The conference center at Caux, Switzerland
I spend my summers, like many Swiss, up in the mountains. But my summer ‘chalet’ is a former Palace hotel, now an international conference centre, with hundreds of participants, from around the world (see: www.caux.ch).
We enjoyed a magical evening of Klezmer music in the Caux theatre. It’s slightly amazing that after the almost total destruction of the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe that gave birth to this musical idiom, this haunting, joyful, dancing, sad music is played and enjoyed by many. I’m not well-known for my dancing, but it is almost impossible NOT to dance to this music! A moving revenge on Hitler.
I’ve also taken part in a workshop on ‘Religious diversity and anti-discrimination training’, a training that has been modeled by an NGO called CEJI and is billed as ‘A Jewish Contribution to an Inclusive Europe’ (www.ceji.org). And there were also a number of people taking part in this conference on ‘Learning to Live in a Multicultural World’ from the pedagogical movement for children’s rights inspired by the Polish-Jewish victim of the Holocaust, Janusz Korczak.Towards the end of the Second World War, the former Caux-Palace, then the Esplanade Refugee Camp, housed some 1,600 Jews. In 1999, we inaugurated a plaque at the foot of an oak tree planted in 1997 to mark this little-known chapter of history. The simple plaque looks out over the breath-taking view over the Lake of Geneva to the Franco-Swiss pre-Alps. The text on the plaque reads: ‘In remembrance of the Jewish refugees who stayed here, and of those who were not admitted to enter Switzerland during World War II. We shall not forget.’
Claude Ruey, then President of the Vaud Cantonal Government sent a message. He described memory as ‘one of the most noble, the highest virtues of man’. Speaking to the Jewish people, he stressed that theirs was ‘a destiny so exceptional, so cruel, that it now belonged, like an emblem, to all mankind. A destiny that had left deep and terrible marks on our history, despite monstrous and dishonest attempts’ to blur or deny it. History needed to be looked straight in the face, without blinking, Ruey went on. The duty to remember was ‘a painful virtue for the Swiss’. The past should not be recalled in order to condemn the present, but the memory of the elders ‘should serve to instruct the younger generations’. The Canton of Vaud would not prove lacking in the courage to do this. For him, the past revealed both the grandeur and the weakness of mankind, ‘the mean and contemptible behaviour of some; the courageous, determined and uncompromising actions of others’. He concluded his message, ‘Truth is a constant quest, made up of looking ahead and of memory.’
The Mayor of Montreux, Pierre Salvi, spoke at the 1999 event, noting that in early 1945, his town, with its population of 16,000 inhabitants had sheltered 4,000 wounded, deported people and refugees, including those Jews housed in the Caux-Palace. It was important to face past wrongs, he went on. ‘Mankind is inclined to forget, and so repeat past errors,’ he continued, but one shouldn’t surrender to discouragement. Now the region again sheltered several hundred refugees. In the words of the organisers of the event, ‘the installation of the commemorative plaque and the modest ceremony are an expression of the desire to learn the lessons from the past and build a shared future less weighed down with the baggage past’. In solidarity with the refugees of today, representatives of the five continents lit candles.
My bedside reading this summer is Martin Gilbert’s massive history of the Holocaust, so I’m moved to encounter all these other reminders of the contribution to our continent and the world of this amazing people. As a Christian pretty ignorant about the world of Judaism and the anti-Semitic history of Europe, I have the feeling that this must be part of my ‘homework’, if I want to be a responsible European and world citizen.
Philippe Mottu, one of the founders of the Caux conference centre, has died aged 97.
With his friends Robert Hahnloser and Erich Peyer, Philippe Mottu was a founder of the Conference Centre for Moral Re-Armament (now Initiatives of Change) which opened at Caux in 1946. He will be remembered as one in a long line of Genevese who have taken initiatives extending far beyond Switzerland.
http://www.iofc.org/node/50310