A
HEBREW MARTYR*
[* NOTE.] Mr. Isaac Feinstein was a missionary of the Norwegian
Church,
and these are extracts from his wife’s
letter to their children after his death - ED. DAWN.
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In the small hours of Sunday, June 22, 1941, war began. We could hear the thunder of artillery from
the
The same evening your father held his last meeting in our hall. There were only a few present; the awful roar
and thunder of artillery were a grave and sinister accompaniment to the
service. In a composed, unwavering voice
your father spoke his words of encouragement to his congregation. It was as though he knew it was the last
time. He put his whole heart into it
when he said, “Who knows what awaits us in the next few days and where we shall
all be next Sunday, but ...
“God is our
refuge and strength,
A very present help in
trouble.
Therefore will we not fear,
though the earth be removed,
And though the mountains be
carried into the midst of the sea”
(Psa. 46: 1, 2).
We spent the nights that followed and most of the days in our
air-raid shelter in the cellar. Instead
of harmless A.R.P. exercises, we were facing grim reality. We hardly had time to go upstairs to our
kitchen to fetch something to eat before having to return to the cellar. The crash of the explosives was
terrible. Every time we thought it was
our house that had been hit. We could
hear the tinkle of broken window panes as explosion followed explosion.
Your father’s calm and self-control were an example to us
all. No sooner had the raiders passed
over than he wanted to be on the street with a pick and shovel to rescue or
help others, wherever the need might be.
He would not be stopped by our entreaties, but simply said, “You can’t know; perhaps some child is buried in the debris
and is calling for its mother. I must go
and help, and God will bring me safely back.”
At first dawn a friend came and implored your father to hide
himself. He said there was a plan to
arrest or kill al1 Jews. This, too, I
only heard later; otherwise I would have begged him to hide with Christian
friends. But he had made up his mind that
he could never do this, for it would have brought us and others into
danger. So, slowly morning drew on, the
morning of the saddest day in your short lives.
The shooting and the roar of artillery grew a little weaker, but we had
another air raid.
Father came downstairs in the early morning and told us to
remain all day in the cellar. My task
was to quieten and comfort you and find you something to do. You had to be engrossed with trivial things,
while above our heads on the streets of the cruel city terrible things were
taking place. All the Jews were being
driven together, and every house was being searched for them. One could see long columns among them, being
led through the streets to the police headquarters. They had to go with hands held above their
heads; if any through sheer weariness let them drop or just could not go any
farther, the soldiers who were escorting them beat them with their rifles or
prodded them with their bayonets. I have
heard that terrible things happened. Old
women who could go no farther were killed on the spot and left lying in the
gutter. A Rumanian priest could stand
these horrors no longer; he begged them to stop, but was shot by his own
people. German officers and soldiers
stood on the pavement, jeered and photographed the miserable columns with great
satisfaction.
I was not able to watch it for long. In any case it was almost over by then. Your father had been marched off with one of
these tragic columns and I followed him to let Sister Olga know what was happening. All forenoon we had sat in our cellar without
any suspicion of what was happening up above.
I did go upstairs to father’s study once to see how he was getting on; I
asked him why he was so pale and whether he would have something to eat. He smiled sadly and said, “You will know why later.”
At the end of September, three months after your father had
been taken away, it became known in the city that a
number of Jews had been released from a concentration camp to help in
demolition work. The same evening two
men asked to see me, saying they had something to tell me. I recognized them as men who used to attend
our meetings and knew I could trust them.
Their story almost paralysed me with horror. This is what they had to tell.
“We were with your husband that
Sunday. To all imprisoned with him in
the cellar at police headquarters he was a help. In the evening we were taken out into the
courtyards of the headquarters. There
were so many of us that we lay packed one on top of the other like sardines. We suppose our persecutors hoped we would be
hit by bombs, but though they exploded all around us, unfortunately we remained
untouched. In the early morning we were
taken in long columns to a concentration camp.
Feinstein was in the same
truck as we. We were packed so tight we
could neither move nor breathe - there were 140 of us in a cattle truck that
would have taken 40. Doors and windows
were shut, all cracks and holes were sealed, and steam was driven in from
below. It was a gruesome journey of
death. Many went mad, and the cries of
those in torment were terrible. From time to time the trucks were left standing
for hours in the burning summer heat.
Awful things happened which we can never tell. Those of us who survived are haunted by our
memories.
“Your husband probably did not have
to suffer very long. It was not long
before he began to repeat psalms in a loud voice, and his face was like the
face of an angel. Then he fell asleep
and woke no more. During the night at a
small Moldavian station the trucks were opened and the corpses fell out. They thought that everyone would have been
suffocated on this journey of death. But
there were six of us who were only unconscious who were injured as we fell
out. Seeing us bleeding they brought us
back to life and consciousness with injections; they gave us something to eat
and then forced us to bury our dead friends in a common grave. While we were doing this we found our dear
Mr. Feinstein. We dug him a separate
grave. Before burying him we went
through his pockets in the hope of finding his documents or something else to
send you, but nothing, not even his watch, was left. He had been stripped of everything
beforehand.
“They put us in a camp there with
many others; we had to work hard and led a miserable life. Often we were sorry that a renewal of life
had been granted us. Now they have
brought us back here into the city, but nothing good awaits us.”
A few days later these two men did me the service of appearing
before the court to testify what they knew of my husband’s death, so that I
could get a death certificate. Without
this we should never have got a passport and should not have been able to leave
the country. In this way your dear father’s death proved your salvation, and you
were able to go to
‑ The Hebrew Christian.
* *
*
FOOTNOTES
1. The description above, of what happened to one of Christ’s disciples
during the Second World War, is a foretaste of what will happen to some of His
disciples during the Great Tribulation under the Antichrist:-
“Take heed that no man lead you [‘disciples’ (3)] astray.” … “For nation shall
rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines
and earthquakes in divers places. But all these things are the beginning if
travail. Then shall they deliver you up
unto tribulation, and shall kill you: and ye shall
be hated of all nations for my name’s sake:” (Matt. 24: 4, 7-9, R.V.).
“The Church
of today must be the Enoch of our world. We Christians must show the
people of our time what the good life really means: it is the reproduction of
the life of Christ by the grace of the Holy Spirit. Such an example will
not be popular, but it will please God, to whom one day we must render an
account. It may also earn Enoch’s reward: translation to
Heaven without passing through the [Great
Tribulation and] portal
of death. But we have Enoch’s testimony to give, namely that Christ
will return to this earth to set up the Golden Age. Two world wars
have sharpened the interest of many people in the truth [of selective rapture, and] of the Second Coming of
Christ; but this interest has been divided into two schools of thought.
One of these is linked with the name of J. N. Darby, and holds that the
Church will entirely escape the tribulations which precede the Return
of Christ. The other school of thought is linked with the name of B.
W. Newton, just as brilliant a scholar as Darby,
and these friends hold that the whole Church must endure the
tribulation. May it not be that the golden mean of these two antinomies
is the truth? If we exercise the faith of Enoch in a humble walk
with God and a clear testimony to His Word, we may “prevail to escape” [Luke 21: 36, R.V.]
what is coming upon the world. ‘Watch and pray
that ye may be accounted worthy to escape’ (Luke 21: 36).”
- FRANK V. MILDRED.
2. LONGING FOR HIS COMING
Beloved, are we longing for the coming of our Lord, or shall
we meet Him with grief and not with joy? Shall we open to Him immediately, or shall we
want more time to prepare? Is He coming
to us as a judge, or is He coming to us as the Bridegroom of our hearts and the
blessed Hope of all our life?
This is the special work of the Holy Ghost in preparing His
Bride for the coming of the Bridegroom, and, unless we have this expectant love
for His appearing, it is certain that we are not in the right state of heart.
As the Lord’s coming draws nearer, it will doubtless be
somehow revealed to the hearts of His children, who are waiting and watching
for Him, in such a way that, while they will not know the day nor the hour, they will at least be ready, and something
within them will be going out to meet the Bridegroom.
When a great magnet approaches a lot of little bits of steel
and iron filings in a box of sand, they become agitated, and a quivering movement
is seen along the whole line. They
almost seem to be conscious of something in the air attracting them upward; and
when the magnet comes a little nearer, they just leap up to meet it and cling
to it by the subtle attraction of the magnetic fluid. And so, as the Lord’s coming draws nearer, the
hearts of His people will become strangely conscious that the Bridegroom is at
hand, and they will be drawn out to expect Him and prepare for Him in a manner
which they themselves may not understand. “When these things begin to come to
pass,” He said, “then lift up your heads and bend yourselves back,” in the
attitude of preparation for flight, “for your redemption draweth nigh.”
Sometimes we have seen on a branch a bird standing, almost
ready to fly, with wings just fluttering, and its whole attitude poised and
prepared to spring from the branch and sweep away into the sky at the call of
its distant mate. So should the Bride of the Lamb be waiting with
fluttering wing, uplifted eye, and all her being poised and ready at the first
call to mount on high and be transported to the Beloved of her heart.
A. B. SIMPSON, D.D.
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