April 11 marked Holocaust Remembrance Day, known as Yom Ha-Shoah in Hebrew.

As a 13-year old, I recall visiting Germany, and with my own eyes I saw heaps of rubble in Stuttgart that were left over from World War II. My parents worked in Germany, hunting Nazi war criminals, for eight years after World War II. Some of my earliest memories in life are hearing the personal stories of Jewish Holocaust victims at my parents' kitchen table. I remember the crying, the tears, and the screams.

In case some of you are not familiar with it, Holocaust Remembrance Day is the day when, in Jewish communities throughout the world, and in Poland, and especially in Israel, there are ceremonies, speeches, personal testimonies and television programming that recall the murder and attempted genocide of six million European Jews from 1939 to 1945. In Israel, a siren wails throughout the nation, stopping traffic, and reminding us of this event.

Not that I could ever forget. As a young adult, I taught an English class at a college in Israel. Most of my students were in their 70s or 80s, and had concentration camp numbers tattooed onto their arms. On occasion one of them would tell me a little bit about their sufferings as slaves of the Nazis. I will never forget their faces and what they taught me: I cannot ever forget them. 

The Holocaust had a touchstone event called Reichskristallnacht (German for 'the country's night of crystal'). On that evening in 1938, hundreds of Jewish shops, stores and synagogues were burned, broken into, all windows were broken, all items looted, and the Jewish owners were beaten up and dragged into the streets, then mocked publicly. A national boycott against Jewish businesses was set in order. A number of Jews were beaten to death, and the German people (as well as the larger world) stood by while this happened, hardly lifting a voice of protest. Last year, just before Yom Ha-Shoah, a similar event occurred in France that was reminiscent of Reichskristallnacht. It was not on the same scale, but the boycott actions were the same, and so was the anti-Semitism. You can see this event on You Tube at this address: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfK7Yal64S0

Just as this French and Arab mob tried to throw away all imported Israeli items from a grocery store, and tried to tell all other shoppers not to buy Israeli products, so the Nazis did the same on Reichskristallnacht. If you were a shopper at that store in France, would you have dared to buy an Israeli product (such as the flowers or citrus that was shown)? Fear and intimidation are being used once again today to spread anti-Semitism.

All of you are, I'm sure, convinced that God loves the Jewish people and the nation of Israel. Politics aside, if this is the teaching of the Bible, then may I ask you to stand with the Jewish people during today's rising tide of anti-Semitism? Muslim propaganda and anti-Semitism are sweeping across Europe, and are entering the USA. Our neighboring Arab villages in Israel are being radicalized and educating their children to hate Israel. I am truly concerned for my people in Israel and the diaspora.

Prayer for the safety of worldwide Jewry is needed; but also, your spoken and written words are needed. If you don't speak up to your neighbors, to your church, to your friends and to public officials in your community about the need for loving Jewish families and supporting the existence of the state of Israel ... who will? Isaiah 49:14ff tells us that God has a mother to child relationship with Israel and the Jewish people. Please read it. Then let us remember Holocaust Remembrance Day and what it teaches us. The past helps us understand the present. The Holocaust reminds us that forces in the world have a plot to destroy the Jewish people. This is partly because the Messiah will return to a Jewish Jerusalem, from which to redeem and rule the world. If the Jewish people are destroyed, Messiah can't do this ... at least that's what our enemy thinks. The Holocaust teaches us that if God's people don't take the lead in protecting and speaking up for the Jewish people, no one else will. 

Ten years ago in Poland I met a Polish man named Grzygosz Tez (pronounced: Jay-gosh Tish). He was 92 years old, and on his deathbed. He asked me to come and visit him at his nursing facility. Through an interpreter, he whispered for half an hour, telling us his story of how he hid local Jewish families in his barn from the Nazis, risking the life of everyone in his family. His last words to me were, 'I'd do it again!'  He also told me that he hid his Jewish neighbors because his priest told him, when he was a boy, that God loved the Jewish people always. Look at the power of truth! All of you know of Corrie ten Boom and her family, who bravely did what Mr. Tez did, for the same reasons--they saw what the scriptures taught about God and Israel, and they were constrained to help their own Dutch Jews when persecution and death came. All of this happened as part of the Holocaust. Last year I gave a lecture on the Holocaust to a group of Dutch and Arab believers at the Westerbork Transit camp in Holland. Only one or two of the dozens of Arab believers knew anything about the history of the Holocaust. So we must remember and tell the story, because the world is quickly forgetting.

When God gives you opportunities to stand up and speak the truth about God's relationship with Israel, please do it. Maybe your words will save lives, too. This is a valuable lesson from the Holocaust, one which I am reminded of on this year's Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Shalom in Messiah Yeshua,

David Friedman