
& child, by the time the excavation is complete. The rifleman in the
picture, doubtless a member of the Einsatzgruppen, is levelling his
weapon at the diggers & not at the mother & child at this point. The
perspective of the figures & the angles at which they stand make this
clear. That the small family group will swiftly follow the diggers
into the grave is beyond question. The mother walks across the picture
in the direction of the grave, some way off, the dark object lying
on the ground between her & the soldier, I concluded was a hat of
some sort, which she had doubtless been ordered to remove in order
to present a clearer target. The woman's hair is greasy, slicked down.
It's this detail that led me to conclude she had been wearing a hat.
No doubt her head was soaked in sweat, being terrified & having carried
her child into this field, which might have been a long way from where
she was being held captive.
The stance of the mother as she walks is one of almost suppliant
protection for her child, curving her body over it, as if to bury
it forever in the timelessness of her own body, as if the child might
continue to live, if not forever, then at least past the horror of
that present moment. The child's figure hangs in its mother's arms,
speaking of his or her own surrender in that moment, yet not a surrender
to death, but to the grace of its mother's embrace. Something in the
position of the child's legs expresses a tragic hopelessness that
could only BE childlike, almost the legs of a rag doll. The angle
of the head reveals how one small cheek is pressed against the mother's
face. How deep the silence of their communion must have been at that
moment - it's a silence that cradled my own meditation, sitting on
the floor in a monastery that is itself timelessly silent throughout
the night.
Night - "Night & Fog" - "Night" for poor wretches.
The woman will die first. The child will experience the destruction
of the mother's body before its own, probably falling, still living,
as the mother falls dead; the child still held in arms that embraced
in life, & continue in death. Soon after, the child will die, too.
As its little life is snuffed out, so will a little more light in
the growing darkness we are making of this world. I have found it
necessary to communicate to you how deeply affected I have been by
this photograph; I have seen it a thousand times & yet, for me, more
than any other image of The Holocaust, it's so fundamental in its
statement - the camera's witness to a crime humanity is ALWAYS committing
against itself. To destroy a mother & child is to destroy the basic
unit of ALL humanity. Yet the soldier, too, is a child destroyed -
destroyed by a system that took a young boy from HIS mother & emptied
HIM of life, snuffed out HIS humanity. Who was he? What were his interests?
Did he play the piano? Did he enjoy sports? Did he have a girlfriend?
Was he married? - None of those questions matter. The child wearing
that uniform is dead. In its place stands a machine that is able to
kill - to kill cold.
On the night of the 15th I suffered an insomnia attack - I'm getting
more & more of them these days. When living the sort of schedule that
is the rule here, up at 3am, to bed at 8pm, losing sleep is a luxury
I CAN'T afford! As it is, I'm getting less sleep than is good for
me, & insomnia breaks me down quicker than anything else. Around 2am,
sick of staring interminably into the darkness, I dragged myself to
the bath house. Once there, I surveyed my puffy, ravaged face. Puffy
face in the mirror - nothing very "venerable" there - just wreckage.
Strangely, having been meditating upon this picture for something
like the last 48 hours, this morning's Mass was being said for The
Dead.
I had arrived for Vigils at 3.30am, then at 6am for Lauds & by 6.45am
I was stumbling out of my choir stall in order to approach the altar
& receive Holy Communion. As I swallowed the precious Body & Blood,
I felt the familiar warmth surge through my empty, early-morning stomach.
As I did so, I offered my communion for the woman & child in the photograph,
whose remains are doubtless still lying somewhere beneath that anonymous
field somewhere in Eastern Europe. Suddenly, in that moment, I experienced
a deep, deep intimation of this woman alive & well, standing in that
same field, alone. No longer hazy, grainy black & white as in the
photograph - the field was now a verdant green, the sky a breathtaking,
endless blue. The bright Sun mantled everything in gold, even the
air the woman breathed. As I looked at her, a warm summer breeze whispered
against my face, & then there were the two of them - the woman, the
child. The woman was bouncing the child up & down in her arms. She
gazed across at me, squinting in the bright sunlight, her face a radiant
smile.
Every now & then, she pointed me out to the child, lifted its little
arm, encouraging a wave. Both of them were the image of happiness,
freedom, peace. This was no fleeting, half-formed image in my mind.
It was a complete vision - highly-detailed, sharply defined. I could
SMELL the grass, HEAR the chirping of the birds, the buzzing of insects.
The vision overwhelmed anything in my actual sight at that moment;
I saw nothing but the mother & child, the field, the sky. No abbey
church with The Mass going on, no choir stalls, no monks sitting in
rows around me. Tears streamed down my face. I felt certain that those
tortured souls were at peace now, living in a happiness far removed
from the squalid circumstances of their deaths. Since that experience,
I have consulted the photograph again, focused upon it. None of the
horror it portrays has lessened for me, yet I feel a connection with
the unkown subjects that I had never felt previously. I am able to
look at that photograph now & feel that somewhere beyond the lives
that ended as that camera shutter clicked, there is peace & joy
So - do I sigh with relief & settle back into my life again? Do
I tell myself that no matter how horrific death was for those unknown
people, they are now "in Heaven" & everything's OK? No - I don't.
Shooting down women & children is NEVER OK. Turning young men into
mindless thugs is NEVER OK. Our just supposing that we can be "good
Christians" by going to church & offering our Communion for The Dead,
& by so doing feel we've "done our bit" is NEVER OK.
My love always,
N
