TRAINING WEEK

Several new missionary couples have arrived this month, and they all gathered in Frankfurt for training this week.

Elder and Sister Thayn will be the Area Humanitarian specialists assigned to Türkiye and will be living there. We will work together on earthquake rebuild projects, but they will take over the support for humanitarian work in Türkiye. We served with them in the South America South Area. While we served in Chile, they were our counterparts in Argentina. We never met in person until we were back home in Utah but felt we knew them well through our weekly Zoom meetings. We are thrilled to be serving with them again!

Elder and Sister Muehlmann will be an in-field welfare and self-reliance couple living in Munich. We will be working closely with them on humanitarian projects in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. We look forward to getting to know them better.

We have three new couples in our office in Frankfurt. Southwick’s will be office support. The Nelsons and Giffords are welfare and self-reliance missionaries specializing in education and employment. We squeezed these new couples into our office space and already enjoy their company.

They trained all day, all week. We had lunch and dinner with them and an activity together each evening. One night we went to the temple. Another night we went to play kegel (German bowling), we made airport/hotel runs and thoroughly enjoyed our week together.

After one of our activities Celia invited us to her home to see her husband’s hurdy-gurdy collection. The hurdy-gurdy is a string instrument that produces sound by a hand-crank-turned, rosined wheel rubbing against the strings. Melodies are played on a keyboard. It sounds like a bagpipe.

Friday was the yearly office clean-up day. We cleaned out cupboards, rearranged furniture, and cleaned out the clutter on our computers.

We joined some of our friends for a Saturday field trip in Frankfurt. In the center of the old square is a haunting monument that is easy to miss if you are not looking for it. This plaque, placed in the cobblestones of the town square commemorates the book burning in 1933. The Jewish writer Heinrich Heine is quoted: “That was just the beginning. Where one burns books, in the end, people are burnt as well.”

We visited two Jewish museums. One of the worlds most famous Jewish families comes from Frankfurt and the Judisches Museum is housed in the Rothschild home and tells of their family history.

The museum holds many objects that belonged to Anne Frank’s family, who lived in Frankfurt for several generations.

This beautiful sculpture symbolizes the history of Frankfurt’s Jews: the feeling of simultaneous connection and uprooting. It also reminds us of the tree of life and God’s connection to the people of Israel as they are described in scripture with the metaphor of the tree.

US troops took Frankfurt in late March 1945. Large areas of the city had been destroyed. 80% of the buildings were either damaged or in ruins. Of the over 30,000 members of the Jewish community, only about 150 Jews survived. Approximately 13,000 Jews from Frankfurt died in ghettos or concentration camps. Their names are memorialized on walls outside the museum.

The second Jewish Museum we visited was built over the ruins of the Jewish ghetto. Jews settled in Frankfurt as early as the 12th century. In 1460 the Frankfurt city council decided to establish a Jewish ghetto. Over the next two years, all the Jews in Frankfurt were forced to move to the newly created judengasse, which was separated from the rest of the city by walls and gates. The residents governed themselves. There were synagogues, ritual baths, and various institutions of religious life. The rabbis of Frankfurt were respected for their learning far beyond the city’s borders. The residents of the judengasse spoke Yiddish and followed Jewish tradition and the Jewish calendar. This ghetto existed as an enclosed area until around 1800. Jewish life was marked by close interaction with the surrounding Christian society.

This week is the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Soviet Red Army troops liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau on January 27, 1945, and the day has become known as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Just 220,000 Holocaust survivors are still alive, and more than 20% are over 90. Remembering these atrocities is not an end in and of itself. We cannot remain silent when injustice in any form takes place.
Russell M Nelson, the president of our church, made this statement in June 2020:
“The creator of us all calls on each of us to abandon attitudes of prejudice against any group of God’s children…During the Savior’s earthly mission he constantly ministered to those who were excluded, marginalized, judged, overlooked, abused, and discounted. As his followers can we do anything less? …We need to foster a fundamental respect for the human dignity of every human soul, regardless of their color, creed, or cause. And we need to work tirelessly to build bridges of understanding rather than creating walls of segregation.” May it be so.

With love, Elder & Sister Lamb (aka Ed & Debbie, Mom & Dad, Pop Pop & Tu Tu)