Evolution is a teaching from the pit of Hell! The theory of evolution is a fairy tale from Satan’s book on how to miss Heaven and go to Hell. The following is the first part of an article concerning evolutionary belief and ‘…the horrific and inhumane treatment of Ota Benga, a young African man who was taken from Congo in 1904 by noted African explorer and former slave trader Samuel Verner. Samuel Verner was known for his belief in evolution and for his support of white supremacist ideals. On his maiden voyage onboard the Roquelle from Antwerp to Congo, Verner was surprised that dark-skinned individuals were allowed to dine together with Caucasian shipmates. In a letter to his mother, he lamented that, “the helplessness of that race is simply appalling.” So from the very beginning of his journey to the West, Ota found himself strongly influenced by racist evolutionists.
Ota was first displayed as an ‘emblematic savage’ in the anthropology wing at the 1904 St Louis World’s Fair with other pygmies. He was eventually presented by Verner to the Bronx Zoo director, William Hornaday who came up with the idea of using Ota Benga to ‘educate’ the public about human evolution. At this time Ota Benga was just twenty-three years old. His height was only 1.5 metres (4 feet 11 eleven inches) and he only weighed 46.7 kg (103 lb). Ota Benga, which meant ‘friend’ in his native language, was often thought to be just a boy, but he was actually a twice-married father. His first wife and two children were murdered by white colonists, and his second spouse died from a poisonous snake bite.
Ota Benga became a sensation, drawing large crowds to the Zoo including over 40,000 on Sunday, 16 September 1906. Despite criticism, particularly from some church leaders at the time, Dr Hornaday insisted that he was merely offering an ‘intriguing exhibit’ for the public’s education and:
… apparently saw no difference between a wild beast and the little black man; [and] for the first time in any American zoo, a human being was displayed in a cage. Benga was given cage-mates to keep him company in his captivity—a parrot and an orang-utan named Dohong.
Nevertheless, Hornaday’s racist Darwinian ideas were clear elsewhere in his writings where he described Ota Benga as:
“… a genuine African pigmy, belonging to the subrace commonly miscalled ‘the Dwarfs.’”
The other co-founder of the Bronx Zoo was Henry Osborn. Henry Osborn was regarded as the leading evolutionist of his day, and is famed for the discovery of many dinosaurs, including the T. rex. Like Hornaday, Henry Osborn was highly racist as a result of his belief in evolution. For example, before Madison Grant (who was also influential in the founding of the Bronx Zoo) wrote his racist book, On the Passing of a Great Race, Grant shared his transcript with Osborn who made many suggestions. In the preface to the fourth edition Osborn wrote:
[I]n no other human stock which has come to this country is there displayed the unanimity of heart, mind and action which is now being displayed by the descendants of the blue-eyed, fair-haired peoples of the north of Europe. If I were asked: “What is the greatest danger which threatens the American republic to-day? I would certainly reply: The gradual dying out among our people of those hereditary traits through which the principles of our religious, political and social foundations were laid down and their insidious replacement by traits of less noble character.”
Grant’s book, as we know, was largely influential on Adolf Hitler. Hitler called the book, ‘his bible’ for it advocated a rigid system of selection through the elimination of those who are weak or unfit.
Society is sadly accepting the sinful sodomite lifestyle as normal so therefore anyone that does not MUST be dealt with in the harshest way possible. Therefore a ‘UK bank closes Christian ministry’s account, according to Christian Concern 24 July 2020. Barclays Bank is closing the account Core Issues Trust, a Christian counselling service. The bank has informed them that their account will be closed in September. Core Issues Trust (CIT) provides “help for people who who want to move away from same-sex attraction or behaviours.”
No reason was given by the bank, but it is the latest in a series of denials of service to CIT, including from PayPal and Mail Chimp, Facebook and Instagram. CIT have also been targeted by an extensive campaign of abuse on social media, aggressive trolling and hateful text messages and abusive phone calls to staff. Mike Davidson, CEO of CIT said: “A coordinated campaign has resulted in our ministry coming under immense pressure and key service providers cancelling their services.” He went on to comment: “This amounts to mob rule. If a social media mob can cause a bank to close the account of a Christian ministry, then there is nowhere for Biblically faithful Christian ministries to go. The UK is now becoming an intensely intolerant country. Key service providers have cancelled their services to a Christian charity because of a social media mob.”
Andrea Williams, chief executive of the Christian Legal Centre, commented, “If it is CIT first, it will be churches next. If banks and other service providers start to placate social media campaigns by unilaterally terminating their accounts then the UK will be a very difficult place for Biblically faithful Christian ministries.”
Editorial Comment: This is not just a UK phenomenon. Our most recent email newsletter was blocked by Mail Chimp, with no specific reason given. It was eventually allowed to be sent after we removed a brief item that included the following comment: “the Bible reports the Creator God does hate homosexuality, along with adultery, gluttony, thievery, etc, all in the same paragraph, (1 Corinthians 6:9).” Read the item here. Creation Research has also had to deal with denials of service, along with abuse and interference with our websites and electronic media, but this is not just a “woe is us” report. It is a wake-up call to Christians. This is what happens when people “exchange the truth about God for a lie”. See Romans 1:18-32.
Dr Peter Ridd is the former ‘…professor who was sacked by James Cook University after disagreeing with findings by some of his colleagues about the Great Barrier Reef. He is now seeking to appeal his dismissal in the High Court of Australia.
Dr Ridd’s research suggests that some studies claiming the Great Barrier Reef is dying are unreliable. However, such unreliability is no surprise.
A few years ago, a survey by the respected science journal Nature found that more than 70% of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist’s experiments. A majority of those surveyed agreed that there is a “crisis of reproducibility”.
The Australian (12/8/20) reported that the prestigious American Journal of Psychiatry has had to publish an extraordinary correction to a 2019 US-Swedish paper.
This widely praised, peer-reviewed paper had claimed that transgender surgery – such as breast removal or genital reconstruction – reduced the need for mental health treatment. This claimed benefit of transgender surgery has been used to push for easier access to such treatment.
Dr Michelle Telfer, clinic director at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne has argued that mastectomies improve the mental health of “trans boys”. Lobbying by Telfer succeeded in securing funding of $6 million from the Andrews government in Victoria to cut waiting times for treatment.
But last month, the American journal retracted this claim. It published a correction, an editorial and letters from a dozen psychiatrists, clinicians and researchers in four countries. They identified multiple flaws in the 2019 paper. Faced with the criticisms, the authors of the original paper acknowledged that “the results demonstrated no advantage of surgery” for subsequent mental health.
As a leading researcher pointed out, the 2019 paper had ignored post-surgery suicides!
The correction has come not a moment too soon. The original US-Swedish paper had been hailed by Australian trans activists in their campaign to achieve full Medicare cover for all trans surgery.
Treatment guidelines from the Melbourne Royal Children’s Hospital transgender clinic argue for trans breast removal for girls as young as 16 with gender dysphoria (distressed by their biological sex).
This campaign comes at a time when the number of gender dysphoric children seeking treatment is rising faster than ever before. The spike in cases may be linked to “copycat” pressures from social media. Many of these children have autistic traits.
FamilyVoice has been alerting MPs about this worrying trend. We continue to urge federal health minister Greg Hunt to set up a national inquiry into the causes and treatment of childhood gender dysphoria.’https://familyvoice.org.au/news
Julie Roys writes that ‘It’s known as the “nuclear option.” And it’s a way the church that founded Liberty University can remove any university trustee, including embattled trustee and president, Jerry Falwell, Jr.
I recently became aware of this “nuclear option” when an anonymous source reached out to me and encouraged me to research Liberty’s articles of incorporation and an official letter Jerry Falwell, Jr., sent to the U.S. Department of Education.
Sure enough, the “nuclear option” exists, according to these documents. And given Falwell’s recent behavior, and the trustee board’s historic reluctance to hold him accountable, this could be an option that Thomas Road Baptist Church (TRBC)—the church that founded Liberty University—may want to consider.
Currently, Falwell is on indefinite leave as president and chancellor of Liberty for posting, and then deleting, a racy photo of himself and his wife’s assistant.
The “Nuclear Option”
Liberty’s articles of incorporation clearly state that TRBC’s board has the power to remove trustees it believes are failing to protect Liberty’s mission.
This is what Jonathan Falwell—pastor of TRBC and the son of Jerry Falwell Sr., who founded TRBC—referred to as the “nuclear option” in the 2016 book, Falwell Inc.
“Dad set it up so the church forever will be the rudder that guides the university,” Jonathan Falwell said. “He said that if Liberty ever turns to the left, members of the board should fire everyone and shut the place down. The nuclear option exists. They will use it if they have to.”
Specifically, Liberty’s articles of incorporation state:
(T)he Board of Trustees is obligated to act upon a determination by the Board of Directors of Thomas Road Baptist Church that any Trustee has affirmatively engaged in efforts that maliciously undermine or attempt to significantly alter the Christian mission of the Corporation insofar as that mission is reflected in the Liberty University Doctrinal Position . . . Such a determination shall be made only after the Trustee is given notice and the opportunity to appear before the Board of Directors of Thomas Road Baptist Church to address its concerns prior to its determination. If requested, the Trustee shall be given notice and the opportunity to appear before the Board of Trustees to address any determination of the Board of Directors of Thomas Road Baptist Church. The Board of Trustees may request that the Board of Directors of Thomas Road Baptist Church reconsider its determination and take into account the information submitted to it by the Board of Trustees. . . .
This oversight function of Thomas Road Baptist Church was also mentioned in a letter Jerry Falwell Jr. wrote to the U.S. Department of Education on January 16, 2014.
The letter states that the “University’s Articles of Incorporation provide the TRBC’s Board of Directors with the power to remove any University trustee the Board finds to be ‘undermining the mission of the university . . .’”
It further states:
This ongoing oversight ensures that TRBC’s mission-oriented intentions in founding Liberty University continue to be implemented. Thus, the TRBC Board of Directors maintains this continuing oversight of the University’s board of trustees and has the power to make its own interpretations on important issues related to the religious doctrine of the university.
I reached out to TRBC to ask if the church board is considering using its “nuclear option,” but no one responded. I also reached out to TRCB Pastor Jonathan Falwell, who also serves as a trustee at Liberty, but he did not respond either.
I contacted Scott Lamb, vice president of communications at Liberty University, by phone and email, specifically asking about TRBC’s ability to remove Liberty trustees. But Lamb did not respond.
Liberty’s Trustees Praise Falwell, While Others Call for His Removal
Currently, Liberty University’s Board of Trustees appear at odds with Liberty’s larger community of constituents. While many alumni, students, faculty, and staff are calling for Falwell’s removal, the trustees seem inclined to retain him.
Jerry Prevo, who served as chairman of Liberty’s Board of Trustees from 2003 until becoming Liberty’s interim president, said in a statement: “In the 13 years that Jerry Falwell, Jr. has served as president of Liberty University, Liberty has experienced unprecedented success, not only academically and financially, with a world-class campus, but also spiritually.”
Prevo also attributed Falwell’s recent lapse in judgment to the “substantial pressure” that comes with leading “a large and growing organization.”
Similarly, Franklin Graham, whose son William Graham IV serves as a trustee at Liberty, said: “(Falwell) is a great leader and he has taken this school—it is one of the largest universities in the United States. He’s done an incredible job. He is a great leader and I certainly support him.”
About Falwell’s recent racy photograph, Franklin Graham added: “All of us in life have done things that we’ve regretted. I think he certainly has regretted that. It was a foolish thing.”
However, Save71—a group of more than 400 Liberty alumni, students and faculty—are calling on Liberty’s Board of Trustees to fire Falwell. The group says its actions are not based on just “one photo,” but “a pattern of behavior and toxic culture that trickled down from Liberty’s leadership into every part of the school.”
The group adds: “Over the past several years, President Jerry Falwell Jr. has damaged the spiritual vitality, academic quality, and national reputation of Liberty University. We are a group of Liberty alumni, students, and faculty calling on the Board of Trustees to permanently remove President Falwell and replace him with a responsible and virtuous Christian leader.”
Similarly, U.S. Representative Mark Walker, a former instructor at Liberty, tweeted that Falwell’s “ongoing behavior is appalling” and Falwell should “step down.”
And Liberty alumnus Colby Garman, who serves on the executive committee of the Virginia Southern Baptist denomination, tweeted: “In order to preserve the many great advances that have been made at @LibertyU and honor the ongoing work of the excellent faculty there he should step down and make way for new leadership.”
Time to Act?
It remains to be seen whether the directors of Thomas Road Baptist Church side more with Liberty’s Board of Trustees or with Falwell’s many detractors. And even if TRBC’s board wants Falwell out, does the board have the resolve necessary to use its “nuclear option”?
Andy Savage; who is he? Personally, I had never heard of him, as far as I know, but when I read the following article I was not surprised. I was with a mission agency for fourteen years that covered up an immoral missionary medical doctor for years and years. That cover up was due to the Good Ole Boys Club! Oh, the mission warned new nurses coming to the field about this man and disciplined the nurses that he committed adultery with but NEVER did anything to the good doctor UNTIL he groomed a twelve year old girl. When his pedophilia was exposed by the girl then and only then did the mission act. To read about this misjustice go to https://bangladeshmksspeak.wordpress.com/about/ and https://sadsaga.wordpress.com/.
After reading about the missionary doctor you too will not be surprised at the following article. What a mess today’s Christianity is in.
‘A pastor who resigned just over 2 years ago for supporting accused sexual abuser, Andy Savage, is starting a new church—and one of the abuse victims is speaking out.
“Not only has my abusive pastor @andysavage started his own church,” Jules Woodson tweeted Sunday (August 9), “but the pastor that hired him and supported him (and was subsequently fired), Chris Conlee, is coming back to Memphis to start a new church. Where and when does the madness end?”https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=true&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1292667702343905281&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fjulieroys.com%2Fpastor-supported-abuser-church%2F%3Fmc_cid%3D35f57b5ab5%26mc_eid%3Db13d34ad49&theme=light&widgetsVersion=223fc1c4%3A1596143124634&width=550px
Chris Conlee was senior pastor of Highpoint Church in Memphis, Tenn., when then-teaching pastor Andy Savage was accused, in 2018, of sexually assaulting a minor 20 years earlier as a youth pastor.
Jules Woodson said that in 1998, when she was 17 and Savage was 22, he offered her a ride home and, on the way, pulled the car over and coerced her into performing oral sex on him. He then made her promise to “take this to the grave” with her.
Savage was a student pastor at a Texas church at the time. Woodson says she told church leadership, who said they would handle it. No one filed criminal charges. Savage left the church, and the church threw a going away party for him.
In January 2018, in the midst of the #churchtoo surgence, Woodson reported the incident to the Montgomery County (Tex.) Sheriff’s Department. They did not prosecute Savage because the statute of limitations had passed.
Savage said he had repented, and Conlee knew about the alleged assault when he was originally hired. When Woodson went public in 2018, Conlee came to Savage’s ardent defense, expressing “total confidence in the redemptive process Andy went through” following the assault, according to The Christian Post.
After an investigation—and media firestorm—Savage resigned from Highpoint in March 2018. Conlee resigned a few months later in July after leading the church for 16 years.
“It is with profound sorrow that we share with you the news that Chris [Conlee] has resigned as Lead Pastor of Highpoint. We have arrived at a point of respectfully agreeing to go in different directions for the Kingdom,” the church had said in a statement at the time.
But then last week, after two years away, Conlee’s wife, Karin Conlee, announced in a blog post that the couple was returning to Memphis to start One City Church. They are also launching Race for Reconciliation, a “local race and a national education platform.”
“We can’t shake from our hearts the role that we believe the church should have in the city’s healing,” Karin Conlee wrote. “There are other jobs out there to pay the bills, but our calling is to pastor. So, we start over in faith.”
Her only nod to the past controversy was that she has a “little apprehension” about returning. “I think of the way Satan likes to work. Silence, half-truths and division are three of his favorite weapons. In relationships, we often fill in gaps of silence with distrust,” she said.
In response to Woodson’s tweet over the weekend, Rachel Denhollander, a sexual abuse survivor known for her work to charge and convict USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar, said “I stand with @juleswoodson11.”https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=true&embedId=twitter-widget-1&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1292993844322197504&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fjulieroys.com%2Fpastor-supported-abuser-church%2F%3Fmc_cid%3D35f57b5ab5%26mc_eid%3Db13d34ad49&theme=light&widgetsVersion=223fc1c4%3A1596143124634&width=550px
Genesis 1:31 “And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.”
Prior to Darwin’s ideas being published, there were many people who believed in spontaneous generation. This idea teaches that life just appears from non-living material. There was always observational evidence for this. For example, dead meat will eventually “spontaneously generate” maggots. Eventually, more careful research showed that this was, in fact, due to fruit flies landing on the meat and laying eggs, which hatched out into maggots.
Those evolutionists who wish to ridicule the idea of spontaneous generation need to remember that they have to believe it happened at least once. A German university has recently tried to find a route for the development of DNA, but their suppositions raise far more questions than they answer. Their study says:
The process of biological evolution that has given rise to the diversity of life on our planet must have been preceded by a phase of chemical evolution. During this ‘prebiotic’ stage, the first polymeric molecules capable of storing information and reproducing themselves were randomly assembled from organic precursors that were available on the early Earth. The most efficient replicators subsequently evolved into the macromolecular informational nucleic acids – DNA and RNA – that became the basis for all forms of life on our planet.
With Marxism and Islam growing worldwide be assured the following story will be repeated again just as spoken of in the Word of God! Mark 13:14 But when ye shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing where it ought not, (let him that readeth understand,) then let them that be in Judaea flee to the mountains
‘Tibor Spitz, a retired chemical engineer turned renowned artist and educator, spoke to Aish.com about the extraordinary events of his life before, during and after the Holocaust.
Born in 1929, Tibor Spitz grew up in the small town of Dolny Kubin, nestled in a picturesque mountainous region of Orava, Slovakia, shouldering the country’s border with Poland. “It was a very beautiful place to grow up, but it wasn’t in my parents plans to live in Slovakia at all,” Spitz explains. “Several years earlier they had moved to the Land of Israel but had to return to Europe.”
Tibor Spitz, one year old, in 1930
Tibor’s parents Yosef Tzvi and Shoshana Spitz had realized their dream to settle in the Land of Israel in 1920, living in what was then the small town of Bnei Brak. “It was there that my oldest sister Esther Spitz was born, but she died at a young age from illness.” The couple’s fortunes continued to decline when Yosef Tzvi was shot by Arab marauders. Suffering from an infection to the wound, and with Shoshana pregnant, they were advised to return to Europe to receive medical care.
The Spitz family in 1936. Tibor is on the left
Back in Slovakia, the Spitz’s had three children, Ernest, Chava and Tibor. “It was more or less a happy childhood. Living in the mountains made us tough, there was snow on the ground for around eight or ten months of the year and we became strong and healthy.”
“My father had the most beautiful voice. Before moving to Israel, he had trained as an opera singer in Vienna and he had mixed with so many well-known composers.“ In Slovakia he found work as a chazan. “My father was angelic person, and his voice was a healer.”
“Music was a basic part of my life, our home was filled with singing. My father often played music on a gramophone, and aside from leading services, he taught Hebrew and would give talks about living in the Land of Israel.” Tibor’s father also acted as the shochet (ritual slaughterer). “He did everything except circumcisions, and I was like the rabbi’s son.”
The Jewish community of Dolny Kubin numbered just 100 families. “We were not big enough to have a cheder, (Jewish school) so I along with the other Jewish children went to public school. Despite the small size of the community, it was rich in its diversity.”
Tibor was ten years old when the Nazis began their conquest of Europe.
Anti-Semitic measures
In March 1939, Slovakia aligned itself as an ally to the Nazis, with Josef Tiso, a Catholic priest turned politician, introducing harsh anti-Jewish measures. (After the war in 1947, Tiso would be tried and executed for war crimes and crimes against humanity).
One day Tibor returned home with tears in his eyes. “As the only Jewish boy in a large elementary class, I asked my mother what I should do, as I was being cursed for being Jewish. She gave me this advice, ‘You better live the way that people would have reasons to envy you rather than feel sorry for you.’ It was then that I learned in any situation to try to remain a mensch, a decent human being.”
“In 1940, we were kicked out of public school and overnight my mother became a teacher to the town’s 24 Jewish children aged 6 to 16.”
Josef Tiso meeting Adolph Hitler. Slovakia aligned itself as a Nazi client state
In 1941, the Jews of Slovakia were forced to wear a star, and in the same year, the Slovak government negotiated with Nazi Germany for the mass deportation of Jews to German-occupied Poland. By 1942 deportations had begun. By the end of the war, around 69,000 of the country’s estimated 90,000 Jews had been murdered, although the deportations were staggered and typically shrouded in false promises.
“I used to ask myself: why they didn’t just deport all of the Jews straight away? But I realized, of course, that we would have tried to run away.”
“Tiso announced that the country would remain civilized, but each week or two, another measure was introduced against us. They took our property, musical equipment, eventually also our fur coats, jewelry and our money but life somehow just seemed to carry on.”
It was all a ruse; we were being sent to our deaths.
“When deportation orders were given, they told us to learn a manual trade for our new lives in the East, and they even provided workshops.” Tibor learned to be a bricklayer, while his father learned glass making. “It was all a ruse; we were being sent to our deaths. They turned up the heat of the water little by little until we were too weak and were trapped.”
On the last train
After the deportations began, some Jews were left to run some confiscated businesses, pharmacies, essential services including the cemetery. “Part of my father’s duties had been to officiate at the Jewish funerals. My brother and I also helped with the manual cemetery work.” Yosef Zvi was told that his family would be deported on the last train.
“We didn’t trust the authorities and every time there was a deportation, we went into hiding.”
In 1943 Germans began to lose ground against the Russians on the Eastern front. “By that time, almost all Jews were gone and only some remained in either Slovak Labor camps or waiting in limbo, as we did.”
This situation continued until 1944 when part of the Slovak army along with many civilians joined partisans and started an uprising against the Slovak fascist government. The Red Army was already in neighboring Ukraine in the east and in Poland across the northern border, so the rebels expected a quick victory. But the Germans crushed the uprising and took over the entire territory of Slovakia.
Escape to the forest
Amid aerial bombardment and mortar fire, the Nazi invasion had seen many Slovaks leave the cities to seek refuge in the outlying villages. “One night, accompanied by my grandfather who had been staying with us, we collected our things and left, pretending to be refugees. It was chaos.
“The Germans put up posters – ‘Come back to your homes, even Jews! You will have rights.’” The Spitz family was not convinced. “My parents said we would be crazy to go back to our homes.”
Briefly renting a room in a nearby village but knowing it still might take the Red Army months to break through on the Eastern front, Tibor’s brother Ernest came up with a plan.
“The Nazis were on every corner looking at documents. We were thinking of hiding under the ground in a forest for several months before my brother Ernest thought it over to the smallest detail. He said we needed to find a stream that would give us a water supply, in a steep valley far enough off the beaten track that no one would pass through.”
Ernest’s plan was to cut a triangle out of the slope near to the floor of the valley, which would provide the family with cover from the rain and shade from the sun.
“With neither pen, nor ink or paper to draw on, he used charcoal from the brick stove to draw a plan on the wall of the apartment we were hiding in, and we tried to remember every detail.”
After Ernest had located a steep valley that closely matched their needs, they began to prepare for their escape.
“During the day we would stay in the village, pretending to be war refugees helping the villagers with their harvest, but at nights we would build our shelter. We had neither tools, nor nails or ropes. Just a small military trench shovel we found, a small hatchet, and our bare hands.
“It was extremely difficult to dig the ground in a pristine forest, pull out boulders and rocks, cut roots, and move the dirt. Our hands were bloody. To make a hole to squeeze six people into the side of a steep hill took days. We improvised, used fallen tree trunks and branches and then camouflaged the area so that nothing would reveal any human presence.”
After completing the shelter and camouflaging the area the family disappeared into the forest.
Illustration by Spitz of how the family built their forest hideout
Surviving
“Not all Slovaks were fanatical believers in the Nazi victory, and the German Army was close to collapse, so it did not even cross our minds that we would have to spent such a long time in the snow-covered mountain. Also nobody forecast that 1944 would be the coldest winter of the century.
“We hid for 200 days, and every day was the longest I have ever experienced. As patrols on horseback and foot searched the forests, each day could have been our last.
“Under the ground, we didn’t feel the cold so much, and we also had three layers of clothes. I vividly remember that the hole was smaller than we needed and we could not stretch or lie out. We were squeezed into uncomfortable positions.
A painting by Spitz of the family’s underground hideout. Patrols were a common threat
“We lived like animals, like foxes, instinctively, surviving from one minute to the next. We ate berries, we knew the mushrooms that we could eat, and sucked the water from the snow and ice to stay alive. The forests and the wild nature felt like friends helping us to hide from the human predators and murderers.
“When I would go to find food, I would fill in my footprints with snow to prevent anyone discovering our whereabouts.”
“It was just a biological level of survival. That’s all.” Spitz says, “On the most basic level that you could imagine, nothing else mattered.”
Brush with death
In February 1944, just over two months into hiding, Ukrainian partisans assisting the Red Army and operating in the forest discovered the Spitz family.
“They lined us up, one of them guarded us while the other went through our things. My mother said we should pray, but my father just wanted it to be over with, they began arguing. ‘We are not your enemies,’ my mother pleaded with them. ‘It’s not worth it, Hitler wants to kill us all,’ my father interrupted her. Meanwhile, the soldiers began laughing watching them argue it out.”
The end of family, by Spitz
Amid the scene, Tibor hedged his bets and ran away, returning hours later after he hadn’t heard any shots.
“It turned out that they had been under strict orders not to kill civilians, but they had taken all of our clothes and the primitive food supply we had. It was a miracle to not be killed, but that winter was the coldest of the century and it was practically a death sentence.”
That night, the family wondered whether they should risk going to a nearby village to ask for help, or stay where they were and freeze or starve to death. “The SS Gestapo was absolutely desperate to kill us; we had witnessed enough of their crimes to know how much money they put on Jewish heads.”
Miracle
“As we were freezing, something incredible happened to us that I look at as a miracle. We were so cold, and from nowhere, there erupted a warm spring of water with a strong smell of sulphur. It warmed our tiny hole in the valley. It was such a healer and raised our spirits.”
With renewed hope, Tibor’s mother took the risk of asking for help. “These villages were stricken with poverty. Eventually she found partisans who also had very little but they were sympathetic to our family’s needs.”
Menorah, by Tibor Spitz, a message of hope
“If you are alive come out”
In April 1945 news of the end of the war reached the Spitz family hiding in the forest. Tibor was 14 years old. “One day peasants came through the forests calling out, ‘If you are alive, come out.’ This was our liberation.”
“At first, we went back to my grandfather’s home where he and our grandmother had raised their seven children.” The grandfather had suffered from the physical and emotional strain of the war. “Aside from us, all of his other children and grandchildren were wiped out. He was broken by the loss, and lasted just three months before he died.”
In July, 1945 the family returned to Dolny Kubin. “People looked at us like we were ghosts, and were even coming up to us and touching us. Because of all that had happened, we couldn’t have been real people.
“Life was so unpleasant, yet we tried to continue our lives. At the end of that summer, in September we went back to school. I had lost a year of studies and it was not easy.”
Later, the Spitz family moved to another town, Liptovsky Mikulas, 50km away, where Yosef Zvi once again took on the role of rabbi and cantor for the Jews that remained there. Later Tibor and Ernest headed to Prague to complete high school and then university. “I went on to study chemistry while my brother studied art.
“Prague was the best place to be as a chemistry student.” He scored the highest grades in his school. Meanwhile, Ernest was making a reputation as a talented artist.
“He was outspoken in fighting against the communist regime for artists’ expression. He opened a gallery, and shared messages through his paintings and murals promoting human rights.” Sadly, he died a young man aged 33. “I don’t have the proof, but I think the authorities were behind his death.”
Self portrait by Ernest Spitz, 1955, five years before his death aged 33
Judaism seen as a hostile ideology
“When I look back now, what motivates me to tell my story is my forced silence while living in communist Czechoslovakia. Judaism was considered a hostile, subversive ideology and Jewish suffering and the subject of the Holocaust became practically forbidden in politics, cultural life, art and literature alike.
“There was no outlet for either healing or reducing the pain. To the contrary, we were constantly reminded and suspected of having connections to democratic Israel that was oriented towards the West and became an adversary to the USSR. Religious institutions were persecuted but the accumulated traditional hatred and hostility against the Jewish religion became specifically intense. Judaism, with its wisdom and promotion of freedom, particularly irritated the dictators who considered the Jews to be subversive enemies.”
Tibor’s family
During his time in Prague, Tibor’s father also passed away. “He was taken to hospital with something trivial and never came out. He was not even 60.”
His sister Chava cared for their mother who died in Slovakia in 1986. “Chava later moved to Kfar Saba in Israel and was married and had children but died just ten years later.”
In 1967, aged 38, after graduating with a PhD in chemistry, Spitz was encouraged to meet Noemi, a daughter of the head of the Jewish community of Bratislava, and also a survivor of the Holocaust.
“I was raised deeply as a Jew, and so after the war it was absolutely essential to me that I could only marry a Jew. I was a good catch,” he laughs. “As a husband, I had everything a girl could imagine, I was educated, and had job prospects, but for years I resisted marriage as I felt a built-in conflict. Life was still far from normal, where a person could just walk up to you and call you a dirty Jew.”
Tibor and Noemi met and their second meeting was their wedding – a private ceremony in Prague City Hall.
Escaping communist rule
“God gives us the strength to survive.” Tibor says. “Survival is not only about dodging the bullets, God gave us a ‘seichel’ a brain, and we are given all the tools we need.”
Accepting a work contract in Cuba, Tibor and Noemi left Prague. Nine months later, they made a successful attempt to escape from a refueling Cuban airplane and became political refugees living in Canada. “At home the courts sentenced us to 15 years in prison.”
After nine years in Canada, they settled in the US in Kingston, where Tibor worked for a company pioneering magnetic recording heads.
Holocaust education
Over the years, Spitz has taken a prominent role in Holocaust education and is a regular speaker at universities, high schools and embassies in the US. Last year, he gave 26 lectures alone.
Delivering a lecture in May 2019 to Baruch College, NYC
“Jewish collective ignorance, disbelief in unlimited cruelty and lack of unity before and during the Nazi era cost us the lives of a third of all Jews on this planet. No other nation or country would have survived such impact, yet three years after it ended, the Jews proclaimed the existence of the State of Israel on the territory of their ancestors.
“I have visited Israel many times. It is a 2,000-year-old dream. It is a miracle and we live in a generation when it is happening before our eyes. We need to be proud of who we are.
“To be a Jew, for me, is to live with an uncompromising moral fight for justice. I was raised to be proud as a Jew and I still feel that. Every holiday is my favorite holiday, they each teach such important lessons with unprecedented wisdom. But now, I think to myself, I am alive and I see every day as a holiday.”
World leaders have also been guests at his lectures, especially from Slovakia of whom he has been invited to meet successive presidents.
“I stress the importance of seeing world events truthfully without adjusting them to be either more pleasant or harmless, to learn from our mistakes and the mistakes of others and to eliminate fear as an emotion.
“We should also remember that Western civilizations based their values on Jewish Scriptures connected to pursuing peace, cooperation and tolerance, including the Jewish principle ‘Do not do to others you do not want done to you.’”
Together with his wife, Noemi and former Slovakian President Andrej Kiska
Revisiting Dolny Kubin
In 2002, Tibor was invited by a film crew to try to relocate their hideout. “An old woman who remembered our family from the war times explained that for many years villagers had visited our hiding place to commemorate the superhuman endurance of a Jewish family hiding in their forest.
“After more than seven decades it was not easy to find the remnants of an underground place covering just a few square yards. Topography of the area had changed significantly as the forest wood was harvested and the areas covered by trees have significantly changed.
At the site in the forest of what remains of the hideout
Five years ago, an annual ‘Peace March’ began, with hundreds of people walking from the nearest village to the hideout, with Tibor and his wife participating as an eyewitness giving public lectures and interviews for local and national TV and radio.
“Revisiting brought memories of the terrible times and so many victims, too many of them children, my cousins, and schoolmates – one of them shot dead while also hiding in the forest. I also felt celebration for freedom and life as well. I was filled with an awareness of breathing, feeling, loving, and the ability to perceive colors, shapes and sounds to listen to music and human speech. Not to be hungry to the level of counting the last drop of energy before your body shuts down and to be in the presence of people you do not have to be afraid of.”
Artwork
Over the last few decades, Tibor Spitz’s artwork has been displayed in the US, Canada and Europe. His artwork shares a variety of themes, not only the Holocaust, but also Kabballah, Jewish heritage and identity. He paints, sculpts and works with ceramic, wood among other artforms.
The March to Eternity, artwork by Tibor Spitz
“In 2002 I received an offer to exhibit my Holocaust paintings in Bratislava, Slovakia. Slovak President Schuster sponsored the event, and arrived there personally together with other government representatives.”
Several additional exhibitions of Tibor’s artwork have also been held in the country since. The last was held in August 2019 in Dolny Kubin on the occasion of Tibor’s 90th birthday.
The Spitz’s living room is adorned with 50 of his own works. One of his latest creations was a wood carving shaped into a horse with a rider, in honor of a local bar mitzvah boy. “This piece of wood had a hole in it, he says. I found a good use for it.” He adds, showing how it became the horse’s eye. “I say, don’t cry over spilt milk, you can turn everything in life into a positive. You have to stay positive; if not, you live your life in disharmony.”’https://www.aish.com/ho/p/Hiding-from-Nazis.html?s=ss2
The following is not a surprise to anyone who is even a little discerning of Hollywood, communism and totalitarian governments.
‘This report examines the ways in which Beijing’s censors have affected and influenced Hollywood and the global filmmaking industry. Stories shape the way people think, and the stories told by Hollywood reach billions. As an anti-censorship organization dedicated to the celebration of open cultural and artistic expression, PEN America has sought to understand how one of the world’s most censorious regimes is extending its influence over the global locus for filmmaking here in the United States, shaping what is perhaps the world’s most influential artistic and cultural medium.
PEN America defends and celebrates freedom of expression in the United States and globally. Our work has included a decades-long advocacy engagement on China, where dozens of members of our sister PEN organization—the Independent Chinese PEN Center—have been imprisoned or persecuted by Beijing. The most influential of those colleagues was Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Liu Xiaobo, who was serving an 11-year prison sentence for his writings when he died of liver cancer.2 Our work has involved advocacy campaigns, detailed research reports, literary exchanges, and other efforts aimed at pushing back against Beijing’s censorship policies and its criminalization of dissent.
Over the last decade or more, as Beijing has expanded its global role as a world power, leading trade partner, sovereign investor, and cultural influence, these domestic patterns of censorship and control have extended beyond China’s borders. Beijing’s rising global influence has meant that the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) approach to censorship is making itself felt by publishers, authors, scholars, writers, journalists, and others who address topics of interest to China, regardless of their citizenship or where they are based. In 2015, PEN America documented Chinese publishers’ censorship of Chinese-language translations of foreign authors in our report Censorship and Conscience: Foreign Authors and the Challenge of Chinese Censorship. In 2016, we analyzed the CCP’s efforts to affect foreign media’s coverage of the country in Darkened Screen: Constraints on Foreign Journalists in China, and its enforced disappearance of five publishers (including two with foreign citizenship) connected to a Hong Kong bookstore in Writing on the Wall: Disappeared Booksellers and Free Expression in Hong Kong. In 2018, our research on social media censorship in China for Forbidden Feeds: Government Controls on Social Media in China included an analysis of how Beijing’s digital censorship affected users of Chinese digital platforms even when they were outside the country.
We have seen this exportation of censorious pressure elsewhere, so much so that there is a long—and growing longer—list of examples from the last few years alone: the major academic publisher Cambridge University Press attempting to pull titles from access by Chinese audience due to fear of CCP retaliation; the consistent degradation of press freedoms and civil liberties in Hong Kong; New Zealand publishers finding their books censored by Chinese printers; academics and students across the globe facing intimidation when they speak out on issues the CCP considers sensitive; and global brands forced to apologize simply for printing the words “Taiwan” or “the Dalai Lama.”
Increasingly, Beijing’s economic clout has allowed it to insist that others comply with its censorship strictures—or has led others to voluntarily internalize these strictures, even without being asked—as a prerequisite to doing business with or in the country. While individual compromises may seem minor or worthwhile in exchange for the opportunity to engage with China’s population, the collective global implications of playing by Beijing’s rules need to be recognized and understood before acquiescence to Chinese censorship becomes a new normal in countries that have prided themselves for their staunch free speech protections.
Hollywood is an important bellwether. The Chinese government, under Xi Jinping especially, has heavily emphasized its desire to ensure that Hollywood filmmakers—to use their preferred phrase—“tell China’s story well.”8 Within the pages of this report, we detail how Hollywood decision-makers and other filmmaking professionals are increasingly making decisions about their films—the content, casting, plot, dialogue, and settings—based on an effort to avoid antagonizing Chinese officials who control whether their films gain access to the booming Chinese market.
As U.S. film studios compete for the opportunity to access Chinese audiences, many are making difficult and troubling compromises on free expression: changing the content of films intended for international—including American—audiences; engaging in self-censorship; agreeing to provide a censored version of a movie for screening in China; and in some instances directly inviting Chinese government censors onto their film sets to advise them on how to avoid tripping the censors’ wires. These concessions to the power of the Chinese market have happened mostly quietly, with little attention and, often, little debate. Steadily, a new set of mores has taken hold in Hollywood, one in which appeasing Chinese government investors and gatekeepers has simply become a way of doing business.’ For the full report go to https://pen.org/report/made-in-hollywood-censored-by-beijing/
Nothing really surprises me anymore and especially in Christendom! Christian leaders sometimes get too big for their britches or as Solomon put it ‘Can a man take fire in his bosom, and his clothes not be burned?‘. Perhaps that is what has happened to Jerry Falwell Sr’s son Jerry Jr. Yes, ‘Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. is at the center of controversy once again, after posting (and then deleting) a racy picture of himself and a woman seemingly at a party on his yacht.
In the picture, Falwell and a woman, described as a friend, appear with their shirts hiked up and pants unzipped with the caption: “Lots of good friends visited us on the yacht. I promise that’s only black water in my glass.”
A video of the party also showed up on the internet, featuring Falwell and others at what appears to be a Trailer Park Boys themed party. The scenes are surprising, given that Falwell is the president of a the largest Christian university in the country. One guest in the video makes a vulgar gesture toward the camera. Some are wearing tight clothes with bellies exposed. Many have cigarettes dangling from their mouths.
Initially, some on social media questioned whether Falwell, a married father with three children, was truly the person in the photo with the woman.
At one point, Malachi O’Brien, a fellow with the Falkirk Center, a think tank launched by Liberty University, tweeted that the picture was not Jerry Falwell. But O’Brien later retracted his statement, saying, “It was Jerry, so I was wrong. It was a photo taken out of context of the other photos w/ it.”
I emailed Scott Lamb, vice president of communications at Liberty University, early Monday morning asking for comment, but he did not respond. In the meantime, several media outlets, including Relevant magazine, reported the photos.
Other Scandalous Photos
This is not the first time Falwell has been embroiled in a scandal involving photos.
In October, Falwell paid an undisclosed amount to settle a lawsuit brought by a former pool attendant who had become a part-owner with Falwell and his wife of a gay-friendly hostel in Florida. According to news reports, the attendant—and potentially others—may have had sexually compromising photos of the Falwells, which the attendant used as leverage in the case.
Also, in 2019, pictures of Falwell and his wife at a Miami nightclub sparked controversy after they were published in an article by Politico.
Initially, Falwell denied visiting the nightclub and said that the images were manipulated.
However, Seth Browarnik of World Red Eye, who took the photos , later published even more pictures of Falwell at the nightclub. Browarnik added that when he sold the pictures to Politico, he didn’t even know why Politico wanted them.
“We . . . were as surprised as anyone to discover that Mr. Falwell was among the partygoers we photographed,” Browarnik said.
This latest controversy involving Falwell comes just two-and-a-half weeks before classes resume at Liberty.
Earlier this summer, 35 black alumni called on Falwell to resign after Falwell tweeted a racist image, mocking Virginia Governor Ralph Northam. The leaders said Falwell’s tweet was a “microcosm” of his divisive rhetoric over the past several years and did not display the “Christlike leadership that the University deserves.”
Tibor Spitz, one year old, in 1930
The Spitz family in 1936. Tibor is on the left
Josef Tiso meeting Adolph Hitler. Slovakia aligned itself as a Nazi client state
Illustration by Spitz of how the family built their forest hideout
A painting by Spitz of the family’s underground hideout. Patrols were a common threat
The end of family, by Spitz
Menorah, by Tibor Spitz, a message of hope
Self portrait by Ernest Spitz, 1955, five years before his death aged 33
Delivering a lecture in May 2019 to Baruch College, NYC
Together with his wife, Noemi and former Slovakian President Andrej Kiska
At the site in the forest of what remains of the hideout
The March to Eternity, artwork by Tibor Spitz
whatyareckon 