reading

Tightrope Across the Abyss

by Shanti E. Bannwart

Bettina lives on top of the Mesa in a hand-built adobe house with turquoise colored trim and window frames. The High Desert is her backyard. There are wild lupines and sturdy New Mexican sunflowers. Fiery red Indian paintbrush blossoms hide between cacti with thorns that hook fiercely into your flesh. Magpies screech in the scrubby pine trees and deer come close to the house to drink from the water in an old bathtub, left there to catch some of the rare rain showers. When the moon grows close to full, coyotes yipe and laugh into the night, telling each other jokes from hill to hill and across the flat mesa, their eerie laughter galloping down into the canyon were a small brook provides water for bull frogs, lizard and hare. In winter a cedar fire brings the iron stove to glow and the smoke rolls across the roof, spreading sweet and deliriously spicy fragrances. The wind pushes tumbleweeds across brown grass and gathers them in thick clusters along chain link fences. New Mexico is part of the Southwest of the U.S., about at the meridian of Morocco. It is dry and hot in summer, but we are blessed with four seasons, and snow falls in winter, because we live at about 7000 feet elevation.

Bettina is my neighbor, and neighborhood at the outskirts of Santa Fe means distances of several miles between us. Bettina Göring has a slim face, blond hair, lively eyes and a quick smile that lingers, comes and goes like shadows of the fast moving clouds across this serene landscape. Her front teeth are just uneven enough to indicate that she might not have American roots. She has not. Like I, she too, was born in Germany. Her grandfather’s brother was Hermann Göring. In case you are young enough not to recognize this name: Hermann Göring was the perfectly blond and Arian profiled German officer, the right-hand of Adolf Hitler and Marshal of the Empire, the leader of the SS, founder of the feared GESTAPO and commander of the Luftwaffe. Herman Göring concocted and condoned the concept of the concentrations camps, where in perfectly engineered gas-chambers and extermination ovens more than six million, mostly Jewish, human beings were destroyed.

I live at the foot of the Mesa where Bettina has settled. New Mexico is about as far away as one can flee to separate from one’s German roots and culture, but not far enough, I found out, to avoid meeting a compatriot who is the grand-nice of Herman Göring. For years I didn’t know about her ancestral bondage and burden. We rarely met and simply said Hello! when we encountered each other along the dirt road. I didn’t know that she was a Göring, even when her husband Adi functioned as electrician and connected my 380 foot deep well pump with the meter. Water is precious here in the High Desert and there are houses on top of the Mesa which lack a well. A Mesa is a flat table of land that is shaped and marked by canyons, valleys and deep fissures. Our Rowe Mesa spreads for hundreds of miles and can be identified from a spaceship.

I learn about Bettina’s ancestry when a friend mentions during dinner, Do you know that Bettina created a documentary about her pilgrimage to a Jewish artist in Australia who is a concentration camp survivor? Bettina’s last name is Göring, she is the grand-niece of Hitler’s right hand and officially designated successor.

This friend informs me where I would be able to buy the movie, and so I do. It stands waiting for months between books on my shelf, before I gather the courage to view it. I am German, too, and was born at the onset of WW II, my soul and identity is scarred by this history. I still feel unable to talk about the Holocaust without sobbing, more than sixty years after the events. I am perpetrator by lineage and cultural inheritance.

When I finally gather my courage and view the documentary, it moves me deeply. The images sink into layers of the past were they merge with memories of my own German history. I feel less alone and branded when I discover that Bettina, too, suffers the phenomenon of grief and guilt by association with her German origin.

One day, when driving to Santa Fe along the dirt road that leads out of the canyon, I slow down at the cattle guard. Another car comes my way and stops. Our windows are aligned, and when I open mine, Bettina is looking at me. With one glance, and for the first time, we recognize each other as sisters of fate.

Shanti, she says, I heard that you bought my video.

Bettina, I respond, I want to meet and talk with you.

Again, I postpone, for months, connecting with her. I am afraid, shy, terrified, like one would be before open-heart surgery. I fear to be found out, to be discovered with a black sore inside that has been there for most of my life and would remain until the end. I dread the anguish that radiates from that spot and cannot be soothed. Weeks later, Bettina invites me to a public viewing of the movie in the small and intimate Jean Cocteau theater in Santa Fe. A painful discussion follows the performance.

And this is the story which the documentary portrays: Made aware by a friend, Bettina discovers the art of the Australian painter Ruth Rich, who creates pictures of concentration camps and their victims, dark, brooding, heart-wrenching art. Her images burrow into the subconscious rivers of horror that flows underneath the physical reality of those camps. Ruth is a renowned artist and has shown her work in two major exhibitions in Australia. Bettina Göring studies the artwork on Ruth’s website and begins an email correspondence with the artist. This emerging relationship encourages Bettina to attempt healing of her own ancestral wounding, of her guilt and shame, by meeting face to face with this survivor, whoís loved-ones were gassed during the Nazi regime.

Oh my god, Bettina sighs and distorts her face, it’s going to be work.

The camera follows her on this journey to Australia and documents with touching simplicity a thoroughly womanly approach to atonement: being there, eye-to-eye with the Enemy. The fright before meeting the guest shows in Ruth Rich’s face as she stands at the Sidney airport, waiting to encounter Bettina.

I am totally overwhelmed, she says with tears, squeezing the wilting sunflowers in her hands.

The two women get together as strangers, drink tea, circle and test each other as they begin to talk. It is hot in Australia. They sweat and get tired, anxious and nervous as well as intimate in their revelations. The physicality of such encounters is stunning, perplexing and heart-wrenching. They search inside themselves for the courage to be torn open and made vulnerable to their deepest pain. They struggle to come to terms with a horrific historical event by scaling it down to the personal encounter.

They demonstrate politics of the heart and soul as a female approach to making peace through personal action and down-to-earth, awkward meetings and exposure.

Are you willing to be uncomfortable with me? asks Ruth.

To have courage and make myself vulnerable, I need physical contact, says Bettina. They stretch their hands towards each other and hold on as if shipwrecked.

We need to step into the water together, says Ruth.

Making peace is hard work, like giving birth. It is painful, humbling and sometimes petty. These two women walk along a fine edge, daring to stumble and fall. We watch how a uniquely feminine space for healing is being created. A big universal story is encapsulated in this small encounter. Horror is transformed into forgiveness through the physical closeness of two deeply wounded human beings. The surface of this meeting seems gentle and sometimes tentative and polite, but underneath flows a bloody river. This is Herculean work, enacted humbly in a small house in Bangalow, Australia.

A lot of Jewish survivors would not agree with me, meeting a Nazi descendent, mentions Ruth, as if she is surprised by her own generosity.

I understand, says Bettina, I feel total outrage about our inheritance. At thirty I got sterilized, I didn’t want to give birth to more monsters; I cut my bloodline. A radical decision. My brother did the same, independently. I had three mental break-downs and could not sleep for weeks.

After many days of confrontation and healing, Bettina Göring and Ruth Rich desire to perform a final ritual that will bring closure to their journey. They apply to celebrate a peace ceremony in the Jewish Museum in Sidney. Their request is declined.

But the World Peace Organization steps into the breach, staging a peace rite with candles, tears, embraces. During this celebration of forgiveness, the two women stand in for millions.

This was my life work, to get this over with, sighs Bettina, exhausted.

We have become friends, says Ruth.

This encounter portrays a glorious and practical example for the path towards reconciliation and change. It is not the way that official politics is practiced, but it seems more effective and engaging. Intimately videotaped by Cynthia Connop, the documentary Bloodlines is slowly finding its path around the world, being shown and discussed at the Boston Jewish Film Festival and at the Jewish Film Festivals in Israel, in October 2008, when Bettina is invited to travel to Jerusalem and attend the presentation.

A two-page reportage appears in the HAARETZ-Israel News with the title: Goering’s Grandniece Seeks Closure in Israel. The report triggers more than forty responses from readers. Here are some excerpts:

It seems like far too much guilt over what her father’s uncle did. She had nothing to do with it.

I hope she can now continue her life in peace, she has wrestled with her demons enough.

This woman has been hounded beyond sanity. Does she really think her own seed is evil? What a bizarre, Medieval notion. What a grotesque story. What a grotesque world.

This is definitely unmerited guilt. It is unfortunate that she should feel any responsibility whatsoever.

Hermann Goering was a Nazi and committed crimes that are simply unforgivable but it is a problem for him only, not for his family. Nobody can be kept guilty for crimes committed by parents or relatives.

Certainly no sane person would argue she bears the sins of her ancestry—it is a shame that she has felt such guilt over something she has little to do with.

Any Jew who cannot feel empathy for this woman does not understand the essence of being Jewish.

Bettina...you are not responsible for what others did before you were even born...I hope your visit to Israel brings you the closure you seek....

* * *

Weeks later, Bettina visits my home and we have tea.

I need to learn forgiving my own people, she says. I have a lot of compassion for the Germans and their history. My father adored his uncle, Herman Göring, and I feel shame, that I liked him when I was a child.

Your honesty helps me to come out of the closet, I admit, Now I can talk more freely about my past. I am softening around it, as if ice is melting inside me.

I have not yet forgiven my people, it’s a burden I carry. I hope that it might become a fertilizer for my own growth. But now, after reading the responses to Bettina’s appearance in Israel, I feel relieved, free, joyous. Yes, maybe, we both can let go and shake the old shadows off. Maybe we are not responsible, not guilty and tainted by our ancestry.

Bettina, I say, your journey into reconciliation broke a spell.

Your courage to face the victim and accuser took the dark rocks out of the river of my conscience and allows the water to flow. The reactions of the Jewish people to your video reveal that the children of the Holocaust victims encourage movement towards a new story.

Get rid of your guilt, they say, you are insane to believe it’s your burden what your fathers did.

How long have we lived with the belief that being German carries a stigma.

God, I sigh, I feel as if somebody slapped me in the face and yelled Wake Up!.

Maybe it is time for us, the next generation after the Nazis, to kick the demons out and invest our energy, compassion and love into our own, present lives and the country, where we live now.

We hug and a rusty lock in my chest cracks open.

* * *

As I write this, I sit in the small library room of the Anasazi Hotel in Santa Fe. A fire crackles in the chimney. On the mantel stands a carved wooden angel wielding a sword in one hand and the scale of justice in the other. The beautiful face is fierce and serene. She looks as if she knows how to use this sword and will not hesitate to apply force for a worthy cause. Does she discern, because she is an angel, when drawing blood is justified?

I come here from time to time, reading, writing and musing and enjoying the art of the three cultures that live peacefully together in New Mexico. In this room, the Hispanic influence is represented by the carved angel in its simple beauty, the Native American by the exquisite ceramic pots and baskets displayed on the shelves, and the Anglo is present in the blond-haired lady in front of this room who handles requests for trips, and tickets, and rental cars, with help of her laptop. Friendly tourism seems to benefit all three cultures. It took some hundreds of years to find this arrangement between races with such contrary philosophies. I think it is the work of people in their ordinary lives that weaves the bonds between cultures. Here, too, the intricate games of politics are less powerful than people’s respectful human interactions.

It is all layered together and exists in close proximity: normal every-day activities and joys exist side by side with the big events that shake and destroy cultures. The same people who guard concentration camps sit at the dinner table with their families and laugh.

How can a normal citizen turn into a mass murderer without realizing it? asks Bettina in the documentary. Yes, how is it possible that light and darkness can be so interconnected and not know about each other? Bettina is a doctor and healer, and she is also the grandniece of a mass murderer and fears that she might carry his homicidal genes. Hermann Göring was an insane criminal, and he was also a likable man, jovial, admired by the people. He had style and believed himself to be a hero, assured that his fame would spread across the world. When he was accused and put on trial in Nuremberg, he still argued that his deeds were justified. Deemed guilty, and ordered to be hanged, he poisoned himself two hours before his execution.

I live between the last fingers of the Sangre de Christo Mountains, in the High Desert of extreme beauty and harshness; but only about ten miles from my home hides one of the most important battlefields of the bloody American Civil War: Glorieta Pass, where in 1862 the Union forces stopped the Confederates from expanding into the West towards the Pacific Ocean.

It seems that civilization is a very thin net underneath the tight-rope that spans the abyss of our dark passions and motivations. We had better tread gently, keeping a careful and humble balance so that we don’t slip. Two women, Bettina Göring and Ruth Rich, dared to dance on this rope. These two courageous women have become a symbol for a better world, where we can face each other and participate in the intimate territory of each other’s pain and joy.

* * *

Back home in Lower Canyoncito, I step out of the car and find myself welcomed by two ravens croaking above my head. They tease gravity as they spiral and twirl around each other. The brilliant black feathers of these jokesters scratch the air and produce a whistling sound as they glide by. I know them from my morning walks, we have fun conversing and calling on each other. Penstemon blooms at the side of the road and the color of New Mexico’s sunsets is reflected in the faces of blue and purple asters on the ground. High above, vultures circle and lean their wings into the wind.

* * *

A World War II Love Story: A New Mexico Bataan Veteran and his Santa Fe Sweetheart

by Nancy R. Bartlit

The late Arthur Smith grew up in Santa Fe, and, at age 17, enlisted in the New Mexico National Guard. In 1939 jobs were scarce. Smith needed the extra money that he received from participating in the Guard. When the National Guard, or 200th Regiment, was federalized and sent to El Paso, in January 1941, Smith was separated from his high school sweetheart, Bessie Pacheco. He placed a large photograph of her on a table next to his Army bunk at Fort Bliss. His buddies in the 200th regularly stole the photo, and to have some fun, hid it in various places. Once Smith returned to the barracks to find the photo in the latrine, propped over the shower.

While the 200th was stationed at Fort Bliss, Bessie persuaded her father to drive her to El Paso from Santa Fe, but they arrived just as Smith’s troop train was pulling out of the station, heading for San Francisco en route to the Philippines. She recognized Smith on the train, and encouraged her father to race along the road paralleling the tracks. Bessie saw Smith throw something out of the window. She retrieved a copy of Life magazine on which Smith had hastily written on the cover: “Bessie, wait for me. I love you.”

She did wait and wrote him every day during the war. But after the surrender of American troops in the Philippines on April 9, 1942, at Mariveles, Bataan, there was no news of Smith for several years. He received none of her letters while a Prisoner of War (POW). His parents received several postcards, written from his prison camp, sent via the International Red Cross in Geneva, Switzerland. Today, one card is so yellowed with age that it is almost brown. Smith was allowed to suggest a short message to a Japanese typist: “Love to all.”

The New Mexico National Guard was already in the Philippines in the fall of 1941, several months before World War II began. The National Guard had been ordered to the Philippines, then an American territory, because they were the best antiaircraft regiment in the U.S. Army, and many of the New Mexicans (about one-third) were Hispanic. The Pentagon thought that the cultural similarity would help the American troops get along well with the Filipinos with whom they trained under General Douglas MacArthur’s leadership.

Clark Air Base And Manila Attacked

Japanese military forces attacked the Philippines simultaneously with the attack on Pearl Harbor, only on December 8, 1941 by the international dateline. Japanese troops landed in both the north on Luzon and the south on Mindanao. Smith was on Luzon. A first priority of the Japanese charge was to knock out the U.S. Far East Air Force in order to prevent American airplanes from bombing the Japanese troopships approaching the Philippines.

The 200th Coast Artillery originally was calvary, but was converted into an antiaircraft unit by the U.S. Army. They were later known to be the first to fire December 8 and the last to lay down their arms. They were equipped with one battery of 50-caliber machine guns, twenty-two 37-mm guns (seven of which were defective), and twelve 3-inch guns. The regiment also had a primitive radar system, although it did not function properly when the fighting began.

Due to a shortage of ammunition, the New Mexican Guardsmen were not allowed to fire their guns while training. The seals on their ammunition cases were not broken into until the first wave of Japanese airplanes attacked Clark Field on Luzon. The first wave were 54 Mitsubishi bombers. To the New Mexican Guardsmen dismay, they discovered that many of their shells were duds. Why? Because the machine gun ammunition, made in 1918, had been issued in 1941. The men had to polish the corrosion off the bullets before the bullets would fit into the machine gun belts. Imagine!

Following the Mitsubishi bombers were 170 Zero fighters who staffed Clark Field. An American B-17 which got off the runway was shot down by a Zero over the field. Manuel Armijo from Santa Fe watched with horror when the Zero plane machine-gunned the B-17 crew members as they parachuted to the ground. Here was his first experience with the different rules used by the Japanese military than those of the Americans.

When first Sergeant Armijo was stationed with the 200th, he was 28 years old, the upper age limit. His wife Frances had given birth to a daughter, so Armjo applied to return home. His bags were packed to leave the Philippines on December 10 when the Japanese Mitsubishi bombers flew over the airport. Armijo would not get home to hold his daughter for four years.

Armijo remembers: “Around 12:30 p.m., Arthur Smith and I were playing around with the height finder [a sighting device used to aim the antiaircraft guns]. We turned the height finder north and saw a big wave of airplanes. There had been rumors that the U.S. Navy was sending us a whole bunch of airplanes. . . . I said to Arthur, ‘Hey, Art, here comes those darn Navy bombers we’ve been expecting.” When Art looked through the finder, he said: “Sure enough, but they’ve got big red balls painted on their wings.”

For four months the American and Filipino forces fought side by side. Rations were halved since food supplies were cut off from warehouses in Manila as the forces retreated to the Bataan Peninsula. By spring, the American military leaders were forced to surrender as the Japanese invaded with superior numbers of forces and equipment.

As the time for surrender approached, Armijo and Art Smith were ordered to destroy their height finder. Armjo had named the height finder “Frenchy,” after his wife Frances. He and Smith took a hammer and broke up the sights and the lens. The tough First Sergeant was crying. They were near Cabcaben Airport, a small field at Mariveles, near the tip of Bataan, when they were ordered to surrender. White sheets, handkerchiefs, shirts, and other items were waved by the American troops.

Armijo’s Bataan Death March began on the morning of April 9, 1942. He was awakened by a kick from a Japanese soldier who stood over him. Thousands of American and Filipino soldiers were herded into a long column of threes and fours. He passed two young Americans beside a stream. They had been bayoneted while filing their canteens. The second lesson was perfectly clear. By the third day of the now infamous march, Armijo was desperately thirsty. He stumbled and fell down. A guard quickly hit him in the lower back with his rifle butt, crushing a disc. A New Mexican friend from Santa Fe, Eddie Martinez, helped Armijo stand up, and he staggered on in great pain. The alternative was to be bayoneted as he lay.

On the hot, humid march uphill from San Fernando Railroad Station, Art Smith was terribly thirsty. A Navajo friend from Gallup, New Mexico, told Smith to put a pebble in his mouth. The men walked for six days with little or no water or food. Later, the march would be known as the Bataan Death March as thousands of men died along the way. A Japanese guard grabbed the chain around Smith’s neck which held his dog tags along with a crucifix that Bessie had given him and yanked it off. Later, Smith made a new “dog tag” out of a 1 x 2 inch strip from his metal mess kit, on which he punched his name and Army serial number with a nail.

As Prisoners of War

In the famous Cabanatuan Prison Camp, the end destination of the march, Art Smith became very sick. When Manuel Armijo encountered him, he exclaimed, “Why, Art, is that you?” Armijo carried Smith to the prison hospital. Armjo was assigned to be a cook, so he gathered the burned rice on the sides of the cooking caldrons to feed Smith. [The Americans, after surviving on 1000 calories a day while fighting the Japanese, were fed less while prisoners.] The charred rice seemed to have some medicinal qualities since Smith’s health began to improve. Guava leaves helped. Smith’s dysentery got better. The Japanese then sent him to Japan on a Death Ship, the Mati-Mati-Maru.

In Japan, the food was more plentiful. While working in the city of Kobe’s docks, one day Smith surreptitiously grabbed a fish from a drying rack. Since he was only wearing a G-string, he hid the fish in the only possible place, risking his life. Fortunately, the guards did not spot the deception. Smith feels that support of his New Mexico friends and his love for Bessie pulled him through the POW experience.

The War Ends

Japan surrendered August 15, 1945. Manuel Armijo was in Camp 1 when he and the other prisoners learned about the atomic bomb (Little Boy being dropped on Hiroshima) and the end of the war from an American war correspondent. The correspondent just happened to walk into the camp one day. This news set off a wild celebration. The Japanese guards simply vanished, leaving the prisoners on their own for several weeks until they were liberated by American troops. Armijo craved the taste of a chicken, so he went door-to-door in the town of Omuta until he found two chickens. He had to trade all his clothes, including his “long johns.” Then, he and Evans Garcia, his buddy from New Mexico, cooked and ate the chickens.

American B-29s dropped food packages into the POW camps. The food was a welcome sight to the emaciated Armijo, whose weight dropped from 140 pounds to only 88 pounds over the three and one-half years. (By the time Manuel reached Santa Fe, a month after the surrender, he had regained 20 pounds.)

Armijo and Garcia did not wait for the arrival of American troops. They forced their way onto a Japanese passenger train and traveled two days until they reached an air base in Nagoya where American planes were found. They showered, exchanged prison rags for Army uniforms, and ate American food. When Armijo finally got home to New Mexico, after recovering for two months in San Francisco’s Letterman General Hospital, his wife, daughter, and other family were at the railroad station in Lamy, New Mexico to meet him.

His mother prepared a big welcome-home dinner of green chile stew, turkey, and his other favorite foods. Unfortunately, she had prepared rice, which he simply could not face. Manuel’s mother had kept a candle burning for him all during the war. Just before the meal, she led him to the corner of the living room, and asked him to blow out the candle. This was a memory which brought tears to the eyes of the teller years later.

Art Smith was in a prison camp about 70 miles from Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and could feel and hear the explosion of Little Boy, the uranium atomic bomb. On August 15, the prison guards did not take the POWs to their work site. The following day the guards gave the prisoners some clothes and extra food. The New Mexicans could not imagine that the war was over. Soon, Smith was liberated, hospitalized, and sent back to the United States. He was sent to El Paso, but he grabbed a Greyhound bus to Albuquerque, then to Santa Fe.

Smith brought home a white satin parachute from a B-29 food drop on his prison camp. Bessie’s mother made her wedding dress from the material. After waiting six years, the sweethearts were married, then raised two sons. In 2001, they celebrated 56 years of marriage. Later that year Art Smith passed away.

Several years later, Manuel Armijo passed away. But, one of the Master Sergeant’s legacies to Santa Fe was organizing the annual New Mexico National Guard commemoration of the surrender of the American troops on April 9 of every year at the Bataan Building, west of the present state capitol. Of the 1,800 members of the 200th Regiment, half did not return. Many died shortly after getting back to the States. Several dozen were rescued when the 6th Army and the Filipino Scouts surprised the Japanese guards to release more than 500 POWs still housed in Camp Cabanatuan in early 1945 as the Americans were recapturing the Philippines.

Intended Slaughter of POWs

The Bataan survivors have understandably favorable attitudes toward the Manhattan Project, and toward President Harry S. Truman for his decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan. That decision saved their lives. Why? The Japanese Imperial leadership was determined that the during the planned American invasion [intended for November l, 1945], troops not be allowed to free the POWs. The guards were ordered to kill the POWs before they could be freed by American forces. On August 1, 1944, the War Ministry in Tokyo had issued a directive to the commanders of POW camps regarding the final disposition of prisoners. “The August 1 Kill-All Order” demanded the annihilation of all POWs when Americans set foot on Japanese soil. Testimony of New Mexico Bataan POW survivors confirm this knowledge.

With one single, atomic weapon–developed in New Mexico–America lost some POWs transferred to Hiroshima camps. But the single bomb destroyed 35,000 Japanese Army troops and at least 25,000 Korean conscripts in a city which historically was the military gateway for Japanese forces to depart overseas. On the same day Little Boy was dropped, 750 American Superfortresses (B-29s) and fighter planes took off from American military bases on the Pacific islands to destroy four other Japanese cities, while encountering Japanese antiaircraft resistance (Santa Fe New Mexican, August 6, 1945). One more B-29 with one another atomic weapon dropped on Nagasaki, convinced Emperor Hirohito to save his nation from “A Rain of Ruin,” even though his generals wanted to continue the conflict.

The white satin wedding dress symbolized the rescue of half of those sharp-shooters who felt abandoned by their country and called themselves “The Battling Bastards of Bataan.” Yet, during those war years, they were never forgotten at home. The love for a sweetheart, a mother, or a family kept their hope alive.

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Modifications and excerpts from “Silent Voices of World War II: When Sons of the Land of Enchantment Met Sons of the Land of the Rising Sun” (Sunstone Press, Santa Fe, 2005), by Everett M. Rogers, Ph.D., and Nancy R. Bartlit