The following piece is being submitted by me (Bir Krishna das Goswami) for Radharadhya das who wrote the article. Radharadhya das is a devotee in Germany.
By Radharadhya das
After changing the dates of my visit to Poland thrice, I booked it exactly around the date of the 70th anniversary of the German invasion of Poland – without being aware of it. The Polish nation suffered a lot in this war. They lost 6 million people, mostly civilians, both through German and Russian atrocities. When I understood this strange coincidence of me as a German visiting Poland for the first time in his life on that exact date, I requested my Polish friends to visit Auschwitz together. They have never been there, and were not very enthusiastic to go to this horrible place, either.
I was not really ecstatic about this also, but something in me really pushed me to make this a priority. We arrived in Auschwitz late in the afternoon of a sunny Ekadasi. The original camp was a perfectly organized work camp to squeeze the last drops of life out of the slaves who worked for the German war industry. We walked around and chanted with low voice the Holy Name. It felt very sad: so much suffering and killing without any purpose, so many lives slaughtered for no obvious reason. The camp was organized in very similar ways like the meat industry, but less food and more cruelty. The camp closed, and we had to leave. I still really wanted to go the main camp 3 km away where they had the gas chambers in a remote corner of Auschwitz Birkenau camp. So at sunset we arrived, and as a miracle this camp was still open. One Polish devotee went along, and we started out to go to the gas chambers. It was a very long way around a huge, huge camp with “wooden staples” where they kept their human slaves like animals, a lot of them Jewish, but also Polish, gypsies etc. I got more and more upset internally why God could allow all these innocent, harmless people to be tortured in this way. I do not know who was more deplorable. The ones who could not work (too young, pregnant; too old, sick) and were killed on their arrival or the ones who first were stripped of all humanity, working as slaves, being treated worse than animals. I was challenging God and my Polish friend and we were discussing. One thing was clear: we MUST get out of this material world, it is a place of unlimited suffering.
We walked in silence. We were alone in the killing fields.
Then we spontaneously started to sing the Holy Names and it entered into a roaring kirtan of a two men Polish-German harinam party. The whole horror scene transformed into pure spiritual ecstasy. All sorrow, doubts and despair vanished. The sun set and it got dark. The Polish police came, as they closed down the place, but they did not throw us out, but showed us how we could continue our way all around camp. And we blissfully chanted and walked by the gas chambers onwards and completed a full clockwise approx. 3 km circle around the camp, singing blissfully the Holy Names of God. My friend told me that he lived in the area for a long time, but he never heard that kirtan was performed there. It seems that Krishna used us as instruments. We were the last visitors, nobody was there except those killed and tortured souls still suffering in their agony of hopelessness and wrath against God and humanity. We felt SOOOOOO happy and ecstatic that we could sing the holy name there to them.
I have never experience such a transformation from total horror and utter despair to the peaceful and blissful atmosphere of the spiritual world. It was at the sunset and night of Ekadasi, the 31st of August. 70 years ago, in the early morning of the same night, the second world war started with Germany invading Poland, starting the probably most horrible and disgusting war in mankind. The chanting of the Holy names was the answer to my questions and doubts. It is the greatest benediction: when we chant sincerely, it can transform the greatest suffering, unite enemies, nations and people, and open the way back home, back to Godhead. We both felt it deep in our hearts – more convincing than any argument or any reasoning.
My dear Prabhu,
Dandavats. Just returned from the Polish tour and the horror stories of Russian occupation I heard contrasted sharply to the Russian and Polish devotees dancing together in unison for the glories of Mahaprabhu;s World Sankirtan. Shrila Prabhupada writes that since the beginning of time there are two types of personalities, demons and devotees. From realizations like the ones you’ve expressed, we find that the Great Blessing of the Earth today can be traced back to one saviour who exemplified all that is best in the devotee’s heart. We are so lucky to have found shelter beneath the loving wing of that Great Angel His Divine Grace Shrila Prabhupada who defied all odds and appeared in the west to show that there is indeed a grand solution to greed, war, destruction and killing.
Killing is there, but we need to kill out false egos, not one another. War is needed, also, but a war on Maya is required, not on innocent civilians. Greed will not go away, so let us be greedy to share the bliss we have found in the Fountain of All Bliss. Thereby others may know the same bliss in Krishna Consciousness that you and I and all of us have joined hands together to find.
I was born at the end of WW2, and my parents, both Americans, met in Brussels. They were there to serve the Allied war effort. Dad was a lietenant in the US Forces.,First Calvary Division. Lieut Davis landed soon after D-Day on the beach heads of Normandy where he got a huge chunk of a Hitler grenade in his head. After the war, when I was five and six, Dad, now a captain, was posted to Germany. I remember the wonderful German people, and even as a child I could see that they had nothing to do with the war–except for their insurmountable karma. Prabhupada once commented that in Europe there is a war every ten years due to cow slaughter.
Dad took us to Dachau, to the grave of Field Marshall Rommel, an enemy whom– in true ksatriya spirit– he respected. Later on my generation (now turning sixty) came to be called the war babies. But if there is any glory at all to attribute to us war babies, it can be said that we were the first Westerners to embrace the sankirtana movement.
Fortunately for us Shrila Prabhupada appeared in the midst of our anti-war demonstrations in New York with the true peace formula, the Holy Name of Hare Krishna!
Great article, Prabhu, keep writing. That is Prabhupada’s desire.
Yours in Prabhupada,
Patita Pavana das
Please accept my humble obeisances. All Glories to Srila Prabhupada!
The sober reality in the walls of such prisons is stark and sinister, it reflects cruelty beyond the animal world and it reveals the extreme difference between humanity and corrupt illusory power. Karma unknown, invoked by past cruelty was there, the only lesson could be is to surrender to God, for the vision of futility in guise of flesh would be overwhelming.
As Radharadhya das revived the power of purity through the Holy Names, dissipation of that evil and dark grave had started. Until other slaughter-houses are neutralized there still will be more death at the hands of ignorance. Regardless, such personal practice in Vedic terms set the example of the alternatives (which was originally reality) and even if modern society does not take to heed, at least the devotee will succeed, for they’re planting the Spiritual seed and that is what we need.
All Glories to the Vaisnava’s!