Israel (MNN) — Holocaust Remembrance Day was last week Monday, honoring the lives of six million Jews murdered by Nazi Germany. The anthem we often say from the Holocaust is: “Never again.”
But could “never again” happen again today?
Victor Kalisher (left) presenting the Annotated Hebrew Bible at a pastor’s conference hosted by author Joel Rosenberg (right). (Photo courtesy of The Bible Society in Israel)
Victor Kalisher is the director of The Bible Society in Israel. For him, Holocaust Remembrance Day hits close to home.
“My father is a Holocaust survivor, and this always reminds me of him and how the Lord saved him,” Kalisher says.
“He came to faith because he realized that he should have been dead so many times, and it is only by a miracle that he was saved. For me, growing up with a father who survived the Holocaust and listening to what he shared with us every Shabbat morning [when] we had breakfast together, he would share all the things that he went through and the things that he saw and experienced. These are things that it’s hard to believe.
“My father wrote his memories. There is a book about his life, and some of the things he shared with us are not in this book. He said, ‘If I would write them down, people will think that everything is just a lie because they think it cannot be that human beings would do such a thing.'”
Kalisher says, today, he sees antisemitic trends that ring eerily familiar.
“This is not something that is so far away from us as we thought it is and think that we wouldn’t believe that [from] an enlightened nation like Germany was at that time with science and culture, a leading Western nation at that time. Today, the US is the leading nation in the world. [It is] a world superpower in science and many other things,” Kalisher says.
“You can see how easily people can be brainwashed and how evilness can take over the hearts and minds of people with growing antisemitism.”
As a Messianic Jew, Kalisher says fellow Christians can stand with believers in Israel and be a light for Christ.
“In the time of the Holocaust, there were Christians that were considered heroes because they risked their lives to protect Jews,” Kalisher says.
(Photo courtesy of The Bible Society in Israel)
Ultimately, true change of heart happens through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Kalisher says, as The Bible Society in Israel, “We share the Word of God with many people. We provide Bibles. We share the message of the Bible — the Gospel — through the Old Testament from the New Testament.”
There are many ways you can pray over Israel and the nations. And our prayers are needed more than ever.
“The people of Israel very much needed to see the love of Christ, the love of God, the testimony of the love of Christ. […] in the time of the Holocaust, the people of Israel were persecuted. Many nations didn’t want to help and to allow Jews to enter their country. So because of that, for [many Jews], faith in Christ is something that they see as going against Israel and against Judaism because of this history.
“This is an opportunity today to change it, to come and show this is not the case whatsoever — that Jesus loves the Jewish people [and] He wants their salvation.”
(Image courtesy of The Bible Society in Israel)
Learn more about The Bible Society in Israel here!
Header photo of the barracks of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. (Photo courtesy of Sonia Dauer/Unsplash)
