Providing ‘Sources of light’ through stories of survival

Danny Martin, Amy Edelstein and Hans Hallundbaek. JEFF MORRIS PHOTO

By JEFF MORRIS

Sharon Griest Ballen, who has long been involved with the Presbyterian Church and the Interfaith Prison Partnership, and is chair of Bedford’s Prison Relations Advisory Committee, is familiar with what it takes to provide hope. So she knew what she was doing when, strictly as a private citizen, she organized “Stories of Survival” at the Katonah Presbyterian Church on May 14.

Ballen introduced the three speakers she had invited by saying they would provide messages of hope. She stressed the importance of listening to the stories of those who have lived through defining moments of history and survived violence, corruption, and political unrest. She called them “those who have chosen to be sources of light in the face of overwhelming darkness.”

Unsurprisingly, two of the speakers told stories connected to World War II. The third spoke about the “troubles” in Northern Ireland.

Hans Hallundbaek

Hans Hallundbaek, born in 1935 in Denmark, recalled the invasion of his country by Nazi Germany. Danny Martin grew up in Belfast during the time of “the troubles.” And Amy Edelstein is the granddaughter of Aron Bielski, one of the Bielski brothers who took to the woods in what was then Poland and are credited with saving at least 1,200 Jews.

“We have been charged, the three of us, to bring hope,” Hallundbaek began. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know how to do that. Hope is needed, but all I can do is tell a story about the people in a little country far away from here called Denmark. Four million people were occupied for five years by Nazi Germany. They did not lose hope despite what they went through.”

Hallundbaek described hearing and seeing the German planes come over his house as the invasion began when he was 5 years old. Most of what he witnessed came as a result of living within five miles of a major airfield established by the Nazis, which was later the subject of intense bombings by the Americans. He said Hitler knew that Denmark was essential as a farming resource, so while it was subject to restrictions and shortages, Hitler recognized its productivity was needed to supply his troops.

“We were almost hopeless. We were frustrated, we were scared. But we lived through — we made it,” Hallundbaek said. People met in each other’s houses at night. “They sat, and they talked, and they held hands. Denmark has been a kingdom for at least a thousand years, so they shared their history, and they shared their national songs and hymns about how much they loved their country. So they were together. And that, I think, saved them.”

There were also freedom fighters who obstructed the Germans as best they could. “But the biggest hero we had, in my book, was our king,” said Hallundbaek. “The king at that point was Christian the Tenth. He continued to ride his horse through the streets of Copenhagen to show solidarity. We had a moral figurehead on our side who stood by us.”

The king helped Jews escape to Sweden and get to England. At some point the Nazis ordered that Jewish people wear a yellow star, said Hallundbaek. “The king said, if the Jewish people should wear a star, the Danish people will also wear a yellow star. And the Germans relented, because they respected that moral voice.”

“I think the hope I can share is, let us raise some moral voices in this country, for our hope,” concluded Hallundbaek.

Danny Martin

Danny Martin, who was born and raised in Belfast and who still has family there, said putting his reflection together “was like writing a memorial to so many who have struggled and died that I knew personally — but also perhaps a prayer of hope for all who are struggling with conflict today.”

Martin recounted the origins of the conflict in Northern Ireland, observing that empire inevitably leads to conflict, and everywhere the British Empire formerly ruled is still rife with conflict today. He told of living through bombings in the 1970s, and of one particular incident that directly affected his family. His brother’s sister-in-law, Anne McGuire, was walking along a Belfast street in 1976 with her four children, “when an IRA gunman — I knew him, Tommy Lennon from up our own street — was shot by a pursuing British army patrol as he fled the scene of an attempted ambush. His car mounted the footpath and pinned Anne and her children against a school railing. Anne came out of a coma some days later to learn that three of her children had died.”

Martin said her sister Maria, who was Catholic, and a local Protestant woman named Betty Williams responded by calling on the women of the area to march and call for an end to the violence — and march they did, in vast numbers. “The result was the creation of the Peace People, and marches of women from both sides of the divide that spread across the country and over to England. Maria and Betty won the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts,” Martin said.

Though the Good Friday agreement of 1998 finally ended the conflict, Martin cautioned that it was not a “real and true resolution, even if it did stop the conflict and end the ‘troubles,’ for the suspicion and fear that had festered over years was still there, and the conflict beneath the agreement manifested in a horrible drug industry and the highest rate of teen suicides in Europe.” He said there is still room for reconciliation.

Martin ended by quoting from a poem by William Stafford, with emphasis on the last stanza, which he said applied to all conflict at all times, especially today: “For it is important that awake people be awake / or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep; / the signals we give—yes or no, or maybe — should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.”

Martin added, “For the resolution of conflict, the signals we give are critical: in a world of deliberate and cynical disinformation, a world of divide and rule that feeds conflict.”

Amy Edelstein

The final speaker, Amy Edelstein, recounted not her own story, but that of her grandfather, which has been told elsewhere and was made into a book and movie. The Bielski brothers saw their parents killed by the Nazis and moved into the woods near their home in what was then Poland and is now Belarus, where they formed “a village in the woods.” For four years, they managed to stay under the radar of the Nazis, moving repeatedly to avoid being discovered, and eventually growing to a community of 1,200 people. 

“I speak to middle school groups,” said Edelstein. “I explain that the behavior of the Nazis was a form of bullying; that bullying and hate come in many forms, and it comes for every group in one form or another. I started using the phrase, ‘Be a Bielski.’” Edelstein said she shares her family›s story as often as possible as her way of combating hate in this world, “so that people know there is another way.”