Shalom at Last! (Jewish)
It’s strange that one of the first Hebrew words I
learned as a child was shalom, meaning peace. I never knew peace
growing up as a Jew in Germany. When Hitler came to power, I was
only a child—a child who soon felt the pain of being called a
“Christ killer.” How can I forget the horror of that November
night in 1938 when Nazi storm troopers marched through our
village breaking and destroying the property of every Jew?Was there a power that could erase the hatred I felt as the Nazis carried my father and older brother away to a concentration camp where they were starved and tortured? My brother escaped to China. Later my father was able to get to London, where he began a desperate attempt to get our family out of Germany. Four of my sisters joined him. But my younger brother and sister, my mother, and I didn’t make it. When Germany invaded Poland, we lost all hope. I was 16 when, facing labor camp, I escaped to Yugoslavia and then to Italy. When the war was over, I met a beautiful Italian girl named Leda, and we married in 1947. Leda agreed to accept the Hebrew faith and to raise our children as Jews. We returned to Frankfort in search of my family. I was joyfully reunited with my younger brother, who returned from exile in China. But my mother and younger sister had been killed at Auschwitz. I knew I could not live in Germany. The pain was too great. Two years later, Leda and I moved to the United States with our new baby daughter, Sabine, and eventually settled in Burbank, California. Two sons were added to our family, Philip and Bernard. I was rebuilding my life around my family and my job when our older son was killed in a car accident. In anger, I denounced God. “How could you allow this to happen to one of your own people? How can you be a good God and bring such pain to me?” Two months after Philip’s death, a neighbor invited Bernard to church camp. He was 14 and missed the companionship of his brother. How could a camping trip hurt him? I thought. Perhaps he may find peace there. Indeed he did. Bernard came home believing in Jesus. I was shocked, but nothing I said could shake him. A few weeks later, Leda visited the church to meet the people who were having such an influence on our son. She continued to go and before long she, too, placed her faith in Jesus Christ. I felt rejected, but when Leda invited me to go with her to church, I angrily refused. Then I began to notice a change in both Bernard and Leda. They were contented and peaceful. They were reading their Bibles. And they were influencing Sabine. I decided to check out what my son was being taught and turned to my Hebrew Bible. I read rapidly through the Torah, but question after question confronted me. When I got to Isaiah 35:5, I knew God was talking about me. “Then will the eyes of the blind be opened.” And when I read in Jeremiah 31:31 that God promised to “make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah,” I knew I had to have a look at the Christian Bible to know about this new covenant. I was surprised to find that Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and the disciples were all Jews who observed the laws and feasts. I’d always thought they were Romans. I struggled with my own guilt—all through the four Gospels. Had I rejected the Messiah? Paul said he came “first for the Jew, then for the Gentile” (Romans 1:16). Jesus, celebrating Passover, said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you” (Luke 22:20). I fell to my knees when I came to 1 John 2:23 and understood the truth: “No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also.” I cried out to God for forgiveness, and suddenly my heart was flooded with love for the Father and His Son, Jesus, the Messiah. My search had taken me almost a year. But from the moment I fell to my knees, I was able to love Jesus, my Messiah, with all my heart and mind and soul. I was even able to love those who had so cruelly persecuted my people. At last I understood the true meaning of shalom!
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