Randy Ford Author- GOOD PEOPLE 3rd Novel 67th Installment

      To her father’s unrelenting questioning about her life and Asia Marie wrote, “Am I not a woman?”  To this he could only reply, “Ya.”  But it wasn’t that simple.  He hoped that one day that she would admit that she needed him.

      There was very little personal information in her letters.  All she ever wrote about was her folk.  “Her people,” particularly the men were small in stature.  The men were also dark, while the women were almost all brown.

      Hertzl never complained directly to her but attributed his daughter’s attitude to the reluctance of young people to accept guidance.

      Meanwhile Marie’s life shifted even more away from agape.  In order to adapt to a foreign land she occupied herself with all aspects of love.  Love to her had to be more than puppy love or the love for or from a parent.  So soon she found herself very susceptible to a Frenchman’s advances and tried to explain it to her father.  From then on Rev. Hertzl had one additional thing to worry about.  He therefore told his daughter that it was time that she seriously considered marriage.

      Marie’s dilemma and zeal were not uncommon.  Then to be disappointed over finding out that her students really hadn’t gotten past the fact that their teacher was a foreigner.  They were very polite but their smiles were almost impossible to interpret.

      There came a point when she wanted to give up.  As for her frustration she was told that, as long as she was Christ-centered, it didn’t matter how well she did because the Lord was in charge.  And of course, without the help of the Holy Spirit, “our cake will naturally fall flat.”  They told her that, and she was expected to pray herself out of her problems.

      Marie also craved news from home, but frequently the news she got plunged her right back into the fracas on her doorstep.  So she decided to abandon her teaching and to get her hands really dirty.  She went to work in a refugee camp; and it became both a blessing and a curse.  Each day she faced personal threats but continued to serve Jesus while threatened with malaria, diarrhea, scabies, and conjunctivitis.  Overwhelmed she often wept.

　     Each day at the camp placed her in the company of bad people.  To her good people were less evident than bad ones.  She hadn’t yet heard the French expression “in the night all the cats are gray.”

      On hearing about life in the camp Rev. Hertzl wrote to his daughter and said: “I know it has been hell.  But… with every act of kindness a price is paid and often that price is dear.  And isn’t it with such people, those with the rods and the whips, that God asks us to form a connection?  Perhaps you can, as you say, ‘Bring about change and force others to rethink the game’, but what if the rules of the camp were dictated by, say, an eager Nazi-besotted twenty-year-old who happens to be your brother?  And what if he believed in Hitler?  Certainly God hasn’t made it easy for you.  However pray, and you’ll find that it would be wrong to be too sanguine.  You may feel that I’m completely apathetic, which sadly may be true. Strange, isn’t it? So what’s happened to me?”

      Marie tried to control herself.  Then she laid her father’s letter down and wrote him back.  “Dear father, my work has brought me in contact with atrocities that you wouldn’t believe.”  Then she went on to write: “You couldn’t possibly fathom the level of brutality and inhumanity that I see every day.”  But of course he could.

      Nothing helped.  Then she turned to her Bible, opened it to John 15:17, and read the commandment about loving one another.  “But they hate me, do you hear, daddy!  They hate me!  But if you were to look at all that I’ve done you would know that there was no reason for their hatred.”

      “History has its lessons, and the fiction is that each of our experiences are unique,” replied Rev. Hertzl.  “Never is conceit more obvious than in the young visionary who strikes out on a personal mission to save the world.  But as soon as he or she stumbles into a snake pit or a dunghill, from that moment on he or she believes nothing could be worse.  But how could they be so wrong?  Believe me, sorrow that is never spoken is the heaviest burden.  I’d like to be able to say to my brother, ‘while the world may hate you, what do I care what the world thinks: I love you.”

      By all accounts Marie’s stay in Vienna didn’t help her much, and she couldn’t blame it on how depressing the magnificent city on the Danube can be in the wintertime, or from having to adjustment from being suddenly transplanted from warm Asia to a cold place.  Instead Marie found herself trying to relate to her uncle Niki, who by then had settled into the routine of a recluse.

      Niki already suffered from guilt.  Marie could share with him her own feelings of desperation.  Meanwhile all she knew about her family’s connection with the holocaust was this: her father had spent much of the war in a Nazi concentration camp, which in her mind should’ve made him want to go back home, but instead he immigrated to Texas.  Was he ever intending to go back?  He refused to say.  During all of those years he rarely mentioned his brother and then only when questioned.

      He also failed to tell her the truth about his family’s role in Austria’s persecution of the Jews.  His silence fueled Marie’s curiosity and made a visit to Vienna obligatory.  For the short span of thirty-two years both her uncle and his deeds had been buried, and later she regretted that she unburied it all.  Still curiosity had a strong pull.  Unfortunately she wouldn’t be able to change any of it.

      Much of her time in Vienna she spent wandering the streets, trying to unravel the alchemy of this great metropolis.  That seemed easier to her than spending a lot of time with her uncle.

      Randy Ford

Randy Ford Author- GOOD PEOPLE 3rd Novel 26th Installment

      They nabbed her in front of their building.  On the same day, even the same hour, various warrants for various people came across Fritz’s desk.  He didn’t pay attention to the names.  If he had seen Eva’s name would he have recognized it?

      And it was all because Eva left the flat and for that the severest punishment.  Hatred seemed contagious.  Hatred (hatred immeasurable, unimaginable, and unchangeable) burned in the hearts of too many people.  And too many people lay the blame for their troubles on the Jews.  Who indeed had to accept personal responsibility when there was a handy scapegoat?  This would be the least lethal interval until after the war.  No one knew it, but the worst was yet to come.

     Do you know what really hurt Pauline?  The congratulations they bestowed on others and themselves.  They had the sense that the severest measures were indeed moral and justifiable.  And that was just the beginning.

     Weakness was offered as an excuse, but Pauline never totally disagreed that in general the Jews were a problem.  No outrage would’ve changed those feelings.  Outrage should’ve come from a strong sense of right and wrong.  So much might’ve been pardoned had Pauline paid attention to what she herself had taught her sons.  In light of that, Karl kept coming back to a single question: where was his mother when they carted off Eva?

      Karl became angry over the fact that Eva’s status wasn’t reported to him.  Remember how on his last night at home she came into his room to help him pack.  Looking back he particularly remembered her shaking.  Still she seemed totally focused on him, and he never thought of her as a Jew.  Yet she always said that she knew her place, which Karl accepted without much thought.  He even sometimes spoke to her in a rough manner.  And she never corrected him.  To be truthful, regardless how much the truth hurt, he bought into thinking that indeed there was an immutable hierarchy of races and that his family belonged somewhere near the top.

      But had she, instead of remaining passive, insisted on more respect, he perhaps would’ve grown up with a different set of values.  So affection for him, affection for all of them she gave, and in return she wanted nothing more than acceptance from them.  Only they couldn’t fully give her that. The rejection to which she had to reconcile herself was not only terrible, but as Karl later acknowledged, also turned out to be extremely brutal.

      The truth was, given who they were, they couldn’t have been totally displeased over what happened to Eva.  Karl never felt that he had as much revulsion and outrage over the cleansing of Vienna as he should’ve had, and every civilized person should’ve.  He felt that he should’ve been the first against it and then condemned it more vigorously than he did.  Why did he find it difficult to break through all of that?

      He imagined Eva’s condition quickly deteriorated.  He couldn’t exactly remember when it became apparent to him that he’d never see her again.  He’d blame himself for the senseless beatings she received.  The alarming thing was that the slightest indiscretion often led to death.      

 

      Because with his heart and soul he was at the time for the cause: Karl remembered that being his standby response to hard questions about his beliefs.  In order not to draw attention to himself he tried to remain calm and unemotional.  There was always the distinct possibility that without warning that they might want to kill him too.  In the camp, that was the rule rather than the exception: the frequent beatings were understood to be part of the game.

      Punishment designed to terrorize and to debilitate Eva gave her captors reason to celebrate.  A few more hours were probably all that she had left.  She wouldn’t suffer much more.  What!  To know that she had all of her hair cut off.  Half naked and bare footed….  Having fallen ill and hurt from the exposure and the beatings.

      As Jews they were awakened at every hour.  Beaten, tortured, and attacked by dogs, they were meant to suffer!  Karl, however, and many other Austrians (even those in camps) had to believe that they weren’t doing this.  It was the Germans.  Understand?  The Germans!

      How could anyone forget the suffering?  Or the daily torturing that took place?  He remembered the deaths that each morning revealed.  It was difficult to explain why these deaths were ever seen as morally laudable.

      The fatal consequences of starvation, exhaustion, deprivation and disease were in accordance with the Fuhrer’s wishes.  Of course afterwards it became easier to allege anything but the truth.  Shifting the blame became the game.  Men such as Eichmann, weren’t they primarily the ones responsible for the selection?  No one wanted to admit that they ever thought the reasons the Jews were killed were justifiable.  The truth was that the atrocities would never have happened without common consent.  Karl wouldn’t admit that the language of discrimination was used by almost everyone.  He found forgiving himself hard.

      Eva had but a common grave.  She had no ground to call her own.  She never had a home, but the Hertzl’s.

      Randy Ford