2008

Holocaust Remembrance Day

…[ Full Article ]

http://www.jewsforjesus.org/blog/--20090416 - 2008/04/25

2007

HITLER’S THEOLOGIANS: The Genesis of Genocide by Stan Meyer

Did Hitler and his followers carry out a theology that is Christian at its roots?…[ Full Article ]

http://www.jewsforjesus.org/publications/issues/16_10/01 - 2007/04/04

2005

The Holocaust

People often describe the Holocaust as the climax of 2,000 years of Christian mistreatment of Jews. Some invoke the Shoah as the ultimate reason for Jews not to believe in Jesus. Jewish believer Moishe Rosen challenges that view: "The phrase '2,000 years of history leading up to the Holocaust' is more than a reference to past prejudice and persecution. It is an indictment against Christianity that misrepresents Christ's message and intent. Anyone who gives credence to such an accusation bestows upon Hitler the power to change theology."1 Neither Jesus nor Christian…[ Full Article ]

http://www.jewsforjesus.org/answers/community/theholocaust - 2005/01/01

2002

Dare We Hope?

How do we find personal hope in God?…[ Full Article ]

http://www.jewsforjesus.org/publications/issues/14_5/darewehope - 2002/09/01

Remembering September 11—Reflections from a Messianic Jewish Perspective

Six interviews from Messianic Jewish Americans about 9/11.…[ Full Article ]

http://www.jewsforjesus.org/publications/issues/14_1/911reflections - 2002/01/01

2001

Rahel Hirshenson Landrum, Daughter of Sami Hirshenson by Rahel Landrum

I remember when I was about ten years old, I found and read—with tears in my eyes—a report my dad wrote for the Romanian police, in which he described what he and his family went through during the pogroms and the Second World War. That was the first time I was introduced to what happened to my father during the Holocaust. I never asked him about it and he never mentioned it to me. Everything I learned I heard from my mom after he died. Rahel with her parents My father, Sami Hirshenson, was born in Bucharest, Romania in 1923. He was 18 years old…[ Full Article ]

http://www.jewsforjesus.org/publications/issues/13_8/rlandrum - 2001/07/01

Jonathan Bernd, Son of Hans Bernd by Jonathan Bernd

Reflections on forgiveness from the son of a Holocaust survivor.…[ Full Article ]

http://www.jewsforjesus.org/publications/issues/13_8/bernd - 2001/07/01

Seeing and Believing: A Review of Survivor Stories by Naomi Rothstein

60 minutes running time. Produced by Jews for Jesus. Available for purchase. Video brings images to life in a way that few other forms of media can. And hardly any other theme provides as much vitality as the subject of Survivor Stories. The 60-minute documentary-style production tells in vivid detail the true accounts of several people who have at least three things in common: they are Jewish, Holocaust survivors, and have become believers in Jesus. Many people ask the question,…[ Full Article ]

http://www.jewsforjesus.org/publications/issues/13_8/survivorstoriesreview - 2001/07/01

A Child Questions

"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning?1 Why, O LORD, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?"2 I am my father's son: His wounds embedded in my core He bequeathed me more than a half-century's worth of tears To weep on his behalf. Will release ever come? Will hate ever cease? What of joy, laughter, what of song? "You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy. A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born…[ Full Article ]

http://www.jewsforjesus.org/publications/issues/13_8/childquestions - 2001/07/01

Mark Landrum, Son of Flora Landrum by Mark Landrum

My mother, Flora, was born towards the end of the Holocaust. Her family lived in Northern Greece, in the middle of a thriving Jewish community. Her father was part of the Greek underground resistance movement. When the Nazis told the Jewish community that they would be allowed to live if they cooperated, he didn't believe them. Instead, he decided to take his family into hiding. For part of the war, they hid with a Greek Orthodox priest. The rest of the time they hid in the woods. There was not nearly enough food for the whole family. Some of my mother's older…[ Full Article ]

http://www.jewsforjesus.org/publications/issues/13_8/mlandrum - 2001/07/01

Rob Wertheim, Son of Fred Wertheim by Rob Wertheim

My father, Fred, was born in Germany in 1925. The son of a baker, he lived in a village of 2,000 people. The town had very few Jews, ten families to be exact. As a young boy, my father had to look among the non-Jews for playmates. Rob—school days By the time my father was eight, the Aryan philosophy of Hitler was gaining acceptance by most Germans. His best friends did not want to play with him anymore. His parents, who were prospering in the bakery business, held to the illusion that Hitler would lose his popularity and that things would get…[ Full Article ]

http://www.jewsforjesus.org/publications/issues/13_8/rob - 2001/07/01

Jhan Moskowitz, Son of Max and Lilly Moskowitz by Jhan Moskowitz

Some survivors do not tell their kids anything. They just don't. Some survivors tell their kids everything. When I was a little boy, I crawled into my father's lap and asked, "What is that number on your arm?" He didn't flinch, he told me he was in the concentration camps. He grew up outside of Lodz, Poland, and spent four and a half years in several work camps as well as Auschwitz. He did not explain in detail what he had been through, but he told me more as I got older. I asked him if he went to school, and he said that Jewish kids didn't get to go to high school.…[ Full Article ]

http://www.jewsforjesus.org/publications/issues/13_8/moskowitz - 2001/07/01

Train of Life

The word "whimsical" seems out of place when describing a story set against the backdrop of the Holocaust, yet the 1999 Paramount Classics film, "Train of Life" indeed is a whimsical treatment of a serious topic. In fact, there are many humorous scenes. The humor is not about Nazis or the Holocaust—but about life and especially about the absurdities that survival requires. In French with English subtitles, the movie has a surreal quality owing to its implausible plot and some "Fiddler on the Roof"-style musical interludes. The film opens with a brief…[ Full Article ]

http://www.jewsforjesus.org/publications/issues/13_5/trainoflife - 2001/01/01

Past Oppression, Present Excuse? by Ruth Rosen

What can happen when we take our sufferings out of their historical context.…[ Full Article ]

http://www.jewsforjesus.org/publications/issues/13_5/pastoppression - 2001/01/01

2000

After the Holocaust, Part One by Hannah Neufeld

My father was born and raised in Vienna, Austria. He had to flee for his life and he barely escaped the torture of the concentration camps. After repeated attempts to escape—only to be captured and returned to Germany—he and his brother made a suicide pact. They would take their own lives before being sent to one of the death houses. Most of my father's family would come to their untimely demise for the "crime" of being Jewish. The rage in my father's voice and the pain I saw in his face as he told me these things, I remember well. Some of my earliest…[ Full Article ]

http://www.jewsforjesus.org/publications/newsletter/2000_03/aftertheholocaust1 - 2000/03/01

After the Holocaust, Part Two by Amer Olson

When I was serving with The Liberated Wailing Wall (our mobile evangelistic music team) we had a chapel at the Lutheran Bible Institute. Toivi Blatt, a Holocaust survivor, happened to be lecturing in one of the classes that day, and we were allowed to sit in. This man was part of the only successful large scale escape from any of the Nazi's Death Camps, Sobibor. He was thirteen at the time. Toivi's survival could only be described as a miracle. As the officers surveyed the line of men and chose which could work and which should march toward the smokestack down the…[ Full Article ]

http://www.jewsforjesus.org/publications/newsletter/2000_03/aftertheholocaust2 - 2000/03/01

Losing All; Gaining All by Ruth Horak

I was born in Czechoslovakia in 1935. Our family owned one of the largest textile factories in the Czech Republic. In 1940, when the Germans occupied this area, they first took the industrialists, and my father was sent to the Warsaw Ghetto. We never saw him again. In September of 1942 all the Jewish people from Prague were deported and everything was taken away from us. My mother had prepared us to immigrate to England, but soon the borders were closed and we couldn't get out anymore. We were sent to Thereseastadt, a horrible ghetto, and stayed there 16 months. …[ Full Article ]

http://www.jewsforjesus.org/publications/havurah/3_1/horak - 2000/02/01

1998

Jewish Survival in a Changing World

A close look at assimilation and what it means to be committed to Jewish survival.…[ Full Article ]

http://www.jewsforjesus.org/publications/issues/11_7/jewishsurvival - 1998/01/01

1997

The Journey by Hans Bernd

I was born Hans Reiner Bernd in 1929 in Koblenz, Germany, the youngest of three children. I grew up almost as an only child, because my brother and sister were respectively fourteen and thirteen years older, and rarely at home. My parents both came from old, established German Jewish families. My father was a doctor who had served as a medical officer in the first world war and had been wounded and decorated. Like many "enlightened" German Jews, my parents attempted to integrate totally into German society, and I don't think they ever went to the synagogue, nor did we…[ Full Article ]

http://www.jewsforjesus.org/publications/issues/11_1/journey_Hans_Bernd - 1997/01/01

1995

Things We Couldn't Say by David Brickner

Things We Couldn't Say by Diet Eman/James Schaap. W. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 390 pgs., hardcover. Not enough stories have been told. Not enough trees have been planted outside Yad Vashem. Not enough accounts have been written of the heroic deeds of those "righteous Gentiles" who risked everything to save Jews during the second World War. So it is with deep appreciation that I recommend the story of Diet Eman who, during the Nazi occupation of Holland, risked her life and lost the love of her life to save Jewish people. This is a gripping, first-person…[ Full Article ]

http://www.jewsforjesus.org/publications/issues/10_2/couldntsay - 1995/07/01

1994

Am Yisrael Chai by Moishe Rosen

Despite the Holocaust, the God and people of Israel live.…[ Full Article ]

http://www.jewsforjesus.org/publications/issues/9_4/yisraelchai - 1994/03/01

1992

Haman, Hitler, and Now Hussein—Another Holocaust? by Louis Goldberg

Another Holocaust? A new twist on the old, twisted final solution? We have barely been able to accept the enormity of the destruction of much of European Jewry. One third of all Jews living before mid-century are gone—one million of them children. Now we live in a world where far more destructive and deadly weapons are available to modern day Hitlers and Jew-haters like diabolical Saddam Hussein. How can we bear to think of another horror after the Holocaust has already tortured and put six million Jewish people to death? Painful Memories Difficult to…[ Full Article ]

http://www.jewsforjesus.org/publications/issues/8_1/hussein - 1992/01/01

1989

If you want life, expect pain by Susan Perlman

A person sensitized by suffering might well ask the question, "If God exists and he is loving, why does everything hurt so much?" There are no easy answers that we can give because the "so much" is something that only he or she can know. Nobody can sense the meaning of another person's "so much" to give any kind of answer to that anguished person. When we try to give answers we must inevitably fail because the pleadings of those in agony are not merely for answers or understanding, but also for relief from the anguish. If there is anything real in life, it is pain. If…[ Full Article ]

http://www.jewsforjesus.org/publications/issues/6_6/pain - 1989/07/01

1985

An Interview With Dr. Vera Schlamm

Ed. note: Dr. Vera Schlamm spent her childhood in Nazi Germany and Holland. Her early youth—the days when most girls are beginning to date—was spent trying to survive on tiny morsels of food while in Bergen-Belsen. For a fuller account of her story of survival and her earnest search for God, see the books Jewish Doctors Meet the Great Physician and Testimonies. available online by clicking the links. Both also contain the accounts of other Jews…[ Full Article ]

http://www.jewsforjesus.org/publications/issues/4_3/schlamm - 1985/09/01

1984

Another Holocaust? by Louis Goldberg

Another holocaust? Perish the thought! How can we bear to think of another horror when the European holocaust massacred six million Jewish people, one third of all Jews living at the time. Of the six million, one million were children. PAINFUL MEMORIES Difficult to Face Only in the last several years have our Jewish people even ventured to talk about the holocaust. Hitler and his bloody henchmen succeeded in more than eliminating the mortal lives of six million Jews. He conjured a horror that is still keenly felt, even after more than 35 years. It is as…[ Full Article ]

http://www.jewsforjesus.org/publications/issues/3_7/holocaust - 1984/09/01

1983

I Escaped From Hitler Twice: The Fred Wertheim Story

When a Jew comes to believe in Jesus, it not only affects his life but the lives of those closest to him—his family. This was certainly the case when Steve Wertheim, the son of a Jewish immigrant, came to believe in Jesus. Steve's father, Fred, was born in Germany in 1925. The son of a baker, he lived in a small village of 2,000 people. The town had very few Jews, ten families to be exact. Fred, as a young boy, had to look among the non-Jews for playmates because the only other Jewish children were his two older sisters and an older Jewish girl. It didn't bother…[ Full Article ]

http://www.jewsforjesus.org/publications/issues/3_1/escape - 1983/09/01

Excerpt from When Being Jewish Was a Crime by Rachmiel Frydland

The following is an excerpt from Rachmiel Frydland's autobiography, When Being Jewish Was A Crime. The time is 1938 in pre-war Poland. Mr. Frydland, a yeshiva student, has come to believe in Jesus. Inevitably, the time has come to tell his parents: When I was in the yeshiva, I rarely wrote home, but now I became more convinced that I must tell my parents what had happened. Yet whenever I began to write about my faith, I lacked the courage to be frank and I wrote in an indirect way. They must have guessed, or perhaps others wrote and told them of my experience, because…[ Full Article ]

http://www.jewsforjesus.org/publications/issues/2_10/frydlandexcerpt - 1983/07/01

When Being Jewish Was a Crime by Kresha Richman-Warnock

No Jew who lived through the merciless devastation of the Holocaust emerged unscarred. Many Jews responded either by rejecting God or even hating Him. Rachmiel Frydland in his recent book, When Being Jewish Was a Crime, presents another perspective. Mr. Frydland grew up in Poland where he was in training for the rabbinate. As a young man, he met a Jewish Christian who showed him how clearly the Scriptures portrayed Jesus as the Messiah. Struggle as he might, he could find nothing in the Jewish Bible to refute this and soon Frydland became a believer in Jesus. That was…[ Full Article ]

http://www.jewsforjesus.org/publications/issues/2_7/frydland - 1983/01/01

1981

In the Midst of Sorrow by Kresha Richman-Warnock

Each Jew must develop some personal perspective on the horrors of Nazi Germany. Different conclusions have been drawn, and they are reflected in the literature of post-Holocaust Western Jewry. Rather than generalize about various responses, I would like to deal with just one—that of the poet Jacob Glatstein. Jacob Jacob Glatstein came to the United States from Lublin, Poland, in 1914. He weathered the Second World War in this country, while Lublin became the site of a large concentration camp. Glatstein had a deep love for his people and the culture of Eastern…[ Full Article ]

http://www.jewsforjesus.org/publications/issues/1_5/sorrow - 1981/01/01

Without Jews by Jacob Glatstein

Without Jews there is no Jewish God. If we leave this world The light will go out in your tent. Since Abraham knew you in a cloud, You have burned in every Jewish face, You have glowed in every Jewish eye, And we made you in our image. In each city, each land, The Jewish God Was also a stranger. A broken Jewish head Is a fragment of divinity. We, your radiant vessel, A palpable sign of your miracle. Now the lifeless skulls Add up into millions. The stars are going out around you. The memory of you is dimming, Your kingdom will soon be over. Jewish seed and…[ Full Article ]

http://www.jewsforjesus.org/publications/issues/1_5/withoutjews - 1981/01/01

Where was God When the Six Million Died? by Steffi Geiser-Rubin

God was mourning over the dead, the persecuted, those whose minds were scrambled with the lust for power. God was suffering along with every humiliation and each act of violence. God was weeping over the lost souls who were hurled namelessly into eternity. WHY DID GOD JUST SIT BACK AND LET IT HAPPEN? WHY DIDN'T HE STOP IT? WHY? The answer to the question is not snappy, nor is it smug and self-satisfied. It is hard to explain and hard to understand. But it has to do with love that is really LOVE. God created man to be loved by HIM and to be able to give love…[ Full Article ]

http://www.jewsforjesus.org/publications/issues/1_5/wherewasgod - 1981/01/01