Articles
Articles on the Sabbath, the Holy Days, Memorial Days, and the historical Jewish festivals and fasts, with insights into their meaning, not only in Jewish history, but also in a current Messianic context.
Yom Hashoah - Holocaust Memorial Day
Ray of Hope Israel – Sidney and Linda Speakman
Dear Friends;
May 1, is " Rememberance day" for the deaths of 6 million Jews in Europe.
Among them were about 1,500,000 children. Can you imagine killing that many children in 4 years? There was said to be about 250,000 Jews who believed in Jesus. There were also Christians who were willing to pay the price with their lives. They died in the same camps.
Below is a true story during this time of so much suffering. God's mercy was there too. Please take 10 minutes of your time to read this. It will bless you and you will cry with joy.
"THE FENCE"
The sky was gloomy that morning as we waited anxiously. All the men, women and children of Piotrkow's Jewish ghetto had been herded into a square.
Word had gotten around that we were being moved. My father had only recently died from typhus, which had run rampant through the crowded ghetto.
My greatest fear was that our family would be separated.
"Whatever you do," Insider, my eldest brother, whispered to me, "don't tell them your age. Say you're sixteen."
I was tall for a boy of 11, so I could pull it off. That way I might be deemed valuable as a worker. An SS man approached me, boots clicking against the cobblestones. He looked me up and down, then asked my age.
"Sixteen," I said. He directed me to the left, where my three brothers and other healthy young men already stood.
My mother was motioned to the right with the other women, children, sick and elderly people. I whispered to Insider, "Why?" He didn't answer. I ran to Mama's side and said I wanted to stay with her.
"No," she said sternly. "Get away. Don't be a nuisance. Go with your brothers." She had never spoken so harshly before. But I understood. She was protecting me. She loved me so much that, just this once, she pretended not to. It was the last I ever saw of her.
My brothers and I were transported in a cattle car to Germany. We arrived at the Buchenwald concentration camp one night weeks later and were led into a crowded barrack. The next day, we were issued uniforms and identification numbers.
"Don't call me Herman anymore." I said to my brothers. "Call
me
94983."
I was put to work in the camp's crematorium, loading the dead into a hand-cranked elevator. I, too, felt dead. Hardened, I had become a number.
Soon, my brothers and I were sent to Schlieben, one of Buchenwald's sub-camps near Berlin. One morning I thought I heard my mother's voice.
"Son, she said softly but clearly, "I am sending you an angel." Then I woke up. Just a dream. A beautiful dream. But in this place there could be no angels. There was only work, hunger and fear.
A couple of days later, I was walking around the camp, around the barracks, near the barbed-wire fence where the guards could not easily see. I was alone. On the other side of the fence, I spotted someone; a young girl with light, almost luminous curls. She was half-hidden behind a birch tree. I glanced around to make sure no one saw me. I called to her softly in German.
"Do you have something eat?" She didn't understand. I inched closer to the fence and repeated my question in Polish. She stepped forward. I was thin and gaunt, with rags wrapped around my feet, but the girl looked unafraid.
In her eyes, I saw life. She pulled an apple from
her woolen jacket and threw it over the fence. I grabbed
the fruit and, as I started to run away,
I heard her say faintly, "I'll see you tomorrow."
I returned to the same spot by the fence at the same time every
day. She was always there with something for me to eat - a hunk of bread
or, better yet, an apple. We didn't dare speak or linger. To be caught
would mean death for us both. I didn't know anything about her except that
she understood Polish and seemed to me to be just a kind farm girl. What
was her name? Why was she risking her life for me? Hope was in such short
supply, and this girl on the other side of the fence gave me some, as nourishing
in its way as the bread and apples.
Nearly seven months later, my brothers and I were crammed into a coal car and shipped to Theresienstadt camp in Czechoslovakia.
"Don't return," I told the girl that day. "We're leaving."
I turned toward the barracks and didn't look back, didn't even say good-bye to the girl whose name I'd never learned ... the girl with the apples.
We were in Theresienstadt for three months. The war was winding down and Allied forces were closing in, yet my fate seemed sealed. On May 10, 1945, I was scheduled to die in the gas chamber at 10:00 AM.
In the quiet of dawn, I tried to prepare myself. So many times death seemed ready to claim me, but somehow I'd survived. Now, it was over. I thought of my parents. At least, I thought, we will be reunited.
At 8 A.M. there was a commotion. I heard shouts, and saw people running every which way through camp. I caught up with my brothers.
Russian troops had liberated the camp! The gates swung open. Everyone was running, so I did too.
Amazingly, all of my brothers had survived; I'm not sure how. But I knew that the girl with the apples had been the key to my survival. In a place where evil seemed triumphant, one person's goodness had saved my life, had given me hope in a place where there was none. My mother had promised to send me an angel, and the angel had come.
Eventually I made my way to England where I was sponsored by a Jewish charity, put up in a hostel with other boys who had survived the Holocaust and trained in electronics. Then I came to America, where my brother Sam had already moved.
I served in the U. S. Army during the Korean War, and returned to New York City after two years. By August 1957 I'd opened my own electronics repair shop. I was starting to settle in.
One day, my friend Sid who I knew from England called
me. "I've got
a date. She's got a Polish friend. Let's double date."
A blind date? Nah, that wasn't for me. But Sid kept pestering
me, and a few days later we headed up to the Bronx to pick up his date
and her friend, Roma. I had to admit, for a blind date this wasn't so bad.
Roma was a nurse at a Bronx hospital. She was kind and smart. Beautiful,
too, with swirling brown curls and green, almond-shaped eyes that sparkled
with life.
The four of us drove out to Coney Island. Roma was easy to talk to, easy to be with. Turned out she was wary of blind dates too! We were both just doing our friends a favor. We took a stroll on the boardwalk, enjoying the salty Atlantic breeze, and then had dinner by the shore. I couldn't remember having a better time.
We piled back into Sid's car, Roma and I sharing the backseat. As European Jews who had survived the war, we were aware that much had been left unsaid between us. She broached the subject, "Where were you, during the war?" she asked softly.
"The camps," I said, the terrible memories still vivid, the irreparable loss. I had tried to forget. But you can never forget.
She nodded. "My family was hiding on a farm in Germany, not far from Berlin," she told me. "My father knew a priest, and he got us Aryan papers."
I imagined how she must have suffered too, fear, a constant companion. And
yet here we were, both survivors, in a new world.
"
There was a camp next to the farm." Roma continued. "I saw a boy
there and I would throw him apples every day."
What an amazing coincidence that she had helped some other boy. "What did he look like? I asked.
He was tall. Skinny. Hungry. I must have seen him every day for six months."
My heart was racing. I couldn't believe it. This couldn't be.
"Did he tell you one day not to come back because he was leaving Schlieben?"
Roma looked at me in amazement.
"Yes."
"That was me!"
I was ready to burst with joy and awe, flooded with emotions. I couldn't believe it. My angel.
"I'm not letting you go," I said to Roma. And in the back of the car on that blind date, I proposed to her. I didn't want to wait.
"You're crazy!" she said. But she invited
me to meet her parents for Shabbat dinner the following
week. There was so much I looked forward
to learning about Roma, but the most important things
I always knew: her steadfastness, her goodness. For many months,
in the worst of circumstances, she had come to the fence and
given me hope. Now that I'd found her again, I could never let
her go. That day, she said
yes, And I kept my word. After nearly 50 years of marriage, two
children and three grandchildren, I have never let her go.
Herman Rosenblat,
Miami Beach, Florida.
This is a true story and you can find out
more by googling Herman Rosenblat as he was bar mitzvahed at
age 75. This story
is being made into a movie called "The Fence".
Things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews.
The following article was written by Eric Hoffer on 1968 - over four decades ago. Hoffer, a Christian, was an American social philosopher. He was born in 1902 and died in 1983, after writing nine books and winning the Presidential medal of Freedom. His first book, The True Believer, published in 1951, is widely recognized as a classic.
The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden
to the Jews. Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people and
there is no refugee problem. Russia did it. Poland as well as Czechoslovakia.
Turkey threw out a million Greeks, and Algeria a million Frenchman. Indonesia
threw out heaven knows how many Chinese - and no one says a word about refugees.
But in the case of Israel, the displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees.
Everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab. Arnold Toynbee
calls the displacement of the Arabs an atrocity greater than any committed
by the Nazis. Other nations, when victorious on the battlefield, Dictate
peace terms. But when Israel is victorious it must sue for peace.
Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this
world. Other nations, when they are defeated, survive and recover but should
Israel be defeated it would be destroyed. Had Nasser triumphed last June
he would have wiped Israel off the map, and no one would have lifted a finger
to save the Jews. No commitment to the Jews by any government, including
our own, is worth the paper it is written on. There is a cry of outrage all
over the world when people die in Vietnam or when two Negroes are executed
in Rhodesia. But when Hitler slaughtered Jews no one remonstrated with him.
The Swedes, who are ready to break off diplomatic relations with
America because of what we do in Vietnam, did not let out a peep when Hitler
was slaughtering Jews. They sent Hitler choice iron ore, and ball bearings,
and serviced his troop trains to Norway.
The Jews are alone in the world. If Israel survives, it will
be solely because of Jewish efforts. And Jewish resources. Yet at this moment
Israel is our only reliable and unconditional ally. We can rely more on Israel
than Israel can rely on us. And one has only to imagine what would have happened
last summer had the Arabs and their Russian backers won the war to realize
how vital the survival of Israel is to America and the West in general.
I have a premonition that will not leave me; as it goes with
Israel so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish, the holocaust
will be upon us.
With our deepest love;
Sidney and Linda Speakman
