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Free downloadable study guide available here.
Love in a Time of Hate: The Story of Magda and Andr Trocm and the Village That Said No to the Nazis
270
Love in a Time of Hate: The Story of Magda and Andr Trocm and the Village That Said No to the Nazis
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Overview
Free downloadable study guide available here.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781513801254 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | MennoMedia |
| Publication date: | 06/13/2017 |
| Pages: | 270 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.00(d) |
About the Author
John D. Roth is project director of MennoMedia’s Anabaptism at 500 initiative. Prior to that role, Roth was a professor of history at Goshen College (1985–2022), where he also served as director of the Mennonite Historical Library and editor of the Mennonite Quarterly Review. Roth has published widely on topics related to Anabaptist-Mennonite history, theology, and church life. He is also the founding director of the Institute for the Study of Global Anabaptism at Goshen College and is active in Mennonite World Conference. John and his wife Ruth enjoy spending time with their grandchildren and are members of Berkey Avenue Mennonite Fellowship in Goshen, Indiana.
Read an Excerpt
Love in a Time of Hate
The Story of Magda and André Trocmé and the Village That Said No to the Nazis
By Hanna Schott
Herald Press
Copyright © 2017 Herald PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5138-0125-4
CHAPTER 1
Motherless World
Florence and Rome, 1901–9
The king of Italy made an imposing sight. Little Magda stood before his oil portrait in wonder. Whoever wore so many stars, bands, buttons, medals, and baubles, in addition to a sash, was without a doubt the most important and powerful man in all of Italy. And right after him came Papa.
The similarity in moustaches and medals made it clear that the two men were good friends. The king had a funny-looking beard — its tips turned upward so that they pointed at his ears. Papa's moustache was shorter, and his ears did not stick out from under his hat the way the king's did. Clearly, Papa was the better looking of the two, even though he had fewer medals on his chest.
"Papa rode past our house with his soldiers": In one of her very first childhood memories, Magda stood on the balcony and watched the parade pass in front of their house. Papa was seated on a majestic horse. The army band marched in front of him. Papa was a colonel. Magda had no idea what that meant, but the word sounded like colonna: columns. Papa was as slender and handsome as a column. He was so important that he was not able to live at home. Papa stood watch over the entire land.
Oscar Grilli di Cortona could have claimed that he did in fact belong to the columns that upheld the Italian monarchy. At the time of the parade that Magda remembered, her father was stationed at the fortezza of Florence, close to where the family's house was located.
A large, dark figure standing at the end of a long, dark hallway and calling Magda to run into his arms: that was Magda's second childhood memory. The man was wearing a black coat that reached to the floor, and a tall black hat was perched on his head. She was afraid and had no interest in doing what he requested. Magda did not know that the black-clad figure was a monk who belonged to the Russian Orthodox Church, whose worship services took place several floors below the Grilli family's apartment in Rome, not far from the Vatican. She felt nothing other than fear.
Florence, Rome: Oscar Grilli di Cortona was stationed for several years in both places, but "Rome" or "Florence" meant nothing to a three- or four-year-old child. The only things she knew in either place were rooms with high ceilings, unimaginably long, badly lit hallways, dark red carpets, and an old-style, doorless elevator that moved slowly in a loop up and down inside the building without stopping.
There was little difference in the ambiance of the two places Magda lived — only the governesses changed, in a yearly rhythm. The "older sisters" who arrived from the north — the phrase au pair had not yet been invented — made their Italian sojourn and traced Goethe's steps in Florence, Naples, and Rome. And there, where they settled for a few months, they took care of a rather terrified little girl and tried to teach her the things they considered the most important.
* * *
Magda grew up in a motherless world. Nelly Wissotzky Grilli di Cortona, Magda's mother, died at the age of twenty-three, ten months after her marriage and barely four weeks after the birth of her daughter.
Magda's world was a motherless world, but it was nevertheless a world full of women.
There was Varia Wissotzky Poggio, whom Magda called Grand-Maman. She was Magda's maternal grandmother, and probably the person in the Grilli household best suited to provide little Magda with something like maternal care and to establish an emotional bond with the child. Grand-Maman spoke French with her granddaughter, and they addressed each other in the formal style. Sometimes, however, they shifted to English or German, and when Magda was not supposed to understand the conversation, the adults present slipped into Russian. Grand-Maman had been born in Siberia.
How did a child from Florence come to have a Siberian grandmother? The story was complicated but quite typical for a time in which the concept of an "immigrant background" had not yet been invented. People searching for a better life were on the move in every corner of Europe.
Grand-Maman's father, Alexej Poggio, lived in Saint Petersburg. That he bore an Italian family name was because his father, a noble merchant from Genoa, had killed an opponent in a duel and was forced to flee from Italy to Russia. The dishonorable emigration of his father proved to be no obstacle to the young Alexej, who rapidly ascended in Russian society. Alexej fought first against Napoleon and then became a bodyguard in the czar's court. Until December 1825, he enjoyed a life of ease and glamor in the royal household. Then a new czar, Nicholas I, succeeded his father on the throne. In a solemn ceremony, the officers of the guard were supposed to swear an oath before their new lord. But they refused to do so. In their view, the Russian crown was standing in the way of long overdue reforms. Serfdom, especially, should have been eliminated long ago — and for that conviction the officers were ready to risk life and limb. Alexej was fortunate that he was not numbered among the leaders of the rebellion; they were immediately hanged. The other rebels, who later became known as Decembrists, were demoted and banished to Siberia. Alexej was part of this group, and he remained there for thirty years until Alexander II ascended the throne and commuted the punishment of the Decembrists.
Thus it came to be that Grand-Maman was born in Siberia. A life that began in Siberia and led to Tuscany gave Grand-Maman the ability to adapt and made her curious about every new thing she encountered.
Regardless of the day or season, Grand-Maman always wore black. And, at least in the judgment of the fashion-conscious Italian relatives, she was always poorly dressed. "Someday someone on the street is going to come up to you and slip you some coins," said Nonna Grilli, Magda's paternal grandmother, who was always alert to the visible markers that distinguished her family from the common folk.
"Then I'll take the money and give it to someone who can use it," Grand-Maman answered decisively.
Grand-Maman had been trained in Geneva and Florence as a pianist, but she also nurtured a deep love of philosophy and literature. When Magda was a bit older, her grandmother held animated conversations with her about the Russian side of her family history, the question of serfdom, and the struggle of the Decembrists. Magda surely would have heard the term human rights for the first time from the mouth of Grand-Maman. But then there were also all the routine matters, as well as Italian. Grand-Maman quizzed Magda when it came time for exams; sometimes she was learning the content alongside her granddaughter. Grand-Maman was clearly the favorite grandmother — perhaps even an older friend — and now and then in later years an accomplice as well. But she was never tender with Magda. Taking the child on her lap and giving her a kiss would have been, for Grand-Maman, unthinkable.
Grand-Maman never spoke of her daughter Nelly — Magda's deceased mother — and did not tolerate others speaking of her either. Both Nelly's life and Nelly's death were taboo subjects in the Grilli family. In Oscar Grilli's bedroom hung a photo of his deceased wife. It showed Nelly as a young, seemingly fragile, beautiful woman — the beloved, who remained such for Oscar's entire life.
"Do you know who that is?" Father once asked Magda. It was one of those rare days in which she visited him in his room.
"The woman in the photo?" Magda asked. "No. I don't know."
Was it that she couldn't say it — that the word mama could not pass her lips? Or did she truly not know? Years later, even the sixty-year-old Magda, when pressed by her children to speak into a tape recorder about her memories, could not answer this question.
* * *
A grand-papa belonged to Grand-Maman. He was not dead, but he was invisible. Grand-Maman never spoke of him, but every now and then a small gift would arrive in the mail for Magda, sent by Grand-Papa from some mysterious place. Where this was, however, and why her grandfather never allowed himself to be seen like other grandfathers were some of the many mysteries of Magda's childhood.
The second woman in Magda's early world was Nonna Grilli, her father's mother. Mannered, strict, and status-conscious, she was a native Italian, but she only conversed in French. For her, Italian served only to give instructions to servants and delivery boys. Between Nonna Grilli and Magda stood first the wet nurses and then a comet's tail of governesses, in keeping with all the standard conventions of the family's class.
The third woman who also lived in the house and helped to shape Magda's life and perspective was Aunt Olga, Nelly's sister and Magda's aunt. But she too was as good as invisible, even though she slept only a few steps away in a darkened, adjoining bedroom. Day after day she lay there on her chaise longue. Aunt Olga suffered from migraines, and for several years it was Magda's dream to share in her suffering. Whoever had migraines got tea from the servants and the best pastries, which you could receive in bed along with a great deal of care and attention. Whoever had migraines didn't have to repeat her piano lessons endlessly or practice perfect handwriting. She could simply be there and do nothing at all. What a life!
Aunt Olga's daughter Lalli was the fourth female presence in Magda's world. These two cousins, nearly the same age, developed a profound trust for each other. Their friendship was the one glimmer of light in Magda's childhood.
Lalli's family was also without a man in the house. Her father had left the family shortly after Lalli's birth and had married another woman. Out of all of this, young Magda drew a clear conclusion: I have a father. Lalli has a mother. Some children must have a father, while others have a mother. Since people at that time were slow to correct the assumptions of children, Magda's conviction that she had no mother was not shaken for many years.
The fact that she too had once had a mother did not become clear through some child-appropriate explanation regarding conception and birth. Rather, she learned of her mother's existence in a coarse, almost brutal, manner. One day Magda overheard one of the household servants say to another: "È lei che ha ammazzato sua madre!" (She is the one who killed her mother). At first Magda didn't know whom they were talking about, but then she saw that the other maid was looking straight at her. They were talking about her! She had killed her mother?
The sentence pierced her heart. Magda could not free herself from the thought. And she knew not a single person in whom she could confide about such matters.
CHAPTER 2Magda's Fears
Florence, 1910–11
Magda's father did not wear his heart on his sleeve. Perhaps expressing his feelings simply didn't fit with Oscar Grilli di Cortona's character and temperament. Or perhaps all young men in his circle placed their feelings behind shields so that they could become useful officers and worthy representatives of their social rank.
Only one stirring of his heart could not be hidden from those around him: Oscar's love for Elena Wissotzky Poggio, better known as Nelly. Magda's mother was the love of his life. She was certainly that in life, and she remained that in death as well. Nothing about this changed when Oscar remarried. For years he had resisted the expectations of his friends and counselors. A man, especially one in his position, must be married, they argued. Oscar would have gladly continued to live his life as he expected: successful in his career, yet lonely and withdrawn in private. But he finally relented. After nine years as a widower, he allowed himself to be persuaded to enter into a second marriage.
He chose Marguerite — a Florentine Italian Catholic. Oscar and Marguerite were married on December 1, 1910, and they absorbed Magda into their newly established home — at least on Sundays. For Marguerite, the nine-year-old stepchild was something like the leftover remains of her husband's past life. It was not that she did not like children. In time, Marguerite herself became the mother of three children, and she was not unhappy in this role. But Magda was the lingering memory of her husband's first marriage and — much more importantly — a reminder of her husband's great love.
That this love endured, and would continue to endure, soon became clear to Marguerite. Oscar carried a photo of Nelly in his wallet, wore her ring on his pinkie finger, and kept a lock of her hair in a chain around his neck. All this from a man who appeared to be anything but a romantic! Magda would later describe her father's marriage to Marguerite as a tragedy. Marguerite was driven sick with jealousy. Her feelings were directed not only at Nelly but also at Magda, even though Magda's father had never displayed any visible sign of attentiveness or tenderness to his daughter.
Marguerite's attitude never changed in the many years of their marriage, and her anxious possessiveness of her husband made Magda jealous in turn. But nothing could erase Oscar's deep connection to Nelly. Even as an old man he would read the letters his fiancée had written to him decades earlier. What's more, he copied them out in his own hand. Again and again he attempted to copy Nelly's signature so that at least the last word of these duplicated letters would appear as if written by her. After his death, all of these letters, along with the brooch containing the lock of Nelly's hair, were passed along to Magda.
* * *
Anyone living in the higher circles of Florentine society who was nearly eight years old was old enough to leave the house to pursue an education. So it was that Magda was sent to a boarding school run by German deaconesses, the Istituto delle Diaconesse di Via Santa Monica, on the other side of the Arno River. In 1860, the Kaiserswerther sisters, as they were called, had established a "house of education and nurture," in which they offered the children of Tuscany basic instruction comparable to a primary-school education today. It ended with an entrance exam into a state school, which for most students marked the end of their educational journeys.
When Magda was a student at the school in 1909, almost all the deaconesses were quite elderly; several of them had even known Magda's grandmother, Nonna Grilli, when she was a student there. Magda was the youngest of the female students, and her bed in the large dormitory was so high off the ground that she had to have a running start to jump into it. In the morning she had to make the bed with great care so that none of the blanket edges betrayed any hint of a wrinkle. Every Thursday evening the children were permitted to receive visitors, but only in the cool, dark "Hall of Emperors," whose portraits glowered sternly from the walls.
Grand-Maman appeared there dependably and punctually every Thursday, and brought Magda the local news and assured the unhappy, homesick child that they would see each other again on Sunday — that is, as long as Magda conducted herself beyond reproach. The school's standard punishment for a misdeed was that one could not go home for a Sunday visit.
Even Sunday began with the deaconesses. Grand-Maman came to the Sunday school at the boarding house to accompany the children's singing with the pump organ, but it would have been unthinkable to go directly from Sunday school to the noon meal at Papa's house. First Grand-Maman and her granddaughter attended the so-called Swiss church, that is, the Waldensian congregation, where the two listened to a sermon in French for nearly an hour — or, as was more often the case for Magda, yearned for it to end. By then Magda would become restless, since she knew that time was pressing and that she needed to be back at the boarding school by suppertime. Indeed, as she later wrote, soon after the meal with Papa and Marguerite, she would become "overwhelmed with a feeling that my heart was constricting, my hands began to feel cold and began to cramp. Soon I would need to be heading back on the narrow Santa Monica alley!"
Once a week, as a charitable activity of the Salvation Army, Grand-Maman distributed cod liver oil to the children in the poor section of the neighboring San Frediano. How eagerly Magda wished she were one of those poor children who were able to be so close to Grand-Maman! Instead, she sat and thought intently about her grandmother, only a few steps away, whom she was not permitted to see.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Love in a Time of Hate by Hanna Schott. Copyright © 2017 Herald Press. Excerpted by permission of Herald Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Foreword 9
Prologue 13
Part I
1 Motherless World 17
2 Magda's Fears 25
3 Finishing School 33
4 Fleeing the Cloister 41
Part II
5 A Piety Lacking Mercy 51
6 This Whole Isolated World 59
7 The Man without a Face 67
8 Such a Thing as Beauty 77
Part III
9 Walking the Emmaus Road 89
10 Serve the Rich or the Poor? 97
11 Wedding and Travels 107
12 Young Family in Coal Country 113
Part IV
13 Moving to the End of the Earth 125
14 Descendants of Refugees 137
15 A School of Resistance 147
16 A Stranger and You Took Me In 157
17 The Weapons of the Spirit 167
Part V
18 A Village on a Hill 177
19 Every Child We Can Save 187
20 "Yon Need to Be Careful" 199
21 Arrest and the Village's Farewell 211
Part VI
22 Raid on the School 223
23 On the Run 235
24 The Great River of History 247
Epilogue 261
Acknowledgments and Sources 265
The Author 271