The Dead Admonish Us
Martyrdom and Memory
For International Holocaust Remembrance Day, I’m re-sharing a piece I wrote for Harper’s in 2024 about my cousin Gottfried Ballin, who joined an anti-Nazi resistance group in Cologne, was arrested and convicted of conspiracy to commit high treason, and then deported to Auschwitz, where he was murdered.
Since it deals with martyrdom, it feels like an especially appropriate time to share it. The title is “The Dead Admonish,” which comes from “Die Toten Mahnen” or “Die Toten Mahnen Uns,” a slogan often used by the socialist movement in Germany—it marks the memorial to Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in Berlin.
Much of the piece is based on my experiences going back to Cologne to research Gottfried and his mother, Anna Ballin, and the bookstore my family once owned there, where Gottfried once worked.
I had the very uncanny experience of being a ghost walking around that city. I arrived at the Jewish cemetery in Cologne quite by accident on the high holy day of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, so I was struck recently when I bought a book about the German-Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig and found this in the introductory essay:
In his central work, Der Stern der Erlösung, (“The Star of Redemption,”) Rosenzweig describes the Jew on the Day of Antonement “confronts the eyes of his judge in utter loneliness as if he were the dead in the midst of life…Everything earthly lies behind him.” Then, “God lifts up his countenance to this united and lonely pleading of men,” and grants man a part in eternal life. Man’s soul is alone—with God. “Everything earthly lies so far behind the transport of eternity…that is difficult to imagine that a way can lead back to the circuit of the year.
In his Judah ha-levi, Rosenzweig takes up the theme again. He speaks of the tension between God and man which seems irreconciable on this day of atonement and reconciliation, until in the last profession of the day “man himself, in the sight of God, gives the answer which grants him the fulfilment of his prayer in return…in this moment, he is as close to God…as it is ever accorded man to be.”
I’m not sure I got there exactly, but again, it’s eerie how that spiritual loneliness mirrored my own experience.
The Harper’s essay is an outstanding piece of work, especially in your evenhanded and perceptive reflections about your family and their both unique and representative character.
"he didn’t care for self-righteous idealists" I enjoyed your essay, John, and the chance to learn more about your family history. It seems unfair to try and assess a life cut so short, deprived of the chance to grow and mature... Bildung. I hope you'll continue to do some live dialogues if writing less frequently is necessary. I think you come off well in the spontaneous spoken word.