Whistling
in the Dark
by
Terry Bohle Montague
Portions of this article are excerpted from Mine Angels Round About
(Granite, 2000) by Terry Bohle Montague. All rights reserved.
As
the Nazi's were shutting down World War II Germany, Elder Normon
Seibold had the nearly impossible task of gathering up stranded
missionaries and getting them out of the country. How was he to
find them in the train stations?
Missionaries
in Nazi Germany were not allowed to proselytize. Instead, they taught
English lessons and formed baseball and basketball teams. Harold
Kratzer, Fred Duehlmeier, Darrell Robins, Norman Seibold (fourth
from left), Wilford Wegener, Claytor Larsen, and Frank Swallow have
just finished playing baseball with two boys who are wearing Hitler’s
Youth uniforms. It was 1939.
Part
1
Mine Angels Round About
And whoso
receiveth you, there will I be also, for I will go before your face.
I will be on your right hand and on your left, and my spirit will
be in your hearts, and mine angels round about you to bear you up.
—D&C 84:88
Here in the
Idaho, Pocatello Mission, not all missionaries have the luxury of
cars. Many must depend on members for transportation. One Monday
morning in May of 1999, I picked up Elders Douglas Zaugg and Carlos
Zuniga to take them to the Laundromat.
On the way,
Elder Zuniga told me he had read a talk by one of the general authorities
about a mission evacuation from Nazi Germany. It told the story
of a lone missionary who traveled along the German-Dutch border
looking for stranded missionaries and, through inspiration, found
many of them. Elder Zuniga asked if I had heard the story.
I told him
I knew something about it.
After the elders
finished their laundry, I drove them the two miles to Norman Seibold's
home.
The four of
us sat in the Seibold living room and talked for 20 minutes or so.
During those few minutes, Norm bore his testimony three times that
the Lord takes care of his missionaries. A quiet, powerful spirit
filled the room The three of us left feeling sobered and grateful
for the experience.
On the way
home, Elder Zuniga, a young man of many words, sat silent in the
back seat.
A month later,
the mission office contacted Elder Zuniga and told him his visa
had been cancelled and he was being deported. Having served in the
Idaho Pocatello Mission for a year, he would be returned to Chile.
The reason for the deportation was not clear, but a clerical error
in the U.S. Immigration Office was the suspected cause.
Elder Zuniga
was broken-hearted. All of us who knew him were saddened.
While Elder
Zuniga waited to be "processed" through Miami, he telephoned me.
We talked about what had happened. The last thing he said was that
meeting Norman Seibold and hearing his testimony had sustained him
through the trial of having to leave his mission.
Elder Zuniga
was reassigned to the Chile Osorno Mission where his first assignment
was to train leadership in that fast growing mission.
It had been
sixty years and Norm Seibold was still escorting missionaries.
And this time,
he didn't need to whistle.
As a kid, Norm
Seibold couldn't, as he said, "carry a tune in a basket," and he
couldn't whistle. It was a source of some humiliation for the boy,
growing up in the farming community of Newdale, Idaho. All the other
guys could whistle, but not Norm.
Then, in August
of 1939, while serving as a missionary in the Church's West German
Mission, Elder Seibold climbed onto a baggage cart in a noisy, over-crowded
Cologne railway station and, with urgent determination, whistled.
The notes were the first four of the hymn, Do What Is Right.
From that moment, they became the sounding call of one of the more
dramatic moments of the Church in the 20th Century; that
of the evacuation of the West German Mission from Nazi Germany.
The year before,
in September 1938, the Czechoslovakian, East, and West German Missions
were evacuated during the course of a crisis created by Nazi Germany's
demand for a strip of land along the German-Czech border known as
the Sudetenland. The missionaries waited out the crisis in Rotterdam,
Holland. Then, with the signing of the Munich Agreement in October,
the missionaries returned to their assigned areas.
The evening
of November 9th 1938, members of the SS, disguised as
civilians, broke into, looted, and burned synagogues, Jewish hospitals,
shops, and homes. Missionaries across Germany watched in horror.
Some Jews, including women and children, were slain as they tried
to escape being burned to death. Several missionaries witnessed
the stoning of Jewish businessmen in front of their shops and stores.
Just after
that week, Elder Seibold waited for a train in the Nuremberg railway
station. While he walked up and down the platform, a commotion at
the other end of the station drew his attention. Armed guards stood
with their rifles leveled as Jews of all ages climbed from the cattle
cars of one train and filed across the yard to another. Their heads
had been shaved, and, as they passed Seibold, he saw many still
had blood crusted on their scalps where the razor had nicked their
skin.
Sickened, Seibold
turned away.
 |
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The
young missionary Elder Normon Seibold.
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The Nazis kept
a cautious eye on the religious activities of the German people.
Hitler declared, "We want no God but Germany!"
Hitler disbanded
the Catholic Youth Association and replaced it with his Hitler's
Youth. Activities for Hitler's Youth as well as political rallies
were scheduled on Sundays in an effort to discourage anyone from
attending church services.
Hitler also
demanded Protestant ministers swear a loyalty oath to him. In fear
of their lives, many complied. Those who did not - almost a thousand
of them - were arrested and put in concentration camps.
The LDS Church
did not escape the notice of the Nazi officials. "You blunt the
intellects of the people!" a Nazi official told one Branch President.
Church leaders
warned members and missionaries to be circumspect in their actions
and avoid voicing opinions which were contrary to government policies.
Even the West German Mission Journal makes no mention of the tension
existing between the Church and the State - with one exception.
An entry made in early 1939 states Mission President M. Douglas
Wood reproved an unnamed missionary for his vocal opposition to
the Nazi government. The elder was threatened with immediate release
if he persisted. The journal recorded no other details.
Although the
winter of 1938-39 passed quietly, tension in the West German Mission
grew. The Nazi government ordered the missionaries to sign statements
agreeing they would not go from house to house, or be involved in
any group discussions in any park or on the streets. Only Sunday
meetings were allowed and those were often interrupted by the arrival
of SS officers who sat at the back of the room and observed the
gathered Saints. Any other meetings had to be approved by the local
police.
Government
interference was obvious in almost every aspect of the missionaries'
daily lives. Even their letters from home were opened and read by
censors prior to their delivery. Portions of the letters, judged
inappropriate by Nazi officials, were cut from the pages. Many missionaries
were watched and, sometimes, followed through the streets. One pair
of elders had their apartment thoroughly searched and stated the
police even probed their straw tick mattresses with long, metal
prongs.
Despite those
conditions, the missionaries persevered. They joined clubs and groups,
even organizations connected with Hitler's Youth, to meet people
and introduce them to the gospel. They participated in sports events,
gave athletic exhibitions, taught classes and formed musical groups.
They also relied on cottage meetings in the homes of church members.
In the spring
of 1939, Germany demanded Poland turn over a narrow strip of territory
called the Danzig Corridor. Poland refused the demands and resisted
Hitler's threats. Great Britain and France declared they would lend
Poland all the support in their power
Missionary
work stalled. War was the main topic of conversation and it overshadowed
all gospel discussions.
The missionaries
observed many indications of an approaching crisis - ships and airplanes
were built, automobile manufacturing plants turned out military
vehicles instead of cars, draft notices were delivered, long columns
of troops moved across the countryside at night, farmers were told
the wheat must be harvested by the end of August. Fruit, vegetables
and meat became increasingly scarce. Bakeries produced bread made
with a poor grade of flour extended with sawdust.
On August 24,
1939, Hugh B. Brown, President of British Mission, telephoned the
West German Mission office in Frankfurt with instructions from President
Heber J. Grant. Once again, they were to evacuate.
Telegrams were
dispatched to each missionary companionship.
Leave
immediately for Rotterdam. Trunks same train.
Appoint
temporary successor. Wire Quickmere upon departure.
Wood
On Friday,
August 25th, Norm Seibold and his companion, Donald Anderson,
noticed the streets of Stuttgart were unusually crowded. All capable
military personnel had been ordered to report to their units and,
everywhere, there were soldiers.
Seibold reported
feeling an unnatural undercurrent of emotion in the people of the
street - a feeling of unrest, of anxiety, and fear.
When the pair
returned to their apartment, they found a letter from the American
Consul in Stuttgart.
AMERICAN
CONSULATE GENERAL
Frankfort-on-Main,
Germany
Kaiserstrasse
27
August
25, 1939
CONFIDENTIAL
It has
been learned that in view of the present tension in Europe, the
American Embassy in Berlin is advising American citizens that
it might be best to leave Germany.
This
advice, of course, does not imply that the Embassy or any Consular
Office can assume any responsibility in connection therewith,
but each one who may act upon this suggestion or advice must do
so at his own risk and responsibility.
Having no word
from President Wood, the missionaries laid the letter aside and
prepared to retire for the night.
Later, Geren
V. Howell, a missionary from the neighboring town of Feuerbach,
burst into their apartment telling them he and his companion had
just received a telegram from the mission office in Frankfurt. It
read, "Leave immediately for Rotterdam. . ."
Deeply concerned,
Seibold dressed and went to the local post office where there was
a telephone. He called Frankfurt and spoke to President Wood.
He gave Seibold
instructions concerning the evacuation and also told him to go to
the town of Esslingen the following morning and see that Adalbert
and Elizabeth Goltz, an elderly missionary couple, had prepared
to leave.
The Goltzes
were German converts to the Church who emigrated to the United States
and raised their family in Utah. After their youngest daughter married,
they realized their dream of serving a mission in their homeland.
Seibold informed the pair of President Wood's instructions and advised
them to pack as quickly as possible.
Goltz, a former
officer in the German cavalry, replied. "It is not necessary for
my wife and me to leave. Surely we face no danger in our own Fatherland."
"Whether there
is danger or not," Seibold insisted, "President Wood says the missionaries
must leave."
Goltz replied,
"My Patriarchal Blessing promised me I would serve a mission in
Germany. That promise is not yet fulfilled. I will not go."
Seibold argued,
but the older man remained unyielding. He would not leave and ordered
Seibold from his home.
Seibold refused
to be sent away; he turned to Sister Goltz and said, "Sister Goltz,
can't you convince your husband to leave?"
A modest and
shy woman, Sister Goltz declined to discuss the matter, but made
it plain she would respect her husband's wishes.
Seibold gave
up. He returned to the post office and telephoned mission headquarters.
"They won't come," he told President Wood.
"Yes they will,"
he replied. "Go back and get them!"
Seibold returned
to the Goltz's apartment. Once again he did his best to convince
them it was important they leave, and leave now.
Goltz countered
all Seibold's arguments with "I have faith in my Patriarchal Blessing.
You have not!"
"This is not
a matter of faith," Seibold answered. "This is a matter of obedience.
President Wood says we must leave."
In anger, Goltz
left the room.
Seibold appealed
to Sister Goltz. "You've got to do something. President Wood says
you've got to leave. The American Consul says you've got to leave.
If you don't, there's a really good possibility you might be stuck
here. If that happens you'll never see your family again."
About that
time, Goltz came out of his room. Sister Goltz turned to him and
said, "Papa, I go."
"She might
just as well have slapped him" Seibold recorded in his journal.
Sister Goltz
got her belongings together. When her husband saw she was serious
about leaving, he, too, packed his things.
Continue reading
this article—"Part II-Escaping through Closed Borders."
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