June
2, 2011
Dear
Family,
How
are you? We are doing good and so far we
have not fallen victim to the food poisoning e-coli breakout here in
Germany. That is really good. Knock on wood that we will stay okay.
We
had today off because it is Ascension Day, which is tied to their Easter
Celebration and my understanding is that it is also their Father’s Day. We have ended up staying home and not sightseeing
because Marv hasn’t felt very good. He
thinks he is coming down with a cold but I am wondering if possibly it is more
allergy related because there is a lot of different pollen in the air. It is now after 4 p.m. and he has slept all
afternoon. I sure hope he will sleep
tonight but I am assuming he really doesn’t feel too good.
It
is really nice just to stay home. The
weather is nice and sunny today with a nice breeze. The temperature says it is 72°. I have spent the day cleaning, doing wash
which for some reason is taking all day today.
It must be the humidity because I am having a hard time getting the
clothes to dry so I have clothes that are washed waiting for the dryer. We have a condensation dryer, which means it
does not vent outside and you have this container that holds the water from the
clothes. I have had to empty that a lot
today. I finally just took out some of
the clothes and hung them up to dry and put the pants on drying racks.
Tomorrow
I will be the only one in my office because everyone else is making it a long
vacation. I guess they are glad they
have a missionary so they don’t have to decide who has to be in the
office. I have a feeling that the only
ones that are going to be in the offices will be the missionaries tomorrow and
we will see how many of those are actually there. The kid we take into work that is doing his
internship might be the only one on his floor, the executive secretary and his
wife, for the Area Presidency on my floor and I will probably be the only ones
on our floor. I don’t know about the Doctors
but I assume someone will be there as there are always people that are sick or
needing their help somehow will be on the 3rd floor and Marv will be on the
fourth floor until the Asplund’s get back in town and they might come over to
the office in the afternoon. It will be
interesting to see who really is there.
There are about 5 more missionaries on Marv’s floor that could be there
but all the employees seem to have scheduled the time off. I can’t say I blame them.
They
get 28 days of vacation plus all their holidays off and unlimited sick
leave. Wouldn’t you like that? I sure would have. Plus the people in my area say they have a
lot of comp time. I’m not sure how they
figure that because in Germany there is no such thing as comp time. Oh well, I’m not here to figure out their working
hours and tracking of it. I just can’t
figure out how you can arrive on Monday after 9 a.m. and stay to maybe 6 or
possibly 7 occasionally and leave on Thursday at 3:30 p.m. and get your full 40
hours in for the week. I guess I don’t
know how to count or something. (There’s
one that does that and they eat at their desk and count that as their work time
too so maybe it all adds up.)
I
am starting in the process of budget preparation but it is not going well
because the guy I am suppose to work with is not letting me know what he has
already. He is just planning on
entering it and I’m not sure how much I am going to get to put input on because
he says it should be about what it was last year but in reality it should be a
lot less because they have more budget than they spend and let me tell you they
spend plenty but we need to get it down to what they actually spend or at least
somewhat closer. S&I likes the
budgets to be spent between 90 and 102% and I think they have typically spent
around 84%. Plus looking at their
budgets they have a lot more than they should have for various accounts so I am
not going to be liked very well if I do try to pull it into alignment. I just hope that I get to have some input,
if not, then why am I even here.
This
is a picture of a cemetery. I may have
already sent it but what I learned something this past week about their
cemeteries that was interesting to
me. When someone dies they lease the
area for 25 to 30 years and the family has to take care of it. Notice they plant flowers or ground cover all
over the top of it. Then after 25 or 30 years they are
dug up and someone else is put there. The headstones are ground up or something
like that so apparently there are very few graves that are very old with
headstones. I’m so glad they don’t do
that in the States.
This
next Wednesday for the sister’s night
out we are going to visit this huge cemetery, which is close to our office and
they say it is old and so I will take some pictures. I will notice if I see any really old
headstones. I was looking forward to
seeing some.
I
was hoping to go to Flensburg probably at the end of our mission and see if any
of our relatives graves were there. They
are on my Grandma Hayes’s side and I don’t have very much information going back
on them but I do show a few generations in that city. This was called Prussia at one time but is
now part of Germany. It is close to the
Denmark border. But it appears I’m not
going to see any old headstones. Emiliya showed me some pictures of old
headstones from her country so they must not do the same over there.
We
went to a going away dinner for six couples last night at a Chinese or Thai
restaurant in Friedburg about 30 minutes away.
It was pretty good but we aren’t sure we are going back. It cost Marv and I about $50 US dollars just
for the buffet and a drink. Neither one
of us ate that much at the buffet to make it worth the cost. Oh well, it was another experience.
I
received my general conference issue finally this week but it was the Liahona
instead of the Ensign. I e-mailed and
asked that they make sure I get the Ensign from here on. It is nice to reread the talks and be
reminded of all that I heard during conference.
It will take me a while to get through it.
We
have been invited for a real German meal on Sunday after church to one of the
guys that I work with. They are a
couple that have never been able to have children and they have tried adoption
and foster care but nothing is working out for them. He is 41 years old and I think his wife is a
couple of years younger than him. I think he would have made a great dad because
he is really kind. He is very tall and
quite big. He has to duck to get through
the doors.
He
wants to take us to a town that is known for their flowers (actually we would
be taking him because they don’t have a car) and I am worried how he is going
to fit in our little car for a couple hour trip. We took him to the grocery store in our car
once and the seat had to be clear back and he still was pretty cramped. I don’t know if it will be me or his wife
that needs to sit behind him because I don’t think there will be room for
either one of us behind him. It should
be interesting. He has been really kind
to me and to Marv. He is a secretary in
my office but has put in an application to be on the computer support team. I hope he gets it because it will be a raise
for him and he is really pretty good with the computer. I would miss him in the office but we aren’t
going to be here forever and he needs to do what is best for he and his family.
Marv
is working on making arrangements for us to visit a Center for Young Adults and
do some training with the people in Budapest, Hungary and so we will probably
be going there in a few weeks over a weekend.
I understand the town is wonderful and a must see but I don’t know how
much time we are going to have to see things.
Hopefully a little bit of time so we could take a tour or
something. It is a little scary to go
there but I guess we will figure it out.
It appears any traveling we do will be with Marv’s assignment. We are suppose to go with the Asplund’s the
first week in August to a YSA Conference in Munich. I think that will be a fun thing to do
because we won’t be alone and we will be able to see the young people and mingle
with them. Sometimes I am envious of
those couples that get to work in the Centers with the young people. I know they have their challenges but I think
you would see good things happen and could really make a difference in
lives. They typically go to the Centers
two days a week and I don’t know what they do the rest of the week. We work 5 days a week and get Saturdays off
unless we travel to do some training and then that is usually on a weekend when
they want us to go so then we get no time off.
But visiting the Centers would be a fun thing to do.
The
church bells are ringing. We hear them
every day and I think it is kind of cool.
There are lots of things I like about being here. It really is a great experience and a
learning one for us.
These
are some markers in our town as a memorial to the Jews.
The
next two are in the sidewalks and they are probably about 5X5. You kind of have to be looking for them. There is one that says,
“Here
lived Karoline Schiff born 1874, Deported 1942, to Theresienstadt
Murdered
March 10, 1943.
Amother one says: Here lived Simon Changer Born
1858, Victim of the pogrom, TOT Dec 2, 1938.
The
second one says, Here lived Betty Charger of building Nachmann, Born 1862,
Deported 1942, Theresienstadt, TOT Sept. 15, 1942
HISTORY OF
THERESIENSTADT
On June 10, 1940, the Gestapo took
control of Terezín and set up the prison in the Small Fortress (kleine
Festung), see below. By November 24, 1941, the Main Fortress (große
Festung, i.e. the walled town of Theresienstadt) was turned into a ghetto.[1]
To outsiders, it was presented by the Nazis as a model Jewish settlement, but
in reality it was a concentration camp 'where over 33 000 inmates died as a result of hunger,
sickness, or the sadistic treatment meted out by their captors'.[2]
Theresienstadt was also used as a transit camp for European Jews en route to Auschwitz.
'Although some survivors claim the population reached 75,000, official records
place the highest figure on September 18, 1942, at 58,491 in Kasernes
(barracks) designed to accommodate 7000 combat troups.'[3]
Dr. Siegfried Seidl,
an SS-Hauptsturmführer,[4] served as the first camp commandant in
1941. Seidl oversaw the labor of 342 Jewish artisans and carpenters, known as
the Aufbaukommando, who converted the fortress into a concentration
camp. Although the Aufbaukommando were promised that they and their
families would be spared transport, eventually all were transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau in September 1944[5]
for Sonderbehandlung, or "special treatment", i.e. immediate gassing
of all upon arrival. Seidl himself was hanged for his crimes by a post-war
tribunal in Vienna in 1946.[6]
As in other European ghettos, a Jewish Council
nominally governed the ghetto. In Theresienstadt this was known as the
"Cultural Council" and eventually known by the residents as the
"Jewish self-government of Theresienstadt".[7]
The first of the Jewish Elders of Theresienstadt was Jakob Edelstein,
a Polish-born Zionist and former head of the Prague Jewish community. In 1943, he was
deported to Auschwitz, where he was shot to death after watching his wife and
son being shot to death also.[8]
The second was Paul Eppstein,
a sociologist originally from Mannheim,
Germany. Earlier, Eppstein was the speaker of the Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland, the central organization of Jews in Nazi Germany. In the
course of the liquidation transports in autumn 1944, when some two thirds of
the ghetto population were deported to Auschwitz, Eppstein was allegedly shot
in the Small Fortress.[citation needed] He died on Yom Kippur,
the holiest day in the Hebrew calendar,
after he informed the deported people of what was awaiting them in the
"East". Benjamin Murmelstein,
a Lvov-born
Vienna
Rabbi, succeeded Eppstein. In the last days of the ghetto's existence, eminent
and much-loved Rabbi Leo Baeck served as the Elder. In 1943 to 1945, he was the speaker of
the Council of Elders of Theresienstadt, after being deported from Berlin,
where he had served as the head of the Reichsvereinigung der Juden in
Deutschland. He was to survive Theresienstadt and emigrated to London after
the war. [9]
Many of the 80,000 Czech Jews who
died in the Holocaust died in Theresienstadt, where the conditions were
extremely difficult. In a space previously inhabited by 7,000 Czechs, now over
50,000 Jews were gathered. Food was scarce and in 1942 almost 16,000 people
died, including Esther Adolphine
(a sister of Sigmund Freud), who died on September 29, 1942; Friedrich Münzer (a German classicist), who died on October 20, 1942.
Medicine and tobacco were strictly prohibited; possession could be punished by
hard labor or death. Single men and women were officially forbidden to meet, or to communicate with a Gentile without German permission,
however married couple often remained together and were able to sleep in the
same quarters.[7]
It soon became the "home"
for a great number of Jews from occupied Czechoslovakia.
The 7,000 non-Jewish Czechs living in Terezín were expelled by the Nazis in the
spring of 1942. As a consequence, the Jewish community became a closed
environment.
Theresienstadt supplied the German
war effort with a source of Jewish slave labor. Their major contribution was
the splitting of mica
mined from local Czechoslovakia. Blind prisoners were often spared deportation
by assignment to this task. Others manufactured boxes or coffins. Others
sprayed military uniforms with a white dye to provide camouflage for German
soldiers on the Russian front. According to ex-prisoners, Theresienstadt was
also a sorting and re-distribution centre for underwear and clothing
confiscated from Jews.. "from all parts of Germany, the baggage taken away
from the Jews was sent to Theresienstadt, and there it was packaged, sorted-out
in order to be sent out all over the country, to various cities, for the people
who were bombed-out and suffered a shortage of underwear and clothing."[7]
456 Jews from Denmark were sent to
Theresienstadt in 1943. These were Jews who had not escaped
to Sweden before the arrival of the Nazis.
Included also in the transports were some of the European Jewish children whom
Danish organizations had been attempting to conceal in foster homes. The
arrival of the Danes is of great significance, as the Danes insisted on the Red Cross's
having access to the ghetto. This was a rare move, given that most European
governments did not insist on their fellow Jewish citizens being treated
according to some fundamental principles. The Danish king, Christian X,
later secured the release of the Danish internees on April 15, 1945. The White Buses,
in cooperation with the Danish Red Cross, collected the 413 who had survived.
Approximately 144,000 Jews were sent
to Theresienstadt. Most inmates were Czech Jews. Some 40,000 originated from
Germany, 15,000 from Austria, 5,000 from the Netherlands and 300 from Luxembourg.
In addition to the group of approx. 500 Jews from Denmark, also Slovak
and Hungarian Jews were deported to the ghetto. Some 1,600 Jewish children from
Białystok,
Poland,
were deported to Auschwitz from Theresienstadt; none survived. About a quarter
of the inmates (33,000) died in Theresienstadt, mostly because of the deadly
conditions (hunger, stress,
and disease, especially the typhus epidemic at the very end of war). About 88,000 were deported to Auschwitz
and other extermination camps. At the end of the war, there were a mere 17,247
survivors. 15,000 children lived in the camp's children's home; only 93
survived.
Well,
I guess this was your history lesson for the week.
Well,
that is about all the news I have for this week. Just more of the same. Hope this finds everyone doing great. We love you.
Love,
Elder
and Sister Paxton
