Mission to the City
My Experiences During the Great Depression
by
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From: I Am Disappointed
One day in December we read the headline in the Norwegian newspaper: “Ended life with gas.” By reading the article, we find that it is a Norwegian woman who took her own life. The police had found a letter among her papers that she had written to her mother: “Forgive me for what I am now going to do. I lost my place 3 weeks ago. I have not wanted to bother you. I know you would have helped me if you had known, but I have to live in my own way. I am disappointed. Farewell, dearest mommy.”...
Now I travel up to the police station where they have information about the Norwegian woman who committed suicide. We show our business card and identification and ask if we could be allowed to look through her papers for the possibility of finding out who she is. They gave us the address where she lived and permission for us to look through her papers.
Here we are met by her landlady. We show our identification and tell her why we are here. She shows us the room where the girl had lived and where her life came to a tragic end. We find a suitcase that contains some letters and photographs.
On top of the bundle of letters was a Norwegian song. It goes like this:
“Give me flowers while I am alive,
So my eyes may delight in them.
When I am in my coffin
I don’t need flowers anymore.”
We read the song and our eyes filled with tears, thinking about this young woman. How often must she have longed for some flowers—flowers in the shape of a smile, a friendly word, a heartfelt handshake. All this we give so sparingly, and yet it costs so little.
By looking through her papers we find instead of flowers the broken promises that had been her fate in life. How our world is so much like this! How thorns and thistles so make our hearts bleed! How few are the flowers.
The Devil has come to murder and destroy. Whenever a young man or woman sets foot on the road of sin, they fall prey to the world’s false allurements.
We travel back home again and a few days later we have found a broken hearted mother. It is not an easy job to give such a message, yet it has to be done. Only another mother can best understand how it felt for her that day as she heard: “Your daughter has taken her own life; she is now in cold storage at the big morgue.” Give me a flower while I live---
...From: Christmas at Ørkenen Sur
Finally, Christmas Eve is here.
I went down early to be ready to welcome the “Samaritans.”
At the appointed time, 3 fully loaded cars came charging into Ørkenen Sur; they stop at “Gospel Hill.”
Here they unpack the different things they brought. The boys have already taken up their positions and formed a long line. All are given either a small pot or a tin or some other kind of container.
A wonderful smell comes from the warm rice porridge which fills out noses—it is quite tempting! The minister comes forward, sings some verses of the old, blessed Christmas hymns; these hymns and songs are capable of tugging at the heartstrings of even the hardest of men.
Afterwards a message was given about Him who was so poor that he had to be thankful for a crib in the stable; but He came to make many rich. Rich in peace, happiness, joy and hope. What is surprising about the Christmas Gospel is that it never gets old.
Even here at Ørkenen Sur the message speaks to, and goes, we hope, to their hearts. After the devotion, they come forward from the line, one after the other, to get their part of the Christmas porridge and the other delicious foods. They smile and say thank you just like happy children and then they walk back to their own little huts.
It was Christmas at Ørkenen Sur also. But while they are sitting there, enjoying these things, their thoughts go, I am sure, over the Atlantic, over to the little, white, painted, cozy houses with low ceilings, where it is so blessedly good to be.
A boy at Ørkenen Sur thinks:
“I wonder how things are at home this evening? Are all the siblings at home with father and mother? I am sure they are, and I am sure they are talking about me.”
Oh God, if only one could be back home this evening!
A tear rolls gently forth, and then another---
But he is at Ørkenen Sur and will not be hearing the church bells in their homeland.
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About the Book
The book records Karl Holm’s personal account of his work in Ørkenen Sur, a shanty town in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn during the worst years of the Depression. Here, in the shadow of Manhattan, he found life at its grimmest, but life that responded to practical love expressed in the form of shelter, food, and the Christian message. Follow his adventures as a cat led him to a desperately ill man. Follow him on his rounds in the hospitals, reconnecting the ill and dying to their families. Joblessness, destitution, suicide, and murder were only part of his daily life. But there was also grace, love, and an unquenchable spirit. Who knew that he could be a sports reporter writing about crew races? This was a Norwegian-American at his best. Parts of the book, such as the closing account of Christmas Eve, could have been written by Charles Dickens. This is an account to inspire people today as much as then. This book was translated by Arnold E. Andersen, MD, his grandson, with the assistance of Kari Schussler.
About the Author
Karl Holm immigrated to the United States from Norway in 1926 with two of his daughters to find work as a carpenter. Little did he know that, within a few years, he would be called to work with the down and out, the sad and lonely, the jobless and the alcohol dependent, helping to found a “Hoover Village,” which he called Ørkenen Sur or “bitter desert” in Norwegian, in a run-down section of Brooklyn. Here he worked by faith to bring help and hope. He was later recognized by the King of Norway and the Mayor of New York for his work. Every policeman on the beat knew him by name as he made his way to hospitals, to prisons, to the morgue, and to bars.