A World Synchronicity by Stephen Schuitevoerder
It is quite rare for me to experience an extraordinary synchronicity and even rarer to have it occur in the world channel and witnessed by all in a room together. Many thanks to the Intensive of 2019 for being witnesses, supporting and coming along with me on this journey. Thanks to David, my friend on this journey who in his courage to emerge assisted us all in this process. And thanks to Birgitta for bringing forth the synchronicity and invisible threads and inter-connection that binds us.
Some context. I am Jewish. My parents were born in Europe in the 1920’s and as children migrated to South Africa with their parents in the early 1930’s. Many of my family were killed in the Holocaust. My family did not talk of the Holocaust and I only realized my history and the full impact on my family when I went to the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC in 1999 and saw pages and pages of people who had been killed, all having my last name, a very distinctive Dutch name, Schuitevoerder. My father’s lineage had lived in Amsterdam, Holland since the 1600’s. It was very painful to see the record of the deaths of so many of my family at Auschwitz, Monowitz and Sobibor in the 1940’s. Elderly people, babies, women, men and children. I was shocked and distraught, and angry. As I became aware of the atrocities and studied the history of Jewish oppression during the 1930’s and 1940’s I became furious with all in Germany, Austria, really all in Europe except for Denmark, for their participation in the holocaust and all the anti-Semitism my ancestors have experienced over the ages.
Arriving home to Portland with indignation and anger I recall an awakening moment when I went to Kinko’s to do some printing. There was an elderly man with a Germanic accent at the store. I did some calculations and realized he could have easily been a soldier in the Second World War so I approached him asking where he was from and ready to challenge him at the slightest idea he was German and had potentially participated in the war. He replied that he was from Austria, (at this moment I had a mental note of a tick meaning I could well be right), and he then moved to Germany, (a double tick), until they let him out of the concentration camps whereupon he moved to the United States. I recall the blood draining from my face as I realized he was Jewish.
It took quite a while to fully realize what had happened and often in telling this story I feel sadness welling in me. I had taken a specific quality, in this instance this man’s accent and generalized it to mean something quite different, to that of being a Nazi. I realized this behavior of generalizing one individual quality to a person and then a whole group and attacking them for this, as I had done to him and also in my fury with most of Europe was also what Hitler and the Nazi’s had done to the Jews during the holocaust. They had generalized a specific situation to a whole group of people and persecuted them for this. I recognize that I too clearly had the ability to generalize and attack. It changed my perspective and refined my interaction with many people. This experience also woke me up to the importance of doing inner work as a precursor to any large group work I participate in.
Now back to the synchronicity. I had shared this story and my learning from this experience with the Intensive group prior to doing group work, encouraging members of the group to work on themselves when they are in reaction to another person or role in a group process as part of the work. We then immersed in group process. The following morning in a check in, David mentioned that the story I had shared had been difficult for him as a German man. We had a touching interaction of understanding of the difficulties and challenges German people face holding the burden of this history. I shared that I recognized that war is not easy on anyone and the German people had suffered terribly during and after both 20th Century wars. It was a touching and caring interaction. At the end of the interaction a few members of the group asked us if we could hug each other. I approached David and we gave each other a very warm hug. As I did so a deep sensation began to stir in my heart as I realized that this was not just Stephen and David hugging each other, but a Jew and a German embracing, reconciling the agonies of a past history. The sensation became stronger in my chest. As I sat down, I shared with the group I was having a strong inner experience and they encouraged me to go deeper into it.
I began to feel into my body and my heart and chest and began to allow the waves of agony to course through my body. First in sobs, and then in waves, and in the sounds and cries of this agony. At this time my internal experience was firstly of the agony of my ancestors, of 2000 years of pain and suffering and violation of the Jews. But it expanded further to the agony of the German people. The incredible suffering during the First World War; the challenges and pain between the wars; the suffering of the Second World War; the violation of those who were left after the war; and the splitting of a nation. And then the pain expanded to all human beings as I realized all of us hold immense suffering in our bodies, in our DNA. We hold the pain and the stories of our ancestors struggling to survive. And that the pain I was expressing is all of our pain. It was a very profound experience for me as I felt the DNA of my body, and the DNA of the Jews and my ancestor’s change in this moment. My heart was open.
The next day was my final teaching day of the Intensive. Birgitta, a member of the Intensive approached me with a Facebook note she had received the day before, on the very day I had done this work in front of the group. Birgitta’s neighborhood has a Facebook page that people in the neighborhood belong to. A man had written a note to the group with a photo he had taken. The photo is below:
The note reads in Dutch: Beste buren,
Ik woon al 20 jaar op de Nassaukade, maar heb dit nog nooit gezien. Is dit een 1 mans actie of een terugkerende herdenking, waar ik geen weet van heb? Dan heb ik het over de waxinelichtjes en citroen zuurtjes.
Alvast bedankt voor jullie reacties
My Dutch is not perfect but it reads something like this: Dear neighbors,
I have been living at the Nassaukade (a street in Amsterdam) for 20 years, but have never seen this before. Is this one mans action or a recurring commemoration that I do not know about? I am referring to the tea candles and lemon candies. Thank you for your comments.
The photo that he shared is of commemorative stones called ‘Stolpersteine’ that had been laid by a German Artist in different places in Europe. A Stolperstein is a concrete stone of 4 x 4 inches, with a brass plate in which the name of a person killed in the Holocaust, their date of birth and death, and their place of death engraved. The Stolpersteine have been placed in the pavement in front of the former residence of victims who were killed in the Holocaust of the Second World War.
For a clearer photo of the stones he took a photograph of:
The neighbor had noticed candles and candy around these commemorative stones on his street and in his 20 years on this street have never seen this kind of commemoration before. And so he took a photo. What is remarkable is that he posted this photo and inquiry on the very day that we had done very deep work at the Intensive. Somehow around the same time we had done our work, someone had commemorated the lives of these three Jew’s who had died in the Holocaust, and further someone had taken a photo of this commemoration and sent it to his neighborhood, and to a person who was at the Intensive. It was remarkable and astounding how we are all interconnected and related beyond time and space. In itself this is quite a synchronicity and awesome to witness.
But there is more to this story and its synchronicity. The names on the stones of his photograph, it’s hard now even to believe are: Schuitevoerder. Three people, my ancestors. We are all connected by this invisible thread that binds us and shows itself to us every now and then, reminding us of this remarkable truth of our interconnectivity. Thanks for reading.