Mois : mai 2023

Siegal, a New York-born journalist and novelist who lives in Amsterdam, presents readers with translated excerpts from journals penned principally by seven Dutch diarists, tracking their lives as the five-year (1940-45) German occupation unfolded. The diaries are part of a collection of thousands of journals gathered by the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam.

This moving and often riveting book is a revelation, providing a glimpse into life under Nazi occupation. At once epic and intimate, it merits comparison to Marcel Ophuls’ classic 1969 documentary about life in occupied France,  « The Sorrow and the Pity, » which recently had a revival in New York City. 

Siegal’s diarists include a Dutch general store owner who joined the resistance and helped hide and protect Jewish citizens, two Dutch Nazi sympathizers and a Jewish journalist who meticulously recorded the day-to-day life in a transit camp where Dutch Jews were held before being sent off to their deaths in locales like Auschwitz. (Siegal made a conscious choice not to include excerpts from worthy but already-published and well-known diaries, such as that of Anne Frank.)

Interspersed with these narratives are Siegal’s able historical context for the journals and her own personal reflections. Siegal herself is a « second-generation » Holocaust survivor, who wondered why talk of her Czech grandfather’s life before immigrating to the United States was often met with uneasy silence.

The personal is important here — but so is the greater, wider context of wartime (and postwar) Dutch history.

There is not any single answer as to why German forces rather easily occupied the Netherlands despite initial courageous resistance by Jews and non-Jews, including urban workers. One answer may be that the city of Rotterdam was largely leveled by German bombing, and the Dutch capitulated out of fears of further destruction, a view argued in an arresting 35-minute colorized video of the occupation’s early days available on YouTube. 

Of course, there was the very real fear factor. The war was not merely a military conflict, Siegal notes, but its « ideological violence played out in urban centers, in public squares, on public transportation, and inside businesses and homes. Often, it was characterized by civilian betrayals among neighbors, even within families. » 

Another key element was the complicity of Dutch authorities and what one observer describes as « the ferocious hunt for Jews. » A Dutch historian told Siegal that a majority of the Amsterdam police participated in roundups. Postwar testimony indicated that « not even ten percent of the country’s Jews would have been captured » without the involvement of the Dutch police.

The numbers are certainly damning: Nearly three-quarters of the Dutch Jewish population perished in the Holocaust — one of the highest percentages in all of Europe, edging close to Poland’s astonishing 90%.

This fact goes against what for years was the accepted postwar narrative in Holland: that the Dutch bravely resisted the German occupiers and helped Jewish neighbors, like Anne Frank’s family. 

That uneasiness — a kind of cultural dissonance — is something that Jewish residents in the Netherlands feel keenly. 

« Something was deeply troubling about Jewish life in the Netherlands, » Siegal writes.

A fellow New Yorker living in Amsterdam agreed, telling Siegal: « They say that the Dutch Jews are still in hiding. » (Siegal, though, commends recent Dutch efforts to grapple with the past, such as establishing a striking Holocaust memorial in Amsterdam.)

Some gentiles did display courage, as attested by the diary entries of general store owner Elisabeth van Lohuizen in the town of Epe. Van Lohuizen was aware of the risks she and friends and family were taking in hiding Jewish residents. But she remained steadfast, drawing from her own Liberal Dutch Reformed Calvinist faith for sustenance. (She and her family were later honored in Israel as « Righteous Among the Nations. ») 

Van Lohuizen wrote in July 1942 of the deportations to Poland: « Why, oh why, do they bring such tremendous suffering to this group of God’s children? » Later that month she wrote that Jewish lives « are just as valuable as ours; we must help, and not be afraid. » 

Such empathy is in marked contrast to other diarists. One is Douwe Bakker, a zealous anti-Semite and an ambitious Amsterdam police detective intent on pleasing his German overseers. In speaking of early violent Jewish resistance, Bakker wrote of « hundreds of mad Jews » and « the horde of Jewish beasts. »  

But for me what lingers in the memory is not Bakker’s mocking and bigoted bravado but the entries of Inge Jansen, the pseudonym for a Dutch socialite married to a physician eager to ingratiate himself with the Nazi medical establishment. Her entries — recording a life of social engagements, teas and a kind of hazy wartime languor — hint of the sad vacuity and emptiness of a life spent among the German occupiers.

By contrast, the moral center of the book, aside from the entries of van Lohuizen, is the painfully etched testimony of Philip Mechanicus, a Jewish journalist who chronicled life at the Westerbork transit camp in northeastern Holland. 

Mechanicus’ wife, who was not Jewish, survived the war. Mechanicus did not. Forced to leave Westerbork in March 1944, he eventually perished at Auschwitz.

His diaries were once available in English in a single volume, though they have long been out of print. So we owe thanks to Siegal for reviving attention to Mechanicus’ achievement: the brave witness of a gifted journalist who wrote movingly and gracefully about probing existential concerns as well as the small details of camp life.

« Whoever has the courage to look life in the eyes must also have the courage to face death, » Mechanicus wrote in July 1943. 

Later in the year, he said it was his calling « to record the daily goings on here for those in the future who will want to have a picture of what happened here. That’s why I have a duty to continue writing. »

Hope against hope. Mechanicus’s death and his disappearance from Siegal’s narrative, about three-quarters through a 500+-page book, is achingly felt.

That says something about the diary form; the way in which a reader can discover both the trivialities and grandeur of a life without layers of accrual. But as Siegal wisely argues, diarists always engage in some filtering. « Diaries should be read as a first draft of memory, » she notes.

A diarist, Siegal adds, has only « begun the process of selecting moments to record, and thereby, remember. These moments have been plucked like leaves from a relentless, rushing current. »

Of course, the calamity that began in the Netherlands in 1940 began decades before World War II — rooted in the war that preceded it. 

Here it is useful to step back a bit: The recently published English translation of the wartime notebooks of the eminent philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), who served in the Austrian army in World War I, chronicles how a sensitive soul survived the war’s brutalities.

Much of Wittgenstein’s journal, translated by scholar Marjorie Perloff, deals with mundane day-to-day matters, as well as veiled references to the young scholar’s homosexuality. But Wittgenstein’s reflections on being an infantryman on the Russian front grapple with the persistent themes posed by the experience of war.

Though he came from a prominent Jewish family, Wittgenstein was baptized and raised Catholic, and there are many references to the intersection of war and faith. « We’re being shelled, » he wrote in July 1916. « And at every shot, my soul contracts. » 

Similar terrors are graphically portrayed in the recent adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s landmark anti-war novel All Quiet on the Western Front. The film recently won the Oscar for best international feature film and can be streamed on Netflix, a fine way to understand the brutalized and nihilistic landscape that set the stage for what unfolded in Europe in the 1930s. 

Though the film has been criticized for taking liberties with Remarque’s original narrative, its depictions of trench warfare — violent but, to my eyes, not gratuitous — probably cannot be equaled.

Such depictions are both timely and urgent. Who would have thought that on the same continent as the World War I Western Front, trench warfare is once again, in the year 2023, a reality — this time in Ukraine. Then and now, war sadly tells us something about the human condition.

« It is so strange to be a human being, » van Lohuizen wrote in November 1944. « Your friends gone, and they are suffering under such terrible circumstances, and yet you continue to live. »

« Sometimes, I just can’t see any light, yet you must continue to hope and believe, in order not to sink into despair. »

« Our students have taken a lot of pride in that work around building a care for our campus, » he said. « So I think that it has really done wonders for us, to extend the learning from inside of the school building to outside as well. »

The roughly 80 trees taking root at St. Thomas More are the result of a collaboration among several D.C.-area organizations. Together, the groups have planted tens of thousands of trees as they’ve embarked on a mission to increase the district’s tree cover at a time when development poses a continuing threat to existing green spaces.

One of the groups, Laudato Trees — a play on the name of Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical « Laudato Si’, on Care for Our Common Home » — has sought out Catholic locations to plant American beeches and chestnut oaks alongside other native and well-adapted species, seeing potential in the church’s expansive property footprint in the nation’s capital. 

The trees are free to the institutions, with the costs covered through local partnering nonprofits, including Casey Trees and Interfaith Partners for the Chesapeake.

In 2021, Laudato Trees formed as a volunteer team of five lay Catholics looking to use tree planting as a way to more deeply ingrain Laudato Si’ and church teachings around environmental justice across the Washington Archdiocese. While not an official archdiocesan program, the Laudato Trees group has the support of the local church, and several of its members are part of the archdiocesan Care for Creation Committee.

« Pope Francis talks about an ecological conversion. And I see this as a step on that path for a parish to take. It’s easy, it doesn’t require capital, it’s highly visible, and the parishes tend to get excited about it, » said Philip Downey, a founder of Laudato Trees and member of the archdiocesan creation care committee, as well as the one at his home parish, the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle.

Growth in the DC church

The Laudato Trees team links prospective planting sites with arborists and tree-growing organizations. Within D.C. boundaries, that has come through Casey Trees, which has an endowment to grow trees in the district on private land at no cost to landowners. 

For church properties in the Maryland counties within the archdiocese, Laudato Trees has worked with Interfaith Partners for the Chesapeake, whose Trees for Sacred Places program has planted more than 20,0000 trees. Through grant funding from the Chesapeake Bay Trust, the program covers the costs, which can range upward of $100 per tree.

To date, Laudato Trees has planted 583 trees at approximately 29 Catholic-owned properties, and has coordinated planting roughly 240 more trees at 15 additional sites later this year. That puts it in striking distance of its goal to add 1,000 trees in the district and five-county region of the archdiocese, which is home to 139 parishes, 90 schools and dozens more church ministries and organizations.

Said Downey, « We just started calling parishes and it was a pretty simple pitch: Hey, we’re the Laudato Trees team, and would you like some free trees planted in your parish property? »

So far, the Laudato Trees team has reached out to 80 parishes, a dozen schools and 43 other Catholic organizations. It usually starts with an email, then a follow-up phone call to explain the program and gauge interest. Downey describes it as « a process of persistence. »

When a parish or church group is open to the idea, an arborist visits the site to make recommendations on where, how many and which types of trees to plant. Once the parish or organization approves the plan, a planting day is scheduled and the trees — typically 6 feet tall — often are planted with the assistance of parishioners and students. 

Casey Trees encourages growing medium- and large-sized trees in order to maximize the environmental and social benefits. The number of trees a property can plant varies widely, said Vince Drader, Casey Trees director of communications and development. Churches typically take 10-30 trees, while larger properties like Mount Olivet Cemetery planted more than 1,000.

In March, students at Elizabeth Seton High School, in Bladensburg, Maryland, took part in tree planting as part of a service day. Each of the 20 trees was « adopted » by a student’s family, who committed to caring for the tree until it is fully grown. 

Daughter of Charity Sr. Mary Frances Hildenberger, a member of the advancement team at Seton, told EarthBeat that the day was part of a wider focus at the school on integral ecology — both in adding it into curricula and in taking part in the Vatican’s Laudato Si’ Action Platform.

« Yes, I do believe that the tree planting has led to a growing awareness of environmental concerns and the reality that everything is interconnected, » she told EarthBeat.

It was reading Laudato Si’ that brought Downey back to the Catholic Church. In his return, the now-retired urban planner and developer thought about all the land owned by faith-based institutions in the archdiocese and the issues he saw with how it was being used, especially in light of human-driven climate change: « not enough trees, large lawns, huge parking lots used once a week, stormwater runoff issues, no solar panels. »

He wondered, « Is there anything we can do here that would essentially motivate parishes to try and take action? »

He decided to start with trees.

Trees do more than spruce up a city’s appearance. They also bring benefits for community health and the local environment. Studies have found the positive health benefits of trees include reducing stress, boosting immune systems, improving mental health and even reducing crime.

Trees filter the air, absorb heat-trapping carbon pollution from the atmosphere, capture rainwater and help mitigate flooding, and provide habitats for animal species. 

Trees also cool temperatures — an especially critical trait in cities where the urban heat island effect exacerbates health issues as paved roads and concrete buildings retain and radiate large levels of heat. Often, that heat is felt disproportionately in different areas of a city, as is the case in D.C., where temperatures in its northeast can be as much as 16 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than the rest of the city, according to findings from a 2018 study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association.

Identifying ways to keep cities cool, with 80% of the U.S. population living in urban areas, becomes increasingly important as climate change drives temperatures higher. Vivek Shandas, a professor of climate adaptation at Portland State University whose research team pioneered the NOAA heat island mapping studies, said they have shown areas with greater canopy coverage have reduced temperatures. 

As more and more cities plan to expand green spaces, location as much as quantity matters in how effective trees are.

« If our goal is to reduce temperatures, there are really strategic places and strategic placements of trees that would allow it to really provide the greatest benefit, » Shandas told EarthBeat.

Challenges to developing DC tree canopy

The nation’s capital has a deep-rooted history with trees. Tourists and locals flock each spring to the Tidal Basin for the annual Cherry Blossom Festival, and as far back as the 1800s, Washington, D.C., garnered the nickname « the City of Trees » for the thousands that lined its streets. As of 1950, tree canopy covered half of the district’s map.

But by 2001, tree canopy coverage had dropped to roughly 35%. A 1999 article in The Washington Post highlighted the problem and caught the eye of Betty Brown Casey, a longtime resident who formed Casey Trees two years later with the goal of reversing the trend by growing large canopy and native trees throughout the district.

On Earth Day this year, Casey Trees planted its 50,000th tree in Ward 8’s Fort Stanton Park. It planted more than 5,000 in 2022 and is on track to eclipse 6,000 trees in 2023, all toward its overall goal of 40% tree canopy cover in Washington by 2032, and 8,600 newly planted trees annually. 

The District of Columbia, which today counts upward of 2 million trees, has set its own canopy goal of 10,500 trees planted each year, and the Maryland Legislature in 2021 passed a bill calling for the planting and maintaining of 5 million trees by 2031, with at least 500,000 sited in underserved urban communities.

While it looks to plant at all Catholic properties, Laudato Trees and its partners have used the city’s heat island map to identify places where new trees can have the greatest impact. That’s in part what led it to St. Thomas More Academy.

The principal, Smith, said that southeast D.C. lacks many green spaces. « So for providing access for shaded spaces, but also access to these green spaces for not just leisure, but to bring beauty to the area, was very, very important to us, » he told EarthBeat.

Like heat, trees in the capital are also unevenly distributed, with greater canopy coverage in the western and northwestern parts of the city, according to a 2017 U.S. Forest Service study. Wealthy areas had greater canopy coverage, and while impoverished neighborhoods saw higher rates of new plantings, they also experienced more tree loss.

Studies on the effectiveness of tree planting on reducing the heat island effect are still emerging, Shandas said, but attention has picked up as more cities and leaders have turned to trees as a cooling response to extreme heat. 

Results take time, up to 10-20 years, for the real effects of tree planting on temperature to be measured, he explained. From his own studies using satellite imagery, infrared cameras and air temperature sensors, he has found that trees planted near sidewalks or buildings can cool temperatures roughly 1 degree each year as they grow.

« This is all just really emerging work, but we know from the computational models, from historical analysis of tree planting, that many of these cities have had clear results as a consequence of planting trees in their properties, » Shandas said. 

In Brookland — nicknamed « Little Rome » as the home to Catholic University of America, the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception and numerous other Catholic churches and monasteries — temperatures can be as much as 10-15 F hotter than in the Rock Creek Park, an affluent neighborhood in northwest D.C.

Over the past four years, the Washington Retreat House in Brookland has planted 50 trees on its property, through city programs that provide discounts on water bills, as well as with the Laudato Trees program.

« It does give a witness to other people, I think, if they know that it’s not just a landscaping project but it is something to help provide for those who will come after us to support the common good, » said Adorer of the Precious Blood Sr. Sara Dwyer, director of the Franciscan retreat house.

Dwyer told EarthBeat that mitigating the urban heat island effect was one of the motivations of adding trees to the property. Green spaces are important not just for health and environmental reasons, she said, « but also for this peace of mind to help people stay grounded and aware of Earth. » 

But maintaining those spaces is becoming increasingly challenging in Brookland, she added, as trees are torn down and replaced with new housing units and office buildings.

Casey Trees’ 2022 Tree Report Card found that 1% of tree canopy, or 565 acres, was lost in D.C. between 2015 and 2020. That occurred despite the city exceeding its planting goal of 10,500 new trees last year by planting 12,111 trees.

« Really, the biggest challenge to trees in the city is the constant threat of development, » Drader said.

The population in D.C. grew 17% from April 2010 to July 2019, a rate faster than any other state or U.S. territory, according to U.S. Census data. After a small dip during the first year of the coronavirus pandemic, the population is again trending upward. 

Following the population growth are investment dollars, with the Washington region leading the nation in overall investment, per a February analysis by the Urban Institute.

Along with development, city settings pose other obstacles to tree growth. On site visits, arborists with Casey Trees assess the location of power lines and utility lines above and below ground to avoid growing limbs and roots causing future problems. Special care is also needed to not disturb building foundations or cemeteries, some of which date back to colonial times. Traffic must also be factored into tree spotting.

« But those pale in comparison to the trees and land being lost to construction and development, » Drader said.

Ongoing commitment to creation care

Buy-in and maintenance can also be challenges, Drader said. The team at Casey Trees completes a tree care agreement with each of their sites that provides instructions on watering — young trees require 1.5 inches of rainfall or 25 gallons of water weekly during their first three years of life — and other steps to help the trees grow to full maturity. Weekly watering alerts are sent throughout the summer, and Casey Trees leads programs to teach about the importance of trees and how to care for them.

For the places it plants, Casey Trees provides three years of maintenance, including pruning and, if necessary, replacement. For parishes and Catholic properties outside D.C. in Maryland, maintenance is the sole responsibility of the property.

A benefit of working with faith-based organizations is there often is a group ready to take the lead on tree care, Drader said. From the Catholic groups he has approached, Downey has found tree plantings can open conversations about other ways their properties can be used — whether through solar power, energy efficiency or permeable parking lots — to benefit the environment.

« It’s a whole new level of consciousness that I think Pope Francis is talking about when he talks about ecological conversion, » Downey said. « So the question is, ‘Okay, if that’s our mandate, how can we be the best stewards of all this land? How can the land essentially help heal our ecological systems?’ « 

At Thomas More Academy, the trees have raised attention around church teaching on creation care, Smith said. The faculty are exploring ways to incorporate them, as well as a new bioretention system, into the curriculum. One idea is to add plaques to identify the trees and provide additional information.

Ian Mitchell, director of the Washington Archdiocese’s office for social concerns, said that Laudato Trees offers a great example of how everyday Catholics can take the lead in implementing the archdiocese’s Laudato Si’ Action Plan.

« It’s a good partnership. It’s a good example of Catholics using their initiative to come to the service of both the church and our city and our region, » he said.

Partnerships with nonprofits like Casey Trees and Interfaith Partners for the Chesapeake have been crucial to the success of Laudato Trees, Downey added. Groups like Trees Atlanta, Sacramento Tree Foundation and the Cleveland Tree Coalition operate with similar missions across the country. 

The Laudato Trees team continues to reach out to new Catholic parishes and organizations, as well as follow up with past ones and engage conversations with other denominations, including synagogues and Methodist and Baptist churches. Already, it has arranged 29 tree plantings with other religious traditions and has another 100 in the queue. As they do more outreach in Maryland, Downey said they’ll have to identify new sources of funding along with arborists. 

The onetime urban planner, who earlier this year received the Canopy Award for Volunteer Service from Casey Trees, anticipates the Laudato Trees team will hit their 1,000 trees goal by the end of the year. And from there, they plan to keep growing.

« And then we’ll see how many more we can do. »