UNSTOPPABLE
A Holocaust Biography Raises Questions About Devotional Service
PART 3: THE BOTTOM LINE
By 1975, 28 years after his arrival in America as a penniless Holocaust survivor, Siggi Wilzig had built an empire in oil and banking. When he was in a particularly good mood over how well things were going, he had an unusual way of showing it. In restaurants and business meetings, he burst out singing Broadway show tunes, snapping his fingers and appearing more like an entertainer than a banker. On other occasions, he showed his satisfaction by clicking his heels together, raising his right hand, and shouting, âHeil Hitler!â with the nonchalance of wishing someone âHave a nice day.â Making fun of his former Nazi oppressors was Siggiâs way of saying, âTo heck with you, Adolf, you and your master plan. It didnât quite work out the way you expected, did it?â
At the same time, Siggi never escaped nightmares of what heâd witnessed: families torn apart, people dropping dead from starvation, human beings burned and their ashes scattered across concentration camp grounds for fertilizer. Worst of all was watching guards march children to their death in gas chambers and crematorium ovens. One particularly harrowing report describes Nazi guards tossing Jewish babies in the air for target practice.
âIs there a God? That was a big question in Auschwitz,â Siggi told an interviewer in later years. âNobody had the answer. Somebody said, âMaybe there never was a God.â Someone else said, âMaybe there once was a God, but He resigned.â Somebody else said, âHeâs not paying attention to us anymore, so maybe He wants us dead.â
âThe answer came to me after liberation,â Siggi described, âwhen I had to take an airplane somewhere. That was my first plane ride. It was a cloudy, rainy day. The plane took off and it went up into the clouds, and then it got over the cloudsâand the sun was shining. I tell you it was a beautiful day above those clouds, and that reminded me that the Almighty was always there. He didnât die. He was talking to me. âIâm up here,â He was saying. âDonât despair. Sometimes a dark cloud like Hitler gets between us, but, you know, Iâm up here.â In that one split second, I was reminded that Heâd never left.â
Perhaps because Iâve worked on Siggiâs biography for the past seven years, that particular anecdote comes to mind when people confide to me their hesitations over going deeper into devotional practice. In the past few weeks, the emails have included questions such as:
* âIf God is all-powerful and all-good, evil should not exist. Why does it?â
* âHow can we know whatâs true when so many philosophies claim to have a monopoly on truth?â
* âWhatâs the point of maya? If we are part and parcel of the Lord, shouldnât we be immune?â
Those are some of the easy questions. Many of the tough ones come slathered in a thick layer of vitriol, deep-seeded anger toward any Divinity who would allow the souls He created to undergo extreme miseries. The argument generally runs like this: âIt Krishnaâs creation. He could have set it up any way He wanted. Why was it necessary to make things so painful? Couldnât He come up with another way of getting us to understand whatever weâre supposed to understand? Why such cruelty?â Then thereâs the kicker: âBesides, thereâs really no evidence that He even exists. Itâs all faith. Krishna consciousness is basically a religious way of making sense of a senseless world. Krishna is really just a pretty myth.â
Iâve been in Krishna consciousness for more than 50 years, and in the early years I took on such questions with the fervor of a Bible-thumping evangelist. In recent years, Iâve found that people arenât really looking to be convinced philosophically out of their doubts; theyâre looking to be comforted. Like them, I, too, wonder at the severity of the world. I, too, question the wisdom of a Supreme Being Who could have found other ways of bringing wayward souls back to Him. And I also stamp my feet sometimes and rattle a fist at the skies, demanding answers to irksome questions.
An early disciple of Srila Prabhupada, a dear friend who passed away years ago after an illustrious career as one of Prabhupadaâs âchief whips,â once gave me a candid reply when I asked him whether Krishna might be a âpretty myth.â He said, âFind me a prettier one, and Iâll follow it.â That was cool. He was well versed in the scriptural explanations of things, but he understood something thatâs taken me nearly a half century to grasp. Intellectual argument only gets you so far. Philosophy never made anyone a devotee. It might help, but itâs not what most people are looking for when they come to Krishna consciousness. They world is filled with tragedy. Hatred didnât die with Hitler in his bunker April 30, 1945, and the work of Krishna devotees is not just to offer scripturally approved explanations. Itâs to remind people that the sun is still shining on the other side of the clouds. Itâs to reach out with a hand of compassion and friendshipâespecially to those whose opinions differ from ours.
Hereâs the bottom line: If we devotees canât find a way to bridge the divide between the aisles, who will?
UNSTOPPABLE
A Holocaust Biography Raises Questions About Devotional Service
PART 2: THE RISKS OF NEUTRALITY
Siggi Wilzig was seventeen years old in 1943 when he was forced into a cattle car with thousands of other German Jews and sent to die in concentration camp Auschwitz. He endured brutal tortures, constant starvation, a dozen selections for death in the gas chambers, and two death marches in freezing winter with only a thin blanket. He survived thanks, in part, to a foxlike intuition for knowing which way to turn, when to dodge blows, and how to find food. He also credited his survival to chance and to âthe hand of the Almighty.â
Siggi arrived in America at age twenty-one with no education, no contacts, and nowhere to go. His first jobs in America were shoveling snow and cleaning toilets in clothing sweatshops. Yet by the time he died in 2003, he had built an empire in oil and banking with assets in excess of $4 billion dollars. Not bad for an immigrant who came here with only $240 in his pocket.
Because he had survived and thrived, Siggi felt an imperative to bear witness, to tell others what had happened and why they should care. He lectured constantly on the Holocaust, mostly at non-Jewish venuesâin churches and universities and at business gatheringsâand was the first survivor to address cadets and officers at West Point. He was a leading voice against Holocaust denial and played a central role in building the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., the worldâs more important monument to Holocaust memory.
If he threw himself into such a missionary role, it wasnât only because he felt an obligation to speak for those who had died in the Holocaust and couldnât speak for themselves. It was also because he believed there was no defense for inaction, no justification for letting injustice go unaddressed. âNeutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim,â said Siggiâs friend, Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel.
How âun-neutralâ are we devotees supposed to be? How involved should we get in the affairs of the material world? After the first installment of this series, a devotee friend wrote that this was an issue he âpondered almost daily. To what degree [are we meant to practice] socially activist bhakti vs. âlet the world go its own wayâ?â Then he wished me well and said he was waiting to see if I could âpull it off by either quoting classic, orthodox Prabhupada-isms, or else by presenting a more liberal view of our theology and praxis by shifting some emphases.â
After more than 50 years of devotee life, Iâve concluded that social action is not an option for us but a necessity, and I look to Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu for inspiration. It has always been a point of pride for me to read that He performed devotional service as a socially transforming enterprise, whether through interfaith dialogue such as His talks with Chand Kazi, meeting other opponents with knowledge rather than weapons, or by serving men and women of the humblest status with compassion and love. Chaitanya accepted many members of lower castes as disciples including drunkards, tribal people, thieves, prostitutes, Muslims and Buddhists. He maintained frequent social contact with non-brahmins, accepted their hospitality, shared their food and drink, and occasionally helped them with menial chores. In a time of extreme caste restrictions such behavior did not merely flaunt tradition, it was tantamount to sedition.
It is true that, from documents of the period, we donât find much expectation that devotional service would have a global impact, but a reasonable explanation is that this early generation of Vaishnavas had other priorities. The Goswamis, for instance, went to Vrindavan with explicit instructions to recover pilgrimage sites, oversee construction of temples, build roads, collect Sanskrit texts, write books of their own, and develop Vrindavan into an important religious center. That was already such a major achievement that in 1570 Emperor Akbar felt compelled to meet the Goswamis for himself. One historian notes that âsuch a marvelous vision was revealed to him [in the Goswamisâ company] that he was fain to acknowledge the place as indeed holy ground.â
In those early years, the main activity of Krishna consciousness was kirtan. Yet even kirtan had the broad social effect of challenging brahminical tyranny and caste prejudice. The young Krishna consciousness movement of the 16th century also emphasized the dignity of women by setting a strong example of gender equality. Mahaprabhuâs followers placed no restrictions on initiating women, nor were there any objections to widows remarrying, even outside their caste. The wellbeing of the greater society was fundamental to Mahaprabhuâs movement, something acknowledged by early Christian Indologists such as Nicol Macnichol, who applauded the bhaktas for having âgrasped the basal conception of Theism that God is a moral being, governed from first to last by a purpose of compassion.â
Today, in a period of political and environmental collapse, devotees are compelled by that âpurpose of compassionâ to adopt innovative methods of devotional service. Weâve entered, worldwide, a time of the largest displacement of humans on record; and here in the US, due to unemployment the coming months are projected to see more people evicted from their homes than at any time in history. As if emergencies on the ground were not sufficient incentive in get socially involved, in the atmosphere above our heads we have entered a lethal stage of climate change. While devotees swear off meat and many devotees have sworn off disposable plastics, these are just the first and easiest gestures. Will we make an effort to reduce our use of fossil fuels to help stave off an apocalyptic future? There wonât be much point in public chanting if there is no public to chant to or any safe public place to chant. Already, COVID-19 has relegated sankirtan to remote locations and online events. Can anyone seriously argue that devotees have the option of ignoring these conditions or of claiming they are someone elseâs responsibility? Do we truly see the world around us as the virata-rupa, an incarnation of the Supreme, or is that merely religious rhetoric?
I remember being in the London temple, in 1974, when Srila Prabhupada looked with concern at a plant that had been left on a windowsill of his quarters. The plant had dried up from lack of water and was nearly dead. He took a handful of water from a faucet and splashed it on the plant. Then he turned to us and said, âIf you are going to have a plantâtake care of it!â
Which we, his followers, might today expand and say, âIf you are going to have a planetâtake care of it!â
UNSTOPPABLE
A Holocaust Biography Raises Questions About Devotional Service
PART 1: MORAL AGENTS OR KARMIC SLAVES?
Unlike Jews and Christians, who have had a vested interest in the outer world for centuries, Vaishnavas have traditionally focused on the inner world. Today, with the world growing smaller and humanity more interdependent, Vaishnavas face unprecedented change. What does it mean to be a bhakta in the 21st century? Is it sufficient to take initiation from an approved guru? Does it mean engaging in sankirtan on a regular basis? Does it mean worshipping the Diety? Does legitimacy as a Vaishnava depend on strict adherence to rules and regulations? And where does social action fit? Should devotees vote? Is community involvement a part of Vaishnava life? Is this even a question that can be raised? Perhaps we humans, devotee or otherwise, are not free moral agents but slaves to our karma.
The late Auschwitz survivor Siggi Wilzig knew nothing about karma. He was the product of a thousand years of German Jewish history, and all he knew as a teenager in the 1930s was that you either figured out a way to survive or you died. Doing nothing was not an option. Siggi was good at surviving. âWe need bricklayers,â he heard one SS officer tell another in Auschwitz. Seventeen-year-old Siggi ran up, whipped off his prisoner cap, and said, âIâve had four years as an expert bricklayer.â It was a foolhardy move since not only was it an outright lie, but prisoners could be killed for speaking without permission. One officer looked at the other, shrugged, and said, âWhy waste him?â For the next two months, Siggi survived doing a job he knew nothing about.
After one particularly grueling day of hard labor, Siggi and other prisoners were confronted by a drunken guard who demanded, âWho knows how to sing?â Nobody moved, so the guard beat one of the prisoners to death with a rubber hose. Siggi calculated that the guard might kill all of them if no one sang, so he stood up, jumped side to side, and sang âRoll out the barrel, weâll have a barrel of fun . . .â The guard clapped, stomped his boots, then handed the young prisoner a slice of stale bread.
âWhat would have happened if he didnât like my singing?â Siggi said to an interviewer years later. âIn a concentration camp, you never knew if something you did would save you or kill you.â
By January 1945 Germany was losing the war and, knowing Allied forces were approaching from the east, the Auschwitz administration marched prisoners out of the camp. Siggi was among many who were forced to walk hundreds of miles through rain and snow to concentration camp Mauthausen in Austria. The ground was thick with ice and mud. Siggiâs shoelaces broke off. He risked losing his shoes, and without shoes he would quickly die of frostbite.
âI needed something to hold my shoes together,â he recalled, âso when we stopped for the night, I crawled over to this thin tree and peeled off strips of bark. Then I twisted the strips together and tied them around my shoesâand they held. Thatâs how I survived. It wasnât education, which I didnât have. It wasnât brainsâI didnât have much of that either. It was the hand of the Almighty.â
Would Siggi have survived anyway, had he not exercised such initiative? Possibly, but faith for him did not preclude exercising common sense. More to the point of this discussion, as a believing Jew he viewed taking action as an invitation for God to intervene in his life.
While writing Siggiâs biography, there were many anecdotes that compelled me to think about what it means to be a devotee today. Viewed historically, devotional life might seem opposed to social action: over the centuries Vaishnavas have appeared more like ascetics, renouncers, and worshipers of Deities in temples than community organizers. One scholar has gone so far as to suggest that for moral and social guidelines Vaishnavas turn to Rama, since what Krishna offers is less a plan for acting in the world than an inner mood of spontaneity and playfulness.
Part 2 will examine how Sri Chaitanyaâs movement has led to a radical rethinking of devotion as a tool for social action.
Yogesvara dasa (Joshua M. Greene) earned his degrees in religious studies from Hofstra University. His book âUnstoppable: Siggi B. Wilzigâs Astonishing Journeyâ will be distributed in April by Simon & Schuster. http://www.joshuamgreene.info/siggi