This excerpt from an article by Dr. Shimon Lev of Hadassah Academic College, Jerusalem, is based on the public lecture he delivered on the occasion of the unveiling of the monument to Gandhi and Kallenbach in Vilnius, Lithuania, on 1 October 2015. – Admin
The story of Gandhi and Kallenbach, in my opinion, is a deeply intimate and personal story. But it also has historical and academic importance. This story is fascinating for yet another reason, as it proves and emphasizes the possibility of cross-cultural influences which can cause much greater outcomes, as was manifested in Gandhi’s impact on the world’s history.
The cross-culture aspects of this story involve Lithuania, South Africa, India and Israel. It involves a young and successful architect named Hermann Kallenbach, as well as an ambitious young Indian lawyer named Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who at that time was perhaps unaware he was to become the future Mahatma. Both Gandhi and Kallenbach were searching for their identities while living as unwelcome immigrants in South Africa.
But this story also involves Leo Tolstoy, the prophet of non-violence, who was among the main critics of Western civilization. It involves Hindus, Christians, Jews, Muslims, alongside with staunch Tolstoians and Theosophists as well as white racism. It also involves two ancient Asian nations on the process of a national revival, struggling for freedom in the age of the collapse of imperialism. But it also contains the most catastrophic event of the 20th century—World War II and the Holocaust. Gandhi on one hand, Hitler on the other—probably the two most famous figures of their time, but what a difference! And in-between there was Kallenbach, who was on the one hand a believer in non-violence, as a disciple of Gandhi, but on the other hand, shared the fears of the fate of his Jewish brothers in Europe, and particularly tried at the very last moment in 1939 to rescue his brother Simon Kallenbach’s family, as well as his other relatives, from the Nazi-occupied Klaipėda (Memel) in Western Lithuania.
Rarely can a historian come across such a story. But even if he does, he faces the risk of “destroying” it with the instrumentation of dry, boring academic facts and references. It is a true challenge to manage this risk, while at the same time giving due credit to the importance of this relationship in a broader historical perspective. … FULL ARTICLE HERE ›››
› Dr. Shimon Lev is an Israeli multidisciplinary artist, writer, photographer, curator and researcher in the fields of Indian Studies. He is the author of “Soulmates: The Story of Mahatma Gandhi and Hermann Kallenbach” and teaches at the Hadassah Academic College, Jerusalem.
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