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
A main theme of my newest book, Blessing Israel, is the coming merger of true believing Christians and true Jewish believers. Our friend at Dry Bones Cartoons did it a gain. He speaks as an Israeli Jew, and seems to recognize the same thing I see. Here is a prophecy from Paul, the Apostle.
Elisha Vision - Commentary 
Why Does the World Hate the Jews?
23 10 2015“When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You’re talking anti-Semitism..” Martin Luther King, Jr.
Here is a great short essay on anti-Semitism that I found on Got Questions.org while researching for my talk next Tuesday at the ICON Lecture Series in Chapel Hill, NC. I will not have time to go into this part, so decided to share it here. Why do you think the world hates Jews?
Why is anti-Semitism so rampant in so many different nations? What is so bad about the Jews? History has shown that at various times over the last 1,700 years the Jews have been expelled from over 80 different countries. Historians and experts have concluded there are at least six possible reasons:
• Racial Theory – the Jews are hated because they are an inferior race.
• Economic Theory – the Jews are hated because they possess too much wealth and power.
• Outsiders Theory – the Jews are hated because they are different from everyone else.
• Scapegoat Theory – the Jews are hated because they are the cause for all the world’s problems.
• Deicide Theory – the Jews are hated because they killed Jesus Christ.
• Chosen People Theory – the Jews are hated because they arrogantly declare they are the “chosen ones of God.”
Is there any substance to these theories?
• With respect to the racial theory, the truth is that the Jews are not a race. Anyone in the world of any color, creed or race can become a Jew.
• The economic theory citing that the Jews are wealthy doesn’t hold much weight. History has shown that during the 17th through the 20th centuries, especially in Poland and Russia, the Jews were desperately poor and had very little, if any, influence in business or political systems.
• As for the outsiders’ theory, during the 18th century, the Jews desperately tried to assimilate with the rest of Europe. They had hoped that assimilation would cause anti-Semitism to disappear. However, they were hated even more by those who claimed the Jews would infect their race with inferior genes. This was especially true in Germany prior to World War II.
• As for the scapegoat theory, the fact is that the Jews have always been hated, which makes them a very convenient target.
• As for the idea of deicide, the Bible makes it clear that the Romans were the ones who actually killed Jesus, though the Jews acted as accomplices. It wasn’t until a few hundred years later that the Jews were cited as the murderers of Jesus. One wonders why the Romans are not the ones hated. Jesus Himself forgave the Jews (Luke 23:34). Even the Vatican absolved the Jews of Jesus’ death in 1963. Nevertheless, neither statement has diminished anti-Semitism.
• As for their claim to being the “chosen people of God,” the Jews in Germany rejected their “chosen-ness” status during the later part of the 19th century to better assimilate into German culture. Nevertheless, they suffered the Holocaust. Today, some Christians and Muslims claim to be the “chosen people” of God, yet for the most part, the world tolerates them and still hates the Jews.
This brings us to the real reason by the world hates the Jews. The apostle Paul tells us, “For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race, the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption as sons; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of Christ, who is God over all, forever praised!” (Romans 9:3-5). The truth is that the world hates the Jews because the world hates God. The Jews were God’s firstborn, His chosen people (Deuteronomy 14:2). Through the Jewish patriarchs, the prophets, and the temple, God used the Jews to bring forth His Word, the Law, and morality to a world of sin. He sent forth His son, Jesus the Christ, in a Jewish body to redeem the world of sin. Satan, the prince of the earth (John 14:30; Ephesians 2:2), has poisoned the minds of men with his hated of the Jews. See Revelation 12 for an allegorical depiction of Satan’s (the dragon’s) hatred of the Jewish nation (the woman).
Satan has tried to wipe out the Jews through the Babylonians, the Persians, the Assyrians, the Egyptians, the Hittites, and the Nazis. But he’s failed every time. God is not finished with Israel. Romans 11:26 tells us that some day all Israel will be saved, and this cannot come to pass if Israel no longer exists. Therefore, God will preserve the Jews for the future, just as He has preserved their remnant throughout history, until His final plan comes to pass. Nothing can thwart God’s plan for Israel and the Jewish people. (Entire quote here)
Les Lawrence, Voice of Christian Zionists (READ MORE)
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Tags: anti-semitism, christian zionists, Elisha Vision, Israel, Jerusalem
Categories : Israel Commentary