Michael W. Finkbeiner writes
this message to his William Penn classmates from the Class of 1965:
In May of 1965 I left Harrisburg prior to
our graduation ceremony to embark on a solo European tour - a graduation present
from my mother. When Margaret Steiner signed my yearbook in my absence, she
asked, "What were you really studying there?" For almost forty
years the question has followed me to see what I've learned about life.
There were two matters affecting me then, which required some searching for
truth to answer.
The first was specific to the holocaust: Was
the great evil of that event something internal to the soul and spirit of the
German people? Being half-German by birth and name, was the capacity for evil
that great inside me as an internal force, like some genetic birth-defect
waiting to manifest itself? On Jan 27, 2005, the world observed the 60th
anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. The youngest survivor of the camp,
then 6 but now 66, Tova Friedman, writes, "Nothing that happened in this
universe compares to what happened at Auschwitz during the war." And so it
seemed in 1965, when we were but 20 years removed from that liberation event. It
was a terrible history, demanding an explanation for how it could have happened
- it still does.
Later in life my father revealed that he had
been a doctor with the American Armed Forces liberating Buchenwald (meaning
"beech forest"). His war service began as a surgeon in an evacuation
hospital, following the front lines from the Battle of the Bulge into Germany.
He was mute on this subject for many years, but near the end of his life he
opened up, and with the sad frustration of a Doctor unable to relieve suffering,
he recounted how little could be done to save the dying remaining victims. Even
their first American meal killed off many, he said. My father's internship had
been in New Orleans at the end of the Great Depression, so he was very
experienced in treating malnutrition - but the Buchenwald cases were so far
beyond anything he had seen before, that it rendered him speechless for decades
about the crimes.
The second question was broader, but similar. It arose from a teaching of the
Presbyterian Church and my Scottish ancestors on my mother's side: Were the
events of life pre-destined, so that we were mere actors on a stage, learning
our lines and the "plot" of life as it unfolds before us, but in a
drama written, produced and directed by unseen others? Or was there a capacity
for self-determination of the outcome in the matters of good and evil set before
us? The abolition of slavery had been accomplished a hundred years prior, but in
the 1960's we were still resolving the issues of what freedom and liberty really
meant for us as a society. And yet I wondered if we were really free to
determine a personal solution through action and choice.
So as I boarded a freighter in Montreal
bound for Rotterdam in May of 1965, those were the questions I wanted to answer.
One of the few books on the ship was "Exodus" by Leon Uris. Reading it
en-route stimulated my desire further to understand how such things happen, and
to find means to prevent future dark episodes.
When I arrived in Europe, I went by train to
the edge of the German Black Forest at Bad Orb, from where my relatives, German
gamekeepers, had emigrated to Pennsylvania. The name means finch-legger, after the small bird
there; I still have a painting of the homestead nestled in the forest under huge
spruces.
Barbara Lorenz's mother had arranged for me to stay with her relatives to get
started in my trip. After two weeks of local touring, I set off hitch-hiking to
Berlin, then France, Spain and Italy, ending my visit with Claudio Grego's
family in Rome and at their summer farm in the hills overlooking Spoletto, site
of the summer music "Festival of Two Worlds."
Ten days were also spent in Paris, where in the first 30 minutes, while picking
up mail at the American Express office, I was hired for a walk-on film role
(playing myself more-or-less) in Jack Tati's "Playtime," a movie with a
modern city of fake skyscrapers constructed on a lot by Orly airport. (See
www.tativille.com - the movie was the beginning of the French opposition
movement to globalization, which is now, well, global. As such, it's enjoying a
revival in France.) I think my character
represented the negative aspects of the dispersion of American teen music
culture. How ironic they should pick me for that. But after my informal study in
1997 of indigenous culture in highland Bolivia and Peru before and after the
spread of universal free MTV/HBO cable hookups to the hinterlands, courtesy of
the narco-trafico cartels and our "War on Drugs" as applied in rural
Latin America, I believe more native culture was destroyed in 5 five years (1990
- 1995) by MTV than by the Church's effoorts in 500 years to stifle the same
expressions of native dance and music. (In a rational sense I know the
music is just the messenger - but see The Drawbacks of Cultural Globalization
By Wole Akande at www.humanbeams.com/humanrights)
Closely observing the Germans in relation to the French, Spanish and Italians,
it became clear that the holocaust was the result of the terrible consequences
of a society allowing prejudice to develop into extreme hate. That hate in turn gave
way to evil in almost unbounded proportions. But I came to see
that such an extraordinary degree of evil is not internal to the human soul and
spirit; it is an external force that acts upon the human soul. Darkness is the absence of light, and cold is
the absence of warmth. But great evil is negatively more than the absence of
goodness, although it can be mitigated or deflected by the choice to do good. It
is a force to destroy the good, although the power of good and of God is
stronger.
Therein lies the answer to the second problem. We are players in a great
drama on the stage of the world. The play is already written, the conclusion
determined long ago. But we are mostly our own casting directors for the parts
we play. We choose what to do and say. We are in fact privileged to write
our own scripts for our walk-on roles.
Therefore
I came to view each of us as having been given certain costumes and props - some
with brains or good looks or money or talents, but all of us with something to
bring to the grand production of life. And death, whether it be early or late,
and life, whether it be happy or sad, is balanced and weighed at the end to
judge what we did with the gifts we were given, and how we improvised our
performance, while operating under the influence of enormously powerful forces,
for good or for evil embedded in the spiritual realm. (See Revelation
Chapter 12 and Micah 6:8, "He has told you, O earthling man, what is good.
And what is Jehovah asking back from you but to exercise justice and to love
kindness and to be modest in walking with your God.")
In June of 1968, a mere three years after leaving Harrisburg, I met Joan Mathews
at Yale. She had been a math major at Sarah Lawrence College, married at 18, had
a daughter at 20, and divorced at 23. She was starting a PhD on of all subjects,
the destruction of native culture in the Caribbean by the Church in the 1500's.
We began studying the Bible to find answers to life's difficult questions, and
were married Jan. 31, 1970. In March, 1971 we became ministers of Jehovah's
Witnesses. Since 1974 I have been an elder in local congregations, and since
1993 in Spanish. For the past 8 years I've been Secretario de la Congregacion
Hispana de los Testigos de Jehova in Greenwich, CT. My children have been or
continue as missionaries in Guatemala, Bolivia and Peru.
More information as to our beliefs is available in 256 languages at www.watchtower.org,
which I hope you will consider. Your comments and personal reactions
to any part of the last 52 years would be welcomed. Email: mwf@earthimage.net
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Mike and Joan in 2002, looking like grandparents |
| Our family includes our mothers, 103 & 89 years young.
Pictured L-to-R are sons-in-law Porfirio, Frederic and Jim. Our daughters are Jean, Sarah and Elizabeth. Grandchildren, also L. to R. Julia, Andrew, Sarah and Hannah. Our son Daniel is at Right. Porfirio and Jean live in Peru. Sarah is a French Citizen. She and Frederic lived in Bolivia for 12 years. Elizabeth and Jim have the four children. Daniel is a Spanish and French Film and Book Editor with Vista Higher Learning in Boston.
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