[Faith-talk] Good Night Message for Friday, March 1, 2013

[Paul]

Hello and good day, morning, afternoon or evening wherever you happen to reside in this world.  Here in the Americas it's evening, so I use that time of day.

The story I'd like to present to you today is rather long, so it will have to be in two parts.  Hope you don't mind that.  Besides, it will keep you on your toes wondering about the outcome.  Although there is no direct reference to Almighty God in this story, anyone with a even a little intelligence will soon learn that He was there, albeit behind the scenes, so to speak.  The story in question is entitled "The Girl With the Apple," written by Herman Rosenblatt of Miami Beach FL and is rendered as follows:

August 1942, Piotrkow, Poland.  The sky was gloomy that morning as we waited anxiously.  All the men, women and children of Piotrkow's Jewish ghetto had been herded into a square.  Word had gotten around that we were being moved.  My father had only recently died from typhus, which had run rampant through the crowded ghetto.  My greatest fear was that our family would be separated.  "Whatever you do," Isidore, my eldest brother, whispered to me, "don't tell them your age.  Say you're sixteen."  I was tall for a boy of eleven, so I could pull it off.  That way I might be deemed valuable as a worker.  An SS man approached me, boots clicking against the cobblestones.  He looked me up and down, then asked my age.

"Sixteen," I said.  He directed me to the left, where my three brothers and other healthy young men stood.

My mother was motioned to the right, with the other women, children, sick and elderly people.  I whispered to Isidore, "Why?" He didn't answer.  I ran to Mama's side and said I wanted to stay with her.

"No," she said sternly.  "Get away.  Don't be a nuisance.  Go with your brothers." She had never spoken so harshly before.  But I understood:  She was protecting me.  She loved me so much that, just this once, she pretended not to.  It was the last I ever saw of her.

My brothers and I were transported in a cattle car to Germany.  We arrived at the Buchenwald concentration camp one night weeks later and were led into a crowded barracks.  The next day, we were issued uniforms and identification numbers.  "Don't call me Herman anymore," I said to my brothers.  "Call me 94983." I was put to work in the camp's crematorium, loading the dead onto a hand-cranked elevator.  I, too, felt dead.  Hardened.  I had become a number.

Soon, my brothers and I were sent to Schlieben, one of Buchenwald's subcamps near Berlin.  One morning I thought I heard my mother's voice.  Son, she said softly but clearly, I am sending you an angel.  Then I woke up.  Just a dream.  A beautiful dream.  But in this place there could be no angels.  There was only work.  And hunger.  And fear.

A couple of days later, I was walking around the camp, behind the barracks, near the barbed-wire fence where the guards could not easily see.  I was alone.  On the other side of the fence, I spotted someone--a young girl with light, almost luminous curls.  She was half-hidden behind a birch tree.  I glanced around to make sure no one saw me.  I called to her softly in German, "Do you have something to eat?"  She didn't understand.  I inched closer to the fence and repeated the question in Polish.  She stepped forward.  I was thin and gaunt, with rags wrapped around my feet, but the girl looked unafraid.  In her eyes, I saw life.  She pulled an apple from her woolen jacket and threw it over the fence.  I grabbed the fruit and, as I started to run away, I heard her say faintly, "I'll see you tomorrow."

I didn't believe she would come back.  It was much too dangerous.  But I returned anyway, the same time the next day.  And there she was.  The same girl.  She moved tentatively from behind the tree and once again threw something over the fence.  This time, a small hunk of bread wrapped around a stone.  I ate the bread, gratefully and ravenously, wishing there had been enough to share with my brothers.  When I looked up the girl was gone.

I returned to the same spot by the fence at the same time every day.  She was always there with something for me to eat, a hunk of bread or, better yet, an apple.  We didn't dare speak or linger.  To be caught would mean death for us both.  I didn't know anything about her--just a kind farm girl--except that she understood Polish.  What was her name? Why was she risking her life for me? Hope was in such short supply, and this girl on the other side of the fence gave me some, as nourishing in its way as the bread and apples.

Nearly seven months later, my brothers and I were crammed into a coal car and shipped to the Theresienstadt camp in Czechoslovakia.  "Don't return," I told the girl that day.  "We're leaving." I turned toward the barracks and didn't look back, didn't even say goodbye to the girl whose name I'd never learned, the girl with the apples.

And there you have half of the story.  The incredible part comes next which, Lord willing, will be presented tomorrow at about this same time.

And now may the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob just keep us safe, individually and collectively, throughout this night or day and especially in these last days in which we live.  Your Christian friend and brother, Paul