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An example of Schwenkfelder persecution - the Viehweg in Harpersdorf · Centrally Speaking

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Centrally speaking, if the central speculative churches podcast speaks about issues that would be of interest to our society.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: In particular, it addresses how a Christian worldview intersects with Western secular culture.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: In the Spirit of the Church's founder, we take the perspective of the Middle Way, which is in agreement with the historic Christian Church.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: Our website is www.tfamily.org.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: It was rated as a Roman Catholic, but then came under the influence of Martin Luther in the times of the Reformation, and then devoted himself to Christian witnesses after 1517.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: It was the universe controversies of the early 1520s that proposed, quite called, differing viewpoints with Martin Luther.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: And as a result, he and his followers began meetings separately.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: They focused on the inner truth rather than the outer.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: The Christian as a new creation and then a practical expression of the R.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: About the 1700s, most of the Quitefrothers lived in or near the village of Harperdorf or Lisa Germany at that time.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: But they came under persecution from the Jesuits and also persecution from the Lutherans.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: And when the eventually migrated away from Germany or coming to Pennsylvania eventually.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: Why were they buried there?
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's because five fathers didn't have the same viewpoint of infant baptism as the Roman Catholics and the Lutherans.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: And when they were fired to have their children baptized, they were treated as heretics and uh persecuted.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: Now my father, Rick Williams Jr., is going to tell more of this story in this talk at a meeting that we called the dawn lunch on May 14th, 2026.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: I trust that you'll gain a greater appreciation of the feedback and also of the Schweinckfelders as a result of his talk.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_04: Well, good afternoon, everybody.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_04: I've always been interested in history, as many of you may know, and I'm very much interested in the Schwenckfelder history.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_04: There's some nice history that's out there on the walls, it's been put up there within the last couple months, I guess.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_04: And I invite you when you have some time just to take a quick quick look at that.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_04: I think it's interesting.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_04: It's explained something about the Schwenckfelders, and it's done nice and quick and succinct.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, so here's my story today.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_04: I looked for this opportunity to have to tell to you, and I'm glad to have it.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_04: Uh I like having a captive audience.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_04: I used to teach Sunday school and coach little league baseball.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_04: And then I had a more or less captive audience.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_04: I used to check with my two sons to see if the kids were enjoying my stories, and they always said they were.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_04: But in thinking back on it, possibly they have just been being nice to the old man.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_04: Well, in any case, here was a story, and it begins in a familiar way to us.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_04: All of a certain generation like this.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_04: Once upon a time, in a faraway place called Silesia.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_04: Now let me stop there for just a second, because I know that some of you know where Silesia is, and having some experience asking people about Silesia, I know some people say they know where it is, and actually don't know where it is.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_04: So I thought probably I should just give you a little context and tell you where it is.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_04: In land, it is roughly one half the size of Pennsylvania.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_04: It's considered to be in Central Europe.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_04: It's surrounded by, it's behind the Iron Curtain.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_04: The Iron Curtain is sort of a passe term now because we don't have an iron curtain, strictly speaking, now.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_04: But in 20th century terms, it was behind the iron curtain.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_04: It's surrounded by by uh Russia, Poland, Germany, and the Czech Republic.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_04: It's landlocked and means it has no seaports.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_04: It was also a bit of a football through history.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_04: By that I mean it was beholden to various countries at various times in their histories.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_04: They were not really independent.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_04: Going forward, in the land of Silesia in 1489 was born a man named Caspar Schwenkfeld.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_04: Now I'm not going to give you all of Schwenkfeld and Schwenckfelder history.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_04: I'm just trying to give you a little context for the real point of my story.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_04: So I'm going to skip through a lot of years here.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_04: So I'm moving up to 1517, October 31st to be exact.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_04: That's the day that Martin Luther attacked his 95 thesis on the church door at Wittenberg.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_04: And thus began what became known as the Reformation.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_04: Schweifeld became a follower of Luther, but like many, he disagreed with Luther on certain topics.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_04: And eventually he developed his own following and slipped away from the Lutherans.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_04: He died in 1561.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_04: But several thousand of those he had followers, and seven thousand of those followers continued to remain true to him and stayed together and eventually settled in a number of villages in Silesia, the biggest one being Harpersdorf.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_04: There were some other little ones nearby.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_04: Moving right along here, we're up to 1719.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_04: By 1719, as they were now called, the Schwenkfelders, as they were now being persecuted by the Lutherans, they were also being persecuted by the Catholics.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_04: That particular area of the Central Europe was controlled by something called the Holy Roman Empire, which existed for 1,000 years from 800 to sometime early in 1800.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_04: As most history professors would always love to tell you, the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_04: That's sort of their little joke.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_04: In any case, the Catholics and the Lutherans got together and they decided to put pressure on the Schwenkfelders as if they hadn't been persecuting him enough.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_04: So I wanted to just read just a short section from Harold Howard Krebel's book.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_04: That's what this green book is here.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_04: This was written by Howard Kriebel, and you can obviously tell that he's a Schwenkfelder by the name.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_04: And uh here is what he said, talking about this situation.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_04: This was an edict given out by the Holy Roman Empire.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_04: No Lutheran or Catholic was to perform any religious service for the Schwenkfelders who were to be buried in dishonor in the Carrion pit, on the commons, or at the crossroads, or by the walls of cemeteries, without song or tolling of bells or train or friends and mourners with a wheelbar for their hearse.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_04: Now to us, uh in the 21st century, um we might say, Ah, so what?
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_04: Well, because burials are very different than they used to be.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, I've been to some, and I'm sure you have been too, where people have been cremated and dust gets scattered all over.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_04: Out in the ocean, the golf course, baseball field, in the sky, whatever.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_04: But in 1719, this was a serious issue, and this was a serious hit a serious nerve for the Schweinfelders.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_04: In many ways, this was essentially the last straw for them.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_04: They left their homes in the dark of night.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_04: They came all the way over to America.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_04: Now I'm leaving out some of the story, but that's those are stories for another day.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_04: So they ended up in America.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_04: Forgive, did they?
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_04: Well, hopefully the Schwankfelder's may have forgiven for that major slate, but many certainly did not forget.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_04: By the mid-1800s, the Schwenfelders were well settled and some were reasonably prosperous.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_04: And so it came to be that a gentleman by the name of Solomon Schultz, again another Schwenfelder, you can guess that, about 1862 visited Germany.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_04: Not easier often to do in those days, and his family homelands.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_04: He visited Germany and his family homelands, and he developed the idea of trying to honor those dishonored deceased ancestors.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_04: Eventually, money was raised, and a monument was erected on a major burial site.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_04: There were a number of small burial sites, but the major one was the one in Harperstorf, where the biggest settlement of the Schwenckfelders had been.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_04: I would describe the monument as big, over 15 feet high, more than six feet in width, and somewhat less in depth.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_04: I have a picture up here of it, and you can see it afterwards.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_04: Over the next, moving quite along with the years now, over the next 70 years, occasionally a Schwenckfelder family would visit, but in 1934, which was the 200th anniversary of the major Schweckfelder movement over here in America, there was a group of 440 Schweinfelder, not 400, 40 Schwankfelder visiting their Silesian homelands.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_04: A service was held and acquaintances made, and some of them, not surprisingly, recognized themselves, if you will, because there were lots of these people who were cousins.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_04: And so they made great friends.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_04: As an aside, I should tell you that a lot was going on in Germany at this time.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_04: Those of you who have any interest in history may remember in July and August of 1934, which is when the Schweinfelders were there, was exactly the time when Adolf Hitler solidified his control over Germany.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_04: There were two major things that happened in that brief period the Schweinfelders were there.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_04: Something called the Knight of the Longknives, which you can Google and find out about.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_04: But basically it was Adolf Hitler's successful attempt to wipe out all opposition and people he'd had a grudge against for years.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_04: They murdered hundreds and hundreds of people those two nights, uh, and that was called the Knight of the Long Knives, and then the natural death of Field Marshal and President President von Hindenburg on August the second.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_04: And Hitler then declared himself president besides just the uh prime minister.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_04: Moving right along, and so the second world war came and went, and many began wondering with the known carnage and the monument well behind the iron curtain, could the Viveg monument have actually survived?
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_04: Possibly worse, because the people living on the land had been changed.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_04: There was two conferences that were held at the end of the Second World War.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_04: One was in Yolda in Russia, and the other was in Potsdam in Germany.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_04: And the US and Russians and Americans, excuse me, US, Russians, and British broke up Europe into way it was going to be set up after the Second World War.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_04: But as it affected what we're talking about, Russia claimed part of the territory of Poland, and Poland and was then given part of the territory in Germany.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_04: Germany, of course, didn't get anything, but the territory that the Polish people got was Silesia.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_04: So now the people that we knew there were no longer there.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_04: One day the Polish people moved, came in in trains and pushed out the German people and they moved over to West Germany.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_04: So we wondered and wondered about our monument.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_04: Our expatriate friends, the Germans, when we eventually caught up with them, and that is also a story for another time, but we caught up with them in 1948, and they said, yes, indeed, the monument did survive, but they were then they could go back, but they were reluctant to go back because the problem with going back was easy for them to get back, to go back, but they couldn't always be sure that they would get back over from the Iron Curtain, so they were anxious to go.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_04: And so you can probably imagine it got worse and worse, and eventually, of course, you recall the Berlin Wall, which was built in 1961.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_04: But also in 1961, a descendant by the name of Andy Burkey.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_04: Now I don't know if there's anybody here who may remember Andy Berkey possibly.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_04: I'm looking at Ken Clemens.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_04: George Mason remembers him.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_04: I remember the name, I think I know what he looked like.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_04: But in 1961, he went over there.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_04: He successfully crossed the Iron Curtain, and more importantly, he made it back.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_04: He visited the monument and gave us a firsthand account, and it was totally neglected, hard to find, and badly damaged, but not destroyed.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_04: Now, again, I want to just read one little section here out of this book.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_04: This is a book that was written by Kyle Maester.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_04: It's called Twentieth Century Schwenkfelder, and basically it was a follow-up to the book that was written by Howard Kreble, and he covers a lot of things.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_04: But I just want to read this one little part here.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_04: I think it'll give you the feel for what happened here.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_04: Andy Berkey, with considerable courage, visited the area.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_04: That's the area of the Vive.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_04: It was part of Poland, with all traces of former German inhabitants seemingly removed.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_04: Town and street names were an incomprehensible Polish, and only with difficulty did Andy locate the bold scarred and neglected Vive Machemin.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_04: The once beautiful surrounding grove overgrown with weeds and brambles.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_04: He could locate only one elderly woman with whom he could communicate through her smattering of German.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_04: So that was the story there.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_04: Andy felt we could work with him to restore it, but unfortunately, neither he nor anybody else had any idea how we could possibly get that done considering the way things were at that time.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_04: However, as time marched on, the Polish leaders got braver and began slowly to try to steer a separate path from the Russians.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_04: You may remember Lok Lok Volensa, John Paul II, the Polish Pope, so it became easier and safer to go to Poland and return.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_04: A group of Schwenkfelders in the late 70s who were touring Europe went into Poland, visiting several sites, and also found the Vive Monument and reported on its condition.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_04: They strongly suggested that we try to do something to improve its condition.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_04: A VWA committee was started general conference at the meeting of the Schwenkfelders, and thus began the effort to restore the monument.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_04: An early leader was Claude Schultz.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_04: Many of you know Claude Schultz, grandfather to our own Peter Colvin, who is a moderator of this church, and who was, Claude Schultz, was by almost any measure an extremely colorful personality.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_04: Up said, since we already had German contacts, whom we were on very good terms with, we decided to try to work through them to get the monument appropriately repaired.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_04: And for twenty years the project went nowhere.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_04: Poor Claude was asked to report at every conference meeting on the progress.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_04: The report always seemed to be the same.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_04: Oh yes, we have plenty of money, but no matter what we try, there is always a stumbling block.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_04: And so it was that eventually the wall came down, and a new and younger and fresher descendant entered the scene.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_04: Some of you may think I'm talking about myself there, but no, not yet.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_04: That's Jerry Heedner I'm making reference to.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_04: He visited the monument in the late 90s, along with other sites, and then invited some other younger and fresher blood.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_04: That's me.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_04: And my wife.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_04: So we all went back to the scene along with a young, energetic Polish tour guide by the name of Blanka Moskowarsa in 2001.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_04: Now I have a good Polish friend over there, and I told him I'm apologizing in advance.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_04: I may not do so well with my pronunciation, but I'm pretty good with Blanka, so I think I'll refer to her as Blanka.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_04: Eventually, our small group, along with Blanka, sat down with a Mrs.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_04: Fedorowitz.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_04: I got that one better.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_04: Whose family lived in a small cottage by the path that led to the Vive monument.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_04: Blanka had reason that she might be able and willing to help us.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_04: And Mrs.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_04: Fodorowitz did agree to keep an eye on the monument, especially after she learned that it wasn't just an old memorial to a German military victory, but it was actually something more important as far as she was concerned.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_04: And of course they didn't know any German, or at least none that they would admit to.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_04: So of course there would be some small remuneration for Mrs.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_04: Fedorowitz, but that was insignificant as far as we were concerned.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_04: We sat down with Mrs.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_04: Fedorowitz and she offered us some cake and coffee.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_04: Unbeknownst to us, coffee was served at all significant events in that part of Poland.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_04: Hot weather not prevailing.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_04: It was then as we were laughing and chatting, everybody was translating back and forth that the light bulb.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_04: Now when I say the light bulb, you may remember the comics of the 40s and 50s, and maybe even to this day and a lesser extent, when something exciting or new happens, the light bulb is shown, and Bill would know this light bulb is shown over the character, which means aha! A revelation or I got an idea.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_04: So the light bulb went off for me while we were sitting there.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_04: My inner voice, that's the light bulb, said to me, Why are you trying to seek improvement to the Viveg monument through the Germans who used to live here?
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_04: The Polish people, to put it mildly, don't like them.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_04: And certainly for good cause, after all the misery and horror that they had inflicted on the Polish nation and people for five years from 1939 to 1945, and who knows what before that.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_04: Why don't we deal directly with the Polish people?
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_04: After all, we have always gotten along with them.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_04: We have millions of Polish people living in America, and they even sent a general over here during the American Revolution to help us.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_04: Colonel, later General Kuska Kuska.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_04: I don't think I have that name right, but you remember who it was, I'm sure.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_04: At about the same time that my light bulb went off, Cherry Heber had a similar light bulb go off.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_04: Blanca, the Polish god, was not only extremely helpful, but seemingly very interested in the Schwenkfelder.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_04: Why don't we try to get her to help?
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_04: Blanca, as she guided us around, loved to tell the stories of the Schwenkfelder's persecution by the German Catholics and Lutherans.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_04: She latched on to an English word to describe the persecution and used it whenever possible.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_04: This word was horrible.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_04: And she always emphasized it in a way that we all found very humorous and went something like this, horrible.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_04: So if I were to see Jury now and he were to pass me, and I would look at him and I would say, horrible, he knew exactly who I was talking about.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_04: And so it came to be that we put both of our revelations together and asked Blanca if she could help us find someone to restore our Vive monument.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_04: She said she could and would love to help us.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_04: I guess at that point it's not necessary for me to tell you.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_04: Won't be any surprise if I reveal to you that in less than a year the monument was completely rejuvenated at what we considered was a reasonable cost and was actually improved upon.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_04: In that we had a separate tablet, like rock placed there with a description of the significance of the monument, and we had had it in three languages Polish, English, and German.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_04: Two years later, in the summer of 2003, a large group of Schwingfelter returned for a rededication.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_04: We invited the repatriated Germans to the event, and they came.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_04: A whole busload of them, complete with a brass band.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_04: Of course, our Polish hosts were invited.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_04: Now picture this if you will.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_04: It was a blazing hot day, August 1st.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_04: Temperatures went over a hundred.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_04: A parade started at Mrs.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_04: Fedorowitz's home at eleven o'clock.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_04: In front of the parade were the two oldest Schwankfelders carrying a huge flower wreath with them, and then the five piece German brass band followed by the American Schwenckfelders, then the returning Germans, and finally what seemed like the entire village of Twartiti, which was the old Harpersdorf with a new Polish name, or so it seemed.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_04: We sang familiar hymns as we marched.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_04: The local mayor offered some appropriate words, and I might say they were all in Polish, followed by a brief rededication service led by our own Schwankpulp pastor.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_04: That was Karen Kriebel.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_04: My wife and several other women nearly passed out.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_04: We were in the shade, but everybody was dressed to the nines, as they say, for the occasion.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_04: We're not talking about flip-flops here and dungarees or jeans with holes cut in them.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_04: We're talking dressed up for the occasion.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, and did I say it was hot?
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_04: Very hot.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_04: After the rededication, we walked to a town hall where we were served.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_04: Similar cakes that Mrs.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_04: Pedorovitz had given us.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_04: And guess what we had to drink?
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, yes, the drink of choice.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_04: Steaming hot coffee.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_04: And they were in those what I call the old small cheese jars.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_04: Some of you may remember them, I remember them well.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_04: My mother used to get these cheese jars.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_04: After we had the cheese, you'd clean them out and they became the fruit juice glasses that we used for years.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_04: That's what they served us coffee in.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_04: These interesting old glasses.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_04: Needless to say, we were gracious guests and drank the hot, hot coffee.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_04: Of course, we became great friends of the Polish villagers.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_04: We correspond with them regularly, periodically, and often and still do today.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_04: They look after our monument, and we regularly visit with them on the Schwenckfelder's tour of their homelands every two or three years.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_04: One year we even hosted one of their children here in the U.S.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_04: and he actually interned for us during the summer at the Schwenckfelder Library.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_04: Well, that ends this story.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_04: Are there questions?
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_04: Well, if there are no questions, then I'm going to give you a second, much shorter story, which is very appropriate since Ken got his cake today.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_03: The people in Silesia, their original language was German?
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, originally, if you go back two or three hundred years, if you go back further than that, you get all kinds of things, but let's just talk about relatively recent history.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, German.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_03: So after the Second World War, when the boundaries were redrawn, that's when the Germans were kicked out and the people became more Polish.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_04: But their DNA were Germans.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_04: Way back when they were Germans, actually, the Polish people came in in trucks and trains, as it was later described to us, and came in and somebody walked around with them and said, You take this house, and you take that house, and you take this house, and they moved into the house, and eventually the German people realized that they couldn't really live with them, they were going to have to leave, and so they eventually left, and they all went mostly together over in uh in West Germany.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_04: I'm forgetting the name of the town they went, but they were over there in West Germany.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_04: And we were lost in them for a number of years.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, I'll tell you another time the story of how we found them, which is tremendously interesting.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_04: For three years there after the end of the war, we had no idea where they were.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_04: Are there other questions?
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_04: All right, now I'm going to give you the shorter story, and it ties in with Ken's birthday.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_04: And it begins like this.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_04: And so it was that in 1989, after America had recently celebrated its 200th anniversary of its birth, and several years later, the hundredth anniversary of the Statue of Liberty, that the young, newly elected moderator of the Central Schweinfelder Church suggested to his fellow leaders that a 500th birthday party for Caspar Schwankfeld, who was born in 1489, might be intriguing and exciting for the constituency.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_04: A dinner was planned, of course.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_04: Schwenkfelder's voice had food as part of their events.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_04: The culmination and high point of the event was to be a large sheet cake with 500 lit candles.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_04: Now I have to tell you that when the church trustees got wind of the idea, they were not happy.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_04: 500 lit candles in Fellowship Hall, this being Fellowship Hall.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_04: You need to know that nearly half of the Worcester Fire Company was connected directly or indirectly to the church.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_04: Not to say anything about the Tomenson Fire Company, that's Kensey or they could see potential danger.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_04: But with some promised adjustments and precautions to the plan, it proceeded.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_04: Now, if you will imagine, if you will, that night, here we are, 200 people or thereabouts in this room, having just finished their dinner, the dishes cleared, and the big moment arrives.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_04: All turn their heads to the doors in the back, and the doors open, in comes a huge, and I mean huge, sheet cake on a tray with 500 lit candles on it.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_04: Now let me just say this: if you have ever tried to put many, many candles on a cake, it is very challenging.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_04: So I'm going to admit that we didn't really have 500 candles on the cake.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_04: We put as many as we could get on and decided that uh we would round it to the nearest 500.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_04: So there we got 500.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_04: For our purposes, we had 500 candles.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_04: As you picture this scene, there's one other thing that you need to picture too, as it rolled through the door and everybody sort of gasped and whatever, because it created quite a spectacular light.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_04: I don't know if anybody here besides myself was there, whether you were here, Ken.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_04: I don't know, maybe you don't remember.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_04: But walking behind the cake were three Worcester firemen carrying fire extinguishers.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_04: And yes, we did sing Happy Birthday.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_04: Now I'd like to conclude the story by telling you to look at the ceiling in the corner up there and see that charred spot on the ceiling and tell you that was from the event, but it would not be true.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_04: Because nothing bad like that happened.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_04: The culmination of the story was really this.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_04: They went into the kitchen, which is right over here, put out the candles.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_04: I don't know how.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_04: That might have been quite a job.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_04: I wasn't in the kitchen and served the cake.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_04: It was half chocolate, half white, and was very good.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, and I should add that two weeks later the trustees met and passed a resolution making sure that something like that could never, never happen again.