Hello my friends! What a nice evening it was spending with our friends, who picked us up and sat with us at our Church's dinner and silent auction. The meal was very tender stuffed pork chops, delicious! mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, salad, and cheese cake for dessert! IT was wonderful! Then Father Mark and the Angels played - we danced a couple of waltzes. They ended with "How Great Thou Art" Wow! was that beautiful. I didn't know Father Mark could sing so well! It truly was a blessing being there and visiting with our Church family! We're in that Parish ten years now.
Love people so much that you will do all that you can to lessen their human
sorrows. Lord, You have shown Your love for me. May I now radiate
Your presence to others.
Scripture for the day:
"A lawyer, asked Jesus a question to test him. 'Teacher, which commandment
in the law is the greatest?' He said to him, 'You shall love the Lord your
God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.'
This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: 'You
shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all
the law and the prophets." ~Matthew 22:35-40
Meditation for the day:
God has a plan for the world we live in. God's design for the world is a
universal fellowship of men and women, guided by God. The plan for our
lives is also in the mind of God. In times of quiet meditation we can seek
God's guidance, for the revealing of God's plan for our day. Then we can
live this day according to God's guidance. Many of us are not making of our
lives what God means them to be, and so we are unhappy. We can miss the
God's plan for our lives.
Prayer for the day:
I pray that I may try to follow God's design for today. I pray that I may
live my life today consistent with God's plan.
A Girl With An Apple
(This is a true story and you can find out more by Googling Herman
Rosenblat.
He was Bar Mitzvahed at age 75)
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 11, 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, and then asked my age.
'Sixteen,' I said. He directed me to the left, where my three brothers and
other
healthy young men already 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 t ransported in a cattle car to Germany .
We arrived at the Buchenwald concentration camp one night weeks later and
were
led into a crowded barrack. 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 into 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
sub-camps
near Berlin .
One morning I thought I heard my mother's voice.
'Son,' she said softly but clearly, I am going to send 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 fea r.
A couple of days later, I was walking around the camp, around 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 little 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 hear d her say faintly,
'I'll see you
tomorrow.'
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 Theresienstadt camp in Czechoslovakia .
'Don't return,' I told the girl th at day . 'We're leaving.'
I turned toward the barracks and didn't look back, didn't even say good-bye
to the
little girl whose name I'd never learned, the girl with the apples.
We were in Theresienstadt for three months. The war was winding down and
Allied
forces were closing in, yet my fate seemed sealed.
On May 10, 1945, I was scheduled to die in the gas chamber at 10:00 AM.
In the quiet of dawn, I tried to prepare myself. So many times death seemed
ready
to claim me, but somehow I'd survived. Now, it was over.
I thought of my parents. At least, I thought, we will be reunited.
But at 8 A.M. there was a commotion. I heard shouts, and saw people running
every which way through camp.. I caught up with my brothers.
Russian troops had liberated the camp! The gates swung open. Everyone was <
/FONT>
running, so I did too. Amazingly, all of my brothers had survived;
I'm not sure how. But I knew that the girl with the apples had been the key
to my
survival.
In a place where evil seemed triumphant, one person's goodness had saved my
life,
had given me hope in a place where there was none.
My mother had promised to send me an angel, and the angel had come.
Eventually I made my way to England where I was sponsored by a Jewish
charity,
put up in a hostel with other boys who had survived the Holocaust and
trained in
electronics. Then I came to America , where my brother Sam had already
moved. I
served in the U. S. Army during the Korean War, and returned to New York
City
after two years.
By August 1957 I 'd opened my own electronics repair shop. I was starting to
settle in.
One day, my friend Sid who I knew from England called me
'I've got a date. She's got a Polish friend. Let's double date.'
A blind date? Nah, that wasn't for me.
But Sid kept pestering me, and a few days later we headed up to the Bronx to
pick
up his date and her friend Roma.
I had to admit, for a blind date this wasn't so bad. Roma was a nurse at a
Bronx
hospital. She was kind and smart. Beautiful, too, with swirling brown curls
and
green, almond-shaped eyes that sparkled with life.
The four of us drove out to Coney Island . Roma was easy to talk to, easy to
be with..
Turned out she was wary of blind dates too!
We were both just doing our friends a favor. We took a stroll on the
boardwalk,
enjoying the salty Atlantic breeze, and then had dinner by the shore. I
couldn't
remember having a better time.
We piled back into Sid's car, Roma and I sharing the backseat.
As European Jews who had survived the war, we were aware that much had been
left unsaid between us. She broached the subject, 'Where were you,' she
asked
softly, 'during the war?'
'The camps,' I said. The terrible memories still vivid, the irreparable
loss. I had
tried to forget. But you can never forget.
She nodded. 'My family was hiding on a farm in Germany , not far from Berlin
,' she
told me. 'My father knew a priest, and he got us Aryan papers.'
I imagined how she must have suffered too, fear, a constant companion. And
yet
here we were both survivors, in a new world.
< BR>'There was a camp next to the farm.' Roma continued. 'I saw a boy there
and I
would throw him apples every day.'
What an amazing coincidence that she had helped some other boy. 'What did he
look like? I asked.
'He was tall, skinny, and hungry. I must have seen him every day for six
months.'
My heart was racing. I couldn't believe it.
This couldn't be.
'Did he tell you one day not to come back because he was leaving Schlieben?'
Roma looked at me in amazement. 'Yes!'
'That was me!'
I was ready to burst with joy and awe, flooded with emotions. I couldn't
believe it!
My angel.
'I'm not letting you go.' I said to Roma. And in the back of the car on that
blind
date, I proposed to her. I didn't want to wait.
'You're crazy!' she said. But she invited me to meet her parents for Shabbat
dinner
the following week.
There was so much I looked forward to learning about Roma, but the most
important things I always knew: her steadfastness, her goodness. For many
months, in the worst of circumstances, she had come to the fence and given
me
hope Now that I'd found her again, I could never let her go.
That day, she said yes. And I kept my word. After nearly 50 years of
marriage, two
children and three grandchildren, I have never let her go
Herman Rosenblat of Miami Beach , Florida
This story is being made into a movie called The Fence.
God bless you all!
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