A letter from Burkhard Paetzold in Germany
December 2012
Dear friends,
The peace of Christ be with you all.
I’m wondering how to talk about the birth of Jesus today. In a time when "Christmas" has become a marketing article, and our Nativity plays happen in warm churches or romantic sceneries, decorated with glitter and electronic lights, I’m wondering if this mirrors the true story. At the same time I'm wondering about the reality of refugees and other migrating groups in our world today who are not welcome in our cities and towns.
Should we imagine Jesus' birth, for example, in a hidden spot of a metro station today, the only remaining shelter away from our luxury shopping “temples”? But if so, would we recognize the Holy Family smelling badly after a long journey without a place to take a shower and in the midst of baggage sacks that look like garbage?
Every year in November right before the North American Thanksgiving, German churches celebrate a so-called “Ecumenical Peace Decade”—10 days of prayer for peace and justice. This year the motto was “Courageous for Human Dignity.” In my home congregation in Petershagen-Eggersdorf we had decided to talk and pray specifically about our relationship with Sinti and Roma people. (Sinti is a specific Romani people group, which has mainly lived in Germany—for 600 years now.)
November 9 is the date Germany remembers the “Night of Broken Glass” pogrom—a series of well-planned attacks against Jewish citizens throughout Nazi Germany in 1938, carried out by SA [Sturmabteilung, Storm Detachment or Assault Division] paramilitary and civilians. German authorities did purposefully not intervene, which made this day the beginning of the persecution of Jewish and other minorities. So later November 9 became a Holocaust memorial day. This year our church remembered not only the millions of Jewish victims, but also the 500,000 Sinti and Roma who have been murdered during that time.
On November 9 our church invited the Sinti Swing Berlin Band to play and we read reports about the racist persecution of Sinti and Roma in Nazi Germany as well as about the situation today, when Roma, who came as refugees during the Yugoslav and Kosovo wars, are now deported from Western European countries (including Germany). Many of the Roma kids grew up in German towns, went to school, and don’t know any word of Serbo-Croatian or Albanian but have to return to those countries now with their families.
On another evening during our peace decade I got to talk about our PC(USA) ministry with Roma in Eastern Europe to show the situation in which Roma have to live today. Al Smith, who had just returned from the Russian Roma Network meeting in Kursk, joined me for this evening.
At the end of the Peace Decade we celebrate every year an ecumenical devotional service together with our Roman Catholic sisters and brothers. This time we had invited a Caritas street worker, Rainer, who works with Roma in a housing project in Berlin. Right now the German tabloids are full of reports about Roma refugees coming in “huge masses” from southeastern Europe and seeking asylum in Germany. Rainer’s goal is establishing long-term relationships, building trust and serving people in need, Roma and non-Roma alike, helping Roma with language training and in their daily struggle with the German bureaucracy.
All this seems far away from our quiet commuter town, but suddenly much to our surprise a man stood up during the devotion to tell us that in our own town some 40 or 50 years ago a Protestant deaconess, Sieglinde, had once established a long-term relationship with Sinti and Roma: Families from all over East Germany came to camp in her garden and spend time together singing, praying and playing.
Later “Sister Sieglinde” became the point person for the Protestant churches in East Germany for this ministry. All this happened at a time when Sinti and Roma were considered “asocial” and were forced to work in industrial labor and to settle and assimilate.
It was not easy and in some cases it was only through Sieglinde’s service that those whose parents and grandparents had been imprisoned in concentration camps during the Nazi regime received a government stipend as a compensation. Unlike other victims or anti-Fascist fighters, it was difficult for Sinti and Roma to be recognized and granted compensation. In East and West Germany Sinti and Roma have still been considered outsiders and many Germans have still lived with their century-old racist prejudices and considered the so-called “Zigeuner bands” to be persecuted “rightly” by the Nazis for being “criminal beggars.”
The man who told us about Sister Sieglinde was a neighbor who sometimes served her when there was a repair request. When she died several years ago her work ended. Her service was almost hidden and was not remembered before now.
Today we should know better. On October 24, 2012, the German Chancellor Merkel, the Federal President Gauck, and Romani Rose, Chair of the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma, attended the dedication ceremony of the Memorial for the European Sinti and Roma killed under National Socialism.
Nevertheless, racism is still present.
I’m sure we have to rethink our image of the Nativity, and I want you to help us pray and advocate for people who are not welcome in our world.
I want to thank you for your prayers and support of this ministry to the Roma and Sinti in Central and Eastern Europe. Please consider coming alongside us in 2013 with your prayers and financial contributions as we partner to find an integrated approach to address diversity in this part of the world.
May your Christmas be filled with the blessings of peace and reconciliation within your families as well as with your neighbors near and far.
Burkhard
The 2012 Presbyterian Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 275
The 2013 Presbyterian Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 283
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