Showing posts with label concentration camp. Show all posts
Showing posts with label concentration camp. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Never Again: Concentration Camp Tour Motivates Messianic Jew - S. MICHAEL CHARISMA NEWS

Entrance gates to the Nazis' Dachau concentration camp. (Wikimedia Commons )

Never Again: Concentration Camp Tour Motivates Messianic Jew

S. MICHAEL  CHARISMA NEWS
Standing With Israel
When I was 19, I moved to Israel to join the army. I came with intense Zionism and a deep sense of responsibility to protect my people.
Since I am Jewish, it only made sense, and when I landed on Israeli soil I had only one thing in mind—drafting into the Israeli Defense Forces. After arriving and getting settled, the army finally called me up. The months of basic training felt like nothing compared to the fire inside of me.
During training we learned many things: Zionism, Israeli politics, Judaism, and Hebrew—and we also learned about the Holocaust. This had a particular influence on my unit as most of them were great-grandchildren of survivors. Our commanders emphasized to us: "Never Again!" or, in Hebrew: LeOlam Lo!
Shortly after basic training we became "official" soldiers in the IDF, and to do so we had swear into the army. During this special ceremony we swore to "Never Again!" allow such horrors to befall our people. We understood that our training allowed us to make sure that the Jewish people would remain forever safe in our homeland. It was a powerful moment for us as we stood with our guns and swore that "Never Again!" would an enemy annihilate the nation of Israel.
Reminiscing about it now makes that day since I completed my service and was released—nearly two years ago—seem like a very distant memory for me. But all of my training and service came back to me recently when we pulled up to the courtyard at Dachau in Germany.
A long pathway dotted with sturdy, tall trees welcomed us. The silence of the place was eerie as we started walking down the gravel road. Each step drawing closer to the gates ahead, the tour guide didn't say a word and the only sound was that of our footsteps against the stony ground. It was hot and the sun seemed relentless, as the heat of summer should have faded by then, but instead it felt like a cruel punishment on such a long day.
Arbeit macht frei, "work for freedom" sprung into my head as the gate became visible. I didn't know German, but I knew what the sign said. They made us study it in basic training. Work for freedom. What a distortion. Freedom meaning death. Work to death ... work to freedom.
It was the first time I had ever entered the snare of a Nazi death camp. The tour guide stopped us just before entering the gate; she explained that Dachau was the first concentration camp ever built by the Nazis, and it was to be used as an example camp. It was known to be especially brutal.
For me, the tour was personally moving. Being Jewish myself, I was painfully affected by the thought that thousands—if not millions—of my people were tortured, neglected and murdered inside these very walls. Our guide explained to us the cruelties my people endured. The reality of everyday life was unbearable to comprehend. Here, my people died, simply because they, like me, were Jews. The tour led us around the entire campus—from the fields where prisoners endured harsh labor, to the barricades, to the processing offices, and then to the showers.
Later in our tour, the guide brought us to a long narrow corridor. She explained to us that these chambers were used for torture by the SS guards. She turned her attention towards the non-Jewish victims of the Nazis and explained how several Christian pastors were also victims and died at the hands of Nazi torture. Amongst the millions of prisoners, three barracks towards the back of the camp were reserved only for Christians: those that stood strong in their faith and refused to align themselves with the monstrous beliefs of the Nazis.   
The hall was long and cold. The only noise heard was the sound of our breathing. Looking down the hall you could see small rays of sun blasting through the tiny windows on the doors, proving that perhaps there still can be light in the darkest of places. We walked down the hall together, trying to comprehend what had taken place in these cells.
We were in the torture chambers.
The hall was cold and rooms held their own demons. The chamber seemed to go on forever—so many rooms, so many horrible acts committed here. The hall just kept going and going to what felt like the length an entire football field. I stopped and peeked through each door to the rooms inside. Each room was entirely empty, cold, and the paint was peeling off the walls. The windows had large black shades that had been pulled back to let the sun in, but when prisoners were in these rooms I am sure it was entirely black.
Each room brought with it a new spirit of evil and each room seemed to get darker and darker, letting in little to no light. I felt like I couldn't go on any longer imagining what had happened in these torture closets. I wanted to scream, run out, and find the sun light I had complained about earlier. I felt the darkness consuming me. Jews, Christians, politicians, scientists, professors, fathers, brothers, humans were all kept here under the worse conditions that are still incomprehensible to us.
The last door on the right side of the corridor had light shining through the small window. It was guiding me to the end. As I reached the end I looked into the window where the light was coming from. There in the middle of the room, on a small table, arms spread out and legs bound, was a small crucifix of Jesus Christ. On his head was etched the words "King of the Jews."
The sight took my breath away. I grew up as a Messianic Jew, believing in Jesus—or, as I grew up calling him, Yeshua—as my Messiah. I stood there for a very long time contemplating the meaning of this moment. The Nazis attempted to eliminate the King of the Jews from the face of the earth by eliminating his people, his family—his flesh and blood—and attempting to silence those who stood tall in faith of Him. I take it as a great responsibility, being a Jew and one who believes in Messiah Yeshua, to never forget all those that died in these chambers. Both my spiritual brothers and sisters as well as my physical brothers and sisters.
As we left the chambers I took off my backpack and pulled out my Israeli flag and my unit patch that I earned serving in the IDF. It was only just a couple of short years ago that I swore into the ranks of the army. I swore that nothing like what I just saw would ever happen again. During the ceremony I chose to swear in on both the Old Testament and the New Testament, combining the heritage of my fathers with the faith of my redemption. That day, I stood with an Israeli flag in hand and swore once again: "Never Again!" I affirmed that "Never Again!" would my people be led to the slaughter.
Messianic Jews also have the duty of never allowing the name of the Messiah Yeshua to be defamed in such a horrible way. As the Jews were being led to the gas chambers or to the mass graves, the Messiah was not merely mourning their suffering, rather He was suffering with them. The fact that some of His followers allowed, or even encouraged this to happen, has left a dark black stain on the name of Jesus in the eyes of the wider Jewish people. As a Messianic Jewish believer, I'm also strongly connected to my duty to assure that the stain is taken from the name of Jesus and that it become known that He was suffering with the Jewish people, not causing it.
Messiah came for all of humanity. He came to save us, redeem us and give us the message of the kingdom of God. We do not always hear stories of Jews and Christians being slaughtered next to each other during the Holocaust. We sometimes forget about the faithful Christians who raised their voices in protest against the murder of the Jews, and against the evils of Hitler and his minions. But they were there. We were all together, and Christ was also with us, suffering right alongside us.
Today, the Christian voice for Israel is stronger than ever. Evangelicals are some of the loudest voices for pro-Israel advocacy. The Christian voices lost in the Holocaust are resurrecting in our day. As Jews and Christians, let us join our voices together and ensure that something as atrocious as the Holocaust will never again happen. May we, as the people of God, followers of Jesus our Messiah, take this stance together and raise this cry in unison: never again. 
S. Michael works as a writer for First Fruits of Zion (ffoz.org) a Messianic Jewish ministry based in Israel, Canada and the United States. She works within the Messianic Jewish communities both in Israel and in America. She is currently a student in Israel with hopes to continue in ministry work.
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Thursday, March 20, 2014

Auschwitz: Evil Unchecked a Prelude to Genocide - CBN News


Auschwitz: Evil Unchecked a Prelude to Genocide 
Joel Rosenberg
CBN News

March 20, 2014 
 
The New York Times best-selling author Joel Rosenberg is back with another historical novel. This one deals with one of the darkest times in human history: the Holocaust.

During World War II, 11 million people were rounded up and taken to concentration camps all over Europe. Six million were Jews.

An estimated 1 million of them died at Auschwitz, the Nazi concentration camp complex in Poland.

Rosenberg's new novel, The Auschwitz Escape, was inspired by true stories of those who were captured and sent to the death camps.


In it, Rosenberg provides a glimpse of the horrors that existed behind those prison walls, and the courage needed not only to survive a death camp, but to break free and tell the world the truth.

"We must never forget what they did, and why they did it," Rosenberg writes in a Fox News blog. "But we must also be ready to act wisely, bravely, and decisively if a mortal threat rises again."

"For if we learn nothing else from the history of the Holocaust, we had better learn this: Evil, unchecked, is the prelude to genocide," he warned.

Are we as a culture at risk of forgetting the terrible events of the Nazi Holocaust? Rosenberg addressed this question and talked more about his new novel on "The 700 Club," March 20.

Joel Rosenberg and Pat Robertson - The 700 Club

View the show segment here: 


Wednesday, February 19, 2014

UN Blasts N. Korea Leader for Nazi-Like Crimes - CBN News (700 Club)

UN Blasts N. Korea Leader 

for Nazi-Like Crimes


By George Thomas
CBN News Sr. Reporter
Wednesday, February 19, 2014

The United Nations has implicated North Korea's Kim Jong Un in crimes against humanity "strikingly similar" to those Nazis committed in the world's most secretive nation.

A U.N. panel issued a report listing atrocities that include systematic execution, torture, rape, and mass starvation.

In 2011, Kim Hye Sook, the panel's chief witness against the state, granted CBN News the first American television news interview.

For 28 years, Kim languished inside North Korea's oldest concentration camp. Although she eventually escaped the camp, some of her family were less fortunate.

"I lost seven members, including my grandmother, mother, brother, and my husband," she told CBN News.

Kim saw daily executions, mass starvation, and mothers killing their children to survive.

"Often these prisoners were killed over petty things, like stealing food," she told CBN News. "The guards would always gather other prisoners to watch the execution. It was a form of intimidation. The command was then given to fire at the prisoners."

Rape, murder, torture, slavery, sexual violence, forced abortions -- those were just a few of the words found in the 374-page report the United Nations said amounts to crimes against humanity.

"The commission of inquiry has unanimously come to the conclusion that there is abundant evidence of great wrongs of this kind," Michael Kirby, chairman of U.N. Commission of Inquiry, said.

Kim told U.N. investigators that food was so scarce fellow prisoners killed their own children to survive.

"One time a mother put her 9-year-old daughter in this big cast iron pot and boiled her," Kim recalled. "She was a too big for the pot so the mother had to chop her legs and head to fit the body in the pot."

The report estimates that between 80,000 and 120,000 political prisoners are still held in prison camps.

Jeong Kyoung-Kang was one of them. He told CBN News that before being released from North Korea's Yodok labor camp, he was severely tortured for alleged spying activities.

Specifically, Kang said the prison guards performed the Pigeon Torture in which the prisoner is hanged from the wall with his hands tied behind his back. He was in this position for several days.

"This happened repeatedly," Jeong said. "It's like you are hanging upside down. Your muscles tense up and your chest sticks out like a bird. I thought I was going to die."

An estimated 30,000 Christians are also reportedly being held in prison for their faith. Owning a Bible, praying, worshipping are all acts that can put up to three generations of a family in jail.

The United Nations is expected to submit their findings to the International Criminal Court with potential charges against the regime's leadership.

Meanwhile, North Korea dismissed the report, saying, "It is nothing more than an instrument of political plot aimed at sabotaging the socialist system."



Thursday, August 22, 2013

German Chancellor Angela Merkel became the first German leader to visit the Dachau.


“Even unto them will I give in My house and within My walls a monument and a memorial better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting memorial, that shall not be cut off” (Isaiah 56:5)
german chancellor angela merkel
German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited the Dachau concentration camp, marking the first time a sitting leader has visited a camp located inside the country. (Photo: Planet Soil News)
On Tuesday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel became the first German leader to visit the Dachau concentration camp during her tenure.  She delivered a short speech, laid a wreath, and toured the camp.  She also met with survivors, including Max Mannheimer, the 93-year-old president of the Dachau camp committee and a former inmate.  He was imprisoned there in 1944.
Although previous German leaders have visited Nazi death camps outside of Germany, this marks the first time a sitting leader has visited Dachau, located inside the country.  According to Dieter Graumann, the head of Germany’s Central Council of Jews, the visit recognizes that Nazi atrocities were not something that happened only outside of Germany, but also “among us.”
Charlotte Knobloch, president of the Jewish Community of Munich and Upper Bavaria, the region where Dachau is located, called the visit “a strong and important symbol.”
“There are several concentration camps, like Auschwitz, abroad, and for decades chancellors and German presidents have been travelling to these places of horrible German crimes and taking historical responsibility,” she said.
“But the fact that she’s visiting a location within Germany where these unimaginable crimes took place, that doesn’t happen so often … it shows her determination and will to learn the right lessons from history.”
Dachau opened in 1933, shortly after Adolf Hitler came to power, the first in Germany.  It was a prison camp for political prisoners initially, and served as a model for the camps to come.  Ultimately, over 200,000 Jews, gays, Roma, political opponents, the disabled and prisoners of war were imprisoned in Dachau during World War II, and 41,000 lost their lives.
The plan to visit the camp came up after Merkel was invited to speak at Bavarian conservative rally in the city from which the camp takes its name.  Mannheimer had long been pressing Merkel to visit the concentration camp, and she agreed to take the opportunity to make the visit prior to the rally.
At the rally, she told her audience, “At the time when the camp was operating near here, those who wanted to could have seen and could have heard what was going on. It is today so important that it never happens again that we allow ourselves to decide not to see and not to hear.”  Similarly, in a recent podcast she warned, “We must never allow such ideas [Holocaust denial and right-wing extremism] to have a place in our democratic Europe.”
But not everyone was impressed with the timing of Merkel’s visit.  Merkel is campaigning for re-election in September, and some of her critics saw the move as “tasteless” electioneering.  ”If you’re serious about commemoration at such a place of horrors, then you don’t pay such a visit during an election campaign,” Renate Kuenast, leader of the opposition Green Party, told the Leipziger Volkszeitung daily paper.  The Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper called Merkel’s timing “unwise…on the sidelines of a campaign appearance in a beer tent at the Dachau funfair.”  German historian and Holocaust expert Wofgang Benz particularly criticized the casual atmosphere she created “by laying a wreath and expressing condolences just before going off to a beer tent.
Still, Jewish community leaders hailed what Merkel herself called, “a very special moment.”

Check the site out further: Breaking Israel News website