Helmuth and Uli Eiwen stared in amazement at the ancient gravestones mounted on the old city wall where it meandered through a local park.
Helmuth, pastor of Ichthys Church in Wiener Neustadt, Austria, and his wife, Uli, had left a prayer meeting the night before convinced that the key to a mystery awaited them at the wall. For months church members had been praying for the city, asking God to show them what was blocking revival.
During prayer, the conviction had grown that the Lord had something to show them at the old city wall.
Confronted with gravestones with Hebrew inscriptions dating from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the Eiwens were intrigued by a city plaque indicating the stones had come from a Jewish graveyard closed in 1496. The revelation sent them to the library on a fact-finding mission. What they found was a brutal record of treacherous dealings with Jewish residents for many centuries, including an incident in 1496, when every Jewish citizen was forced to flee the city.
PERSECUTING THE JEWS
For centuries it was illegal for Jews to live in this city some 30 miles south of Vienna, but they gradually drifted back, and by 1938, Wiener Neustadt contained a lively Jewish community of about 1,200. In that fateful year of the Nazi Anschluss, there were nearly 200,000 Jews throughout the country. Those who had the means and the foresight to do so escaped to England, the Americas, or Palestine. About 65,000 of those who could not leave died between 1938 and 1945. Many of those who survived the concentration camps chose not to resettle in Austria. In Wiener Neustadt, the second-oldest Jewish settlement in Austria, no Jews are left.
Stirred by this discovery, the Eiwens and the church began to confess to God the sin of the city and to pray for God’s blessing on the community.
BEYOND FORGIVENESS
Soon, however, they became convinced that it was too little simply to ask God for forgiveness. It was necessary to go to those directly offended and face to face confess the sin of the city and ask them for forgiveness. A worldwide search was initiated for Jews born in Wiener Neustadt and driven from their homes in 1938.
Eventually, the church located about 65 of Wiener Neustadt’s Jewish former citizens. Some were too old or ill to return for the all-expense-paid one-week visit offered by the church and its 150 members. After intensive correspondence, however, most made plans to attend either the first two gatherings last year or the third in May.
“We invited you,” Helmut Eiwen told the returning Jews, “because we want to receive you in this city in a completely different spirit than the one in which you were forced to leave.”
During each Week of Engagement, as the events were called, the Jewish guests were honored by the mayor of Wiener Neustadt. They served as “eyewitnesses” in local schools and were invited guests at special events. Accompanied by church members, they were taken on a tour of the city’s old Jewish quarters, led by the city archivist.
But the central event of each Week of Engagement occurred during a day-long church gathering when Eiwen, as a representative of the church and community, asked forgiveness for the “unbelievably great wrong done to you personally, to your family, and relatives in this city.”
Although the primary reason for the gatherings was the recognition of guilt and the request for forgiveness, an important second reason for the Weeks of Engagement was the desire of the church to communicate the love of God to people whose lives had been devastated by their experience at the hands of the community.
Eiwen told the guests, “We are deeply convinced that the God of Israel has brought you here because he wants to show you how much he loves you.”
SHARING STORIES
The heart of the week-long program was daily contacts with church members. Surrounded by people they came to see as loving friends, many of the city’s Jewish former citizens shared their stories.
In the course of the week, some of the Jewish guests found healing for such wounds. “I feel like I am dreaming. God has healed so many wounds in me,” said one guest from Israel. “Only God can do a miracle like this.”
Another guest, surrounded by people who cared, for the first time told of an experience that had seared her heart for nearly 60 years. Deported with her family to Vienna and longing for the dolls she was forced to leave behind in Wiener Neustadt, nine-year-old Miriam Yaron made daily visits to the window of a toy store, where wonderful dolls were attractively arranged.
Finally, her father promised to find a way to buy his daughter a doll. The great day arrived, and a blue-eyed, blonde-haired doll with a porcelain head was laid in her eager arms. Miriam’s joy lasted eight days, until the delicate china head broke when the doll slipped from her arms. Once again, a sympathetic father came to his daughter’s aid. “We’ll find a doll doctor,” he told her. The woman at the shop said she would be glad to fix the doll, but later began to be suspect that the father and daughter might be Jews.
When the child returned to pick up her doll, the woman eyed her suspiciously. “You are not a Jew?” she asked. Too young to understand, the little girl replied with confidence. “Of course.” The woman appeared confused for a moment. “But your father is certainly an Aryan. He has blue eyes.” Confidently, the child replied, “He is Jewish.”
The effect on the saleswoman was dramatic. Grabbing the broken doll, she thrust it into the child’s face. “We don’t repair dolls for Jews,” she declared.
Yaron related, “In this moment, as a child, my sense of self-worth was stolen from me.” She had carried the story within her for 57 years and had never told it to anyone.
One evening after Yaron had related the experience to church members, Uli Eiwen came to her with a carefully wrapped package. Opening it, Yaron found a beautiful, hand-made doll. Yaron told a gathering of friends, “With this amazing act, she closed the circle for me. In Uli’s gesture, I have found human kindness and my self-worth again.”
A NEW CHAPTER
The Jewish guests were not the only people deeply affected by the Weeks of Engagement. Church members told of life-changing impact and even of healing in family relationships. “We, too, have received,” said Ichthys Church member Dieter Bogg.
“My wife and I had never had a special feeling for Jewish people. However, the openness of these people as they came was overpowering.”
What will be the result of the Weeks of Engagement? “In the spiritual realm, an evil chapter in the history of Jews and Christians in Wiener Neustadt has come to an end,” said Helmuth Eiwen. “Now a new chapter is beginning.”
Otto Rudich of Tel Aviv asks, “How can you tell someone else what happened? What we saw in Wiener Neustadt is the power of God starting a new era of history.”
The church plans annual reunions when Jewish former citizens and their relatives and friends will return to the city to renew friendships with relatives and acquaintances.
Eiwen expects that the regular, frequent appearance of Jews in the city again after decades without a Jewish presence will make it difficult for city leaders to ignore the issue in the future.
Another important reason for the reunions is to encourage the participation of the children and grandchildren of Jews driven from the city. “The following generations have been deeply affected,” said Uli Eiwen. “They feel they have been robbed of their roots.”
“It is important to approach these generations in an attitude of reconciliation,” she said, “so that the healing process may move into the younger generations.”
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