From generation to generation they have tried to annihilate us, up to this moment. and yet here we are, a People who never give up. Never give in.
Instead, we survive, and we thrive. We remain a grateful chorus from the Song of Miriam to the Song of Moses.
The hardships we endure to continue our heritage is sometimes best told by individuals who Survived the Holocaust, and who testify their deliverance as absolute miracles.
Yes, there are a few of us left, and must be heard before it’s too late.
They will tell you about Divine intervention, and how they were saved directly by the Hand of God.
So here is one story about how I died and came back to life.
The place was Toulouse, France. This was supposed to be the Free Zone. This was a trick to make the Jews feel they were safe.
In fact, the Nazis were already patrolling traffic. One morning, there they were! Streets were being roped off and Jews, like cousin Villie, were being picked up, never to be seen again.
Father had made arrangements for our escape, an effort that he coordinated with the priest LaRosh, and the French Underground.
There were to be the four of us, father. Noah, mother, Ida, my sister, Sarah, me, the baby, plus five other families whose escape was being endowed by my father.
According to the plan, we were to be picked up by a particular driver who would see us through the checkpoints on our way to the train.
The train would get us to the Pyrenees, and into Spain.
If ..if everything went according to Plan. All of it was risky. But it had to be done. The priest, LaRosh, had been informed that we were on the List to be deported.
A car did show up as scheduled, but to everyone’s horror, the driver was a Nazi.
He turned out to be a member of the French Underground, but we did not know this, as he kept getting us through one checkpoint and another.
He told the guards that he was taking us to “concentration camp” and it worked.
But the drive to the train station was long and terrible, with so many families stuck in the same small car.
There was hardly room to move, when suddenly, Mother whispered in fright, “He’s not breathing.”
Apparently, yes, I had turned shades of blue, and I had stopped breathing. Mother asked the driver to stop the car so that she and Father could get me out for some air.
But the driver kept driving. Mother, and Father now, made a scene. The driver stopped. But the others demanded that he move on. There were deadlines to meet.
If the baby dies, he dies. There are others to consider.
The driver gave my parents one minute, and so they took me out and began pumping me on the side of the road…until it seemed useless, and their time had lapsed.
“Leave him there,” the others yelled out.
But, fortunately, the driver gave my parents one more minute.
The Lord is my shepherd.
New York-based bestselling American novelist Jack Engelhard writes regularly for Arutz Sheva.
He wrote the worldwide book-to-movie bestseller “Indecent Proposal,” the authoritative newsroom epic, “The Bathsheba Deadline,” followed by his coming-of-age classics, “The Girls of Cincinnati,” and, the Holocaust-to-Montreal memoir, “Escape from Mount Moriah.” For that and his 1960s epic “The Days of the Bitter End,” contemporaries have hailed him “The last Hemingway, a writer without peer, and the conscience of us all.” Contact here.
NOW AVAILABLE: The collection of Jack Engelhard’s op-eds, Writings, here
Plus, a free sample chapter of his noir gambling thriller, Compulsive, is available from his website, here.