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UNSTOPPABLE<\/p>\n
A Holocaust Biography Raises Questions About Devotional Service<\/p>\n
PART 3: THE BOTTOM LINE<\/strong><\/p>\n 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, \u201cHeil Hitler!<\/em>\u201d with the nonchalance of wishing someone \u201cHave a nice day.\u201d Making fun of his former Nazi oppressors was Siggi\u2019s way of saying, \u201cTo heck with you, Adolf, you and your master plan. It didn\u2019t quite work out the way you expected, did it?\u201d<\/p>\n At the same time, Siggi never escaped nightmares of what he\u2019d 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.<\/p>\n \u201cIs there a God? That was a big question in Auschwitz,\u201d Siggi told an interviewer in later years. \u201cNobody had the answer. Somebody said, \u2018Maybe there never was a God.\u2019 Someone else said, \u2018Maybe there once was a God, but He resigned.\u2019 Somebody else said, \u2018He\u2019s not paying attention to us anymore, so maybe He wants us dead.\u2019 <\/p>\n \u201cThe answer came to me after liberation,\u201d Siggi described, \u201cwhen 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 clouds\u2014and 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 didn\u2019t die. He was talking to me. \u2018I\u2019m up here,\u2019 He was saying. \u2018Don\u2019t despair. Sometimes a dark cloud like Hitler gets between us, but, you know, I\u2019m up here.\u2019 In that one split second, I was reminded that He\u2019d never left.\u201d <\/p>\n Perhaps because I\u2019ve worked on Siggi\u2019s 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: <\/p>\n * \u201cIf God is all-powerful and all-good, evil should not exist. Why does it?\u201d <\/p>\n * \u201cHow can we know what\u2019s true when so many philosophies claim to have a monopoly on truth?\u201d<\/p>\n * \u201cWhat\u2019s the point of maya<\/em>? If we are part and parcel of the Lord, shouldn\u2019t we be immune?\u201d<\/p>\n 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: \u201cIt Krishna\u2019s creation. He could have set it up any way He wanted. Why was it necessary to make things so painful? Couldn\u2019t He come up with another way of getting us to understand whatever we\u2019re supposed to understand? Why such cruelty?\u201d Then there\u2019s the kicker: \u201cBesides, there\u2019s really no evidence that He even exists. It\u2019s all faith. Krishna consciousness is basically a religious way of making sense of a senseless world. Krishna is really just a pretty myth.\u201d<\/p>\n I\u2019ve 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, I\u2019ve found that people aren\u2019t really looking to be convinced philosophically out of their doubts; they\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n An early disciple of Srila Prabhupada, a dear friend who passed away years ago after an illustrious career as one of Prabhupada\u2019s \u201cchief whips,\u201d once gave me a candid reply when I asked him whether Krishna might be a \u201cpretty myth.\u201d He said, \u201cFind me a prettier one, and I\u2019ll follow it.\u201d That was cool. He was well versed in the scriptural explanations of things, but he understood something that\u2019s 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 it\u2019s not what most people are looking for when they come to Krishna consciousness. They world is filled with tragedy. Hatred didn\u2019t die with Hitler in his bunker April 30, 1945, and the work of Krishna devotees is not just to offer scripturally approved explanations. It\u2019s to remind people that the sun is still shining on the other side of the clouds. It\u2019s to reach out with a hand of compassion and friendship\u2014especially to those whose opinions differ from ours. <\/p>\n Here\u2019s the bottom line: If we devotees can\u2019t find a way to bridge the divide between the aisles, who will?<\/p>\n UNSTOPPABLE<\/p>\n A Holocaust Biography Raises Questions About Devotional Service<\/p>\n <\/p>\n PART 2: THE RISKS OF NEUTRALITY<\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n 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 \u201cthe hand of the Almighty.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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 venues\u2014in churches and universities and at business gatherings\u2014and 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 world\u2019s more important monument to Holocaust memory. <\/p>\n If he threw himself into such a missionary role, it wasn\u2019t only because he felt an obligation to speak for those who had died in the Holocaust and couldn\u2019t speak for themselves. It was also because he believed there was no defense for inaction, no justification for letting injustice go unaddressed. \u201cNeutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim,\u201d said Siggi\u2019s friend, Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel.<\/p>\n How \u201cun-neutral\u201d 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 \u201cpondered almost daily. To what degree [are we meant to practice] socially activist bhakti vs. \u2018let the world go its own way\u2019?\u201d Then he wished me well and said he was waiting to see if I could \u201cpull 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.\u201d<\/p>\n After more than 50 years of devotee life, I\u2019ve 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. <\/p>\n It is true that, from documents of the period, we don\u2019t 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 \u201csuch a marvelous vision was revealed to him [in the Goswamis\u2019 company] that he was fain to acknowledge the place as indeed holy ground.\u201d 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<\/sup> century also emphasized the dignity of women by setting a strong example of gender equality. Mahaprabhu\u2019s 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 Mahaprabhu\u2019s movement, something acknowledged by early Christian Indologists such as Nicol Macnichol, who applauded the bhaktas<\/em> for having \u201cgrasped the basal conception of Theism that God is a moral being, governed from first to last by a purpose of compassion.\u201d Today, in a period of political and environmental collapse, devotees are compelled by that \u201cpurpose of compassion\u201d to adopt innovative methods of devotional service. We\u2019ve 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 won\u2019t 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 else\u2019s responsibility? Do we truly see the world around us as the virata-rupa,<\/em> an incarnation of the Supreme, or is that merely religious rhetoric?<\/p>\n 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, \u201cIf you are going to have a plant\u2014take care of it!\u201d <\/p>\n Which we, his followers, might today expand and say, \u201cIf you are going to have a planet\u2014take care of it!\u201d <\/p>\n <\/a> <\/a> UNSTOPPABLE<\/p>\n A Holocaust Biography Raises Questions About Devotional Service<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/sub>PART 1: MORAL AGENTS OR KARMIC SLAVES?<\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n 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<\/sup> 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.<\/p>\n 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. \u201cWe need bricklayers,\u201d he heard one SS officer tell another in Auschwitz. Seventeen-year-old Siggi ran up, whipped off his prisoner cap, and said, \u201cI\u2019ve had four years as an expert bricklayer.\u201d 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, \u201cWhy waste him?\u201d For the next two months, Siggi survived doing a job he knew nothing about. <\/p>\n After one particularly grueling day of hard labor, Siggi and other prisoners were confronted by a drunken guard who demanded, \u201cWho knows how to sing?\u201d 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 \u201cRoll out the barrel, we\u2019ll have a barrel of fun . . .\u201d<\/em> The guard clapped, stomped his boots, then handed the young prisoner a slice of stale bread. <\/p>\n \u201cWhat would have happened if he didn\u2019t like my singing?\u201d Siggi said to an interviewer years later. \u201cIn a concentration camp, you never knew if something you did would save you or kill you.\u201d <\/p>\n 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. Siggi\u2019s shoelaces broke off. He risked losing his shoes, and without shoes he would quickly die of frostbite. <\/p>\n \u201cI needed something to hold my shoes together,\u201d he recalled, \u201cso 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 shoes\u2014and they held. That\u2019s how I survived. It wasn\u2019t education, which I didn\u2019t have. It wasn\u2019t brains\u2014I didn\u2019t have much of that either. It was the hand of the Almighty.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n While writing Siggi\u2019s 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 Chaitanya\u2019s movement has led to a radical rethinking of devotion as a tool for social action.<\/em><\/p>\n Yogesvara dasa (Joshua M. Greene) earned his degrees in religious studies from Hofstra University. His book \u201cUnstoppable: Siggi B. Wilzig\u2019s Astonishing Journey\u201d will be distributed in April by Simon & Schuster. http:\/\/www.joshuamgreene.info\/siggi<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n
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By Yogesvara dasa<\/strong><\/p>\n