Holocaust museum

Last week, I visited the Florida Holocaust Museum in St. Petersburg, embarrassed to say it was my first visit to a Holocaust museum. It was moving, horrific, sobering, informative, and of course, profoundly disturbing.

The picture to the right (from the Florida Holocaust Museum) is an actual boxcar (#1130695-5), which transported 100 or more Jews (and other prisoners) at a time to Auschwitz, Dachau, or Treblinka to face death. Those squeezed and stacked into these cars remained there for hours and even days. There was little air, no light, and no sanitation. Many died in this car and other cars like this one before even getting to the death camp.

The poem below was on a wall in the hallway of the museum. James E. Tokley Sr. wrote and presented it in 1997 during the dedication of the boxcar at the museum.

The Box Car, James E. Tokley Sr.

Aboard a train of no deliverance
Winding through the bitter cold
Shivering masses...hopeless waiting
Savage words that freeze the soul.

A Nazi train, apocalyptic
Bound for an unholy land
Where smokestacks belch their strange emetic.
Clouds of death rain human sand.

Inside a boxcar cut for cattle
Slave ship timber, all the same.
An alphabet of Jewish letters
Fingernailed into the grain.

You question why we should remember
Such a monumental sin.
And we reply,
To seek forever
That it happens never again.

who preserved the "Christian" Bible?

Answer: the Jewish people.

Roughly 2/3 of the Bible is the Hebrew Scriptures (aka Old Testament or in Hebrew: TANAKH) which was meticulously maintained by the Jewish people, namely the scribes. Plus the people who protected it by hiding it, burying, and in so doing, often risking their lives. Read more below.

Photo: torah scroll saved in nazi germany | more information


Links
Process of copying the Old Testament by Jewish Scribes
How was the Old Testament Preserved

for Zion's sake I will not be silent

Ted Pearce visited our congregation last Shabbat. He is an anointed musician and servant of God. He spoke about a church led by TOS Ministries in Tubingen Germany. Here are some facts from the site Galilee of the Nations who worked with Ted Pearce and many other artists to create the album: "For Zion’s Sake, I will not be Silent."

1) 70% of the Church’s members had parents or grandparents that were Nazis in World War II.

2) TOS Church members frequently visit the Holy Land and partner with many Israeli Ministries to show their unwavering love and support for Israel.

3) Pastor Jobst Bittner literally built the TOS Church building over the train tracks that took the Jews to the Dachau death camp in World War II. You have to visibly and physically cross the tracks before you enter the front door of the Church, challenging all people before they enter to remember what happened in the Holocaust to the Jews at the hand of the Nazis.

Ted told us about "March of Life" last April in Germany. From his site: "We covered 180 miles and visited the sites of 9 concentration camps ending at Dachau as Holocaust Remembrance Day began. That night we held the "Concert of Life" at a church in Munich Germany and officially released the music video "The Forgotten People"

Here is the video "For Zion's Sake I Will Not Be Silent" with captioned photos taken along the walk.

I could say much but I will let the videos above do the speaking.

If you are in Dallas next week (I wish I was) you can see for yourself what this is all about: TOS Ministries from Tubingen, Germany and Ted Pearce Ministries 3 Evenings of Strategic reconciliation October 31—November 2, 2007 at Baruch HaShem Messianic Synagogue.

Ted Pearce on myspace