Buried Bibles

May 31, 1934: On that day, seventy-three years ago, a group of lay persons and pastors gathered in a city in northwestern Germany named Barmen, and signed a statement of faith drafted by the young theologian Karl Barth. In the opening lines of what came to be called the "Barmen Declaration," this confession declared obedience to Christ as the standard requiring resistance to Hitler and the National Socialist Party (Nazis). In some ways, it was a day like any other: many people shopping in the outdoor market near the church, others going about their work, perhaps noticing a gathering of Christians for a "Synod" meeting in the Gemarke Church.

But this was a gathering that was to have momentous importance for the resistance struggle: In the first article of this "confession," the signers declared their faith in "Jesus Christ, as he is attested to us in Holy Scripture, [as] the one Word of God whom we have to hear, and whom we have to trust and obey in life and in death," and went on to "reject the false doctrine that the Church could and should recognize as a source of its proclamation, beyond and besides this one Word of God, yet other events, powers, historic figures and truths as God's revelation." The battle lines were clearly drawn, such language being a clear renunciation of Hitler and the "Third Reich". In the months and years that followed, most of the leaders of this "Confessing Church", as it came to be called, paid a heavy price for this allegiance: harassment, imprisonment, and in many cases execution. A seminary was born that year, to nurture future ministers in this church movement; although eventually closed by the Nazis, it reopened in 1945 as the "Kirchliche Hochschule," the seminary I have the privilege to serve as Guest Professor during this "Summer Semester ".

On the same day this year, I found myself invited to join a group of Christians to meet the President of the "new" synagogue in Barmen, built five years ago on property given by the Rhineland church and adjoining the Gemarke Church which had been the site of this synod. The two synagogues in Wuppertal, or "Valley of the Wupper River," the larger city encompassing the towns nestled along this river, were destroyed as were almost all the synagogues in Germany, on November 9, 1938 (by German reckoning, the infamous Krystall-Night of "9/11" since Europeans reverse days and months by American standards * when they hear Americans speaking of this date, it inevitably recalls this obscene incident of Nazi terror). A small group of Jews who returned to the city having escaped the Nazi death hunt established a synagogue in the mid-1960s, with some fifty members by 1990. In the last ten years, the numbers have grown exponentially because of the significant immigration of Soviet Jews to Germany in the years since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, with a membership now exceeding several thousand. The situation is not without significant complications, of course, since many of these recent immigrants brought with them only dim memories of their religious faith because of generations of Soviet suppression and persecution. But it is an inspiring story of religious renewal, and a testimony of human courage in the face of evil.
The president of the synagogue took special pride in showing us this beautiful new building and was particularly keen to bring out two old Torah scrolls, the only artifacts from the original synagogues to survive the Holocaust. "When the Nazis took power, we buried them in the Jewish cemetery, in a coffin," he told us, "hoping they would escape notice and survive the violence." Only after the war did a group of survivors return to Barmen in order to exhume the coffin and recover their treasured scripture scrolls. With a twinkle in his eyes, he suggested that the story reminds us that even Jews know something of the resurrection of the dead * and these scrolls, together with the life and vitality of this reestablished synagogue, seemed to me something of a miracle of biblical proportions. As I left, I could not help but reflect upon Jesus' brooding promise, as recorded in John's gospel: "Very truly I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit." (Jn. 12. 24) * a resurrection harvest, indeed!

3 June 2007
Professor Mark Burrows
currently guest professor at the "Kirchliche Hochschule Wuppertal"