The Journal of Helene Berr by Helene Berr

Author:Helene Berr
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781551993362
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Published: 2008-05-06T07:00:00+00:00

Sunday, 10 October, 9.00 p.m.

Outing. Cubs and women with stars. Jean O., Edmond B., Thibault.

Monday, 11 October, morning

A sharp ring on the bell at 7.00 a.m. I assumed (correctly) it was a pneu from Mme M. Hélène brought it up and put on the lights to give it to me. She hadn’t been able to get in touch with Anna, but her letter contained something else, a bit of news that unleashed such an insistent flood of thoughts that I have to write to calm myself: Mme Löb’s husband and daughter have been arrested in the south of France. She had thought them safe, and it had been so hard for her to part with her daughter. Now she is looking on powerlessly as they are tortured.

Once again I sank beneath those familiar waves of bitterness. I lay in bed for nearly an hour going over the same dreadful questions again and again. I thought about Jacques, Yvonne, Daniel, Denise, and also about Papa, because I fear for Papa too, and I broke out in a cold sweat.

Why? It’s all so pointless: what use is it to arrest women and children? Isn’t it a monstrous stupidity for a country at war to have to do that sort of thing? But everyone has such scales before their eyes that they cannot even see the simple point of asking such a question. It’s a frightful machine; now all we can see are its results. On one side, a rational, organized, considered evil (I’d like to know whether B. has become a fanatic, or if he is coldly self-aware), and on the other side, frightful suffering. No-one can see the monstrous pointlessness of it, no-one can see where it all began, the first cog in the infernal machine.

Maman’s anger had turned against Mme Agache. And, through her, against the inertia of the Catholics. And she was quite right. Catholics no longer have the freedom to follow their conscience, they do what their priests tell them to do. And the latter are weak, often cowardly and unintelligent. If there had been a mass uprising of Christians against these persecutions, would it not have won the day? I am sure it would have done. But the Christians would have had to protest against the war in the first place, and they weren’t able to do that. Is the Pope worthy of God’s mandate on earth if he is an impotent bystander to the most flagrant violations of Christ’s laws?

Do Catholics deserve the name of Christians when, if they applied Christ’s teaching, religious difference, or even racial difference, would not exist?

And when they say: The difference between you and us is that we believe the Messiah has come already, and you are still waiting. But what have they done with their Messiah? They’re as evil as men were before he came. They crucify Christ every day. And if Christ were to return to earth, would he not answer them with the same words as before? Who

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