Paul on Mars Hill Acts 17:28-9

Dr. Riemer Faber is professor of Classics at the University of Waterloo, http://archive.org/details/phainomenaorhea00aratgoog
The The text of Aratus
The text of Aratus poem Phainomena  note the article by Dr Riemer Faber
The text of Aratus poemOntario, Canada

The Apostle and the Poet: Paul and Aratus

Dr. Riemer Faber is professor of Classics at the UniversitDr. Riemer Faber is professor of Classics at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

y of Waterloo, Ontario, CanadThe Apostle and the Poet: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts+17%3A28&version=ESV

Acts 17:28



English Standard Version (ESV)






28 for






“‘In him we live and move and have our being’;[a]






as even some of your own poets have said,






“‘For we are indeed his offspring.’[b]






Footnotes:


a.Acts 17:28 Probably from Epimenides of Crete


b.Acts 17:28 From Aratus's poem “Phainomena"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aratus
Later influenceThe two poems were very popular both in the Greek and Roman world,[4] as is proved by the number of commentaries and Latin translations. He enjoyed immense prestige among Hellenistic poets, including Theocritus, Callimachus and Leonidas of Tarentum. This assessment was picked up by Latin poets, including Ovid and Virgil. Latin versions were made by none other than Cicero (mostly extant),[5] Ovid (only two short fragments remain), the member of the imperial Julio-Claudian dynasty Germanicus (extant, with scholia), and the less-famous Avienus (extant). Quintilian was less enthusiastic. Aratus was also cited by the author of Acts (believed to be Luke the Evangelist), in 17.28, where he relates Saint Paul's address on the Areopagus. Paul, speaking of God, quotes the fifth line of Aratus's Phaenomena (Epimenides seems to be the source of the first part of Acts 17.28, although this is less clear):






Ἐκ Διὸς ἀρχώμεσθα, τὸν οὐδέποτ' ἄνδρες ἐῶμεν

ἄρρητον· μεσταὶ δὲ Διὸς πᾶσαι μὲν ἀγυιαί,

πᾶσαι δ' ἀνθρώπων ἀγοραί, μεστὴ δὲ θάλασσα

καὶ λιμένες· πάντη δὲ Διὸς κεχρήμεθα πάντες.

τοῦ γὰρ καὶ γένος εἰμέν. κτλ.

Let us begin with Zeus, whom we mortals never leave unspoken.

For every street, every market-place is full of Zeus.

Even the sea and the harbour are full of this deity.

Everywhere everyone is indebted to Zeus.

For we are indeed his offspring ... (Phaenomena 1–5).





Authors of twenty-seven commentaries are known; ones by Theon of Alexandria, Achilles Tatius and Hipparchus of Nicaea survive. An Arabic translation was commissioned in the ninth century by the Caliph Al-Ma'mun. He is cited by Vitruvius, Stephanus of Byzantium and Stobaeus. Several accounts of his life are extant, by anonymous Greek writers.



The crater Aratus on the Moon and the minor planet 12152 Aratus are named in his honour.


16 Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred in him, when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry.




17 Therefore disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews, and with the devout persons, and in the market daily with them that met with him.



18 Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans, and of the Stoicks, encountered him. And some said, What will this babbler say? other some, He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods: because he preached unto them Jesus, and the resurrection.






19 And they took him, and brought him unto Areopagus, saying, May we know what this new doctrine, whereof thou speakest, is?






20 For thou bringest certain strange things to our ears: we would know therefore what these things mean.






21 (For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing.)



22 Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars' hill, and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious.






23 For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, To The Unknown God. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.






24 God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands;






25 Neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things;



26 And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;






27 That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us:



28 For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.






29 Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device.




30 And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent:



31 Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.

______________________________________________________________________
http://spindleworks.com/library/rfaber/aratus.htm
Introduction

Paul and Aratus

Dr. Riemer Faber is professor of Classics at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
It was A.D. 51


Dr. Riemer Faber is professor of Classics at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada




The Apostle and the Poet: Paul and Aratus

The Apostle and the Poet: Paul and Aratus

The Apostle and the Poet:

The Apostle and the Poet: Paul and Aratus

It was A.D. 51 when the apostle Paul visited the famous Greek city of Athens. Proud of the glory that once was hers, this city could boast that she had produced some of the greatest artists, writers and thinkers. Athens was the cradle of democracy, the centre of learning, and the uncontested leader of the civilized world. It is not surprising therefore that Luke, who records Paul's visit to the city in Acts 17, makes Paul's speech to the Athenians one of the high points of his book. Here we read of the clash between Christianity and paganism, and how the gospel of Jesus Christ and the resurrection was received by people famous for their religious character. Paul presents the good news of salvation especially to the philosophers who confess that Paul brings "strange things" to their ears and who wish to know what he means. The apostle intends to refute both the serious and the popular philosophies of the Greeks, yet he does not ridicule his listeners. Paul's warning of the imminent judgment of God has as goal the conversion of his audience by reasoned yet urgent appeal. And in order to convince his listeners the apostle must know well their beliefs and how he might lead the Athenians to the realization that their tenets are false and must change. Paul tests the spirit of the Athenians and shows them that it is not of the true God.
In this article I shall consider the part of Paul's speech in which he cites, a Greek poet much admired in antiquity. In verse 28 of Acts 17 Paul quotes the Phaenomena of Aratus not to demonstrate his erudition but to show the Athenians that their religion is tantamount to idolatry. Paul enhances his argument by adducing an authority even the Athenians would respect. The apostle shows thereby that he is familiar with the writings and beliefs of the Greeks, and that in proving them false he is able to employ even their own authorities. Thus to some extent Paul uses the ideas and language of the Stoic and Epicurean philosophers who were popular in firstcentury Athens. Yet he does so to refute the commonly held belief in Athens that gods should be worshipped by means of temples, statues and altars. Paul uses a line from the poem of Aratus as a part of his message that the people must repent from the idolatry which characterized their lives. Moreover, the apostle argues that the pantheism which the Stoics taught was also a misconception of the true God as He revealed Himself in His Word and through His Son. Accordingly Paul's address culminates in the good news of eternal life in the resurrected Christ.

The apostle of the Areopagus






The Areopagus was an ancient hill near the agora (market-place) of Athens. According to legend this "hill of Ares" was the first site for the court of justice established by the city's patron goddess, Athena. And in the early history of Athens the judicial court did meet here.





Due to the radical democracy which replaced the conservative political system of Athens in the fifth century the court lost much power, yet it remained a prestigious and venerable institution. It is probable that in the days of Paul the court of the Areopagus still tried cases of homicide and investigated matters of moral and religious nature. Some scholars think that in Acts 17 Paul actually defends himself before the city's councillors in a public trial of the apostle's teaching. (1) When Luke reports that Paul stood "in the middle of the Areopagus" he probably refers not to the place where he stood but to the institution commonly associated with the locale. Whatever the case, Paul presents his address in the presence of Athenians, including Stoic and Epicurean philosophers, and foreigners who chanced to be present.



When he begins to speak, Paul captures the goodwill of his listeners with what appears to be a compliment: "I perceive that in every way you are very religious" (22). No doubt as he had walked through the agora to the Areopagus, Paul had observed the numerous temples, images and altars erected there. It soon becomes evident, however, that Paul deems the religious fervour of the citizens to be misplaced. Though they worship many gods, the Athenians do not worship the true God. And the apostle uses the inscription "to the unknown god" on one altar to introduce to the Athenians the God whom he professes. He whom the Athenians worship as unknown is the God whom Paul makes known to them. The "times of ignorance" as Paul later says, have passed; now the Athenians must worship the one and only God, and Him in the proper manner.
Idolatry is one pagan practice of the Athenians which the missionary attacks. Paul may have spoken at some length about God's second commandment not to worship Him by means of images. It is remarkable that the apostle focuses on this religious practice of the Athenians. For hereby he touches the heart of an important issue in Greek religious life in the first century. From archaic to classical times the worship of the Olympian gods was real and meaningful, whereas in Paul's day scepticism and a faith in pantheism had undermined the traditional Greek religion and had thrown into question the belief that gods were anthropomorphic and ought to be worshipped as such. Such novel ideas, advanced especially by Stoic and Epicurean philosophers, are employed by Paul to lead the Athenians to the realization that they are an idolatrous people.

The Stoic philosophers, mentioned in verse 18 as one party with whom Paul discourses, taught that Zeus is not a god in the form of a human being but a force which permeates all animate and inanimate things. This guiding principle, which unites all living things into one cosmos, they called Reason (Logos). Zeus, the Stoics believed, was not an immortal being, but a power without person. Accordingly Paul could be confident that these philosophers would concur with his statement that "God does not live in shrines made by man" (24). Paul tells the Athenians that God does not live in a dwelling as humans do, and that He cannot be represented in the form of man. The terminology which Paul employs in this verse is similar to that used by the Stoics, yet one should not conclude that Paul is preaching a purely Stoic philosophy. (2) One need only glance at Isaiah 42:5 and Exodus 20:11 to see that Paul's depiction of God the Creator is thoroughly biblical. He merely uses the same language that the Stoics use in their description of the Zeus they believe controls the universe. The Stoics were correct in decrying the numerous temples, altars and statues in Athens. To support his position Paul quotes an authority the Athenian thinkers must have known: the Hellenistic poet Aratus. (3) Paul alludes to Aratus to convince his audience that God cannot be represented "by the art and imagination of man" (17:29).


The poet Aratus and the Phaenomena






Although antiquity deemed Aratus one of the greatest Hellenistic poets, very little information about him survives today. We do know that he lived in the late fourth and early third centuries before Christ, that his place of birth was probably Soli in Paul's native province of Cilicia, and that he studied Stoic philosophy in Athens at the school founded by Zeno (c. 340-265 B.C.). Aratus evidently spent much time in the circle of writers and artists who enjoyed the patronage of the Macedonian king Antigonus Gonatas. Aratus' literary output included an edition of Homer's Odyssey, hymns, epigrams, and even didactic poems on pharmacology and astronomy. Unfortunately, the only work which survives in its entirety is a poem entitled Phaenomena (literally, "natural appearances"). Fortunately for our study of Paul's speech on the Areopagus, it is this poem which the apostle quotes; we can thus read for ourselves the context of the half-line quoted in Acts 17:28: "For we are indeed his offspring."

The Phaenomena is a peculiar poem: it attempts to put into verse two fourth century prose works on the stars and on the weather. An astronomer named Eudoxus had written a treatise on constellations, while another writer, reportedly one Theophrastus, had composed a handbook about the signs of the weather. Following an 18-line introduction in which he states the purpose of his poem and praises Zeus for his kindness in giving to mankind natural signs by which to conduct his business, Aratus dedicates one section (19-757) to a poetic discussion of the constellations, and a second (758-1154) to the use of weather patterns. At first glance the poem appears to be little more than a "farmers' almanac," a guide for learning the significance of changing seasons and weather systems. A long tradition of writing such didactic poems had started with the eighth century poet Hesiod, who also composed a work on the constellations called Astronomia. For subject and style the author of the Phaenomena was inspired by the works of Hesiod and those of the other ancient epic poet, Homer.


It appears that one of Aratus' aims in writing this poem was to demonstrate his skill in providing detailed scientific information by means of non-technical, poetic language. Like other Hellenistic poets, Aratus wanted to infuse new life into ancient genres. His contribution was to rejuvenate the genre of didactic poetry by using the most modern and advanced scientific documents. Aratus succeeded in adapting a difficult technical prose work to poetry. And the popularity which this poem enjoyed in antiquity attests to Aratus' success. The contemporary poet Callimachus praised the poem as an elegant and refined piece of work, and it appears that many readers appreciated Aratus' polished and precise style. Not only did Greeks like the poem, educated Latin writers did too. The famous Roman orator and statesman Cicero translated the poem into Latin, while Vergil was inspired by the Phaenomena when he wrote the Georgics, also an ostensibly didactic poem, about farming. We may assume, therefore, that the Phaenomena was read widely by educated people in the days of Paul.

Since Aratus was schooled in Stoic philosophy, it is not surprising that Stoic doctrine appears in the Phaenomena. Especially in the opening section of the poem (lines 1-18), in which Aratus writes of the omnipotent and omnipresent power of Zeus, Stoic philosophy and language abounds. The half-line "for we are indeed his offspring" is found in this section of the poem. To see the phrase in its context, consider the following translation of lines 1-5 of the Phaenomena:




Let us begin with Zeus, whom we mortals never leave unspoken.



For every street, every market-place is full of Zeus.



Even the sea and the harbour are full of this deity.



Everywhere everyone is indebted to Zeus.





For we are indeed his offspring... (Phaenomena 1-5).



It is noteworthy that Aratus commences his poem with the words, "let us begin with Zeus," for the gods who were conventionally invoked by Greek poets were the Muses, the goddesses of poetic inspiration. Aratus' contemporaries would have been struck by this change, by which the poet lends a religious Stoic tenor into the Phaenomena. To ancient Greeks Zeus was the sky-god whose control over the sun and clouds directly concerned human beings; mention of him at the outset of a work on constellations and weather is therefore appropriate. For Hellenistic Stoics, however, Zeus was another name for that force which controlled the universe and resided in man and beast. It is a kind of pantheism which Aratus advances in these opening lines: the divine Reason permeates every facet of human endeavour. The city-streets and market-places, the seas and harbours are filled with the presence of this deity (lines 2-3). Zeus must be praised at the start of his poem because this "world-soul" controls the cosmos. Mankind is, according to such belief, part of that environment and so "is indebted to Zeus." The omnipotence of Zeus is expressed with the words "for we are indeed his offspring." Literally the poet states that we are of the race (genos) of Zeus. Thus the ancient weather-god, once depicted in anthropomorphic terms, is replaced by the Stoics with an abstract force which pervades the entire world. Having noted the context of the half-verse "for we are indeed his offspring," the reader will conclude that the apostle Paul does not quote this passage in complete agreement with its meaning and intent, but in order to show that even to some Greek thinkers and writers the idea of an anthropomorphic Zeus is false.
The quotation in the context of Paul's speech






Verses 24-31 of chapter 17 clarify Paul's use of the quotation in declaring the gospel of repentance to the Athenians. When he cites the saying that man is God's offspring, Paul employs the words in light of God's self-revelation in the Old Testament. Mankind was created in the image and likeness of God, as revealed in Genesis 1 :26-27. Paul does not give the phrase "for we are indeed His offspring" the meaning which Stoics do; rather, he uses it to preach that God abhors idolatrous worship. Paul had stated earlier in his speech that God does not "live in shrines made by man" (24). After quoting Aratus the apostle says that the Deity is not "like gold, or silver, or stone" (25). Surely Paul has in mind the second commandment here, as stated, for example, in Leviticus 26:1 "you shall make for yourselves no idols and erect no graven image or pillar, and you shall not set up a figured stone in your land." The Stoics had rightly reasoned that if mankind is the offspring of God, then the living God cannot be represented by an inanimate object. Paul himself writes elsewhere that God's eternal power and deity are visible in creation (Romans 1 :20). And in yet another context the apostle restates in general terms what he says specifically to the Athenian populace in Acts 17: "What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, 'I will live in them and move among them' (2 Corinthians 6:16)." Thus on the Areopagus Paul points out that the Athenians had exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man.

Verses 24-31 also makes clear that Paul does not adopt the Stoic theology of a guiding principle as expressed by Aratus; the apostle depicts God as the Creator, whose person is real. In verse 25 the missionary reminds his listeners that God is the creator of the universe, who has no need of human idolatrous adoration. Here Paul may have in mind Psalm 50:7-15, where the Lord states that He does not require sacrifices from mortals, for all the world and everything in it is His by virtue of His work of creation. And to underscore the personal quality of the true God Paul states that God has "overlooked" the times of ignorance (30), "commands" all men to repent (31), since He has fixed a day when He "will judge" (31) the world by Christ whom He "has appointed" (31). Thus the apostle in no way identifies with Stoic or Epicurean theology, but declares the God who is Creator and Judge.


In light of this history of redemption Paul also proclaims Jesus Christ and the resurrection. The salvation of the idolatrous Athenians lies in the faith in the risen Christ. Not only does Paul show the error in both popular Greek religion and serious philosophy, but also he urges the people that "they should seek God." In verse 30 Paul states that whereas the Athenians' worship of an unknown god was overlooked by God in former times, now that the true God has been proclaimed to them the citizens must repent. Judgment of the world is imminent. God has given assurance of this coming event by raising Jesus Christ from the dead. Indeed Jesus and the resurrection are the main themes of Paul's speech. With sorrow we note that this gospel was mocked by some: the gospel is folly to the Gentiles. Yet the mission work in Athens was not altogether futile, for some believed, including Dionysius and Damaris. As for the Athenian philosophers, they could no longer claim that the message of salvation had not been told to them.


Footnotes







(1) For the debate regarding formal trial or unofficial address see T.D. Barnes, "An Apostle on Trial," Journal of Theological Studies 20, 1969, 407-419; C.J. Hemer, "The Speeches of Acts," Tyndale Bulletin 40, 1989, 239-259.






(2) M. Dibelius, "Paul on the Areopagus," in Studies in the Acts of the Apostles (London, 1956), 63, argues that the speech is "alien to the New Testament" and thoroughly Stoic in sentiment and language. More attractive is the interpretation that the speech is in part a praeparatio evangelica intended to guide Paul's listeners from their own position to his "strange" (20) one.






(3) When Paul says "as even some of your poets have said" (28) he reveals his learning, for the sentiment that mankind is the offspring of Zeus was expressed also by Cleanthes, another Hellenistic poet, in his Hymn to Zeus, line 4. The half-line quoted, however, comes from Aratus' poem. Recently M.J. Edwards, "Quoting Aratus," Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 83, 1992, 266-269, plausibly argued that Paul's direct source was Aristobulus, a second century B.C. Jew who cites the opening lines óf the Phaenomena.


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http://www.bartleby.com/108/44/17.htmlCONTENTS · BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD




The Holy Bible: King James Version. 2000.

The Acts of the Apostles

17



The Uproar in Thessalonica

1 Now when they had passed through Amphip'olis and Apollo'ni-a, they came to Thessaloni'ca, where was a synagogue of the Jews:



2 and Paul, as his manner was, went in unto them, and three sabbath days reasoned with them out of the Scriptures,



3 opening and alleging, that Christ must needs have suffered, and risen again from the dead; and that this Jesus, whom I preach unto you, is Christ.



4 And some of them believed, and consorted with Paul and Silas; and of the devout Greeks a great multitude, and of the chief women not a few.



5 But the Jews which believed not, moved with envy, took unto them certain lewd fellows of the baser sort, and gathered a company, and set all the city on an uproar, and assaulted the house of Jason, and sought to bring them out to the people.



6 And when they found them not, they drew Jason and certain brethren unto the rulers of the city, crying, These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also;



7 whom Jason hath received: and these all do contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, one Jesus.



8 And they troubled the people and the rulers of the city, when they heard these things.



9 And when they had taken security of Jason, and of the others, they let them go.





The Apostles at Beroea

10 ¶ And the brethren immediately sent away Paul and Silas by night unto Beroe'a: who coming thither went into the synagogue of the Jews.



11 These were more noble than those in Thessaloni'ca, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.



12 Therefore many of them believed; also of honorable women which were Greeks, and of men, not a few.



13 But when the Jews of Thessaloni'ca had knowledge that the word of God was preached of Paul at Beroe'a, they came thither also, and stirred up the people.



14 And then immediately the brethren sent away Paul to go as it were to the sea: but Silas and Timothy abode there still.



15 And they that conducted Paul brought him unto Athens: and receiving a commandment unto Silas and Timothy for to come to him with all speed, they departed.





Paul at Athens

16 ¶ Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred in him, when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry.



17 Therefore disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews, and with the devout persons, and in the market daily with them that met with him.



18 Then certain philosophers of the Epicure'ans, and of the Sto'ics, encountered him. And some said, What will this babbler say? other some, He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods: because he preached unto them Jesus, and the resurrection.



19 And they took him, and brought him unto Areop'agus, 2 saying, May we know what this new doctrine, whereof thou speakest, is?



20 For thou bringest certain strange things to our ears: we would know therefore what these things mean.



21 (For all the Athenians, and strangers which were there, spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell or to hear some new thing.)



22 ¶ Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars' hill, 3 and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious.



23 For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, 4 I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.



24 God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands;



25 neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; Is. 42.5



26 and hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;



27 that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us:



28 for in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said,

For we are also his offspring.





29 Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device.



30 And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent:



31 because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.



32 ¶ And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked: and others said, We will hear thee again of this matter.



33 So Paul departed from among them.



34 Howbeit certain men clave unto him, and believed: among the which was Di-onys'ius the Areop'agite, and a woman named Dam'aris, and others with them.





Note 2. Mars hill. It was the highest court in Athens. [ back ]

Note 3. Or, the court of the Areopagites. [ back ]

Note 4. Or, gods that ye worship. [ back ]

Further holocaust stories forthcoming

Further holocaust stories forthcoming
Chiune Sugihara
THIS HERO DEFIED ALL THE ODDS AGAINST HIM AND REACHED THE HEIGHTS OF HEROISM. HE OBTAINED THE LIGHT OF CHRIST IN HIS CONVERSION FROM BUSHIDO TO ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY.THE HORRORS OF MANCHURIA LED TO THE RESIGNATION OF HIS POST . HE PURSUED A DEGREE IN ENGLISH LITERATURE
http://www.aish.com/ho/p/48967241.html

Stamped for Life


Defying the Samurai code of honor, Chiune Sugihara risked everything to save Jewish lives.



by Gavriel Horan

When Hitler invaded Poland in 1939, Polish Jewry was trapped between two beasts, the Nazis to the West and the Communists to the East. On one side was certain death, on the other was spiritual destruction. There was nowhere to turn. As darkness set upon the European continent, the sun began to dawn in a far away land, where no one ever would have expected -- Japan, the land of the rising sun.




Polish and Lithuanian Jews sought to escape across the barren Soviet wasteland to the Far East. Underneath the Nazis' very nose, thousands of Jews took refuge in Japan, amongst the Nazis' own allies. How did they make it through the iron curtain to safety? As many as 10,000 Jews owe their salvation to the actions of one man and his wife, who defied everything but their own morals to save lives.



Rebel with a Cause



Chiune Sugihara was born on January 1, 1900, in Yaotsu, a rural area in Japan, into a middle class samurai family. Although the samurai clans put great emphasis on honor and tradition, Chiune was a rebel for most of his life. Instead of following in his father's footsteps and becoming a doctor, he deliberately failed the medical school entrance examination and instead pursued a degree in English literature with a hope to someday travel abroad. The Japanese Foreign Ministry eventually recruited him to serve as Foreign Minister in Manchuria in 1918 where he met with great success. While in Manchuria, Chiune became fluent in Russian and German and ended up converting to Orthodox Christianity. Despite his success, Chiune quit his post in Manchuria in protest over Japanese mistreatment of Chinese locals. In 1935, he returned to Japan, where he married Yukiko Kikuchi and together they had four sons.



In 1939, he became a vice-consul of the Japanese Consulate in Kaunas, Lithuania. When Russia took over Lithuania in 1940, annexing it to the Soviet Union, thousands of Jewish refugees attempted to obtain exit visas to escape the iron grip of Communism; they knew full well that if they remained behind, they would either be forced to give up their Torah lifestyle or be shipped off to the dreaded Siberia. Furthermore, everyone knew that it was just a matter of time before Hitler broke his pact with Stalin and began his conquest of the Soviet Union. The refugees included several of the most prestigious yeshivas of Europe as well as many of the leading Rabbis of the time.



Leaving the Soviet grasp was not easy. The Soviets would only issue an exit visa to people possessing an entrance visa to a foreign country however it was almost impossible to find a foreign consulate who would grant such a visa. It was now Chiune Sugihara's moment to enter the stage.
He refused to take breaks to eat, knowing that every moment was a chance to save another life. Saving Lives Every Moment




Despite the refusal of the Japanese government in Tokyo to grant visas to anyone lacking the proper funds, Sugihara chose to defy official orders. From July 31 to August 28, 1940, Sugihara began to grant visas on his own initiative. During this time, he would spend 18 hours a day hand writing over 300 visas daily, more than one month's regular quota. He refused to take breaks to eat, knowing that every moment was a chance to save another life. At the end of each day, his wife recalled massaging his swollen hands.



He promised the crowds of refugees gathered outside the walls of the consulate that he would not abandon them. He would keep writing until every single person had a visa. "It is the kind of sentiments anyone would have when he actually sees refugees face to face, begging with tears in their eyes," he said. "He cannot just help but sympathize with them. Among the refugees were the elderly and women. They were so desperate that they went so far as to kiss my shoes, Yes, I actually witnessed such scenes with my own eyes."(Levine, Hillel. [1996]. In Search of Sugihara: The Elusive Japanese Diplomat Who Risked His Life to Rescue 10,000 Jews from the Holocaust, p259).



Sugihara continued to issue visas until he was forced to leave his post on September 4 when his consulate was dissolved due to the impending Nazi invasion. He continued to write visas while in transit, throwing them into the crowd of desperate refugees while he boarded his train. When the train began to depart from the station, he allegedly threw his visa stamp into the crowd, enabling the Jews to continue to write their own visas. If he was humanly capable of doing more he would have. He was forced to leave so many behind, and it broke his heart that he was unable to save more.



From Obscurity to Honor



Between 6000-10,000 Jews were rescued by his heroic efforts, second only in numbers to the Jews saved by Swedish diplomat, Raoul Wallenberg. Between 6000-10,000 Jews were rescued by his heroic efforts, second only in numbers to the Jews saved by Swedish diplomat, Raoul Wallenberg. Many of the refugees made it safely to Japan with no intention of continuing to another destination. Some 20,000 Jews survived the war in the Shanghai ghetto despite German pressure for the Japanese government to liquidate the Jewish refugees. In a legendary meeting between the Amshinover Rebbe and several Japanese generals, the question was posed as to why the German's hated the Jews so much. Without missing a beat the Amshinover Rebbe responded, "Because we are not Aryan like them, we are Asians."



In 1945, the Japanese government unceremoniously dismissed Sugihara from his diplomatic service and to this day they deny that it was related to his behavior in Lithuania. From then on, he lived a low key existence for the rest of his life, working hard to make a living to support his family. He lived a quiet, humble life, and his story remained virtually unknown. He felt no need to talk about his accomplishments because he saw nothing extraordinary about them.



In 1968, Sugihara was discovered by one of his beneficiaries, a diplomat to the Israeli Embassy in Tokyo. He was granted the honor of Righteous among the Nations by the State of Israel in 1985. He passed away one year later and only when a large delegation of Jews from around the world appeared at his funeral, did his story become known to the Japanese people


When asked about his motivations, Sugihara replied by quoting an old samurai saying, Even a hunter cannot kill a bird which flies to him for refuge. "I may have to disobey my government, but if I don't I would be disobeying God," he said. "There is nothing wrong in saving many people's lives... The spirit of humanity, philanthropy... neighborly friendship...with this spirit, I ventured to do what I did, confronting this most difficult situation -- and because of this reason, I went ahead with redoubled courage." (Levine, ibid)




Visas for Life



Chiune Sugihara's widow, Yukiko, passed away last month at 94. In her book, "Visas for Life," Yukiko describes her own feelings as she watched the crowds of Jews waiting outside the Japanese consulate in Lithuania: "We saw a little child standing behind his mother hiding himself in his mother's coat, and a girl with an expression of hunger and terror which made her look like an adult and some others crouching in fatigue." She had just given birth to her third child and recalled thinking that if those mothers loved their children as much as she loved hers, she must try to help them.



"I've heard that, as a people, the Jews never forget a promise." She stood firmly behind her husband and was the driving force to keep him going despite all odds. "The Jews who passed through Kaunas still treasure the visas which my husband issued," she said. "They didn't forget what they shouted when we were leaving Kaunas station. ‘We will never forget you. We will see you again.' I've heard that, as a people, the Jews never forget a promise."



Today, over half a century and two generations later, there are over 40,000 people who owe their lives to Chiune and Yukiko Sugihara. We will never forget.


http://www.aish.com/ho/p/48945006.html
Bubbie, Tell Me Your Life


Leah Kaufman's story of unfathomable horror and courage remained locked in memory's vault for half a century, until her granddaughter started asking her questions.



by Sheina Medwed
Tisha b'Av, 1492, was the final day for compliance with the edict of the Spanish expulsion. Although it was a day of national mourning, the rabbis of that generation declared, "Take up your instruments." Thus the Jewish community marched out of their host country with the musicians at the lead. Not only did the Rabbis want to infuse the refugees with hope, they also wanted to remind them that there is only one place in the world worthy of tears being shed when we must leave there. That place is Jerusalem.




The inner command to "take up our instruments"-- to begin again with renewed hope -- has been the mandate of the Jew throughout exile. In recent history the most moving and remarkable examples of this have been the survivors of the Holocaust. Having faced death so many times, having endured unspeakable physical tortures and difficulties, the liberated survivor needed a different kind of courage: the courage to face his tragic experiences and move on to rebuild his life.

Mrs. Leah Kaufman epitomizes such bravery on all fronts. Laden with nightmares of unimaginable personal horrors and losses, Mrs. Kaufman arrived in Canada, orphaned and penniless. She succeeded in rebuilding her life, becoming the proud mother of three sons, an outstanding educator, and an active member of the Jewish community. As for the past, it was locked in memory's vault, for half a century unseen and unmentioned.




There it would have remained perhaps forever had not the urgent need to speak out arisen. Lest the world forget and be bereft of its memories, Mrs. Kaufman bravely unlocked hers. Speaking not just for herself but for the hundreds of thousands whose voices were silenced, she relived the pain of Transnistria, a place whose horrors have long since gone untold because it left its survivors mute.



Although Mrs. Kaufman speaks to us all, it was as a mother and grandmother that she first began telling future generations about a past that must never be forgotten.

One afternoon in Montreal, as Mrs. Leah Kaufman stood at her kitchen sink preparing supper, her four-year-old son ran into the house, sobbing. "Mommy, Mommy," he cried, "do you know what happened to children in the Holocaust?" He put his arms around his mother and buried his face in her apron. Suddenly, his older brother, Seth, who had been in another room doing homework, ran out, grabbed him by the shoulders, and dragged him into their bedroom.




"David," he shouted, in a voice far more adult than his six years, "never, ever talk to Mommy about the war or about Nazis!"



Their mother held onto the kitchen counter unable to move. A memory flashed through her mind. It had happened a year ago, when she was in a local bookstore with Seth. There on a display counter they had encountered an oversized book with a big bold title: Transnistria. Seth had tugged at her hand, saying, "Mommy, isn't that where you were? Don't you want to buy the book?" She had hastily pulled him out of the store. Once outside, she bent down and looked deep into his eyes, which reflected confusion, and said, "I don't want to know. I just don't want to know."



She would speak only one language when it came to the Holocaust: the language of silence.Now, as she stood at the sink with the midafternoon sunlight slanting through the kitchen windows and the red geraniums blossoming in their white flower boxes, Mrs. Kaufman forced herself to pick up the vegetable peeler and continue her preparations for supper. Before her marriage, she had made the decision not to burden her children with her suffering. She wanted to raise them as normal, Canadian children. She would speak only one language when it came to the Holocaust: the language of silence.





* * *



Years passed since the scene in the kitchen. The boys grew, married, and raised families of their own. Pesach, 1991, found the Kaufmans at the home of Seth, now a doctor and leader in a Jewish community. A new generation of Jews was being raised, a delight to both parents and grandparents.



In the midst of the family gathering, Talia, then only eight, suddenly went over to her grandmother and said, "Bubbie, please come sit with me." Mrs. Kaufman willingly sat down on the couch next to the little granddaughter she loved so much. She was completely unprepared, though, for Talia's next words.



"Bubbie, please tell me what happened to you when you were a child."



"Just a minute, Talia," came the somewhat nervous reply, "and I'll come right back to sit with you." Mrs. Kaufman went over to her son and asked in hushed tones, "What should I do? Talia wants to know."



"Mommy," said her son, his expression suddenly serious, "please don't repeat the mistake you made with me. Tell her. Use your own judgement. I trust you."



Mrs. Kaufman went to sit on the couch, took her granddaughter's hand, and began her story.



"You know, Talia, we can't always understand how God runs His world. There are many things that happened to me that are very sad. But look -- here we are sitting together and I want you to know that for whatever His reasons, God was always making incredible miracles for me and for many other people. He became our partner to help us in every way.



"My mother, your great-grandmother, was a midwife and healer. She helped anyone who came to her, Jew and non-Jew alike. When I was little, I would often be awakened by a loud banging on the window -- Boom! Boom! -- and shouts of, 'Domna Bracha, come quickly! We need you to deliver a baby!' My mother also knew what to do if someone was sick. She knew about herbs and special little cups to put on the skin and leeches to pull out the diseased blood from the body. She learned from her mother, my grandmother, who was also a healer.







"Anyway, I remember that one night when I was just about your age there was a banging on the window. This time, though, it wasn't an urgent call for my mother to help. No, it was to warn us to flee because the next day soldiers would be arriving. My mother woke me and my brothers and sisters and dressed us in layer after layer of clothing. When we left the house and made our way to the road, we saw many other families. They were all running away.



"We went to another city and took shelter in an empty house. We stayed there for a few days and prepared for Shabbos. On Shabbos, as we were sitting around the table with the wooden shutters closed, we suddenly heard a loud pounding on the shutters and the door. My mother and father told us to run and hide. My brothers and sisters and I obeyed.



"Soldiers burst in through the front door. They saw all the plates at the table and the leader shouted, 'Where is everybody!'



"My parents said nothing.



"Then he threatened, 'If they don't come out, we will shoot you.'



"My parents called us back into the room. The soldiers lined up all seven children one by one behind each other, with the tallest standing in the back and the smallest in the front. This was so that they could shoot all of us at once using only one bullet. We said good-bye to each other. They picked up their rifles and were about to pull the trigger when suddenly their leader shouted, 'Put down your guns!'



"'Why?'



"This woman brought me into the world and saved my life many times. I can't kill her. Let's go.""'Put down your guns!' he repeated in a booming voice. To this day, I can hear the boom of his voice inside my head. Then, in a much softer tone, the leader said, 'I can't kill her. This woman brought me into the world and saved my life many times. I can't kill her. Let's go.'



"That's the first time I was saved. But that was only the beginning of many difficult and terrible times. The Rumanian soldiers were brutal to the Jews and they forced us to walk in the freezing winter from place to place. We had to sleep in haystacks and on the frozen ground. Many people became sick and died just from the cold.



"One of the next places we stopped was right near a bakery. The delicious smell of the freshly baked bread made our hunger pains even worse. Small as I was, I was always a fighter. I said to myself, 'There must be some way we can help ourselves.' Everyone else was lying down but I was sitting up watching the door of the bakery. I saw a little girl go out of the bakery and I called to her in Rumanian. She was shocked. She had probably never talked to a Jewish child before. But she was curious, like most children, so she came over to me and said, 'What do you want?'



"I said, 'How old are you?' It turned out she was my age. 'Where are you going?' I asked her.



"'To school,' she replied.



"'Do you like school?'



"'I hate it -- because I'm not smart.'



"'What grade are you in?' I asked.



"She told me and I told her to bring me her books. She did. I took one look at what she was learning and said to myself, I'm going to be her tutor! I said to her, 'Don't go to school today. Sit with me and I'll help you. Tomorrow you'll know everything.'



"She sat with me and I helped her. Then she went into her house and told her mother. Her mother was so pleased that she sent out a loaf of bread. As long as we stayed there, we had bread everyday.




___________________________________________________________________
http://www.aish.com/ho/p/Haunting_Fragments.html
Haunting Fragments


My journey to the camps in Poland.



by Atara Gedalowitz

Standing in a train station inside the remains of the original cattle cars, I was standing where so many Jews had stood as they were transported to concentration camps. I heard people crying, but I could not react - I was in shock. These boards were soaked with horrible memories. How could I begin to take it in?



In the Lodz cemetery there were over 40,000 graves, all Jewish, and many from the people of the Lodz ghetto. As I visited different graves, I thought about the people who lay below the ground. How many of their hands could I have held? What would their eyes have looked like, if I could have looked into them? Who were their families, their descendants? There were so many stories saturated in this one place that I couldn't begin to absorb it all. From there it got worse. As the evidence of such tragedies overwhelmed me, my heart closed down.



I felt terrible. Not because the people died, but because I couldn't feel anything at their death.In the small town of Dubia, the inscription that once hung above the ark of a synagogue was now just a crumbling wall in a decrepit apartment attic. It was the single testimony to all those who were sent to the death camp in Chelmno. When I saw the ruins of the death camp, I felt terrible. Not because the people died, but because I couldn't feel anything at their death. My eyes stayed dry as I saw the rubble. I heard how they were driven in a gas truck to the mass graves or mass pyres, but I couldn't prod my heart to respond. Over 300,000 thousand people died in that place and I couldn't even shed one tear.



Later as I was reciting Psalms, I apologized to G-d that I wasn't able to feel the pain of these terrible losses, and admitted how much my own apathy distressed me. One tear trickled down my face and then another. I was heartbroken over my own apparent indifference to the tragedy of my people. My friend noticed I was upset. When I explained to her what was wrong, she reassured me that it was okay to react this way. She helped me to realize how sad I was, and how my mind was protecting me from breaking down completely by erecting fences that sheltered me from the full horror of those deaths.



Yet my friend also provided an alternate perspective to simple sadness. She felt that our return to the very place where so many Jewish people had died gave honor to their memory. Through learning Torah and performing mitzvot n this very place, we testified that our people had survived. My friend was the catalyst for my slow transformation. She planted the first seeds of change in my mind. I began to see that I wanted to change because of what I had seen. I wanted to become a better person in order to honor those that had died. I didn't want their death to be in vain.



Related: A Poland Video Log



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Auschwitz and Birkenau



The very names of these places cause a lump to form in my throat that is part fear, part pain, and part revulsion. Next to the first train tracks that led to the area are hand-drawn, eye-witness pictures of Jews pouring out of the cattle cars and being rounded up for selection. A stone on which someone had painted 'Am Yisroel Chai’ -- ‘The Jewish nation lives’, had been placed on the lone car that stood there as a memorial. There was one more sight there worth noting, and it was by far the most dreadful. It was a bright yellow house right in front of the tracks. It made me angry at first. How dare they decide this was the best place to live in a big cottage painted the color of a rising sun? But then my anger dissolved into pity. What sort of life must they live if they had audacity or numbness or just plain stupidity to build a cheerful looking home next to a place of utter horror?



Birkenau was huge. It was literally miles wide by miles long. The gas chambers and crematorium were hidden, separated by a forest and large spaces. Jews stumbled off trains, were herded into lines and inspected, before being sent to have picnics prior to their deaths. That's right, picnics. The Nazis would give the children food and assure their mothers they would be taken care of before taking them off for "a shower". Then they would force other Jews to burn the bodies and throw the ashes into ponds outside. These ponds were one of two ghastly scenes from Birkenau that had the strongest impact on me.



The ponds looked so peaceful, and yet they symbolize what the Nazis did perfectly. They murdered and slaughtered innocent people, and then treated those peoples' remains with complete disrespect. Afterwards they tried to make their murder more tasteful by masking it with clinical language and false fronts. They dubbed their mass killings "extermination" and "liquidation". They called their cattle cars, packed with starving, thirsty crowds, "deportation" and "resettlement". They threw ashes of humans into calm, serene ponds.



The second place that affected me strongly was the location of the latrines. It was just a block of cement with two lines of holes housed in an ascetic hut. Hundreds of prisoners were rushed in at once and given ten minutes at most, no matter what their condition. I don’t think I'll ever be able to go to the restroom again without thanking God for His many kindnesses.



Horrifying mounds of hair lay behind pristine sheets of glass. Carefully labeled suitcases created haphazard towers.In Auschwitz I walked under the famous sign, 'Work makes you free'. Hidden between two barracks was a single wall where they shot 18,000 individuals. One barrack contained all sorts of things that the Nazis had taken away from people. Horrifying mounds of hair lay behind pristine sheets of glass. Carefully labeled suitcases created haphazard towers. Pots, pans, and cups formed a mosaic of lost kitchens. And then there were the shoes. Thousands of shoes. Both in Auschwitz and later in Majdaneck, the shoes made my heart clench. They were all shapes and sizes. Most had faded to a dusty black brown, most were rotting pieces of decrepit leather, but some were still colored, some were still whole. Small children’s shoes. Red heeled shoes. Sandals. Work boots. Laced, buckled, and slip-on. These shoes spoke with their silence. Where is my mother, my father, my brother? I tucked a bit of their soundless shrieking into my heart and bit my lip as I turned to go.



I left Auschwitz as the sun was setting. It was time for afternoon prayers, and I prayed right there. In front of the gates of Auschwitz I spoke to God. This was more than just a statement of revenge. This was a battle cry for the future: I don't care what they did; I will do what is right. Nazi terrorism had failed to eradicate the eternal prayer song of the Jewish people.



Majdaneck



Majdaneck was smaller than Birkenau, but it was equally difficult to handle. Standing next to ovens that burnt skin and bones was surreal and deeply chilling. Equally chilling were the showers, which sometimes froze and sometimes burned, both alternatives preferable to the other showers, the ones that rained Cyclone B death.



In Majdaneck again it was the containers of shoes that staggered me. I kept thinking, they probably never thought about their shoes. Why would they? They were just shoes. Yet to me they are so much more. They are a connection to those who stepped or danced or ran in those shoes. They symbolize life gone. As I marched away from the containers and toward the buses I thought of Nazi boots crunching their way on this ground, and the soft, tired stumbling of prisoners. I swallowed hard. Since we can't undo what's been done by others, we can only make a better future ourselves.



I am living proof that the Nazis were wrong.Poland was all about loss. Back in Israel I can’t help but overflow with gratitude at being here now. I'm not depressed by what I saw, though much of it was sad, and terrible. I'm proud that I'm a Jew and carrying on our traditions. I am living proof that the Nazis were wrong. Their meticulously planned experiment failed.



My challenge is not to hide in a forest so that no one will know I am Jewish, or even to walk proudly into a gas chamber. My challenge is to pray even on the days when it seems like there is nothing to pray for. My challenge is to choose to the correct path, when it’s easy to choose any direction. This is what I have taken away – a respect for the past heroes and all their trials can teach us about becoming the heroes of today, by carrying on their legacy.



http://www.aish.com/ho/p/48952026.html
http://www.aish.com/ho/p/Murdered_at_Auschwitz.html
http://www.aish.com/ho/p/48948571.html
the above three stories on another po

http://www.aish.com/ho/p/Why_My_Father_Ran.html
Why My Father Ran
What compelled a 60+-year-old man, who had been diagnosed previously with blockages of his heart but refused surgery, to begin running marathons? Here is an excerpt of his story in his own words.




Bilgoraj, Poland: It was a beautiful summer day. Everything was wonderful; the birds were singing, the fields and gardens were dressed like a holiday in velvet green. Children were playing soccer on the field. But all at once, everything becomes very still. Suddenly, overhead in the sky are a few airplanes. The people in the street below start to panic and so it begins -- everywhere in town, people are talking about war. The drummer on the street begins to beat his drum and he relays the bad news... Germany declares war on Poland.



The next day, the city starts to mobilize --people, horses, cars, wagons, even bicycles. The people start to panic and become frightened. The stores become packed with people looking to buy bread and other products. The bread is beginning to disappear. The people are staying many hours on long lines for a piece of bread. The local Polish storekeepers do not want to sell products to the Jews.



We hear the sad news; Germany wants to occupy the port and the city and Poland is stubborn and trying to bargain with Germany. It doesn't take long and the Germans get occupation of the city. With a fast pace, the Germans go forward. In a short time, the Germans take city after city. People say the Germans are not far from Lublin. Great Polish armies come to Bilgoraj and they camp near the new school by the City Hall. Everybody is nervous.



I sit with friends near the house and feed the pigeons and think how good it is for the pigeons. They have wings to fly wherever they want to, but we simple people must suffer through wars. But the time doesn't let me think for long; the fires begin. I run to the point of the roof of a local building; we see a great fire by the bridge and other streets that are burning. We don't see any firemen; only police running around like poisoned mice. They cannot stop the villagers from robbing the Jewish stores. Finally, the shop robbers are put onto wagons and taken away by the local police. The city Bilgoraj burns for three days.



The unlucky Jews whose homes were burned go to live with relatives and friends. Three or four families live in a house with three rooms. And Jews thank God that they got away with their lives. And I, not even 13 years old, feel that a strong cloud would soon fall down.



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Through all of this, the Jews do not lose their hope for a better tomorrow. But tragically, the town of Bilgoraj and so many other towns like it are devastated and emptied of almost all the Jews.



Where we were going we do not care, we just have to run.My family, consisting of my mother, my little sister and two brothers, run. We board a train to leave Bilgoraj. Where we were going we do not care, we just have to run.



The trains are packed with people. Once we make it on to the train, it stops at a station and my brother says to my mother, "I am going down to get you some water." He leaves the train for just a few moments for some water and suddenly the train begins to move again. I cry out in vain, "Stop!! Stop the train! My brother is not back on...."



But the train leaves the station and my brother is left behind. He cannot catch the train. This was a terrible day, which I will never forget for the rest of my life. The image of my brother standing before my eyes, running to catch the train and watching him get further and further away. My mother begins to cry and that, too, is an image I will never forget.



My pen is too poor to describe my mother's sadness and pain. How much I try to give her hope that it would not take long for my brother to catch up with us and be reunited with her again is useless. I am too young to ease her pain – I feel helpless.



My other brother is hit by falling shrapnel and taken to a hospital, but we never see him again because we are running further and further away.



So days and weeks run by and it is just me, my mother and my little sister left on the train from our family.



We finally stop at a town where we believe the war has not yet come. We rent a small room -- just the three of us. But my mother is grieving so much from losing her two sons, so much that one day I say to my mother that I will leave to go find them and bring them home to her.



She replies with tears in her eyes, "I lost two sons and now you want me to lose you too?" But, in my young mind, I think differently. In my mind I want to rescue my family from the town before the Germans came in. I did not understand nor did I ever think for a moment that I would never see my family again.



I beg my mother so much until she finally relents and says to go in good health and come back right away with peace. On such a dark unforgettable night, I kiss my beloved mother and unforgettable sister goodbye and sneak on to a boat and run.



I never do find my brothers – I run from one town to another – each time, the front getting closer. In the months following, I labor in coal mines in Siberia through hard winters, chop trees in the deep, thick forests, work in the fields from morning to night, and live with numerous families who are kind enough to take pity on a 13-year-old boy all alone.



Life goes on. The war finally ends and I want to return to Bilgoraj to find my family. I see some passing soldiers and they ask me where I am headed. I tell them I am returning to Bilgoraj to find my family. They say do not go back to Poland -- you will not find anyone. You will find only ruins... you will not find anybody that you once knew alive.



So I run again -- through Czechoslovakia, Austria, Italy, Israel, Cyprus, Israel and finally America.



I run because they could not. I eventually marry and have two children of my own and years later, I get the news that I have heart trouble and blockages that could end up causing a stroke or worse. I am told that I need an operation and begin to lose all hope. Fear sets in. I pray to God and ask Him to help me. Then I make an immediate decision -- I will not lose my faith! I will face this with courage, as I have had to do so many times before.



I begin to walk a little at a time, and each time I think of my friends and family I left behind so long ago and imagine them walking beside me. Each day I walk a bit farther and farther until one day I see some marathoners running and I ask them where they were going. They say they are in a race and tell me the direction they are headed. So I begin to run along. As I run, I see the images of my mother and my family running beside me, so I run harder. Eventually, I finish the short marathon with the runners. The feeling of pride and accomplishment are so strong, I decide to run a little each day. Each time I run, I picture a different friend or family member that I left behind in Poland running alongside me. I run because they could not. I will continue to search for my family and keep running until I find them.



Dad continued his search for his family. He even returned to Bilgoraj in the 1990's but could not find them. He also continued entering and finishing marathons for many many years. He kept putting off the surgery but the need for it eventually caught up with him and in his mid 70's, he passed away. However, before my dad died, he had entered over 50 races and marathons and never stopped searching for his family.



"Everything disappeared like a dream." That is what my father wrote in his memoirs. Why My Father Ran is now published and available on Amazon. It is the riveting story of Sam Shatz - a holocaust survivor - who's motto was 'Never Give Up.' That is how he miraculously survived through the holocaust and how he lived his life after the war. Each survivor's story teaches us important lessons about who we are and each story must be told. Here is Sam's story. Visit www.whymyfatherran.webs.com to view photos and to see his DP Camp carvings. Click here for international orders.




My father began running when he was a young boy fleeing from the Nazis.



by Henia Stein


http://www.aish.com/ho/p/48944861.html
THE PROTECTED RABBI

http://www.aish.com/ho/p/The_Nazi_Mascot.html
THE  NAZI MASCOT
The Nazi Mascot


Almost all his life Alex Kurzem has kept a lonely secret.



by Olga Craig

Born in Koidanov in the Minsk region of Belarus in 1935, he emigrated to Australia at 15, married and raised a family in Melbourne.



His sons grew up listening, spellbound, to their father's poignant, though light-hearted, wartime tale: of how, as a five-year-old pigherd, he became separated from his peasant family and had to fend for himself for months in a forest before being found by a kindly Latvian family who brought him up.



It was little more than a fairy story: the truth of Mr Kurzem's early life was, in fact, even more extraordinary and so brutally shocking that he had all but obliterated it from his memory.



The reality was that as a five-year-old boy he had witnessed the massacre of his fellow Jewish villagers, among them his mother, baby brother and sister. Kurzem escaped into nearby woods where he survived by scavenging and stealing clothes from dead bodies, until he was found and handed over to Latvian police, who "adopted" him as a mascot.



When the battalion changed its identity to that of a Nazi SS unit, it had a miniature uniform made for Kurzem, complete with the SS insignia and a full-length black leather coat and pistol. He was paraded for newsreels and newspapers as ''the Reich's youngest Nazi'' and taken to the Russian front with his squad.



The whole time, the young Kurzem was frantically trying to hide a secret that would have meant certain death for him: he, too, was a Jew.There he witnessed atrocities. He saw rapes, murders and massacres of Jews, and on one occasion was forced to fire his pistol at a Jewish teenager captured by the soldiers, as the unit rampaged across the country. On another, he had to watch the slaughter of 1,600 Jews who were herded into a synagogue at Slonim.



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The whole time, the young Kurzem was frantically trying to hide a secret that would have meant certain death for him: he, too, was a Jew. He watched atrocity after atrocity, unable to show the slightest compassion for those of his own faith.



His commandant was Karlis Lobe, a notorious Latvian Nazi responsible for the slaughter of tens of thousands of Jews. Mr Kurzem is unsure, but suspects that the unit was responsible for the slaughter of his family.



Still, when the war ended the child had no choice but to speak up for Lobe: the man who had sadistically murdered so many of Kurzem's countrymen had also protected him and ensured his survival while all around Jews were dying in massacres, in concentration camps and in the gas chambers.



Today, Mr Kurzem is a grey-haired man in his seventies. He believes himself to be 72, though is uncertain of his exact age. His lined face and pained expression are testament to his torturous past.



Until a decade ago, he kept his solitary secret. Then, one night in 1997, no longer able to live with his nightmares, or his sketchy memories, he began haltingly to pour out the true story to his son Mark.



He gave a statement to the Holocaust Commission but, to his horror, it dismissed his tale, saying it could find no trace of the massacre in his home village, and going so far as to suggest he was a collaborator who was complicit in Lobe's war crimes.



"I was devastated," Mr Kurzem says. "During those terrible years with the SS I could trust no one. My own people, the Russians, despised me because I wore the Nazi uniform. I was terrified the Nazis would discover I was Jewish.



"Lobe was a monster, but he saved me and survival was all I had. I had to keep so many secrets that secrecy was a way of life. And then, to find that my own people didn't believe me when I finally told my story, was heart-breaking."



But Kurzem's son was determined to discover the truth. Painstakingly, over the past 10 years he has investigated his father's past. Finally able to verify it all with documents and pictures, the Holocaust Commission has reversed its decision and Mark has now written a powerful book, The Mascot, revealing his father's remarkable and horrific story.

THE MASSACRE



His first clear memory is of October 21, 1941, the day his family was slaughtered.Kurzem, of course, is not Alex's real name: that was the name given to him by the soldiers. He now knows he was born Ilya Galperin. His first clear memory is of October 21, 1941, the day his family was slaughtered. The day before his father and the men of the village had been shot.



That night two soldiers broke in and beat his mother. Once they departed, leaving her bloodied and bruised, she told her eldest son: "We are all going to die tomorrow." She knew the massacre of the Jewish women and children would be the next morning.



She told him he must be brave and help her with his brother and sister. That night the young boy awoke thinking: "I don't want to die." In his nightclothes he fled, stumbling through pits filled with the bodies of the Jews shot the day before. In the morning he awoke to the sound of screams. From the tree in which he was hidden, he saw women and children, weeping in terror, being lined up in front of newly dug pits.



"If only I had not looked," Mr Kurzem says softly. But he did. In front of him he saw his mother and siblings among those waiting to be shot. "I could see soldiers forcing people down the hill, using the bayonets. Then I saw my family. I wanted to call out. I wanted to go to her, but I couldn't. The soldiers shot my mother. They put the bayonets into my brother and sister. I had to bite my hands to stop myself screaming."



As he recalls his family's deaths, Kurzem grows pale and his hands tremble. "People have asked me why I didn't take my brother and sister with me when I fled, but I had no idea where I was going. I was just a child myself. Then, to see them murdered. I did not want to watch but I could not look away. I felt I owed it to my mother. If she could bear to endure it, then surely I should bear to watch and be with her in my heart."



Kurzem was in the woods for about nine months. He ate berries and dragged the great coat off a dead soldier. "What I remember most is the terrible cold and the constant hunger. And being so very alone," he recalls.



Of "ARYAN" APPEARANCE



On July 12, 1942, he was found by a local who was not a Jew and handed over to the Latvian soldiers. Lined up along with others to be shot, he knew he had to take any opportunity. While others cowered, he ran to the soldiers, begging on bended knee for bread. His antics amused them and one, a Sgt Kulis, took pity on him and dragged him out of the line. He decided to clean up the filthy little boy and bathed him. When he saw Kurzem naked, he saw he had been circumcised and realized that, although the child was fair haired and of "Aryan" appearance, he was a Jew.



"I will never know why he saved and protected me," Mr Kurzem says. "But he did. He warned me no one must know or it would be certain death for us both."



Before long the little boy, now about six, had become the Latvian SS's famous mascot. In his uniform he was feted before the Führer, filmed keeping charge of German children ("Me, a Jew.Had they but known," he says incredulously) and taken to the Russian Front.



"I hated the soldiers' brutality, their inhumanity. But I don't deny that, as a little boy, I at times loved being the center of attention. I was doing it to survive. To please them. But all the time I was terrified they would discover my real identity and I would also be shot for my faith."



Kurzem witnessed the infamous Slonim massacre in which 1,600 Jews were burned alive.It was at the front that he witnessed the infamous Slonim massacre in which 1,600 Jews were burned alive. "Soldiers were prodding people into the synagogue, then they hammered wooden planks across the doors and windows. They put bunches of burning sticks and branches against the building and in a flash it caught fire. The flames spread quickly and then terrible wails began. Women and children broke out, running into the road in flames. No one helped them, they burned where they fell."



On another occasion, the soldiers used the young boy to lure local girls to their camp where they savagely beat and raped them. And when the unit was used to round up Jews for the cattle trains to the death camps, Kurzem, resplendent in his uniform, was given the task of handing out chocolate bars to lure them inside.



"They were smiling, they thought it a kindness. I didn't know where these trains were going but I had heard enough of the soldiers' talk to know they were going to despair and death."



In 1944, as the tide of the war started to turn against the Nazis, Lobe sent Kurzem to live with a Latvian family who bullied him into writing an affidavit exonerating Lobe. Before long he was receiving anonymous hate mail from Jews who knew the truth of Lobe's atrocities.



A NEW LIFE



Terrified, he booked a working passage to Australia aboard the SS Nelly, late in 1949. "I just wanted to start a new life, away from all the memories that I wanted to lose." His only luggage was a battered brown suitcase in which he kept photographs and documents of his past life. He took odd jobs, one of them with a circus. Eventually, he set up his own carpentry business and set about assimilating himself into his adopted country. He never, he told friends, wanted to return to Eastern Europe. He told his wife, Patricia, and his children nothing of the truth of his past.



Then, that night in 1997, he could keep silent no longer. Since then, he and his son have travelled to his home village many times. He found pictures of his parents under the wardrobe of his old home and, when he summoned the courage, stood by the tree from which he had watched his mother and his siblings murdered.



"Finally, after all this time, I have been able to lay a rose on the grave of my mother," he says, smiling at the memory. "But when I stood at that spot, as a grown man, where I saw her die so bravely, I still had to cram my fist in my mouth to stop screaming."



Mr Kurzem is silent, his eyes moist. "Should I have been standing there with her, holding her hand? Holding the little ones? I have tortured myself with this. But one thing I know: my mother would have died desperately hoping I had survived."

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The Protected Rabbi


Why the Nazi's paid a life-long pension to a chassidic rabbi, and provided stormtroopers to safeguard his yeshiva.



by Leah Abramowitz

Is it possible that there are still new tales to relate from the Holocaust? Hasn't everything been told already? Indeed it turns out that there are always new stories coming to the fore from that horrendous, yet heroic period. One of the organizations which delves into Shoah history, called "Synagogue Memorial," is dedicated to memorializing all the houses of prayer that were destroyed on the infamous Kristallnacht, November 9-10, 1938 in Germany.




Prof. Meier Schwarz, the director of Synagogue Memorial, a Holocaust survivor himself, discovered a fascinating nugget of history. A rabbi had a yeshiva, located on 35 Munz Street in the middle of Berlin, which was not only left standing on Kristallnacht, but armed SS guards were actually placed in front of the rabbi's house, bodily protecting him and his disciples from Nazi hooligans.



Even months earlier when all the Polish Jews residing in Germany were expelled, this man, Rabbi Kupperstock, and his disciples were not only left alone, but the rabbi continued to draw a stipend from the Nazi German government, as he had for two decades previously. (As documented in the Berlin newspaper "Aktuell" in a 1996 article written by German journalist, Gerald Boceian.)



It seems that many years before the war, Rabbi Kupperstock lived in Warsaw, and already as a young man headed a yeshiva. The Russians occupied that part of Poland and drafted many young Poles to help them in their war efforts. Anyone who deserted was killed instantly. Two of Rabbi Kupperstock's yeshiva students who were forced into the Russian army, suffered terribly. Despite the death penalty for deserting, they chose the lesser of two evils and ran away. Unfortunately they were caught and tried and doomed to death that very day.



Amid a jeering crowd in the city square, Russian officers hung the two yeshiva students.Amid a jeering crowd of Polish and Russian anti-Semites, the two young Yeshiva lads were brought into the city square. There, in front of the huge crowd, the Russian officers had them strung up and hung publicly as an example. Rabbi Kupperstock was forced to witness this horror and on the spot he vowed to take his revenge against the Russian officers and their government.



World War One broke out and the German troops seemed far superior to their enemies on the East. The Germans found themselves fighting under adverse weather conditions and on terrain that was unfamiliar to them. It seemed that they would be unable to break through the Russian fortifications. Moreover their troops were concentrated on an additional front, in France and England to the West.



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Nevertheless, and contrary to all logic and predictions, the German army managed to conquer some of the most strategic fortifications on the Eastern front. The defense efforts collapsed and the Russians eventually sued for peace. As everyone knows, shortly thereafter the Russian Czar was ousted and eventually the Communists came to power. The German generals were greatly lauded for their stupendous victory on foreign soil, and prayers of thanks were recited in churches and even in synagogues throughout Germany.



However, it was not solely due to the German superior military skills, nor to the bravery of their leading generals, Hindenburg and Ludendorf, that the Russian front fell so quickly. It was partially due to a lone Jew, Rabbi Kupperstock, who had somehow infiltrated the Russian forces and obtained plans for secret tunnels leading to Russian fortifications. The rabbi then passed this information to the German army. Still seething with rage over the murder of his two students, he helped change the tide of the battle and bring about the Russian surrender. But that fact was kept in complete secrecy.



For years, no one knew why the chassidic rabbi and his students were invited to move to the safe house in the middle of Berlin, and why he was granted German citizenship, a lifelong pension, and a subsidy for his yeshiva. He was even the official Jewish representative at government public celebrations, e.g. when President Hindenburg's birthday was commemorated at a state reception. The rabbi, magnificently garbed in his long, black satin frock, carrying his silver-handled walking stick, was always treated with honor and reverence by the leading German ministers. But no one knew the reason why.



Two years after Hindenburg came to power in 1931, he was forced to appoint Adolph Hitler as Chancellor of Germany. The rabbi ceased to attend official gatherings, but his pension and stipend for the yeshiva continued until his death in 1941. Thus during the early years of the Holocaust, while Jews were being deported or put into slave labor all over Europe, while anti-Semitism became official policy and synagogues and other Jewish institutions were burning, the German government continued to support one chassidic rabbi and his followers in the middle of their capital city - even setting up guards outside his house to protect him - in repayment for the "glorious German victory" which he helped secure in World War One.



When Rabbi Kupperstock died, the yeshiva was confiscated and his students were deported to concentration camps. Undoubtedly the rabbi and his disciples were greatly distressed by the persecution of their fellow Jews going on around them, and they realized that they too would be killed or deported were there no special "historic" arrangement. Like all the Jews of Europe, they held out hope that the war would end much sooner.



Unfortunately, all this lasted only until Rabbi Kupperstock died, from natural causes. The yeshiva was confiscated and his students were deported to concentration camps. There is no record of what became of them. But the story shows us the resourcefulness of someone that seemed so removed from political and military affairs, a man immersed in spiritual matters and holiness, yet who could change the tide of history, motivated by a distant injustice and the verse, "Plague the Midianites and smite them, For they have plagued you…" (Numbers 25:17-18)



More recently, Prof. Schwarz of Synagogue Memorial has petitioned the Berlin Municipality to establish a suitable memorial for this extraordinary rabbi, perhaps naming a street in his memory and thereby bringing to light an unusual chapter in 20th century Jewish-German history.

Meeks cutoff II

http://www.oregonhistorictrailsfund.org/trails/showtrail.php?id=7

BIO repeated
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Historical context






Tuck what is called Meek's Cutoff...a bad cutoff for all that tuck it. ...I will just say, pen and tong will both fall short when they gow to tell of the suffering the company went through





Samuel Parker, 1845

Stephen Hall Meek was born in Virginia in 1807 to James and Spicy Meek. While in his late teens, Meek's mother died and his father remarried quickly. Meek's new mother, a widow with children of her own, was happy to care for the Widower Meek's family, and in so doing, imposed a new rigor into daily life. High time, the teenage Stephen Meek thought, to branch into a new life and head west. By 1828, Meek joined the fur trade and, with William Sublette, ventured into the Rocky Mountains.



Over the next seventeen years, Meek followed wildlife trails, Indian trading trails, and Hudson's Bay Company trails over much of the west. He joined the great trappers rendezvous and wintered with the Flatheads and "Napercies." He traveled many of the West's significant rivers: the Platte, Salmon, Snake, American, Greybull, Yellowstone, Humboldt, the John Day, Malheur, Owyhee, Columbia, Klamath, and Shasta. He traveled in the company of the great mountain men and explorers of the American West including Jim Bridger, Captain Benjamin Bonneville, and the Hudson's Bay Company's Tom McKay.



In 1842, the fur trade was in its closing years, and Meek found himself in Independence, Missouri. Alone, and with no particular direction to follow, Meek joined an emigrant wagon train bound for the Oregon Country. Under his guidance, the few emigrants who crossed overland that year arrived at Willamette Falls early in October.



At Oregon City, Meek and several of his associates were employed by Dr. John McLoughlin surveying and selling lots along the Willamette and Clackamas rivers. Never one to settle for long, Meek was traveling again the following spring. Subsidized by McLoughlin and the Hudson's Bay Company, Meek and his friend, Loren W. Hastings, lead a party of fifty-three men, women, and children from the Willamette River to Sutter's Fort on the American River in California. Although a number of those who were California-bound turned back midway, Meek saw the remaining travelers to Sutter's Fort and then continued alone to Monterey. After a brief stay in Monterey, Meek continued north to Bodega Bay. There he boarded a ship with intentions to travel the world, but only got as far as New York, via Panama, before a change of heart took him home to Virginia.



By May, 1845, Meek was back in Independence, Missouri, where an unprecedented group of Americans was gathering together to travel to the Oregon Country. Stephen Meek's experience (and perhaps his low bid for services) inspired his companions to select him as guide for the train of nearly 500 wagons.










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The group broke into companies. Within those companies were parties, small groups of families helping each other through the trip. Among those following Meek were diarists James Field, Jesse Harritt, John Herren, John Howell, Samuel Parker, and Solomon Tetherow.






Here we left the former route, bearing a little south of west; we steered our course over a tolerable good road thirteen miles and encamped on the same stream, found grass and fine willows.





Jesse Harritt, August 25, 1845





Meek led the wagon train along the rocky banks of the Malheur River, then up and over rocky and rough bluffs. The wagons at this point were proving very maneuverable (inspiring James Field to wonder if they could be driven anywhere). The oxen and emigrants had a very difficult time with the route, however, and some of the parties moved more quickly than did others. The miles stretched between small groups following Meek's route; in some cases the companies followed just a day behind the lead, others followed several days behind.



Meek led the straggling train through Harper Valley and the Malheur Mountains, then on to the north fork of the Malheur River near Beulah Reservoir. From Castle Rock, a prominent feature of the area's landscape north of the reservoir, the group moved west only as fast as the oxen could go. The rocky ground cut and bruised the animals' feet. Historian Donna Wojick noted that, "Stones frequently broken by a forward company, iron-stained by wagon wheels and bloodstained by cattle's feet, left a vivid trail for companies behind to follow."



Just south of Castle Rock, Sarah Chambers (an emigrant in the party) succumbed to "camp fever." Her husband Rowland and the rest of the party marked her passing on a large stone, inscribed "Mrs. S. Chambers Sept. 3rd 1845" Hers was the first death among those following Meek; Many others succumbed in the weeks that followed.



Travel became ever more difficult as the emigrants worked through the area near Drewsey, over Stinkingwater Mountain, and on toward the Harney Valley. Grasses grew drier and water became more scarce. The emigrants had been following Meek for ten days and were growing suspicious of his claims about the route.



The route Meek described and the route followed to date were vastly different. There was speculation around the evening campfires that Meek had lied, had been paid by the HBC or by the Indians to lose the Americans. Some decided he should be hanged (and went so far as to arrange their wagons to make a gallows from a tripod of wagon tongues). Others argued that Meek was their only hope for escape; he was the only man among them who had been in this region of the country before.



Matters worsened (as described by Wojick) when Meek and the wagon train crested the rim of Harney Valley and the broad lake (Malheur) he expected to see was gone -- a large, marshy and stagnant pool stood in its place. The water was unsuitable for both the animals and the people so dependent on them. September's first week was ending and the groups were concerned that their situation would worsen. Rumor and frustration mounted within the camps and the group painfully realized that they were indeed "lost."





It was his [Meek's] intention to follow down Crooked river to the Deschutes and down it to the old road, but when he came to the marshy lake spoken of last Sunday, the company refused to follow him if he made the circuit necessary to get around it upon Crooked River again so he struck off in a westerly direction in order to get upon the main Deschutes river. He well knew that there was a scarcity of grass and water across here and so informed them, but it was near and they would have him go it, and now blame him for coming the route they obliged him to.





James Field, September 11, 1845





The emigrants did find small diversions from their angst at Malheur Lake. Along the dried lake banks were large deposits of alkali which could be used as baking powder. Emigrants eagerly collected the crystals for making bread.



While camped in the valley, the wagon train also met Paiutes living on the shores of the Malheur lake. Although the emigrants often saw Indians in small groups at a distance, this was the emigrants' first direct encounter with a tribal group since leaving the main stem of the Oregon Trail.



The companies found that the valley was a haven for game birds. Even so, the water was too brackish for human or animal consumption and the companies wandered miles out of the way searching for fresh spring water. The lead parties of the wagon train camped on the north edge of Harney Lake.



After another day's travel to Silver Lake, the emigrants again held a camp meeting. Meek thought it would be best to stay on the Hudson's Bay Company trapper's trail and cross through the central Cascades into the Willamette Valley.



However, having lost all faith in Meek's abilities and suspicious of his motives, the emigrants argued that it would be better to abandon the trappers' trail and head straight for the Deschutes, cross it and work toward the Cascades; then, if they couldn't find a pass through the mountains, they could still travel up the Deschutes to The Dalles -- and safety. Meek's authority and protestations about the lack of water in the region were perhaps dulled by recent events. The emigrants dismissed his opinions and set out on a slow, dry pull to Wagontire Mountain.



En route, a toddler succumbed to whooping cough, and on September 8, the wagon train marked its second death and buried 21-month-old Elkanah Packwood. Concerned about humans (or animals) stealing from the boy's grave, the emigrants took care the following morning to roll their wagon wheels over the small burial mound, smoothing the ground so that there would be no hint of the child's body within. Illness increased throughout the wagon train.



It took the entire group three days to travel the 25 miles from Silver Lake to Wagontire Mountain. They set up camp just after midnight.





We camped at a spring which we gave the name of "The Lost Hollow" because there was very little water there. We had men out in every direction in search of water. They traveled 40 or 50 miles in search of water but found none. You cannot imagine how we all felt. Go back, we could not and we knew not what was before us. Our provisions were failing us. There was sorrow and dismay depicted on every countenance. We were like mariners lost at sea and in the mountainous wilderness we had to remain for vie days.





as remembered by Betsy Bayley in 1849