My visit to Auschwitz on this, International Holocaust Remembrance Day - Joel Rosenberg

Some thoughts on my visit to Auschwitz on this, International Holocaust Remembrance Day. by joelcrosenberg

My visit to the Nazi death camp in southern Poland led me to write "The Auschwitz Escape."

(Naples, Florida) -- Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Today is the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in southern Poland. Indeed, this year marks 70 years since the defeat of the Nazi reign of terror, the end of World War II, and the end of the Holocaust that led to the systematic murder of six million Jews.

Let us take some time today -- and throughout this year -- to remember the horrors of what really happened. Let each of us take time to remember the heroes who fought the Nazis and survived and won the war. Let us also consider lessons learned from that darkest of eras in human history, and recommit ourselves to never letting it happen again.

Have you visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., or Yad Vashem in Israel, or one of the Nazi death camps in Europe? I would encourage you to do so, and to take your family.

In November of 2011, I had the opportunity to tour Auschwitz with several friends. The experience marked me forever.

Here is a short video of my time at Auschwitz, produced my oldest son, Caleb, for The Joshua Fund. It runs a little less than five minutes. I hope you'll take a few moments to watch it and to share it with others, especially today.

Here, too, is a link to the historical novel I published in the spring of 2014, The Auschwitz Escape. I hope you and your family will take some time to read it and discuss it.

I did not go to Poland planning to write a book. But as many of you know, I became so deeply fascinated in the lives of four Jewish men, true heroes, who actually escaped from Auschwitz, against all odds. I became intrigued with how they did it, and with their burning passion to escape not simply to save their own lives, but to risk all to tell the world -- including FDR and Churchill -- what was really happening there, and to plead with the world to take decisive action to liberate the camps and end the nightmare. Without question, these were the greatest escapes in human history.

Finally, for now, here is an article I posted on The Joshua Fund website several years ago describing my visit to Auschwitz and some of my thoughts on that visit. I hope you'll find it helpful.

-------------------------------

REPORT FROM AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU

In November, after teaching on Bible prophecy and God’s love for Israel and the Jewish people at a wonderful, pro-Israel evangelical church in Germany, I had the opportunity to travel to Krakow, Poland with the pastor of that church and his wife, and a dear pastor friend from the U.S., and his wife. Together, the five of us spent a day touring the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camps not far from Krakow. None of us had ever been there before. None of us will ever forget the experience. More than 1.3 million prisoners were brought to the camps by the Nazis during World War II. Of those, 1.1 million were exterminated in the gas chambers and the crematoria. One million were Jews. So many of them were children.

It is difficult to describe my emotions as a Jewish person as I stood inside one of the Nazi gas chambers. Or walked through rooms filled with enormous glass cases filled with human hair. And glasses. And shoes. And suitcases from all over Europe. How can one explain the inexplicable? With the help of my eldest son, Caleb, I’ve produced this short video report from Auschwitz to share with you, at least, some of the images that my colleagues and I saw at the camps. At the end of the video, you’ll also see an excerpt of a speech that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered in 2010. He said that the prophecies of Ezekiel 37 regarding the “Valley of the Dry Bones” were fulfilled during the Holocaust and the subsequent resurrection of the State of Israel. I couldn’t agree more. I hope you’ll take a moment to watch the video and encourage your friends and family to watch it as well.

My time at Auschwitz raised many sobering questions. Among them: Why was the world silent for so long? Why didn’t the U.S. and the allies take decisive action to stop Hitler before it was nearly too late? Why didn’t the Church do more to rescue Jews? As difficult as these questions are to answer, more difficult still are these: Why is much of the world largely silent again today as Radical Muslims in Tehran and elsewhere in the Middle East threaten to annihilate Israel and the Jewish people? Why are the U.S. and our allies refusing to take decisive action now to neutralize the Iran nuclear threat before it’s too late?

That said, I am glad to be able to report some good news: More and more Christians are repenting for the Church’s sins against the Jewish people in the past. The Church is mobilizing today to bless Israel and the Jewish people in ways that to her shame she did not in the 1930s and 1940s. More followers of Jesus Christ are hearing and heeding the call to learn, pray, give and go to the work of the Lord and caring for Holocaust survivors today than ever before. More Christians are helping persecuted Jews immigrate to Israel than ever before. More Christians are helping to feed and clothe the poor and needy in Israel than ever before. More Christians are visiting the Holy Land and meeting Israelis and learning about the past, present, and the future of the Promised Land and the Chosen people than ever before. Not all. And not enough. But more than ever. This is good, but more must be done. Evil is rising once again. Israel faces existential threats. The world is increasingly turning a blind eye to the fate of the Jews. Now evangelical Christians are the best friends that Israel and the Jewish people have. We cannot undo the past. But we can ask the Lord to forgive us and ask Him for the courage to be faithful to the Scriptures and to the Jewish people in the times in which we live. We can bless Israel and her neighbors in the name of Jesus, according to Genesis 12:1-3. We can show unconditional love and unwavering support, come what may. This is the heart of The Joshua Fund. That’s what our work is all about. And visiting Auschwitz was another powerful reminder to me personally that this work is more vital and urgent than ever.

As 2011 ends, therefore, I see the gathering storm on the horizon, but I am not frightened or discouraged. I know the God of Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps. I know He is moving powerfully. I know the Lord is taking what man meant for evil and turning it for good. Indeed, the Lord is moving powerfully to care for His people, Israel, and turn their hearts back to Him and His Word. And for this reason I rejoice. I look forward to 2012. I’m determined to stay the course, and I hope and pray that you will be, too.

“Then He said to me, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel; behold, they say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope has perished. We are completely cut off.’ Therefore prophesy and say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God, Behold, I will open your graves and cause you to come up out of your graves, My people; and I will bring you into the land of Israel. Then you will know that I am the Lord, when I have opened your graves and caused you to come up out of your graves, My people. I will put My Spirit within you and you will come to life, and I will place you on your own land. Then you will know that I, the Lord, have spoken and done it,” declares the Lord.’”(Ezekiel 37:11-14)

—————-

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joelcrosenberg | January 27, 2015 at 3:16 pm | Categories: Uncategorized | URL:http://wp.me/piWZ7-3cw

Nazi Nightmare Ends for War Criminal's Son

Thursday, January 15, 2015 |  Charles Gardner  ISRAEL TODAY

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Christians

Being brought up as the son of a Nazi was a burden hard to bear for Werner Oder, an Austrian born in the aftermath of the Holocaust. His father Wilhelm had presided over the murder of many Jews as he trained men in the art of killing at a camp in Poland during World War II.

But in spite of all attempts at denial and covering up the truth, his complicity in the massacre of defenseless men, women and children came to haunt his son – quite literally.

As a small boy, Werner, now 64, regularly woke up screaming from horrific nightmares – a demonic entity actually rising up from a hole in the floor to frighten the life out of him – and he developed into a sickly child as a result.

His father had somehow escaped immediate post-war punishment on account of apparent lack of sufficient evidence, but Werner saw little of him anyway as he was a serial adulterer. Eventually the legendary Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal uncovered the truth of his wicked crimes, but he died of a heart attack just before his trial.

Werner, meanwhile, whose two half-brothers had served in the Hitler Youth, was growing into an angry young man bent on destruction as the psychological damage caused by his family’s involvement with the Nazi death cult manifested itself in aggressive, drunken behavior and self-harm.

“I wanted to be accepted and loved, but the more I tried to be acceptable, the more rejection I felt,” he recalls in his book Battling with Nazi Demons.

He tried to kill himself by swallowing an entire box of tranquilizers his mother kept for her own peace of mind. But he desperately wanted help nevertheless. He remembered how, as a small boy in the throes of his recurring nightmares, he somehow prayed to God for help – even though he knew nothing about God, having been brought up in a completely pagan environment.

His mother was so touched on hearing him that she wrote it down on a slip of paper: “Dear God, look upon me your little child and have mercy on my tears. I do not want to die. If you let me live I will serve you.”

And God did not forget him as the answer finally came many years later in the form of a Christian missionary from over the mountains with whom he came into contact.

He heard that Jesus offered release from the “visitors from hell” that had plagued him all those years. He could hardly believe it was true, but when he invited Christ into his life, he was suddenly and miraculously freed from all the demons that had strangled his mind, spirit and body for so long.

“Kneeling to confess my sin and my need of forgiveness and deliverance, it seemed as if the weight of the whole world rolled off my shoulders," said Werner. "With tears, I sensed the light of God flooding my mind, driving out the darkness of despair and fear. Like chains, the troubles of my soul fell off; my sanity returned and I knew from that moment that God’s only Son Jesus Christ had come to set this prisoner free. From that day, all demons left and my nightmares stopped.”

For the past 30 years Werner has been pastor of the Tuckton Christian Centre in Dorset, England. Not only has he made friends with a Polish Jew who had witnessed and given evidence of his father’s cruelty in court, but he is now a passionate supporter of Israel and the Jews.

And he believes the Church itself was complicit in the Holocaust, which resulted in the death of six million Jews.

Martin Luther, for all his positive contribution to the Reformation in restoring the place of faith in Christ rather than religious observances as the key to salvation, had unfortunately ended his life by publishing terrible anti-Semitic rants, which later served as clerical endorsement for Hitler.

Werner sees a direct correlation between anti-Semitism and denial of the Holy Spirit’s work and relates how, shortly after the modern-day Pentecostal movement emerged on the scene at the turn of the 20th century, a group of 56 German evangelicals (those who believe in the Bible’s absolute authority) met to discuss whether or not it was of divine origin and decided, in what is known as the Berlin Declaration, that it was “of the devil”.

As Werner told a conference in York, this amounted to blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, which even Jesus said was unforgivable.

“They turned out the light in Europe, and we’re still paying the price for it,” he said. “The Holy Spirit was knocking on the door of the church in Europe and saying, ‘The darkness is coming. I want to empower you to resist the Nazis and protect my people’.”

Battling with Nazi Demons is published by Onwards & Upwards, with a foreword by author and international speaker David Pawson, and is available from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com

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March in Hungary Remembers Holocaust

March in Hungary Remembers Holocaust

April 28, 2014

Yori Yalon, The Associated Press and Israel Hayom Staff

Some 12,000 people participate in march honoring the memory of the 550,000 Hungarian Jews who perished in the Holocaust • "I have deliberately come on this march to ask for forgiveness from the Jewish people and the survivors," one participant says.

Sunday's march in Budapest  |  Photo credit: AFP

Some 12,000 people participated in a march through Budapest Sunday, honoring the memory of the 550,000 Hungarian Jews who perished in the Holocaust. Several Hungarian MPs participated in the march alongside Israel Ambassador to Hungary Ilan Mor, former Chief Justice Aharon Barak and heads of the local Jewish community.

Seeking atonement for their relatives, the grandchildren of some of those involved in the Holocaust joined the march, which began with a ceremony by the Danube River, on the site of a new monument for Hungary's Jewish community. Participants then marched some 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) to Budapest, where another ceremony was held, marking the 70th anniversary for the community's destruction.

"Unfortunately, the past decade has seen anti-Semitism rear its head again and every year we see in increase in violent anti-Semitic incidents around the world," Yaakov Haguel, head of the World Zionist Organization's Department for Countering Anti-Semitism, said.

"The World Zionist Organization strongly condemns any and all physical violence, anti-Semitic expressions, incitement and heinous blood libel," he said. "I urge everyone to fight this horrific phenomenon and make it extinct."

Frank Pfeiffer's grandfather voluntarily joined the Waffen-SS, the military arm of the Nazi Party, while his wife Barbel's grandfather helped build the electrical system at the Auschwitz death camp, including the wiring of its gas chambers.

At Auschwitz, about a third of its victims were Hungarian Jews.

"I have deliberately come on this march to ask for forgiveness from the Jewish people and the survivors," said Pfeiffer, a 44-year-old travel agent. "As the grandchild of a perpetrator, I want to express how deeply sorry I am at what my grandfather did."

The couple did not discover the truth about their relatives' actions until about 12 years ago, when they began researching their families' pasts.

"We are here with my husband to say the words our grandparents were incapable of," Barbel Pfeiffer said during Friday's remembrance at the Federation of Hungarian Jewish Communities. "Words cannot undo the events of the past, but we regret what happened with all our hearts."

Commemorations of the 70th anniversary of the Holocaust in Hungary have been tainted by disputes between Hungarian Jewish groups and Prime Minister Viktor Orban's government.

Authorities have acknowledged and apologized for Hungarians' actions in the Holocaust, but a statue commemorating the 1944 Nazi occupation of Hungary is being erected despite protests from Jewish groups, who see the memorial as an attempt to diminish Hungarian officials' role in the deportations.

Zoltan Pokorni, a former education minister, said last week that Germany's occupation of Hungary was "an explanation, but not an excuse" for the fate of Hungarian Jews.

"The murderers were Hungarian and the victims were also Hungarian," Pokorni said. "This is our issue, not a distant historical question."

A German pastor began the March of Life events in 2007. Since then, more than 20,000 people have taken part in reconciliation marches in 13 countries.

Archaeologists Find Treblinka Gas Chambers

Israel Breaking News - Archaeologists Find Treblinka Gas Chambers

Click here to watch: Archaeologists Find Treblinka Gas Chambers The first-ever archaeological excavations at the Nazi death camp Treblinka in Poland have revealed new mass graves, as well as the first physical evidence that this camp held gas chambers. The camp had been bulldozed in 1943. To cover their tracks, the Nazis went so far as to plant crops and build a farmhouse on the leveled ground. Presented in a new documentary, "Treblinka: Hitler's Killing Machine," which aired Saturday on the Smithsonian Channel, the excavations revealed brick walls and foundations from the gas chambers, as well as mass graves and massive amounts of human bone, some of which was close to the ground's surface or exposed to the elements. Historians estimate that about 900,000 Jews were murdered at the camp over just 16 months. WATCH HERE The Nazis began deporting Jews to Treblinka in July 1942, mostly from the ghettos of Warsaw and Radom. There were two camps: Treblinka I was a forced-labor camp where prisoners were made to manufacture gravel for the Nazi war effort. A little more than a mile (2 kilometers) away was Treblinka II, the death camp, where Jews were sent on trains. The victims were told that they were going to a transit camp before being sent on to a new life in eastern Europe. The deception was elaborate: Nazis erected a fake train station in the remote spot, complete with false ticket-counter and clock. "There was an orchestra set up near the reception area of the camp to play," archaeologist Caroline Sturdy Colls told Live Science. "It was run by a famous composer at the time, Artur Gold." The gas chamber was the subject of the teams' second dig. The excavations revealed a brick wall and foundation. There were two sets of gas chambers built at Treblinka, the first with a capacity of about 600 people, the second able to hold about 5,000. The gas chambers were the only brick buildings in the camp, Colls said. The digs also revealed orange tiles that matched eyewitness descriptions of the floor of the gas chambers. Each tile was stamped with a Star of David, apparently in order to fool the victims into believing that the building was “a Jewish-style bathhouse.” The Jewish deportees were split into two groups, one of men and the other of women and children, and ordered to undress for "delousing." After handing over their valuables and documents, the victims were sent to the gas chambers, which were pumped full of exhaust fumes from tank engines. “Within about 20 minutes, some 5,000 people inside would be killed by carbon monoxide poisoning. Corpses were initially buried in mass graves, but later in 1942 and 1943, Jewish slave laborers were forced to reopen the graves and cremate the bodies on enormous pyres,” adds Live Science. After the war, Treblinka was turned into a memorial. Out of respect for the victims, no excavation was allowed there, until Colls and her colleagues won approval from Polish authorities as well as Jewish religious leaders to conduct a limited dig. Source: Arutz Sheva

A Sick Development Coming Out of Europe, ‘disgusting’ Nazi-like salute

A Sick Development Coming Out of Europe, ‘disgusting’ Nazi-like salute Click here to watch: France deplores soccer player’s  ‘disgusting’ Nazi-like salute The French sports minister accused top French soccer player Nicolas Anelka of anti-Semitism and “disgusting” behavior on Saturday night, hours after Anelka made what is regarded as a neo-Nazi-style, anti-Semitic salute to celebrate scoring a goal in the English Premier League. The “quenelle” signal is rapidly spreading among anti-Semites in Europe and is being used by individuals to fly under the radar of strict anti-hate speech laws in parts of the continent. The signal, extending one’s right hand toward the ground while the left hand grasps the shoulder, was devised by Dieudonné M’bala M’bala, a controversial French comedian who has been  condemned in court several times for anti-Semitic remarks. “Anelka’s gesture is a shocking, disgusting provocation. There’s no place for anti-Semitism and incitement to hatred on the soccer field,” said the French sports minister, Valerie Fourneyron, in a tweet. Over the past two months, the “quenelle” trend has gained popularity, prompting hundreds of Europeans to post pictures of themselves online performing the heil-like salute. Many of the images were taken at sensitive sites such as in the Auschwitz concentration camp, the Anne Frank House and even the Western Wall. Dr. Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress, said it was “sickening that such a well-known footballer would make such an abusive and hateful gesture in front of tens of thousands of spectators.” “This salute is merely a lesser-known Nazi salute and we expect the same kind of punishment to be handed down by the authorities as if Anelka had made the infamous outstretched arm salute. “This salute was created by a well-known extreme anti-Semite who has displayed his hatred of Jews, mocked the Holocaust and Jewish suffering.” Use of the “quenelle” is “gaining more and more momentum, is very pervasive on the internet and social networks, and is increasingly becoming a symbol of the Nazi regime, and does not look like a passing phenomenon,” Yaakov Hagouel, the Head of the World Zionist Organization’s Department for Combating Antisemitism, told Hebrew website Ynet earlier this month. WATCH HERE CLICK HERE to sign up for "Israel in my Heart" updates! Israel is in My Heart Receive beautiful pictures and videos of israel!! Follow us on Facebook for top Israel videos: https://www.facebook.com/israelinmysoul Share this email so that others can  subscribe to Breaking News Videos emails Breaking News Videos is a project of  IsraelVideoNetwork.com and12Tribe Films,  developing the next generation of Israel  activists using online video and social networking. Join our mission - Click here to help us grow  our network to reach hundreds of thousands of  people to make a difference for Israel.

Reality Check

I thought I'd do a little "reality check" myself when I was in Israel Nov. 3-11, 2013. Here is what I found. What do you think?  

Steve Martin 

Founder 

Love For His People, Inc.

(P.S. I took these photos myself with my little Fuji camera. Just the way it is.) 

"West Bank"

- my guess is about 10 feet.

(Photo of the Jordan River, near Jericho, Israel. 

Nov. 10, 2013)

"Settlements"

- must be the Bedouins who live outside Jerusalem.

Arab nomads I believe who won't move.

"Two States Solution"

- Jews and Moslems living together

as Israelis. Peacefully.

There is reality.

There is the truth.

If people would 

open their eyes 

and see it. 

For instance, what world-wide politicians and "peace makers" have continually called "settlements" are actually beautiful homes of people. So just move them out???!!! 

(And guess what? They have bought them rightfully.)

That is like telling the people of Charlotte, North Carolina, where I live, that you "must leave and give up everything YOU have worked for and built", to someone who doesn't own it, and will destroy it once you are gone. 

Want a good example? The Gaza Strip was given as a peace gesture, demanded by the PLO, in order to move the "Peace Process" forward. And now what? Rockets continually fired at innocent Jewish civilians a few miles away, after the new "residents" in the Gaza Strip destroyed the homes and businesses of the previous rightful owners.

Let's get real here. Divide the Land of Israel, and as per the Living God of Israel, you will face His reality. Check out the Roman Empire, the British Empire, the Nazi Regime, the Soviet Union...all who opposed the people the Lord has chosen to live in His land are the ones who no longer live.

Other nations will be wise if they take heed to the historical facts.

Sincerely,

Steve Martin

P.S. Share if you too stand for Israel.

Love For His People, Inc.

P.O. Box 414

Pineville, NC 28134

Natan is an artist. He is a Holocaust survivor.

Rachel Boskey

Aug. 23, 2013

Shabbat Shalom dear Facebook friends!

I want to introduce you a dear couple whom Avner Boskey and I have come to love in the last years -- Natan Friedman and his wife Shoshana. Natan and Shoshana live in our town. 

Natan is an artist. He is a Holocaust survivor who escaped death by assuming the identity of a Polish child and living in a monastery. After World War Two, Natan sailed with thousands of others, mostly young people, on the famous “Exodus” ship and he stood on Israel’s shores briefly in August 1947. But all of the Jewish people on the “Exodus” were refused entry to their homeland and were sent back to Europe.

 Natan finally arrived in Israel on May 15, 1948. In Israel, Natan became an accomplished scientist. His wife Shoshana was a schoolteacher with a master’s degree in English literature. They have two children and seven grandchildren. 

Natan has created many amazing works of art over the years, both paintings and sculptures. Some of them reflect the traumas and horrors he experienced as a Jewish child in Poland and many others reflect his life of many years in Israel. Next week Natan and his art will be featured on an Israeli TV program. 

Today I was privileged to photograph some of Natan’s works which will be shown on the TV program. To know Natan and Shoshana is to love them! — with Avner Boskey and ‎נתן פרידמן‎. (16 photos)

Nazi flag flies south of Jerusalem

Monday, May 20, 2013 |  Israel Today Staff  

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Residents of the Arab town of Beit Omar between Jerusalem and Hebron strung up a large Nazi flag adjacent to their local mosque on Monday in a clear message to the Jews living nearby.

A resident of the nearby Jewish communities of the Etzion Bloc said the incident was very jarring. "I felt we were going back 75 years, losing our hold on the land," he told the Tazpit News Agency. "The Arabs no longer feel the need to hide their murderous intentions, announcing out loud that they wish to annihilate us."

The Israeli army was notified about the Nazi flag, and sent in a team to remove it.

The Nazis and Adolf Hitler have long been idolized in much of Palestinian society. Hitler's "Mein Kampf" remains one of the 10 bestselling books in the Palestinian Authority-controlled territories today, and has a local distributor.

During World War II, the Palestinian leader in the Middle East, Haj Amin al-Husseini, was a close confidante of Hitler, and actively recruited fellow Muslims to the Nazi cause.