When Priests Commit Suicide - In the Loving Memory of Carsten Häublein

A year ago, on February 14^th, a day dedicated to love, I got a heartbreaking message which reflects most the unloving nature of our society. I was informed that my friend, Carsten Häublein, a German priest who suffered from EHS for 10 years, could no longer take the pain of the ‘Fire’ 4G LTE, which burned inside his head, and he committed suicide.


My sadness was profound and on that same day I wrote a post but I did not publish it. His death was too overwhelming and I needed more time to digest it and understand what it meant for me, what impact should it have on my life and what his death says about the world and society when priests commit suicide.


Carsten first contacted me 10 months before he committed suicide and we kept in touch and had long conversations, he even spoke Hebrew. He worked tirelessly to help hundreds of people who suffer from EHS while trying to survive himself and living in inhumane conditions in his car in the woods.  

In one of our calls I tried to convince him to give an interview and he refused. He explained that he gave interviews in the past and as a result he and others who tried to fight local cell phone antennas were persecuted “the way the Jews were persecuted by the Nazis”. No German would have said these words lightly, especially not to a Jew, and living with EHS for 4 years, I agree that the comparison is inevitable and no Jew would have said it lightly either.

His exact day of death is unknown, sometime between 11^th to the 14^th of February, 2013.  He committed suicide by jumping into a freezing river. His body was found a few days later. He sat by the river for a few days prior to his death, and one day a person asked him if everything was OK. Why, when for 10 years he said that no, nothing is OK, didn’t anyone do something? Why now, when millions are screaming including children, is anyone still doing nothing?

This is what I wrote the day I heard about Carsten’s suicide:

“I have been sitting all day staring at the computer, saying and thinking again and again “not Carsten…No”. I did not know what to do with myself. I feel sorrow that I cannot contain. It is evening now, and I just cannot smile, I cannot be consoled. I am deeply sad about Carsten but it hurts even more to comprehend the kind of world and society I live in. We learned nothing from the Holocaust.

When mothers who are trying to protect their children are arrested and indicted for refusing the installation of wireless meters in their homes, instead of those who manufacture and distribute them, something is very wrong in society. When judges, doctors, engineers are forced to leave their homes, families and careers and become refugees in the woods in the freezing winter, something is very wrong in society.

But when priests commit suicide, an act which is contradictory to the core of their being, then it means hope is completely lost and with it our most basic values as a humane society.

Today I lost any shred of hope I had in humanity, because when priests commit suicide and cannot see light amidst all the darkness, there is no hope”.

My last conversation with Carsten was difficult. I felt he were at the end of his rope. Following the conversation I contacted another German friend, but apparently no one could help, even in the woods he could not escape the tormenting 4G anymore.

Carsten asked that the poem “Von guten Mächten wunderbar geborgen“ or “By Loving Forces Silently Surrounded”, be read in his funeral. The poem was written by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor and a writer who fought the Nazis to protect the Jews and just like Carsten, his life is a testament of “commitment to justice on behalf of those who face implacable evil”. He was executed just before the war ended. Following is a partial translation of the poem[i]:

By gracious powers so wonderfully sheltered,
and confidently waiting, come what may,
we know that God is with us night and morning,
and never fails to greet us each new day.

Yet is this heart by its old foe tormented,
still evil days bring burdens hard to bear;
O give our frightened souls the sure salvation
for which, O Lord, you taught us to prepare.

And when this cup you give is filled to brimming,
with bitter sorrow, hard to understand,
we take it thankfully and without trembling,
out of so good and so beloved a hand.

Yet when again in this same world you give us
the joy we had, the brightness of your sun,
we shall remember all the days we lived through,
and our whole life shall then be yours alone

Anna Frank wrote that “Despite it all, I believe that people are really good at heart”. I don’t. The end of Anna Frank’s story just as Carsten’s, is all the proof I need.

I signed my post last year with the word “Shattered”. I still am, every day, thinking about Carsten and the society that murdered him.

Dafna

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[i] http://enominepatris.com/deutschtum/musik/Von%20guten%20Maechten%20wunderbar%20geborgen.htm