[Resurrection of the half dead people with British administration - comparison with the picture of El Greco "The fifth seal" - falls on the head and coffee

We know the famous painter El Greco, which real name Domenikos Theotokopulis. He panted a picture which is very familiar to me, "the fifth seal". On this picture apostle John, the mystic on Patmos [island in Greece] could see the resurrection of the deads. I was thinking often of him and of his face when the red glowing morning was coming up over the Rheinberg camp which was presented to every morning like a huge field of graves. I never saw the original of the picture. But I am more advanced than the painter already. What he had seen in his spirit I have seen in real on this world.

I was standing mostly up very early because I wanted to see this picture again and again. Standing up was a torture. Coming up from the lying position from the hart earth without any pillow was provoking pains on the whole body as if it had been one single open wound. When I had adjusted the stiff limbs then I was looking around. Far away a church tower could be seen, some tops of roofs (crests), and the rest was a yellow brown surface from horizon to horizon cut by wire fences shimmering in a tender and graceful way.

In these short moments of the new mornings I did not feel anything of my captivity any more. I was "under way in a wide world which could not be measured". I felt what the mystic meant when he [p.191] said that he would swim in the deity like an eagle in the air whereas - no, we did not have the mood of eagles at this moment, more like acrobats which had gone too far, for whom the way to the end was as far as the way back to the beginning. Then God was moving the rope a little bit, only a little bit and they were falling to the ground with heavy brain concussion. This was the end now, or was a beginning.

One does not know it so precisely if the people in Rheinberg were believing in God, if they were wanted to believe at all basically or could. Therefore the fifth seal which was opening to me every morning was the resurrection of the dead people such a thrilling event, despite of all prose. Because these were not the trombones of the Last Judgment waking up the sleeping persons in the earth, but there were only mouths of the kooks shouting that the coffee  would be ready and had to be collected at once. After several weeks of scarce of water coffee was made every morning, even just real coffee, but without anything else - no bread, butter, sausage, cheese, milk, sugar and all the other ingredients which would represent a joyful breakfast. It was useful to follow the call of the cooks. Who was not hurrying was excluded from getting coffee. As soon as the call had shouted the heads were coming out from the earth, the shoulders, the knees, first only some, then more, then unmissable until the Campo [p.192] Santo was filling with a wild caos of human beings so it could be a horror.

It was as if the dead would be called from earth all 1,000 years for getting their judgment. Never before and never after this I have seen the uprising of the suffering creatures stronger. When the sky over us had opened with the world judge on the throne, I had not wondered, only curious perhaps what he would have done with us, with us who had the signal of being damned on the front drawn by human hands. Would he be capable to convert the asthmatic justice of the winners into his justice? About this I was thinking when the emaciated bodies were erecting themselves from the grave's night into the morning light. And then the comforting future was sure that it would be better not to confront oneself as a terrestrial judge but as a terrestrial charged and previously convicted.

[Divine service, baroque divine church songs and tears]

When Rheinberg was under British rule also divine services were hold. There were priests. As in the concentration camps of the Third Reich there were also here dozens of priests behind barbed wire. The pastors of Rheinberg did provide hosts and candles, also a golden cup. An armored tabernacle was not necessary. Who would steel here? And where the thief would conceal the stolen good or would make money with it? The organ was consisting in our voice boxes. But singing was nothing for [p.193] neurasthenics [intellectual people solving enigmas]. There were too many memories with the melodies. These melodies were remembering our childhood, the days in Upper Swabia with a burning light stick in the hand passing the snow in the morning for singing the Christmas songs in the church. Cantus firmus had been good, Gregorian chorals in the clothes of a monk. But these baroque church songs were attracting tears like summer grass is attracting dew. There was only one solution, escaping when the lips began to move, when the mouth corners were cramped, when the eyes were burning and when little stars were glittering in front of the eyes. One had to escape, one had to order oneself, one had even to insult oneself. Oh no, we had not reached complete rigidness during Second World War yet. One was keeping a big distance to the congregation and was returning as a honest man and as a sinner. There was no other way to support all this yet, first it was a slave's church with divine services behind barbed wire, degraded, despised, leprous. This was not much better than with the pursued Christians of the early Church, not much better than the town of Volkswagen Wolfsburg where the dictator should not have any location at all considering God's will. This whole camp of Rheinberg could only be in a world which was not know by Christ, which was at least pretending as if it had never lived [p.194]. Also Roman proconsuls did not treat worse their prisoners.

[How the Bible should match to Germany now? - praying in the wind with contaminated sand - a thunderstorm and a water wall]

Considering how the New Testament is beginning, then one could get many problems tearing one's hair, throwing oneself into the barbed wire or cutting an artery with a piece of sheet. En proto en logos - at the beginning was the word, God's word, God's sun, God's spirit, everywhere present in our language, in logic, in theology and in anthropology, in cosmology and in geology, in eschatology and biology. And they were acting as if humanity had never passed the stadium of ice age. No, divine service in Rheinberg was almost the heaviest thing to support which had to be supported.

When we tried to pray then we were grinding our teeth, not by fury or hatred, but because the wind was blowing sand into our mouths without end. What we were doing, if eating, if drinking, if sleeping, we always were with this wind and with dirt in the eyes, dirt in the throat, extremely dangerous dirt full of deadly germs which came from the dying camp of the people with dysentery. With this dirt between lips and teeth there was not good praying. As it is so far that love is one of the few catastrophes which is really changing the humans, but it had not touched us nor shocked us. There were many stations to pass on the way to God [p.195].

I remember myself of one afternoon where we were called to a divine service. The pastor was well preaching. He had something of a Galilean fisher, no, of a fisher from Northern Germany who can manage fishing also under an ice cover. He was tearing his net under the ice. It seemed that he would have a big haul. Then a dreadful thunder stroke came interrupting the whole scenery. Without having seen before a big black wall had come and was over us now like a huge coffin lid. then a torrent was beginning as if all holy reservoirs had burst at one time. We were running and gasping for air passing this water wall looking for a shelter in our holes. No, it had been too early yet. The hours of mercy had not arrived yet. The last word about Rheinberg could not be spoken yet. Seeing the sense in this absurdity was not our task yet. This young pastor was not given a second fisher's lesson. Therefore Rheinberg remained a question for us, forgotten fast, shifted away fast on the day when we were dismissed. But we could not kill this question nor have an answer for it. It is coming up again and again pleading for an answer. Who will give it? Who can give it? Well, 10 years were passing, grass has grown where the camp of Rheinberg had been before, and now I want to make a trial for it [p.196].

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