A Holocaust Healing Event in Berlin - Germany

The young Austrian spiritual teacher Thomas Hübl Event held last weekend a powerful “healing event about the Second World War and the Holocaust” in Berlin. Nearly 400 people attended this remarkable day, where I also had the honour to speak. Continue to read here:

The first speaker (after and introduction from Thomas Hübl) was Günther Wieland, a German whose age must be close to 90 now. He is a very touching old man, blind, accompanied by a young Hungarian woman who helps him to travel and organize his full schedule where he talks about his Nazi-past. In his talk he described how he first encountered the Nazis was when he was 3 years old in Ulm, his birth town in Bavaria. There he saw with his mother a poster with a world in ruins. Out of this ruins rose a flame and in these flames stood a man, breaking his chains of the “oppressive peace treatment of Versailles’ as Günther's mother had to explained to the young boy. Underneath the man one could read (his mother read it to him) “vote list 2-NSdAP”. The strong image of this poster stood with Günther for his whole life. Günther also described how he first met Hitler in person when he was still a teenager in Ulm. He, like all his schoolfriends were in complete ecstasy. And, as Günther said, he knew that he would devote his life to this man, to Adolf Hitler. Günther also described how he experienced, still being a teenager, the Reichskristallnacht (the pogrom night, when the Nazis burned down most of the Synagogues in Germany). Günther, who had seen how Germans in Ulm had forced Jews there into the water of the city well to humiliate them, said he was so upset, that he ripped Hitler's picture, which was next to his bed, from the wall and threw it underneath his bed. His parents pacified him saying that these were just abnormal excesses and that sometimes it needs tough measurement. Günther bought into all of that and went in 1944, when he was 17 years old as enthusiastic Nazi into the war. He got wounded in Italy and got blinded there. Still after the war he was a fanatic Nazi. He said no argument would have reached him. It was only a Jungian therapy that worked a lot with his dreams that made him face what he had done. Günther said at his talk that although had the luck that he was not directly involved in war crimes, that he is guilty because, beside the fact that the war was a crime in itself, only the German army made possible that Auschwitz could happen.

After Günther I was asked to give my talk about the “Presence of Auschwitz in our souls” I talked about that fact that after we war we had established in the German speaking countries a culture of silence about what had happened that penetreted deeply also the souls of us younger Germans that were born after the war. I also shared our experience as Germans in EnlightenNext in the work with Andrew, how we Germans had to face our – my ability to cut off any human relationship, when my gets Ego challenged, a capacity that we Germans seem to have stronger developed than other nations. I also described how it was necessary for us German Core Students in EnlightenNext to leave the country for several years just to gain some perspective on our national Ego. One big focus I brought into me speech was what a responsibility we as Germans have to the world to face what had happened and what a chance it could be, if we should be able to create a national culture that would start to face her darkest side. It seems that many people in the audience where touched by what I had to say. Many aproached me with questions and positive feedback afterwards.

After a break I lead the panel dialogue between Günther Wieland and two other time witnesses:

Moshe Mendelssohn’s story made me really stop my breath for some moments. I hadn’t expected what this man had to say. His father was a famous Jewish surgeon, who worked still until 1941 in Berlin and even performed a successful surgery on Göring at that time. He and his family only got deported to Dachau 1941. Moshe said that he already was on the way to the gas chamber there, but being a child some Jewish prisoners managed to hide him. And they hid him in secret space they had built on the upper level of a bulk beds. He was only able to move out of this small hole in the night time and that for three years until the liberation in 1945. After the liberation Moshe worked for Simon Wiesenthal - to “hunt all Nazis down”. He was also part of when they found Eichmann in Argentina. He lives now as an artist in Berlin.

Ursula Boger, granddaughter of the SS-butcher, Wilhelm Boger, who had the name “the devil of Auschwitz” and who got executed after the Auschwitz-trials for his crimes, was very shy at the panel dialogue, but in that very vulnerable and authentic. Just that had a strong impact on the audience.

It was extremely challenging to lead this dialogue in front 400 people. After I asked particular Moshe and Ursula about their story, I focused to talk about the culture of silence in Germany and what it could mean to start talking now. At several points there was a silence on stage, where I didn’t know what to say and where I felt that nothing should be said right now, which is quite challenging to stay with, when you are meant to moderate a public dialogue. But many people said that they were most grateful for these moments of speechlessness.

After a lunch break all participants did a “world café” about what they had heard in the morning. In the World Café it became obvious how difficult it was for many people there to stay with the starkness of the situation. The temptation to “bring in the positive” was quite tangible. I takes a lot to just stay with the truth like this.

The end of the day was a “healing meditation” that Thomas Hübl held. This was a kind of trance journey to the German soul of the Second World War and the Jewish soul of the Second World War and than Thomas brought both souls together. This was vey powerful. Many people started crying.

400 mostly Germans, where were willing to look into the abyss of Auschwitz and staid with it, during this event. There was one sentence of Günther Wieland that staid with me all the time during that day: “The only real healing is radical honesty.”