Who is my brother?

 

Who is my neighbour?

This week saw the 78^th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp by the Soviet Red Army. Even to men hardened by the brutality of the eastern front, the idea of a huge camp set up to exterminate human beings must have been staggering. As the last eye witnesses to the horrors which occurred there become fewer every year, those events will leave living memory and pass into history. It was a cruel time to be alive and for the Jews of Poland. Of 3.3 million Jews living in Poland in 1939, only 380,000 would be alive when the war ended.

The darkness which covered Europe in those in those years seemed complete. Mankind had, in the industrial age, sunk to new levels of barbarity. World War Two was the bloodiest conflict in human history and it still casts a shadow on humanity. Yet among this darkness & brutality, there people prepared to choose a different path, even if they risked all to do so.

Józef and Wiktoria Ulma lived with their family of six young children in Markowa, south-east Poland. Before the war this devout Catholic family got on well with their Jewish neighbours and were well respected in the area as good people. When the Nazi occupiers began their persecution of Poland’s Jews, the Ulma family made a decision which was to have far reaching consequences for them all. They decided to shelter some of their Jewish neighbours from the deadly storm of persecution building around them. They knew the risks and the likely penalty if discovered, but nonetheless sheltered two Jewish families on their farm.

On 24^th March 1944 they were denounced and Germans soldiers along with the local ‘Blue Police’ arrived at their farm. It was said that one of the Blue Police (Polish police under German control) wanted to take over the land of one of the Jewish families in hiding and thought denouncing them to the Germans was a convenient way to be rid of them.

The Germans surrounded the Ulma’s house and caught all eight Jews belonging to the Szali and Goldman families. They shot them all in the back of the head, according to eyewitness Edward Nawojski, who had been forced watch the executions. Then the Germans shot the pregnant Wiktoria and her husband so that the villagers would see the price paid for hiding Jews. The six children began to scream at the sight of their parents' bodies. After consulting with his superior, 23-year-old Jan Kokott, a Czech serving with the German security police, shot three or four of the Polish children while the remaining children were murdered by others. Within minutes 17 people were killed at the Ulma’s farm. It is likely that during the mass execution Wiktoria went into labour because the witness to her exhumation testified that he saw a head of a new born baby between her legs.

The horrifying story of the martyrdom of the Ulma family and the Jewish neighbours they had sheltered makes for very uncomfortable reading but it does demonstrate that some good people will be true to their values, even at times of great danger. That March day in 1944, saw the very worst and the very best of humanity.

The Ulma family home is now a small museum dedicated to them and other Poles who helped their Jewish neighbours. Among the exhibits there, is the family bible. Józef Ulma had marked the passage in the new-Testament which told the story of the Good Samaritan. In that story a lawyer asks Jesus how to achieve eternal life. Jesus responds asks him what the law demands of him. The man states that he must love God and love his neighbour. When Jesus  tells him that this is correct, the man asks, ‘but who is my neighbour?’ It’s then Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan, knowing that most Jews hated the Samaritans. It was a story meant to unsettle and challenge the audience. Loving those we care for can be much more achievable than loving those we are meant to dislike. Jesus, however you consider him, was nothing if not challenging. The disliked ‘outsider’ in Józef Ulma’s experience was the Jewish neighbours who lived around him. As he saw it, he was living up to his faith and common humanity when he helped them.

Of course, many of you reading this will have no particular religious belief but would doubtless recognise the decency and courage of the Ulma family. They paid the ultimate price for sheltering those in need and we should remember them.

Shakespeare once wrote, ‘The evil men do lives after them; the good is oft interned with their bones.’ There was a great evil perpetrated on that spring day long ago and it should never be forgotten, but neither should the courage and goodness of the Ulma family. Ordinary, decent people, caught up in dreadful times. 

Long after the names of the killers are forgotten, we should remember the Ulma family.

Jozef Ulma ( age 43)

Wiktoria Ulma (age 32)

Stanislwa Ulma (age 8)

Barbara Ulma (age  7)

Wadyslawa Ulma (age 6)

Franciszek Ulma (age 4)

Antoni Ulma (age 3)

Maria Ulma (age 2)

 

 

 

Menace

 

                                                               Menace

This year marks the centenary of one of the most scurrilous documents ever produced by an organisation in Scotland. The sentiments it expressed would be labelled as racist and sectarian today and would doubtless cause a national outcry. It described one group in Scottish society as a ‘menace’ and labelled them as feckless drunkards, responsible for crime, financial imprudence and stated that they were out  to supplant the native Scottish population. It also suggested that it was part of a conspiracy to subvert Scotland’s Presbyterian values. The solution the document proposed was to give jobs in public works exclusively to native born Scots and look to deport many of incomers back to their own country.

Perhaps one of the most shocking aspects of the document was that it wasn’t produced by some far-right, racist cranks but by the Church of Scotland’s, church and nation committee and presented at the 1923 General assembly. The ‘menace’ they so vilified was of course the Irish Catholic population living in Scotland at that time. The report was entitled; ‘The Menace of the Irish race to our Scottish Nationality’ and it took until 2002 before the Kirk formally apologised and acknowledged that it was racist, sectarian and far from the teachings of Christ they profess. The Convenor of the Church and Nation Committee in 2002 said he was ‘ashamed at how badly we got it wrong,’ and took steps to work with the Catholic church in Scotland to combat bigotry together.

Of course, we must be careful to judge people against the context of their times. The 1920s saw the emergence of overtly racist and fascist ideologies across Europe and America. The eugenics movement, which was born in the late nineteenth century, had been embraced by many by the 1920s. Eugenicists believed that they could perfect human beings and eliminate so-called social ills through genetics and heredity. They believed the use of methods such as involuntary sterilization, segregation and social exclusion would rid society of individuals deemed by them to be unfit. These ideas seem absurd today as we have a better understanding of the effects of poverty and deprivation on human behaviour, but they held considerable sway in the 1920s and would sink to their nadir in the moral cesspit of Nazi Germany.

In the Scotland of a century ago though, it still should still have been possible to conclude that drunkenness and crime wasn’t confined to the Irish community and that cramming people into the slums of industrial cities would impact on the behaviour of some. One Kirk minister even argued that the higher proportion of Catholics in prison was clear evidence that they were more prone to criminal behaviour. No notice was paid to the social conditions many of them endured a century ago.

As recently as 2001, Catholics made up 28% of the prison population of Scotland despite being just 16% of the population. The causes of this are easy to discern as the 2011 census tells us that 23% of Catholics live in deprived areas whilst the average for Scotland is 12%. Crime and all manner of social ills fester in poverty. The real issue as always, isn’t religion, but deprivation. The fact that societal attitudes kept the children of the Irish diaspora in the poorer section of society, merely exacerbated the problems of poverty, poor health and lower life expectancy.

Education was for many the chief driver of self-improvement and social advancement. The founder of Celtic FC, Brother Walfrid, was so keen to get Catholic children into school that he literally fed them. He knew that education was the way out of the poverty trap and that even after the 1872 education Act, which made primary education mandatory, many children didn’t attend school because they had some form of work to attend.

The great travesty of the 1872 Education Act was the manner in which it was implemented in Scotland. The powers that be specified that religious education in the new Board Schools would be of a kind designated by the Church of Scotland. The struggling Catholic school sector stayed out of the Board system because of this and Catholic parents were forced to pay rates to build and maintain schools which for reasons of conscience they would never use. Simultaneously they tried to support their own schools as best they could. This injustice continued for 46 years until the 1918 Education Act brought them into local government control. Ironically the bigots in Scottish society saw the ascension of Catholic schools into the state system as ‘Rome on the rates’ apparently blind to the injustice which had gone before.

James Breen was a leading Catholic educator of the first half of the twentieth century. He worked at Our Lady’s High in Motherwell among other schools, but is best remembered as heat teacher of St Patrick’s High school in Coatbridge. The town was 52% Catholic then and Mr Breen noticed that local banks never employed any trainees from his school. He visited every major bank in the town and shamed them into ending their petty embargo. He also recalled a group of his pupils visiting an engineering works in the town, thinking it wise to have them think of a skilled trade. The boys, dressed smartly in their uniforms, returned to school having been spat on by some of the workers in the works.

There is mountain of anecdotal evidence about such barriers being put in people’s way, especially from the older generation. Some occupations, such as the police force, were notoriously difficult places for Catholics to advance. Much has changed over the years and most Scots find those attitudes from the past to be embarrassing and medieval. There is however, still a blindness to anti-Catholic sentiments when they are expressed in public arenas such as Orange Parades or football matches. Could we envisage for a moment a society where thousands sang about being ‘up to our knees’ in Muslim  or Jewish blood?  Yet it passes without comment when Catholics are the target of such vitriol.

There seems a reluctance to antagonise or challenge the last bastions of bigotry in our country and to delude ourselves that it’s just uncouth football fans posturing and both sides are as bad as each other. A few journalists over the years have had the moral fibre to call out the unacceptable poison in our midst but the majority shy away from the belligerent minority who keep it going. The challenge is for the tolerant majority in all communities to make such behaviour socially unacceptable. The sporting and law enforcement agencies should also do as much as they can to eradicate bigotry but laws alone will never end it, that takes a change of mindset and attitude which some will never attain. Generational problems need generational solutions and we should start by educating our children about the evils of prejudice.

Scotland has been on a journey in the century since the Kirk produced its infamous report entitled, ‘The Menace of the Irish race to our Scottish Nationality.’ Religion has ceased to be an important facet in the lives of many Scots but echoes of the anti-Irish and anti-Catholic rhetoric of 1923 are still heard, albeit at a much lower-level. Those who sang the overtly racist, ‘Famine Song’ in recent years, which invited those of Irish extraction to ‘go home’  are the tail end of an intolerance which has a long history in this land. Once that sort of nonsense is ended for good, we’ll know that the ‘menace’ of bigotry is at an end. Sadly, it seems a hard dragon to slay, but we keep trying anyway. We owe it to our children to build a better country than that.

The child of Lisbon

 

The child of Lisbon

Johnny Doolin counted out the money again onto the coffee table in his mother’s house. ‘Eighteen quid, ten and six.  Still nearly thirty quid short.’ His older brother, Harry shook his head. ‘We still have a week tae find the money but this flying caper scares the living daylights oot of me.’ Johnny regarded him, ‘Harry we need tae get there on Thursday and be back on Friday. I’ll be papped oot my job if I’m no on the shop floor on the Monday morning. It takes too long on the bus and it’d knacker ye.’ The older of the Doolin boys nodded his head, ‘McKay won’t pay me till the Friday so we need to find thirty quid plus spending money- and the money for the tickets by next week. Any ideas?’ Harry thought for a moment, ’there is always Geezer?’ Johnny Doolin looked at his brother, ‘that parasite?  Borrow ten, pay back fifteen or we break yer legs?’ Harry shrugged, ‘if we don’t have the money for the flights and tickets soon, we might as well watch it on the telly.’ Johnny sighed, ‘I want tae go tae Lisbon, Harry. We might never have a chance like this again.’

Andy McGee, known as Geezer to one and all in the Gorbals looked at Johnny Doolin in the manner a lion looks at a wildebeest. Two of his acolytes, mean looking men with scarred faces and restless eyes, silently observed Johnny too. Geezer laid out his terms in a monotone voice, ‘forty quid? Ye pay back fifty within two weeks or it goes up by a fiver a week after that. Non payment leads to consequences, a vanishing act leads tae consequences for yer maw’s windaes and yer da’s face. We got a deal?’ Johnny nodded and the money lender counted out the money in crisp five-pound notes. ‘Aw this for a fitbaw match?  Ye must love that fuckin team.’ Johnny left the pub feeling a little grubby having dealings with such a man but it was deadline day for the flights and his contact for the match tickets.

He laid the flight tickets on the table as his brother Harry watched him with a serious face. ‘Flight and match tickets sorted, Portuguese money in that envelope and two days off work organised. We’re good tae go.’ Harry pursed his lips, ‘I hear you tapped that shark, McGee for the money. You aff yer fuckin’ head? How are we going to find fifty quid in two weeks? I earn fifteen quid a week and you’re oan less at the railway?’ Johnny Doolin sighed, ‘Harry, this is history. Let’s just go tae Lisbon, cheer the Celts on and we’ll deal with Geezer when we get back.’ His brother looked angry as he replied, ‘Johnny, the man’s a maniac. He had a guy chibbed for not paying back ten quid. If we cannae pay him back, he’ll get his gorillas tae hospitalise us both.’ Johnny shrugged, ‘we’ll deal with it. Meanwhile, pack a bag for Lisbon.’  Harry Doolin was silent for a moment as he thought of what to do. ‘Right, Johnny, we’ll go but they’d better win or all of this is for nothing.’

The night before the flight to Lisbon, Johnny Doolin went into his mother’s room while she was watching tv. On the dressing table sat a statue of the child of Prague. Johnny had knocked it over as a boy and the head had come off. His late father had glued it back on, assuring him that it was good luck to decapitate this particular statue. He carefully lifted the child of Prague statue from the dresser and turned it upside down. The bottom of the statue was stamped with a number 21 and also had a small hole in it which led to the hollow interior. He rolled up a piece of paper until it resembled a small cigarette and pushed it into the hole.

He had neglected to tell Harry that ten pounds of the money he borrowed from Geezer had been bet on Celtic winning the cup. If things worked out, he’d have enough to pay off Geezer and a bit left over. They had staked a lot on this trip and Celtic needed to help them out. He carefully placed the statue back on the dresser, patting it on the head and saying quietly, ‘geeza break, Jesus, eh?’

Lisbon was like a dream. The two working class young men from Glasgow joined the legions of Celtic supporters descending on the Portuguese capital for the 1967 European Cup final. They caught a taxi out to the stadium for the match and found the very air there throbbed and hummed with Celtic songs. This was it. Celtic’s date with destiny. A club born into an impoverished migrant community had reached the very top of Scottish football, could they climb this final Everest and conquer Europe too?

Harry and Johnny Doolin had put all thoughts of Glasgow and Geezer out of their minds as the match started. The sunlit amphitheatre of the Estadio Nacional became the centre of the universe for the brothers as it was for hundreds of thousands of Celtic fans around the world. As the play raged towards the Inter goal, Johnny said a quiet prayer, ‘I don’t ask ye for much, God, but I’m asking ye noo. Let Celtic win this one, eh?’ Harry looked at his brother, who had his eyes momentarily closed. ‘You praying, bro? Johnny nodded as he focused on the game. Harry smiled, ‘I suppose it’s good tae have faith in God, but I’ve got faith Jock and the team too.’

The next two hours had a dream like quality about them. Inter took the lead against the run of play but Celtic refused to buckle. Wave after wave of Celtic attacks broke on the finest defence in Europe but even a fool could see they were living a charmed life. Celtic rained shots on the Inter goal. Sarti performed heroics for the Italians but it was coming, it had to come. In 63 minutes, the world seemed to go momentarily silent as Johnny Doolin watched Jim Craig hold the ball on the edge of the Inter box. Craig held up the ball as if waiting on something, before playing a crisp pass across the 18 yard line where his fellow full back, Tommy Gemmell, was arriving like a train. There beneath the azure skies of Portugal, the big Lanarkshire man met the ball with a crashing right foot and it exploded into the net behind Sarti. Inter were broken, the walls were tumbling down and there would only be one winner now. The two brothers held each other close for the longest time as the supporters around them went crazy. ‘Come on Celtic!’ Johnny roared, ‘one more, just one more…’

The journey back to Glasgow was a haze of laughter, joy and alcohol. They had done it. Celtic were champions of Europe! The touched down in Glasgow airport and were applauded through arrivals as if they were players. It was the happiest day of their lives. Glasgow was buzzing as they made their way home. People wore smiles and greeted each other with hugs in the street. The brothers hugged their mother when they entered their humble tenement flat. ‘We did it, ma! We did it!’ In the hallway, the two sons and their mother held each other close and cried tears of absolute joy. ‘I know you did, boys. I watched it oan the telly, it was magnificent.’

Agnes Doolin fed her boys well as she knew they’d doubtless be heading for the pub later that evening. When the meal was over and she popped across the landing to show her neighbour the sombrero Johnny had brought back from Lisbon for her. As she did so, her youngest son slipped quietly into her room to recover the betting slip. He lifted the statue and using a small screwdriver, widened the hole in the base until he was able to prise it out. He had convinced himself before he put his bet on that the number 21 stamped onto the bottom of the statue was an omen.

He held the small piece of paper up and read it quietly to himself. ‘Celtic to beat Inter Milan 2-1. Odds 9/1.’ He smiled at the cherub like face of the stature. ‘Thanks, wee man. I knew you wouldn’t let us down.’ As he left the room, he turned and smiled at the statue again, ‘and I knew Jock and the boys wouldn’t let us down either. By the way, you’ll be known as the child of Lisbon from now on. I hope that’s okay.’