Torch, Summer 1994

Photo credit: National Museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Oswiecim, Poland; Courtesy of USHMM " ...B old, your ·ng is coming to u; He is just an having salvation, wly and riding o a donkey..." I remembered hearin stories about esus riding a donke . Isaiah 53 says H was despised and fo saken of m , he was pierced thr ugh for our tran essions and all we ike sheep have one astray. I didn't r ally realize hat I was a sinner. d my Jewish achers had carefully avoided t ese verses. So it was tremendou surprise to see that these "Chris ian things" were in y Old Testamen . That brought me to a state of confus1 n. There was no ay to get out of the house and there re permanent air raids, so we slept i the basement which doubled as an air raid shelter. The typical day ende by putting on a warm coat and just si ing do and sleeping in a chair. the candles were snuffed out, we had time to think. One night I felt that I had to square off the matter Mary kept talking about, so I just prayed. "Father of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, you've taken away my father who is on the Russian front. You've taken away my home, and the only thing that I have still is my faith in you the way that I was taught in synagogue and school. It looks like what Mary is reading in the Old Testament goes with these things in the New Testament that were written mostly by Jews, too. It says we all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and that you loved the world so much that you have given our only Son so we ould be reconciled with you. He seems to be conforming to the Old stament image. I pray that either u would help e realize that this is ue or get it out f my mind. '' And I ~ asl p to the s unds of war. Morni came, and the moment I woke up i became totally clear that this Jesus o came is r~ the Savior t I was wai · Then I a ed and surrendered to Him. I prayed for the forglVeness of my sins and embraced Him into my life. He changed my life totally. Those Germans and those Nazis that I could have chee y stabbed in the back tw ays bef e, now looked · e lost souls m· guided by t ·s tlevil of a Hitler. I st ed to feel compassion for them! If a fow can make a turn around like thi ·n a few days then something really happened. But the Bible says t ere is now no division in Christ. e has made us one. As a demonstration of this, the LorcL.brought me together with Ju , the daughter of one of Hitler 's colonels, born into a prominent German family and filled with a fervent love for Jesus and als for Israel and the Jewish people Only the grace of God c ul explain how two pe ple from such xtreme oppos'tes could embrace Ghrist and, fter that, embrace each ot e . d the second one isn't bad either. We had our 31st anniversary this year and if you would ask Jutta if she has any problems with Tom, she would say, "Too many kisses and too many hugs." But that is the way Hungarian boys are made and apparently stay that way even when they get a ot of gray. It · great to try to walk with God nd do it with someone you love more and more as the years go by, bound together with an eternal contract. . s s.~nr~ itler used to say, Give me a child until he or she is six years of age, and I will form them for life," but, as for me, Hitler did not count on God's grace. No matter what evil t e Germans thought out, and evi ·t was, there was st'll t e Savior, sus Christ. Romans 5:8 says, "But God demo ates His own love toward , 10 that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." I first experienced that love within a Christian family in Germany after the war, and looking back on my life, I see the Lord's · n"te mercy and love, beca miracul usly we were sav om many terrib things that d have happened to s. I was born and raised in ermany. y father was an active off'cer in 'tier's army and we lived in Berlin. In 939, Hitler invaded Polan . He had ade a pact with Stalin wh1 h gave itler a part of Poland, and Stalin ook the Baltic countries. My gr dfather was a baron who owned q 'te a bit of land in Estonia. In 1939, 'tier's plan was to Germanize occupied Polish territories wit . families of pure German herita e. The polish barons and counts were thrown out of their castles and br ught to concentration camps or al:5or camps, and my fam ·1 was moved into one of their castles. By this time, my father was already on a secret mission to Japan, so my mother, my two sisters, my brother, and I left Berlin without him on our own and joined one of my uncles, an SS security officer, already resettled in Poland. That is where I spent my early school years. In these formative years, I was raised to believe that we, as Germans, were something special. Torch 13