By the Grace of God

Every Wednesday here in the JC a guest comes to speak at our forum. Our first forum speaker was a British journalist living in Jerusalem. He spoke on how journalism is completely inaccurate and it was hilarious. Two have been cancelled/postponed because of travel complications with the speakers but this week (Wednesday) our speaker was a 97-year-old holocaust survivor, Elias Feinzelberg. It was actually his 97th birthday the day he came and he said there's no place he'd rather be on his birthday :)

We sang Happy Birthday to him and gave him strudel with candles!

He is an incredible man. When asked how he survived he responds,"I don't how I survived but by the grace of God." He was the only survivor in his immediate family - his parents and his six siblings died of starvation in the Jewish ghettos or were brutally murdered by the Nazis. 

He told us his life story - about the poor living conditions in the Polish ghettos, how he did manual labor for years in order to survive, how he passed through nine different concentration camps, and survived on one bowl of soup and one piece of bread a day for years. He was forced to walk for weeks between camps with no food or water - they had to eat the snow to survive. His final camp was an extermination camp where most died from starvation and mistreatment. 

Days after Germany lost the war the nazis frantically tried to kill the remaining Jews and destroy the evidence. Elias remembered being put on a train and given a sack big enough to fit inside. They were going to be taken to a river and thrown in to their death. He reflected,"I had fought for my life for five terrible years, working my hardest and surviving on one bowl of soup and one piece of bread, all to just to die." The train was stopped, Americans opened the doors and told the captive Jews that they were free. 

He began the road to recovery. He regained strength and helped other recovering Jews regain strength. He met his wife at a Jewish recovery camp - she was also a concentration camp survivor. They got married, moved to Guatemala, and lived there for 22 years before moving to Jerusalem. I was grateful I knew Spanish because he needed English translators for the rest of the group to understand his story. 

Having just gone to the holocaust museum earlier this week I was able to put his story in context with the entire situation. 

How did he survive? I don't doubt that there were countless miracles contributing to his survival. He told us he had a strong and healthy body which allowed him to work in order to be preserved by the nazis. He also said he had a strong character which helped him not give up and seek freedom continually. What helped him most throughout his suffering during and after the holocaust, more than the strength of his body and character, was his optimism.

Many holocaust survivors don't want to talk about their experience. They don't want to relive it because it was a very traumatic experience, they feel survivors guilt, or they are ashamed of the less than honorable things they did in order to survive. Elias spoke so openly about his experience. His optimism and strength of character not only helped him survive but it also helped him recover. 

His trust in and love for God during and after the experience only grew. He knew that God preserved him so that he could be a witness of the evil that happened and the power of God that delivered him. A classmate asked after he told his story,"Is there anything good that came out of something so bad?" He replied,"To believe."

Elias telling his experience with a picture of his family and a portrait of his wife behind him. 

Right after our group picture with him.