PEA RIDGE — During World War II a native of Warsaw, Poland, Irena Sendler, managed to smuggle out and save 2,500 Jewish children and infants, as well as over 500 Jewish adults. She was eventually caught and tortured by the Nazis, even breaking bones in her feet, trying to get her to name those who assisted her. But she would not, saving the lives of over 24 women, and one man. One of her guards accepted a bribe from some who knew her and put her name on a list of those who were killed during torture, then let her go.
Irena Sendler’s bravery was relatively unknown until 1999 when four Kansas high school students wrote and performed a play entitled “Life in a Jar,” a play which revealed the dangerous work she had performed during the time the Nazis occupied her homeland. “Life in a Jar” revealed that she had kept the names in a jar of every child, and had hidden that jar in a neighbor’s yard.
She had managed to obtain fake identification and pass herself off as a nurse, going into the Warsaw Ghetto where Jews, who had been herded into a walled camp, suffered from disease, especially typhoid. She would smuggle the children out in boxes, suitcases, sacks and coffins. These children were then slipped into the darkness of a network of basements and secret passages. Irena wrote downthe name of each child and placed the name in the jar, hoping to reunite them with any family member living after the war. When the war ended and the jar unearthed, she found that most of the children she had saved were now orphans.
In 2007, the International Federation of Social Workers nominated Irena Sendlerowa (commonly known as Irena Sendler) for the Nobel Peace Prize, because of her extraordinary work in saving the lives of over 2,500 children, many of whom grew up to become outstanding individuals in many countries.
But the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and former vice-president Al Gore Jr. Irena Sendler died the next year, May 12, 2008.
During the Nazi’s reign of terror, more than 11 million Jews were killed (known as the Holocaust) - some in the ghettos, some in concentration camps, some in their homes, and some while they tried to escape. Of that 11 million, nearly two million were children. Yet today, leaders in Iran, andother locations, are claiming the Holocaust to be “a myth.” Even some Christian men and women have doubted the Holocaust. My father was not one of them, for he saw the results with his own eyes.
There are many in our world who believe that the Jews deserve what has happened to them because, as a nation, they rejected Jesus, their Messiah. But Jesus himself had Zechariah write: “And I will pour on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of grace and supplication;
then they will look on Me whom they pierced. Yes, they will mourn for Him as one mourns for his only son, and grieve for Him as one grieves for a firstborn” (Zechariah 12:10).
Jesus came to die for Israel first, as we remember the number of times the New Testament says: “For the Jew first, and also for the Greeks (all the rest of us)” - so if the Jews “deserve” a holocaust, so do the Greeks. The truth is this: Israel is still God’s people and the world, including the United States of America, must remain faithful to Israel. Nazi Germany was not faithful, and the nation fell.
Jesus rose from the dead, after dying for the sins of Israel and the world, and has been watching over His people, Israel, ever since.
We must remember that He made many promises to them throughout the Old Testament. Read what He said through the prophet Ezekiel: “When I have brought them back from the peoples and gathered them out of their enemies’ lands, and I am hallowed in them in the sight of many nations, then they shall know that I am the LORD their God, who sent them into captivity among the nations, but also brought them back to their land, and left none of them captive any longer” (Ezekiel 39:27-28). The enemies of Israel should take heed: As Jesus rose from the dead and lives, so Israel will fully rise and live. Therefore, this pastor stands with Jesus, and with Israel.
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Editor’s note: Jim Duncan is the pastor of Mountain Bible Church, Mountain, Mo. He may be contacted at P.O. Box 146, Pea Ridge, AR 72751; or by telephone at 417-341-8504; by e-mail at james. [email protected]. His Web site is www.jamesduncan-writer.net.
Church, Pages 2 on 04/11/2012