Messianic Initiative Helps Bring Holocaust Healing

Thursday, April 16, 2015 |  David Lazarus  ISRAEL TODAY

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“When I stood before the actual baby clothing, little dresses and tiny shoes that had been stripped off the infants being thrown into the gas chambers, I just couldn’t take it,” said Tehilah, one of the young Jewish girls who came to Auschwitz with a Messianic initiative called Yad B’yad, which means "Hand in Hand" in Hebrew.

“Standing there paralyzed, holding hands with my German partner, we both broke down crying and could not stop weeping as we held each other and walked through that horrible place,” she recalled. “Something very deep was healed in both of us.”

Every year since 2005, Messianic Jewish leaders in Israel together with their German partners have taken hundreds of Jewish and German youth aged 16-18 to walk through Auschwitz in the Yad B’yad program.

This bold Messianic initiative’s vision is clear: “The pain and the shame of the Holocaust have left deep scars on both Jew and German. They need help to walk together from memory – through friendship – to a shared future."

More than half of all Israeli high schools have since the 1980s sent tens of thousands of Jewish youth to Poland and to Auschwitz to learn the history of the Holocaust. “Many of our children coming back from these trips suffer from nightmares, anxiety and even some cases of depression,” said Batya Herpas, a local city chairperson with the Department of Education. “There are many problems and unresolved issues with the current high school trips to Poland.”

Members of Herpas’ city counsel noticed that the Yad B’yad participants didn’t seem to have the same problems, and that the program could help bring healing and resolution, rather than more pain and anger to their high school teens.

When Roi Keshet, a history teacher in a local Israeli high school, heard about the Messianic Yad B’yad initiative he said that it had been his dream to see Jewish and German teens walking together through Auschwitz. Quoting from Ezekiel 17, ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge,’ he admitted that, “We have a problem with a victim mentality in this country and it is time to bring healing for both German and Jewish youth.”

Many German government officers and education officials have also shown interest in the Yad B’yad journey for their communities. The mayor of Berlin recently hosted a public event in the city square for Yad B’yad kids to tell their stories of how they were helping one another overcome the past and create hope for the future.

“When I saw all the barracks and the destroyed gas chambers,” said Annika, one of the German participants, “I realized for the first time how guilty my nation was and is! I understood what my country did! This was when I understood how important it is to ask for forgiveness… I separated from the group and I asked Julia (her Jewish partner) in the name of my family and in the name of my nation Germany for forgiveness and she forgave me in the name of her family and her nation.”

A Jewish participant named Esther recalled: “At the entrance to Birkenau there are train tracks. We walked in pairs (Jew and German) for about ten minutes holding hands… then each pair sat and prayed together. At first my partner and I were silent, then we began sharing our hearts with each other about what we had just seen. We were both in tears… Then my partner began to pray for me in German and even though I couldn't understand her, it was like God's grace touching my heart."

While in Auschwitz, the young ones light candles as a reminder that even through the darkest hours of human history our people have not been destroyed. It is a small light to remind all of us that hope is our strength, not anger. It is a light, however small, of hope for a future where they and their children’s children will find a way out of the darkness towards a day when we can all say together, “Never Again.”

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The 'Troubling' Turn in US, Israel Relations

The 'Troubling' Turn in US, Israel Relations

By Julie Stahl and Chris Mitchell

CBN News Middle East Bureau

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

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JERUSALEM, Israel -- Israel and the United States have enjoyed a very close relationship going back to the creation of the Jewish state. But on a recent visit to the Middle East, two U.S. congressmen said they're troubled by the direction the relationship is taking.

In a region where radical Islam looks to seize power from long-time dictators, Israel is the sole democracy. On the frontlines of the war against terrorism, it's also a leader in the world of hi-tech and medical advances.

On a fact-finding mission to Israel recently, hosted by a group called "Yes! Israel" and sponsored by Laurie Cardoza-Moore's Proclaiming Justice to the Nations, U.S. Congressmen Dennis Ross, R-Fla., and Robert Pittenger, R-N.C., talked to CBN News after visiting Judea and Samaria to learn more about how the country protects its people and way of life.

"I'm concerned that we as Americans don't truly appreciate or understand and therefore don't appreciate how significant Israel is, not only to our survival as a country, but also the survival of the free world, especially here in the Mideast," Ross told CBN News. 

"They [Israelis] have been our surrogate fighting the terrorists," Pittenger said. "We have helped contribute to the Iron Dome, which is a missile defense system that they've developed." 

The congressmen's comments come at a time of unprecedented friction between U.S. and Israeli leadership over the issue of a nuclear Iran.

"The prime minister is the Winston Churchill of our era and regrettably President Obama is the Neville Chamberlain," Pittenger explained. "He doesn't see the facts. He doesn't see the issues." 

Pittenger said he was disturbed that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared unsure of U.S. help in its time of trouble.

"Frankly, I asked the prime minister at such time that you believe that you will need America, will you believe America will be there for you?  And the best answer he could give me was 'I hope so,'" he said. 

Other long-time U.S. allies -- like Egypt, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates -- are looking to Israel for help in fighting radical Islamic groups.

"Who came in to help Egypt?  It wasn't us. It was Israel," Pittenger told CBN News. "Israel has been the best partner that President el-Sisi has had to defeat the Muslim Brotherhood. Israel has as well been giving significant strategic assistance to Jordan." 

The congressmen said the U.S. could learn a lot from Israel.

"We don't understand what a resilient country that this is -- under enormous pressure and challenge from its borders. In the midst of that, they're one of the strongest, entrepreneurial economies in the world," Pittenger said.

"We can learn a lot about not only their commitment with the young people going into the IDF and having public service, we can learn a lot from their opportunities for economic development," Ross said. "We can learn a lot from their agricultural skills that they've honed and turned a desert into a very vibrant and successful agricultural arena."

Discerning the Voice of the Lord by Elaine Tavolacci

Discerning the Voice of the Lord 

by Elaine Tavolacci

Identity Network

There was a time when the voice of the Lord was rare and there was no widespread revelation. (1 Samuel chapter 3:1) As a young boy Samuel ministered before the Lord alongside of the High priest Eli wearing a linen ephod. The Lord called out to Samuel one day during the night three times but Samuel didn't recognize God's voice until Eli perceived that it was the Lord calling him. 

Samuel then went back, and the Lord called out to him a fourth time. Samuel replied; "Speak, for Your servant hears." He then heard God's voice for the first time. Samuel grew up as a great prophet and none of his words fell to the ground.

The Holy Spirit is speaking to every believer today. In the New Covenant that Jesus made with us, we don't have to be in the five-fold ministry or be a prophet to hear His voice. How much more should we be able to hear His voice then the prophets of old, having the Holy Spirit living inside of us? Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and He is speaking to you, but some of you are recognizing His voice.

The Lord says, listen for My voice. I speak to you in various ways. I speak in dreams, I speak in visions, I speak in nature, I speak through your circumstances, I even speak to you in your trials. As you go to sleep at night with expectation, you will be more receptive to hear from Me in your dreams. As you quiet your mind and posture yourself in an attitude of prayer, you will learn how to hear and become more sensitive to My voice when you pray. As you prepare yourself by conforming to My ways, renewing your mind and attending to My words you will become more attuned to My voice. 

When you free your mind from the cares of this world you will begin to hear with more clarity. As you read My word and meditate upon it, you will begin to discern My plans for you. As you lift your voice to Me in praise and worship, you will begin to hear Me in the song, and you will begin to rise above your circumstances and rest in My presence.

Listen for My Voice

As you go about your day, listen for My voice in your traveling. I will speak to you on your jobs, and even as you are shopping. Seek Me with expectation throughout your day knowing that I will speak to you. Learn how to recognize My voice through other people. Learn to recognize My voice for solutions to your problems. Learn to recognize My voice in all the affairs of your life. I will give you the answers to the questions and concerns that you have. My voice releases authority. My voice brings direction. 

My voice brings instruction. My voice brings transformation. My voice brings healing. My voice brings deliverance. Allow Me to remove anything that may be hindering you from hearing My voice. Stay sensitive to My voice of correction. As you continually submit and surrender totally to Me, you will be able to hear with more clarity. Know that it is My desire to speak to you as My bride in covenant with Me says the Lord.

John 14:17 The Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you.

John 16:13 However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come.

John 16:27 My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.

1 Corinthians 6:19 Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?

Elaine Tavolacci

www.awordinseason.info

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Memory of the Camps - FRONTLINE PBS documentary

A mass gave.

Watch here: Memory of the Camps - 

FRONTLINE PBS documentary

Hitchcock and the Holocaust: “Memory of the Camps”

February 2, 2015, 3:14 pm ET by Patrice Taddonio

Night Will Fall, a documentary that recently aired on HBO, tells the story behind what has been called “Alfred Hitchcock’s lost Holocaust film” — a 1945 documentary filmed by camera crews who accompanied Allied armies as they entered the Nazi death camps at the end of World War II.

Five of the Hitchcock film’s six reels aired for the first time on FRONTLINE nearly 30 years ago, in Memory of the Camps.

“At the time we found the film in a vault of London’s Imperial War Museum, it was not entirely clear what role Hitchcock played in its development,” says David Fanning, executive producer of FRONTLINE. “Moreover, one reel of the original six, shot by the Russians, was missing. There was a typed script intact  — undated and unsigned  — but it had never been recorded.”

The footage was as horrifying as it gets: Gas chambers. Pits full of the bodies of thousands of systematically starved men, women, and children. Crematoria designed to burn large numbers of corpses. And haunted, emaciated survivors.

Work on the documentary featuring the footage had begun in the summer of 1945, with some of the editing done under the direction of Hitchcock (who, according to the film’s director, Sidney Bernstein, would not take a fee for his work). But as Night Will Fallexplores in detail, the film was ultimately shelved.

In 1985, after finding five of the film’s six reels, FRONTLINE added the script and asked the late British actor Trevor Howard to record it. FRONTLINE’s plan was to present the film unedited, as what the film’s producers had originally intended it to be: an unflinching documentation of the conditions of the death camps.

FRONTLINE broadcast the film for the first time in May of that year, using the title the Imperial War Museum had given it: Memory of the Camps. The New York Times said, “Memory of the Camps is a filmed monument that does more than tell the story of what it is recalling. It is the story itself,” and the Boston Globe called it “an uninterrupted silent scream that one can’t turn a deaf ear to or look away from.”

Watch Memory of the Camps in full, for free, on FRONTLINE’s website here, and learn more about the film’s remarkable history and backstory here.

In Mapping the Holocaust, a Horrifying Lesson in Nazi “Paths to Persecution”

April 14, 2015, 3:49 pm ET by Jason M. Breslowand Ly Chheng

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When Allied forces marched into the towns of Bergen and Belsen in the heart of Germany in 1945, there were few obvious signs of the atrocities they’d soon discover. As the forces moved in from the countryside, they passed tidy orchards and well-stocked farms. In a way, it was almost picturesque.

Then came the smell that would lead them to Bergen-Belsen, a concentration camp of 60,000 prisoners. Inside they found decaying bodies that numbered into the thousands. Men, women and children. For those still alive, there was no functioning water supply. Some had not been fed for days. Others were simply too ill to eat. The soldiers filmed what they witnessed, and in 1985 the grisly footage would form the basis for the documentary, Memory of the Camps, which airs again tonight on FRONTLINE (checklocal listings).

Bergen-Belsen was only the beginning, though. In time, ghettos and camps would be discovered in Nazi-occupied territory throughout much of Europe. In all, at least 6 million people died in Nazi Germany’s system of camps — more than 3 million were Jews.

The map below is just a sliver of the reach of Germany’s network of enslavement under the rule of Adolf Hitler from 1933 to 1945. Based on the work of historians at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, it shows the locations (in grey) of 1,096 out of 1,150 ghettos they’ve identified in Nazi-occupied Eastern-Europe. The locations in black represent 868 of the 1,094 concentration camps they’ve documented. (Locations in yellow were filmed in Memory of the Camps.)

The true figure of sites is well above the number pictured above. When historians at the Holocaust museum began their research, they suspected they’d uncover somewhere between 5,000 and 7,000 sites, said Geoffrey Megargee, the project director and general editor. What they soon found is that the actual number is closer to 42,500. But even that, says Megargee, “is a conservative figure.”

The grim census of enslavement, torture and death is part of a multivolume encyclopedia being published by the Holocaust museum. The above figures from the first two volumes have already been released. Six more are planned by 2025.

The early work, Megargee told FRONTLINE, has helped foster a better understanding of what he described as “paths to persecution” during Nazi Germany.

“People tend to think of camps in isolation — concentration camps or ghettos or POW camps or that sort of thing, but there were lots of ways in which prisoners went from one camp to another,” he said.

Equally important, says Megargee, is that given the sheer size of the numbers, it is nearly impossible to believe that ordinary Germans were unaware of Hitler’s system. As he explained:

After the war you had a lot of Germans who tried to say, “Oh we didn’t know anything about these camps,” and they may have been talking about the concentration camps, the extermination camps, that sort of thing but frankly the concentration camps were publicized. The regime wanted people to know about those. It wanted people to know that if they misbehaved, that’s where they were going to go. So these were no secrets, and beyond that, when you have tens of thousands of camps and millions of forced laborers and POWs and concentration camp prisoners everywhere doing every kind of work imaginable, it’s pretty hard to say that you’re not aware of this system.

The slogan 'Arbeit Macht Frei' (Work Sets you Free) at the main entrance of the Sachsenhausen Nazi death camp on the international Holocaust remembrance day in Oranienburg, Germany, Friday, Jan. 27, 2012. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

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Holocaust Remembrance Day - Joel Rosenberg

On Holocaust Remembrance Day, here are four true heroes to remember. Who will be the heroes of our time, standing against evil & genocide? by joelcrosenberg

Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it, said Santayana. Let us never forget.

Yom HaShoah -- Holocaust Remembrance Day -- begins tonight.

Let us take time to remember the six million Jews that were murdered by the Nazis, including 1.5 million children. Let us honor their memories, and pledge ourselves never to forget them. Let us devote ourselves to making sure such evil is never allowed to happen again. This is not just a time for Jews to remember. This is a day for the whole world to remember and commit themselves to standing against evil and against genocide in our time, especially in the face of the Iranian nuclear threat and the murderous rampage upon which ISIS is engaged.

This evening, Lynn and I have been invited to attend the Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony at Yad Vashem, Israel’s renowned Holocaust memorial and research center. I attended last year for the first time, and I am deeply honored to be able to return and bring my wife. I hope to Tweet updates, and post more on this blog so you can track what is happening and consider its significance. We will also attend additional events and ceremonies with Holocaust survivors, Israeli leaders, and various Jewish and Christian leaders. As with last year, I am very much looking forward to this, especially because several of the scholars here were enormously helpful as I was researching The Auschwitz Escape.

My hope and prayer this year is that in addition to remembering those who died in the “Shoah” — the Holocaust — we will also remember the four extraordinary heroes who escaped from Auschwitz 71 years ago this spring to tell the world the truth about what the Nazis were doing, the very men whose remarkable courage and selflessness inspired The Auschwitz Escape. They are:

• Rudolf Vrba
• Alfred Wetzler
• Arnost Rosin
• Czeslaw Mordowicz

It is the story of these four men that inspired me to write The Auschwitz Escape. Last year, FoxNews.com published a column I wrote sketching out their dramatic saga. I hope you’ll take a moment to read the whole column, and then share it with others. Thanks so much. May more such heroes rise up in our generation.

REMEMBERING FOUR HEROES OF THE HOLOCAUST: They pulled off the greatest escape in human history – from a Nazi death camp – to tell the world the truth about Hitler, but no few know their names. [To read the full column, click here.]

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joelcrosenberg | April 15, 2015 at 6:26 am | Categories: Uncategorized | URL:http://wp.me/piWZ7-3hK

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Holocaust Remembrance Day: Shouldering an Inheritance of Grief

04/14/2015   HUFFINGTON POST 

• o be the child of Holocaust survivors is to grow up in the company of ghosts.

To be the child of Holocaust survivors is to grow up in the company of ghosts. By the time I was born, our large German-Jewish family was reduced to an inverted pyramid. My father didn't remember his grandparents and never knew half of his aunts and uncles, but the lost generations were palpable in their absence. You could smell Grandpa's sorrow in his cigar, taste Grandma's grief in the chicken soup. They missed their parents and grandparents, whose ashes lay in the dust of Buchenwald; their brown-eyed sisters and brothers, finished off by the SS; their many cousins; and all the children and grandchildren they would never have.

At our family's Passover Seders, in addition to the four children scripted to ask symbolic questions, there was always a fifth child at the table, the child who did not survive the Holocaust.

I struggled for decades with what to say to this fifth child, my emotional Siamese twin, a child whose voracious hunger for a life unlived I could never sate. Long ago I realized that I could never laugh loud enough, study hard enough, run fast enough or sing beautifully enough to make up for the joy she will never experience, the lessons she will never learn, the races she will never run and the songs she will never sing.

There were days when this martyred child wouldn't let me have a moment's peace; she was my personal Anne Frank who followed me everywhere. At Wrigley Field, while everyone else was guessing the crowd count, she'd pinch my arm and whisper: "Do you know how many stadiums-full it takes to reach 6 million dead relatives?" When I was stopped at a train crossing, she'd sit in the back, kicking my seat, daring me to imagine a one-way ride in a cattle car. She clung to my legs whenever I heard a German accent.

She brought out the worst and the best I had to give, and she was my constant companion -- until I had a child of my own.

One day, I had a vision of my own daughter intercepting the little girl and taking her by the hand to go outside to play. For the first time, I imagined the sound of the little girl's laughter. And then the burden that had sat on my chest since I have had memory began to melt away.

I began to feel my great-grandmother stand behind me and nod approvingly as I made chicken soup. I sensed my great-grandfather putting his hand on my shoulder when I took a job in the Jewish community. I pictured my brown-eyed grand-aunt smiling as I sang my daughter a Hebrew lullaby.

On the day of my daughter's Bat Mitzvah, the little girl and I watched as a new generation assumed the mantle of our Jewish tradition. Finally, I was able to promise her that Hitler didn't win.

I never saw her again.

On Holocaust Remembrance Day, I still light a memorial candle for her, and pray that she is at peace.

A version of this post originally appeared on jufnews.org.

Children of the Holocaust: Stars without a Heaven

Children of the Holocaust: 

Stars without a Heaven

By John Waage

CBN News Sr. Editor

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

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JERUSALEM, Israel -- This is Holocaust Remembrance week, 70 years after the Allies opened the Nazi death camps and found the vortex of 6 million Jewish dead.

Today, fewer than 100,000 survivors remain, but Israelis are working hard to keep their memory alive.

It's difficult to grasp the horror and destruction of the Nazi killing machine. One-third of the world's Jews were murdered. The pain and scars endure to the next generation.

David Hershkoviz would hear his mother screaming in her sleep as she relived the agony: a German soldier separated her from her own mother, who died at Auschwitz.

"She didn't speak about the gas chambers because she wasn't there. She didn't speak about the fact that they were burning bodies; she wasn't there. But during the separation she was there, and that separation didn't leave her," he told CBN News, choking back tears.

Hershkoviz's mother died two years ago. But through a "second generation" study course in central Israel, he's keeping her story alive. The Shem Olam Holocaust Institute is educating people like Hershkoviz to tell their stories when the Holocaust survivors are gone.

The Institute's director, Avraham Kreiger, said many children didn't ask tough questions of their parents.

"How did their parents deal with guilt questions during those moments? How did they go through the difficult moments of separation, of leaving, of difficult decisions? They weren't able to ask this and apparently, the parents weren't able to answer," Kreiger told CBN News.

Meanwhile in Jerusalem, the Yad VaShem Holocaust Memorial Museum tells more stories in an exhibition called "Children in the Holocaust: Stars without a Heaven," with dolls and sketches.

Holocaust survivor Inna Rennet Rehavi's teddy bear is on display. She carried the bear during a remarkable escape with her mother from the train car leading them to Auschwitz.

"Teddy lasted better than I did, and many others. He is more war wounded than I am since he is missing an ear and an arm; but he was a real hero," Rehavi said.