The Polish view of the Holocaust

In February, a diplomatic fallout took place between Poland and Israel. The acting Foreign Minister of Israel, Israel Katz, and PM Benjamin Netanyahu had made statements critical about Poland’s involvement in the Holocaust. Israel Katz had stated that “I am a son of Holocaust survivors and I was even born and grew up in a community made up of Holocaust survivors. The memory of the Holocaust is something we cannot compromise about; it is clear and we won’t forget or forgive.” Katz added a few days later that “the Poles took part in the extermination of Jews. Poland became the biggest cemetery of the Jewish people.” Katz also referred to Prime Minister Yitzak Shamir’s words years earlier, “that Poles suckle anti-Semitism with their mothers’ milk.”

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki

Israel Katz’s statements did not go well with Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki. As a younger man, without a personal Holocaust experience,

Morawiecki did not accept any generalization about his country’s involvement with the Nazis in the horrors of the Holocaust. He argued that what happened in Poland was done only by individual criminals.

The tension between the two countries has been high since February 2018, when Poland passed legislation outlawing any blame on Poland for Nazi crimes against the Jews. The reasoning behind the new law is that the Poles were mere bystanders to the Nazis’ deadly mission. The statistics in the Yad VaShem Memorial Museum in Jerusalem tell about a different reality. Out of the 6.0 million Jewish victims of the Holocaust, about 3.0 million Jews were killed in Poland. The Soviet Union murdered 1.3 million Jewish men, women and children.

The UN and claims against Israel

In 2018, the attacks on Israel over the Gaza border burned tens of thousands of acres of farming land and forest, causing wide-spread smoke pollution over Israel. People on both sides of the border were killed and hurt. The conflict that was initiated and forced on the Gazans by the Hamas terrorist entity still continues with daily destruction and danger to Israel.

On February 28, the United Nations Independent Commission of Inquiry claimed that there is evidence that Israel committed “war crimes against humanity” in responding to the “protests” in Gaza. The report argues that Israeli snipers targeted children, heath care workers, journalists and people with disabilities─ week after week at the “protest” sites. Why did Hamas force children, mothers and special-needs adults to the war zone? The answer is for Hamas to gain an international sympathy by their so-called harmless demonstrations.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders rejected the report, accusing the UN of “setting a new record for hypocrisy and mendacity, out of an obsessive hatred of Israel. It is Hamas which fires missiles at Israeli citizens, throws explosive devices and carries out terrorist activity during the violent demonstrations along the Gaza fence. Israel will not allow Hamas to attack Israel’s sovereignty and its people, and will maintain the right of self-defense. IDF soldiers will continue to vigorously defend Israeli citizens against attacks by terrorist organizations financed by Iran, which declares its intention to destroy Israel” said Netanyahu. (The Times of Israel, February 28)

The land of Israel from waste places to gardens

Spring is a time when everything comes back to life and life triumphs over death. It is a time of deliverance, when the God of Israel led His people out of Egypt, when Hama’s evil plot to eliminate all Jews was stopped. Spring is also the time when the State of Israel began its existence. On May 14, 1948, we saw the prophetic word of the Lord come to pass: “And, I will rejoice over them to do them good, and I will faithfully plant them in this land with all My heart and with all My soul” (Jeremiah 32:41).

Now, however, some things come at a cost. The birth of the Jewish Nation paid for its existence with much persecution of the Jewish people, especially during their centuries in exile, concentration camps and the gas chambers. On Yom HaShoa (Holocaust Remembrance Day), we remember all those who were brutally killed. Our hearts are filled with sadness and heaviness. Only a week after that comes Yom HaAtzmaut (Independence Day), a celebration meant to be filled with joy and gladness.

CFI has worked with and supported the Association of Concentration Camps and Ghetto Survivors for many years. They gather together for their annual meetings to celebrate life. The theme of the meeting in 2018 was “Jewish Phenomenon How the desert becomes a Flourishing Forest.” The seminar was a follow-up to over 1000 trees that were planted by the Holocaust Survivors in 2016 at a kibbutz in Negev. These trees were planted in memory of the 1.5 million children who were murdered during the Holocaust.

The organization showed us how desolate the land of Israel looked just one hundred years ago compared to the beauty we all enjoy today. “Indeed, the Lord will comfort Zion; He will comfort all her waste places. And her wilderness He will make like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the LORD; joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and sound of a melody” (Isaiah 51:3). (Reference: Olga Kopilova, FZS 3rdQ2018)

The Book of Amos continuous prophecies about the restoration of Israel: “I will restore the captivity of My people Israel, and they will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them. They will also plant vineyards and drink their wine, and make gardens and eat their fruit” (Amos 9:14). His people─including old and young, Holocaust survivors and people from all walks of life─will return back to their ancestral land to stay:

“‘I will also plant them on their land, and they will not again be rooted out from their land,’ says the LORD your God’” (Amos 9:15, NASB).

  The grief of double orphans  

We read in 1 Kings 4:25 how Israelis in the days of King Solomon lived “in safety, every man under his vine and fig tree, from Dan even to Beersheba, all the days of Solomon.” The news today tells about a different era with terror attacks and conflicts affecting communities, and families with children.

About ten years ago, we visited the community of Itamar to convey condolences for the loss of life in a terror attack just one month earlier. Arab terrorist had randomly attacked the Fogel family home, killing the parents and three of their youngest children. Two of the older children survived. The attack, that was praised in the world Arab media as a heroic operation made both of the surviving children double orphans. Losing one parent in childhood is difficult. Having both parents cone with such a gruesome way is unimaginable. For a child, the pain may never go away.

If there are grandparents or other relatives, they continue parenting the orphans. Rest of the children need social services and orphanages. Since 2000, about twenty-six families have lost both parents to terror attacks in Israel, and a few more in other countries. In March 2018, fourteen (14) Israeli children become orphans in that one month alone. The victims were fathers and husbands         ─all Jewish civilians killed by Palestinian terrorists.

As always, the surviving terrorist and his family were rewarded by the PA from its generous international aid.

A prayer shawl for a recent Mt. Zion burial

Join us to bring assistance to the Jewish communities to show Christians’ care for orphans and widows.

Attacks against Israelis in 2018

Every year, especially during the main Israeli holidays,  incitement by Mosques and the social networks are pushing the Palestinian youth into the streets to “defend” the main sanctuary, the Al Aqsa Mosque.  Stone throwing in the East Jerusalem neighborhoods and clashes at the Temple Mount follow immediately. Last year, stone throwers also took the Gaza border area to attack Israeli soldiers. The 2018 statistics tell about the grief that all terror attacks caused in Israel:

Prayer and meditation

Celebrating Shavuot 2019                              

For many friends of Israel, the annual CFI Conference is the highlight of the year. We welcome you in June to Jerusalem to worship, praise and hear firsthand outstanding speakers and international musicians. Join in exciting city and museum excursions and fellowship with new friends from the nations. The conference begins on Monday, June 3, and continues with daily sessions through the evening of Wednesday, June 5, in the Manachem Begin Heritage Center. The invited speakers include:

From Holocaust to independence

In 1971, a special monument sculpted by Nathan Rapoport was inaugurated in the Martyrs Forest of the Jerusalem hills. Rapoport said about the sculpture that, “My words have been made of bronze and stone. They are silent, heavy and longstanding.” The monument material is bronze, to last for generations to come. The sculpture, Scroll of Fire, is in the shape of two scrolls for the Jewish nation being the People of the Book. One of the scrolls describes the Holocaust with symbols of Nazi soldiers, ghetto fighters and fences of the concentration camps. The scroll ends with Holocaust survivors arriving in Israel. The scroll describing independence features symbols of Israel, such as olive trees, a man blowing a shofar, the Western Wall and an angel blowing a trumpet. There are two memorial rooms in the space between the scrolls. One of the rooms has a quote from the Book of Ezekiel, reading:

The Holocaust took the lives of most of the European Jews, including 3.0 million Polish Jews and 8 Jews from Finland. The recent studies into the years of the Holocaust prove that no country was blameless for the destruction of the European Jewry. Never again!

(Photo below: One of CFI-USA tours at the monument.)

  Together forward

For the Ethiopian Jews, settling in Israel has been a dramatic change in their circumstances. The younger generation has done better and with dedicated help and support, they will succeed in life. In many families, parents are unable to help their children with language and other skills as the older generation finds it difficult to learn the language. The elderly Ethiopians are called the silent generation, because they speak Amharic and are, therefore, left outside of the activities that require knowledge of the Hebrew language. We visit these families, especially the elderly who experience health problems and depression since many of them feel forgotten and isolated.

Ethiopian children and youth in Israel

CFI works with the Bnei Brak center where Ethiopians of all ages come. Children are offered after-school programs, mothers language and computer sessions, and group sessions for the elderly to meet others of their own age. Ethiopian Jews have come to stay in their ancestral homeland. Please continue praying and supporting them. We thank you and bless you!

Be gracious to me, O God, be gracious to me, for my soul takes refuge in Thee (Psalm 57:1).