December, 1942
452
THE K I N G ’ S BUS I NE S S
Escape fro m Pol and
Part 1.
By KARL FAULKNER* As Told to ANNE HAZELTON
■ against us. But we went on, witness- * ing where we could, taking groups of Jewish children to the country where they would have a chance to breathe pure, fresh air, eat all they wanted, and hear the Word of God. For there, in our Daily Vacation Bible Classes, we taught the Bible "truths, told from a Jewish' angle, and then led up to tell them of Christ as the Saviour. Clearly before me, now, was the memory of my perplexity when, in the spring of 1938, the senior mission ary in the work at Warsaw was or dered to leave the country and I was left to carry on. How could I, a mis sionary with less than a year’s ex perience in that field, assume respon- J sibility of the work? Would it con- * tinue? Could I hold things together, with the growing sense of insecurity in the country? Austria had been in vaded—-the world held its breath won dering what further conquest Ger many woiild make. But God ,was near us during that strange, waiting year —the year of Munich. He always sup plied our needs. The privilege of see ing some of the Jewish children open their hearts to the Lord Jesus Christ was my joy through those days of gathering uncertainties. I remembered that, with joy. Destination Unknown I recalled that the blow fell shortly after that, culminating all the uneasi ness of my position. I had been 4 \Continued on Page 4781
B HE DARK BULK of, the Car- pathian mountains loomed dim ly, against the starless sky. A chill of snow, swept across the narrow valley and 1 huddled deeper into my coat. It was just before Christmas, and in other parts of the world children were singing carols and eagerly, deco rating Christmas trees. I shifted my position on the suitcase and looked hopefully at the dark shadow that was the border guard. “What a way to spend Christmas!” I murmured wearily. “Perched on a suitcase between two countries!” An hour before, in my flight from Poland through Czechoslovakia, I had sought entrance into Hungary, only to meet with a curt refusal. To my dismay, I foundi myself stranded on a sort of “no-man’s land,” an old railway that ran between the two countries, Hun gary refusing me permission to enter and the Czechoslovakian guard hav ing no authority to allow me to return to Czechoslovakia. The night grew darker and a cold rain began to fall. I wondered, un easily, how long I would be kept here. I had heard that a party of Jewish refugees recently had been* detained on the border for four days and had suffered much privation. Suddenly, in spite of my discomfort, I thanked God that I was privileged to suffer, in a * Mr. Faulkner (Biala *37) went to Europe in 1937 under the auspices of the American - European Fellowship.
small-way, with those of His chosen people. Indifferent to the cold rain, now, I let my mind go back to the Jewish people I had known and worked among in Poland, and I involuntarily began to trace the pattern of that work. Like a series of pictures, bright at first but growing steadily darker as the storms gathered, the events of the last sixteen months in Poland passed in review. Days in Poland Warsaw had been to me “journey’s end” when I reached there in August, 1937. The view outside the city, of field upon field of wheat and barley, threaded with deep blue of lupines, stretching far across the plains to the distent horizon, was but a pleasant background for the work God had called me to do. Inside the city, wide avenues and g r a c i o*u s dwellings meant little to me. But when I stood in the Warsaw Ghetto, in marked con trast to all else I had seen, a Ghetto where 250,000 Jews lived, crowded into one small section of the city, ten to a room—then I knew that I had reached the place of His appointment-. Even in those first days I sensed the growing opposition to the mission to the Jews of that city. One of. the workers had been martyred but a few short years before. Another had con tinual threats made against her life. The newspapers, having no libel laws to fear, carried false accusations
cold sharp wind, bearing on it the
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