Producer Steven Spielberg's release of the movie-documentary,
Schindler's List, has sparked a wave of films that depict
the many courageous rescues performed by Gentiles during WW II.
Spielberg was gifted in being able to capture not only the horror
and heartbreak of the Holocaust, but also the courage and virtue
of those who risked their lives for Jews.
Some who were rescued from the death camps, came out of the war with tales of how G-d protected them and preserved them, while others had only hatred and bitterness, no longer believing in G-d's existence. The following is part of the testimony of a first generation American, the daughter of a Jewish Holocaust survivor and a Jewish displaced person.
Susan grew up in the Bronx "in an atmosphere of anger, hatred, bitterness, bigotry, and suspicion ...an atmosphere liberally seasoned with continual repetitions of Holocaust atrocities." She recalls, "My parents seemed determined to insure that my sister and I would never forget the indignities which they had suffered at the hands of the Nazis. It was as if their goal was to cause us to become as angry, hateful and distrustful as they were." But G-d had other plans for Susan. She received Jesus as her L-rd and Savior at the age of 3l. Seven years later she married an American of German ancestry. It is certain, from family photographs, that some of his ascendants were Nazis. Through this union, G-d has wrought healing in Susan. And, through the love of her Savior, Jesus, she is able to speak with detachment of the horrors of her parents' past and with hope for her surviving parent's salvation:
"My father was born in Romania where He was imprisoned by the Nazis in a labor camp. He was sentenced to death twice, but by supernatural intervention, he was able to escape both times. My mother was born in Osnabruck, Germany where she was separated from her parents at the age of twelve and put on a ship with her younger brother. Their destination was New Rochelle, N.Y. where a kind Gentile family agreed to care for these Jewish refugee children...My grandparents and my mother's older brother escaped unscathed (at least physically). My mother's two older sisters were not so fortunate. They were both taken to a Nazi concentration camp. One of them died in the camp and the other was released at the end of the war...The surviving sister was the subject of some 'scientific experiments' on the female reproductive organs which rendered her barren and emotionally scarred for life."
"My mother, who never really recovered from the emotional trauma of being separated from her family...died at the age of 44. My father is alive and well, living in California. He is very resistant to the Gospel because 'a G-d of love would not allow six million Jews to be exterminated. Where was this G-d when I needed Him?' He is still unable to recognize the miraculous nature of his two escapes from death row. I am standing in faith and believing that the blinders will be removed from his eyes and the veil from his heart before he leaves this world."
Susan and her husband James are a remarkable example of the One New Man, Jew and Gentile living together in peace.
"But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For He Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation, having abolished in His flesh the enmity....so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace, and that He might reconcile them both to G-d in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity." (Ephesians 2:13-16)