August, 1941
THE K I N G ' S BU S I N E S S
800
The Jews' Darkest Hour
■and the Dawn By LOUIS S. BAUMAN* Long Beach, California
B HAT THE FINAL travail of Zion has begun is h a r d to doubt. I seriously question whether the Jews of the world ever stood face to face with a darker period than the present hour, in which case the present hour should be a major theme within the “sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day-star arise in your hearts” (2 Pet. 1:19). Pharaoh, Haman, and Antiochus Epiphanes were not more cruel in their anti-Semitic hatreds and deeds than are Adolf Hit ler and his blood-bespattered henchmen. Many of the foremost Jewish writers of our day, faced with Israel’s present bitter distress, are confessing freely that the present outlook is even darker than any that Jacob has ever known in all his troubled trek t h r o u g h the centuries. - Jews Without Hope Morris C. Troper, European director of the American Jewish Joint Distribu tion Committee, recently returned from an extended trip abroad to report' on the condition of the Jews in Europe. He stated that the Jews are facing what may quickly become “the blackest pe riod” in all their struggle with persecu tion, war, famine, and death. He says that if it were not for American aid, there would be “no hope” at all for the Jews Of most of Europe. A book entitled Dark Ages Not So Dark, by Adolf Kober, was r e c e n t l y ‘ Pastor, First Brethren Chureh.
The Bucharest Jewish quarter is de scribed as a “smoldering wilderness o f misery.” Extremists there were al lowed to herd h e l p l e s s Jews—men, women, and little children—into cellars were they proceeded to mutilate and massacre them. Out of the Nazi Poland comes an ac count “of mass child-misery possibly without equal in the long and bitter history of man-made bestiality.” Wan dering a i m l e s s and helpless, in the deepest despair, are some 20,000 Jewish youngsters who fill the roads of Reich- occupied Poland. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency tells us why most of them were orphans: “A Gestapo officer then delivered a short speech in which he said that Jews were responsible for the war and all Jews were the mortal enemies of Germany. The Chelm Jews Had been sentenced by the Nazi authorities to be deprived of their civil rights and to be expelled from the town. The sentence, the officer added, was to be carried out immediately, and all the assembled Jews were to be taken to the Soviet frontier . . . “Although they were less than three miles from the Russian fron tier on the River Bug, the Jews were taken by a roundabout way of over thirty miles from Hrubieczow to Dolbyczow. They were chased across fields, woods, and marshes. Every few minutes, those who were exhausted and unable to run anjr
translated from the German, in which he compares the Jewish sufferings in Germany during the Dark Ages with their sufferings today. He declares that at no time during the German Dark Ages did the Jews suffer so keenly and so hopelessly as they suffer at the present time. The agonies Of the Jews in Germany, in Poland, and in the Balkan states could hardly be surpassed. A quick dispatching by the sword is infinitely more mereiful than the slow torturous route by which hundreds of thousands are being sent into eternity today. It appears that the whole world is set on making the Jew groan forth in utter a g o n y the fulfillment of the prophecies of his final sorrow. Consider this prediction: “And among these nations shalt thou find no ease, neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest: but the Lord s h a l l give thee there a trembling heart, and failing of eyes,, and sorrow of mind: and thy life shall hang in doubt before thee; and thou shalt fear day and night, and shalt have none assurance of thy life. In the morning thou shalt say, Would God it were even! and at even thou shalt say. Would God it were morning!, for the fear of thine heart wherewith thou shalt fear, and for the sight of thine eyes w h i c h thou shalt see” (Deut. ' 28:65-67>. Multiplied Misery A few glimpses of Israel’s miseries la -Europe must suffice.
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