[Faith-talk] Daily Thought for Wednesday, August 14, 2013

[Paul]

Yes, there were.  Mr. Gonin himself related to me that, as a boy growing up 
in the Pyrenes Mountains of France, he got to know the rather complicated 
cave systems that went over the border and, under cover of night, he 
smuggled Jews and other people considered undesirable by the Vichy regime 
into Spain.  The two people I mentioned, Javier Gutierez and Jose Ezquerra, 
likewise knew the systems as well.  You might be interested to know that 
Javier and Jose, in 1938 with Generalissimo Franco's approval, founded ONCE, 
the National Organization of the Blind of Spain (organization Nacional de 
Ciegos de Espana), probably one of the most far-reaching organizations of 
and for the blind, even by today's standards.  So, on December 13 of this 
year, they will have celebrated their 75th anniversary as an organization. 
Paul
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "justin williams" <justin.williams2 at gmail.com>
To: "'Faith-talk,for the discussion of faith and religion'" 
<faith-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Wednesday, August 14, 2013 6:08 PM
Subject: Re: [Faith-talk] Daily Thought for Wednesday, August 14, 2013


> While, there were blind people who were smuggling others to safety also
> then?
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Faith-talk [mailto:faith-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Paul
> Sent: Wednesday, August 14, 2013 3:23 PM
> To: angelsongs at yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [Faith-talk] Daily Thought for Wednesday, August 14, 2013
>
> Hello and good day to all my readers scattered near and far across this
> planet.  I hope that your day is going well or went well.
>
> The article I'd like to present to you today is one that should have been
> sent last year, but at the time it just slipped my mind.  It concerns 
> Raoul
> Wallenberg who saved over 100,000 Jews from extermination by the Nazis in
> Budapest, Hungary.  Not mentioned in this article is the fact that he also
> saved a number of disabled people, including at least one blind person. 
> (I
> know that for certain because we were in correspondence with each other.
> His name was Lajus (pronounced lie-us) Ulmer, one of the founders of the
> association of blind people in Hungary immediately after World War I).
> Anyway the author was Roger Palms and the title of his article is "The
> Difference One Life Can Make," rendered as follows:
>
> This year the world celebrates the 100th anniversary of the birth of a
> Swedish Lutheran who saved upwards of 100,000 Jewish people from
> extermination in Hungary during World War II.  To many followers of 
> Judaism,
> he is known as "righteous among the nations."
>
> Raoul Wallenberg was an ordinary man who did extraordinary things, risking
> his own life to save others only to then die in a Russian prison just 
> after
> the war ended.  How did he do what he did?
>
> In 1944, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, himself Jewish, told
> President Franklin Roosevelt what was happening to the Jewish population 
> in
> Europe.  FDR approved the establishment of the American War Refugee Board
> with a fund to finance the rescue of Jews.  But a person was needed to 
> head
> the work.  In Sweden, it was known that Wallenberg had the needed
> credentials.  He had great ability with languages, had traveled to many
> European countries and had even earned a degree in architecture at the
> University of Michigan.  He agreed to do the work and went to Hungary 
> using
> funds from the board to buy or rent safe houses for adults and an 
> orphanage
> for children who had already lost their parents.  He listed these 
> buildings
> under the protection of the Red Cross and called them by such names as 
> "The
> Swedish Library" or the "Swedish Research Institute." In a short time he 
> had
> 32 buildings and employed 340 persons.
>
> His first step was to design a protective passport called a "Schutz-Pass"
> printed in the Swedish national colors with the Three Crowns heraldry in 
> the
> center.  Although not actually official, the passes impressed the local
> soldiers and Nazi leaders.  Wallenberg passed them out even to people
> already lined up to board the boxcars for the death camps.  (My friend
> Lajus, not a Jew himself, was among those).  Then he would call them "my
> people" and demand that they be released.  The passes made the people who
> held them citizens of Sweden--protected, eligible to go to Sweden if
> possible, and no longer required to wear the yellow star on their 
> clothing.
>
> Wallenberg worked feverishly, night and day, seemingly to appear 
> everywhere,
> and apologizing that "I cannot save all of you."  One woman, shortly 
> before
> she was to be shot, saw Wallenberg coming toward her.  She later said that
> it seemed as if God had answered her prayers.
>
> Wallenberg was right under the nose of Adolf Eichmann, who was ensconced 
> in
> the Majestic Hotel in Budapest.  One day Eichmann told Wallenberg, "I know
> all about you.  You're a Jew lover who receives all his dirty dollars from
> Roosevelt." Wallenberg found that he could fool or work around the Gestapo
> in what some of his colleagues referrred to as "dumdvistig" or "dumb
> daring."
>
> Wallenberg's family motto was "Esse, non Videri" meaning "To be, not to be
> seen."  Being raised in a Lutheran family, he knew the catechism.  It is
> clearly taught that "The commandments are summed up in one rule, Love your
> neighbor as yourself (Rom. 13:9)."
>
> And what would he have learned about the fifth commandment, "You shall not
> murder?" The catechism teaches that "We should fear and love God so that 
> we
> do not hurt or harm our neighbor in his body, but help and support him in
> every physical need."
>
> For Wallenberg that meant rescue, food and medical help for as many as he
> could pull out of the grasp of Nazi killers.  When told that he was being
> hunted by the Hungarian Arrow Cross, who continued to terrorize the Jewish
> population after the German armies retreated, Wallenberg replied, "My life
> is one life, but this is a matter of saving thousands of lives." Reading 
> the
> reports of Jewish killings, Wallenberg figured that in Auschwitz alone,
> 12,000 were dying each day, 500 each hour, 30 a minute or one every one to
> two seconds.
>
> A colleague of Wallenberg, Thomas Veres, a photographer whom Wallenberg
> urged to "take as many photographs (of the atrocities) as you can," wrote 
> on
> his website I Was There:  "It's been said, No one has greater love than
> this, to lay down one's life for one's friends (John 15:13).  They were 
> not
> literally his friends, these people whose lives Wallenberg saved; they 
> were
> simply his fellow human beings, and as such, he felt responsible for them.
> He was an ordinary person who dared other ordinary people to do what he
> did."
>
> One person who was in Budapest at that time told of an orphanage being
> attacked and the children killed.  The onlooker said of Wallenberg, "He 
> went
> down on his knees and cried.  Then he got to his feet and said he would
> fight on." He was gaunt, showing the wear of his work, sleeping only one 
> to
> two hours per night.  On January 17, 1945, with the arrival of Russian
> troops, Wallenberg tried to protect his people by appealing to the
> commandant.  It is known that he was arrested, taken to Russia, and the 
> best
> information is that he died there of a heart attack in 1947.
>
> In a New York Times editorial, January 16, 2012, at the start of this
> anniversary year, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton stated that 
> the
> Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg "chose not to be indifferent when faced
> with great evil.  He could have remained safely in neutral Sweden during
> World War II.  Instead, Wallenberg acted." Then she summarized what
> Wallenberg did by quoting Lutheran pastor and Nazi resister Dietrich
> Bonhoeffer, who wrote, "Silence in the face of evil is itself evil.  Not 
> to
> act is to act."
>
> At a memorial service in Budapest, June 20, 2000, Kofi Annan, then United
> Nations Secretary General said of Wallenberg, "Raoul highlighted the vital
> role of the bystander, of the third party amidst conflict and suffering. 
> It
> was here, in the face of despair, that his intervention gave hope to
> victims.
>
> "Remembering his life should be an inspiration to others to act; for our
> future generations to act; for all of us to act."
>
> And there you have Roger's article which I hope inspired you to act, not 
> to
> literally or physically save a human life, but to give hope and
> encouragement to anyone you know who is going through a rough time right
> now, whether in a personal phone call, an email or, if possible, even a
> personal visit.
>
> Were there any rescuers among blind people during that awful time? Indeed,
> there were.  Those of us who know our history can't ever forget names like
> Paul Ketterer from Switzerland, Javier Gutierez and Jose Ezquerra from
> Spain, and Jacques Luseyran and Raymond Gonin from France.  (I was
> privileged to know Mr. Gonin through my Esperanto contacts and, with
> coordination with Javier and Jose, smuggled quite a few "undesirables" out
> of France into Spain via caves in the Pyrenes.  There is a book in the NLS
> collection about Jacques Luseyran entitled "And There Was Light," but I
> don't know the book number.  Maybe those interested can track that book
> down.
>
> And now may the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob just keep us safe,
> individually and collectively, in these last and evil days in which we 
> live.
> Your Christian friend and brother, Paul
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