Today is the day everything stops in Israel for two minutes once a year. Please read this post from Israel National News and the Times of Israel; to touch, even briefly, the gripping personal testimony of this survivor. I appreciate her credit to “providence” in the face of the very embodiment of evil.
A Survivor Recounts: Defying Death in the Holocaust for a Sister: Suzanna Braun was told to save her little sister as she was herded away to the gas chambers – and she did at all costs. Suzanna Braun recalls the efforts to keep her father’s last wish during the war, with a little help from ‘divine providence’. by Jonah Mandel
(AFP) – Suzanna Braun, who experienced the horrors of the Holocaust and defied death at least three times, believes she survived because of her determination to save her sister – and some divine intervention.
The first time she beat death was sheer luck.
Suzanna was just two weeks shy of 16 when she, her sister Agi and her parents were rounded up in their hometown of Kosice, in what is now Slovakia, and sent to the Polish death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau.
There, the women were separated from the men. As her father was taken away to the gas chambers, he shouted his last words to her: “Take care of your sister!”
Agi, four years older than her sister, was already in ill health.
Now 86 and living in a retirement home in Shoresh, a small village west of Jerusalem, Suzanna recalls every detail of how the women were stripped and herded into the “showers” where there was a faint odor of gas.
Locked behind a steel door with soap in their hands, some women waited for water. Others, who had heard the rumours, began panicking.
It was only when the doors opened they realized they had cheated death.
“They were out of gas,” she told AFP in an interview as Israelbegan marking Holocaust memorial day and 70 years since the end of the war.
Wearing dresses from gypsies killed before them, they were loaded onto trucks and driven to Estonia to join thousands of other women on a death march aimed at killing or weakening as many as possible.
After her mother was shot dead during the march, Suzanna did not speak for a month.
But it hardened her resolve to look after her only surviving relative.
“I didn’t think about anything, only how to save my sister. Because father asked me to take care of her.”
Lethal injection
At one point, they were forced to cross a wide river but Agi could not swim so Suzanna made makeshift wooden floats to carry her to the other side.
They survived the march but were taken to Stuffhof camp in Poland where Agi was put into the infirmary and Suzanna would sneak in food for her at night.
When the Nazis realised Russian forces were heading toward the camp, they attempted to kill as many inmates as possible with lethal injections containing strychnine and gasoline.
As the Nazi orderly was going from woman to woman injecting the poison, Suzanna told her sister and three other women to turn their arms over so the injection would hopefully miss a vein.
The poison took effect quickly.
“My hand stopped working,” she said showing a pale, rounded scar.
Looking around, Suzanna seized a wad of hay from their bedding andbegan putting pressure on her arm, she recounted.
“It exploded like a geyser.”
Quickly she started digging into the flesh with stalks of hay to gouge out the poison. She managed to do the same for her sister and another woman.
“It was like providence,” she said.
Covered in blood, she dragged her sister to a nearby hill and rolled her down it. A Nazi officer was passing so she played dead, and he kicked her down the same hill.
She then got her sister to an abandoned cowshed where she nourished her with leftover milk until Russian forces arrived the next day.
For love of a sister
Not long after, at a hospital in Danzig, Agi’s life was once again saved by medical staff who amputated her gangrened feet.
“The whole time, not my brain but rather divine providence worked for me,” Suzanna said of her survival. “And I cooperated with that providence, with the sixth sense.”
The two eventually immigrated to Israel where Suzanna married, had a daughter and now has two grandchildren. Agi, who married but remained childless, eventually died in 2013, aged 88.
That was when Suzanna decided to go public with the sisters’ story by going back to her hometown along with filmmaker Yarden Karmin to document her story.
The documentary, called “In The Third Person”, is being given its first private screening on Wednesday, as Israel marks 70 years since the liberation of the camps and the end of the war.
“This entire story is being told because since I wanted to commemorate her,” she said.
“My last task is not to live well, go to the cinema and other frivolities – but to tell the story.”
All along it was about saving her sister.
“I wasn’t afraid to die. It wasn’t about me,” she said, explaining that the film was a way of preserving her memory. “I wanted something to remain after her.” Israel National News
Selah…
Les Lawrence, Voice of Christian Zionists
This is the time of year when the United Nations gathers in New York to pontificate about one world government and tries to placate all the demands of 57 Islamic countries and their confederates. This year we even heard the Pontiff add to the voices. So what does Yehovah God think about the UN? Personally, and also Biblically, I am convinced that God is “UN”impressed. Consider His word given here:
I was inspired this week by the teaching of 
Elisha Vision - Commentary 
Why the West is Losing to Jihad
6 10 2015The West continues to be clueless as to the source of Muslim hatred. While we are always seeking a “motive” for jihadi terrorist murders, radical Islam marches on. A million refugees flood Europe in a colossal Trojan Horse migration and Europe provides free housing, welfare and medical treatment. After several terrorist murders in Israel this week, the Palestinians were once again handing out candy. Radical Islam is simple Muslims taking the Koran and Hadith literally. They are doing what Mohammed did. They believe in a supremacist world conquering religion that ultimately eliminates all others. Sharia is not only the religious duty of Muslims, it is equally the legal system. The West sees Islam as a benign, even “peaceful” religion. That is a fatal mistake that threatens the foundations of Western civilization which originated in the values of our Judeo/Christian Biblical heritage. Despite our recent straying from our roots, the values of freedom, liberty and responsibility are still in our DNA.
Today, I want you to consider one narrow example of the polar opposite to Biblical values. It is seen in the murder of two Israelis last Saturday in Jerusalem’s Old City. One was a Rabbi, the other a husband and father of two. I am not making this up. It is today’s news and the links are provided in blue highlights.
Palestinian Baby Named in Honor of Jerusalem Stabber: A newborn Palestinian Arab baby has been named in honor of the Arab terrorist who murdered two Jews and wounded three others in a stabbing attack in Jerusalem’s Old City on Saturday night. The Palestinian Authority’s official news agency Wafa was quick to publish a festive birth announcement, PMW also noted. Halabi was lauded in Wafa’s report as a “hero of our people” who had been “assassinated by the army of the occupation.” Also according to Wafa, “while still in the hospital, the mother of the baby called the mother of Martyr Halabi…during the phone conversation, the two mothers cried from joy.”
WAFA, the official Palestinian Authority news agency and the official PA daily newspaper both reported on the joyous naming. Here is the actual article published in both official PA sources (translated by Palestinian Media Watch).
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Tags: Elisha Vision, Israel, Jerusalem, jihad, Palestinian Flag, Radical Islam
Categories : Israel Commentary