‘Things are getting a little weird over in Europe with the Norwegian Nobel Committee that decides on who gets the Peace Prize every year. Yeah, the prize became a completely joke when it was given to Barack Obama for doing absolutely nothing. It wasn’t clear whether the bar would be kept that low forever but it looks like we’ve got our answer here in the Year of Our Weirdness, 2021. We should have known that The Lightbringer’s taint wouldn’t be that easy to wash away.
It started to get ridiculous last week when Black Lives Matter was brought into the faux Peace Prize lunacy, which Matt wrote about:
You read that correctly. I assure you this is not a satire piece from the Babylon Bee… except it was… last year.
In August of last year, the Babylon Bee published a prophetic article titled, “BLM Rioters Awarded Nobel Peace Prize.” It was hilarious. We laughed. How absurd! Obviously, it was too absurd to be taken seriously.
Except now it’s come true. For real. No joke.
And it’s no longer funny.
The Black Lives Matter movement, which is quite literally responsible for dozens of deaths and billions in property damage, has been nominated for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize.
It really can’t be funny anymore once it becomes true.
The Black Lives Matter movement was nominated by Norwegian MP Petter Eide, who credits the movement with forcing countries outside of the United States to address racism within their own societies. Or something.
The UN is an anti-Christian, anti-Capitalist organization as is the World Economic Forum. Now, what or who is the World Economic Forum? ‘The World Economic Forum is the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation.
The Forum engages the foremost political, business, cultural and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas.
It was established in 1971 as a not-for-profit foundation and is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. It is independent, impartial and not tied to any special interests. The Forum strives in all its efforts to demonstrate entrepreneurship in the global public interest while upholding the highest standards of governance. Moral and intellectual integrity is at the heart of everything it does.
Our activities are shaped by a unique institutional culture founded on the stakeholder theory, which asserts that an organization is accountable to all parts of society. The institution carefully blends and balances the best of many kinds of organizations, from both the public and private sectors, international organizations and academic institutions.
The UN and the World Economic Forum are a part of the New World Order that so many governments are seeking to implement. It was interesting to read that the World Economic Forum Founder and Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab is calling for a new kind of capitalism. What does Schwab mean by a new kind of capitialism? Well, he writes that ‘..we must rethink what we mean by “capital” in its many iterations, whether financial, environmental, social, or human. Today’s consumers do not want more and better goods and services for a reasonable price. Rather, they increasingly expect companies to contribute to social welfare and the common good.’ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/10/coronavirus-covid19-recovery-capitalism-environment-economics-equality/
Is the above true? Would you rather have a better automobile or a company that is a social welfare agent? These people are exactly what the Marxist/Communists are! When you go the the World Economic Forum’s web site it will be evident that this group is pushing the Marxist climate change scam along with many others programs that will not only CHANGE but CONTROL every facet of your life! They say ‘We are living in a more complicated and fast-changing world with interconnected problems and challenges.
Businesses, governments and civil society are undertaking initiatives to define these problems, search for solutions and take action.
But how do the world’s efforts to address these challenges feed into interconnected global systems, or attract wider public attention for more impact?
The Forum offers Platforms to integrate and aggregate these efforts:
Note the first Platform is Covid Action Plan. The China virus is being used to CHANGE forever your and my life! The World Economic Forum is like the UN in that it is anti-Christian and anti-Capitalist!
1John 2:18 Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time.
Here in New South Wales, Australia the state government is pouring millions if not billions into the unreliable renewables! Solar works when the sun shines and turbines when the wind blows! I know it and the politicians know it but they continue down this road to ruin. Just ‘Visit the Third World and you’ll quickly understand the importance of having power as and when you need it. In the Western World, an obsession with chaotically intermittent wind and solar will save you the trip.
Wind and solar ‘powered’ South Australians and Californians know all about Third World power supplies – with routine rationing, load shedding and mass blackouts part and parcel of their efforts to run on sunshine and breezes.
In Britain, power consumers are about to get their very own taste of mass power rationing, of a kind that’s more familiar to Cubans and North Koreans.
“Prominent Norwegian Critic of Islam Found Dead With ‘Visible Damage,’” by Igor Kuznetsov, Sputnik News, October 5, 2020 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):
The organisation Stop Islamisation of Norway, of which the deceased was an active member, seeks to counter the proliferation of Islam, which it sees as a totalitarian ideology that violates the Norwegian Constitution and contradicts democratic and humanitarian values.
Dan-Eivind Lid, 48, one of the centrepieces of the anti-Islam organisation Stop Islamisation of Noway (SIAN), has been found dead. The police suspect foul play, the Norwegian broadcaster NRK reported.
Lid was found dead in his apartment in Suldalen in Kristiansand, with what has been reported as “visible damage to the body”….
“One of our hypotheses is that the person has been subjected to a serious criminal act and died as a result of it”, a police spokesperson said at a press conference….
SIAN leader Lars Thorsen described Lid as “an active member of many years”, with whom he had a close relationship. Thorsen emphasised that Lid was “friendly and polite” and stressed that based on his knowledge of the deceased, he sees no visible motives other than political ones.
The UN is one sandwich short of a picnic but that aside ‘The UN has long proven to be an enemy of Western interests, including those of Israel, as it advances the jihadist cause of the Palestinian territories. It has also been pushing the UN Migration Pact, which is an infringement on the sovereignty of Western nations. So this latest news should come as no surprise.
The bizarre claims of the UN should, however, wake up Britons to the nefarious agenda of the UN, globalists and Islamic supremacists working in cahoots to undermine Britain as a free society — and in fact all free societies.
“UN Insists Record Boat Migrant Numbers ‘Not a Threat’ to Britain,” by Virginia Hale, Breitbart, October 1, 2020:
Record numbers of illegal immigrants crossing the English Channel are “not a threat” to Britain, and could even be a boon for taxpayers, the United Nations (UN) has claimed.
Speaking to the Commons Home Affairs Committee on Wednesday, representatives from the international body argued that Britain should open new channels that would allow many more low and no-skilled third world migrants to enter the country legally in order to deter individuals from paying people traffickers.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ (UNHCR) representative in the UK, Rossella Pagliuchi-Lor, told MPs that the thousands of people who have broken into Britain in recent months were not a problem.
Instead, she insisted that the only “dangers” of the situation were risks to the lives of migrants travelling across the Channel in dinghies, along with “a different sort of risk”, which she said was critical media reporting of the phenomenon.
Taking aim at “the sort of narrative that we’re seeing in the media and elsewhere that suggests these arrivals by boat present… a danger, a threat to the UK, when in fact [illegal immigrants are taking] simply a different route,” the UN official insisted that third world migrants are “not a threat”.
Genesis 7:11-12 “In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights. “
‘It is said that the tongue-twister “she sells sea shells on the seashore” refers to Mary Anning (1799-1847). However, Anning was not selling sea shells at Lyme Regis, but rather fossils that she had discovered on the beach. It is interesting that, while this pioneer paleontologist was not selling shells on the beach, there have been found fossil sea shells on mountains and well inland. When I was a youth, my family often traveled to the Peak District National Park, which is about as far away from the coast as you can get on the island of Great Britain, being about a three hours drive from the nearest sea. Yet, walking over the hills, we would always find fossil clams and the like. It is estimated that perhaps 95% of the fossils you will find are marine invertebrates. Evolutionary geologists think that there may have been periods when continents sunk lower than sea level, but the rock of which continents are formed is less dense than that of the ocean floor. So how do Christians explain this fact?
The CCP is moving with speed to take control of as much of the world as possible. Sadly, most of the politicians in the West are blind to this but the people of Hong Kong are not. They are paying a high price for fighting for the freedom we in the West seem to take for granted. How much longer will be able to be so blasé about what China is doing? Right now there are ‘Twelve local young fugitives detained in mainland China after being arrested while trying to flee to Taiwan have “selected lawyers” from a list approved by authorities across the border, Hong Kong’s security chief revealed on Saturday.Families for the 12, who are being held at a detention centre in Shenzhen’s Yantian district, had previously appointed their own counsel, and in a statement accused Secretary for Security John Lee Ka-chiu of trying to force the Chinese-approved lawyers on them.
Lee’s comments were the first by a Hong Kong government official on the legal representation for the fugitives since they were captured at sea on August 23 by the Chinese coastguard. They have been detained on suspicion of crossing the border illegally.
Our Internet has been down for almost a week so that is the main reason you have not heard from me. Well, we are back up and running. Now, this article by Don Boys just might be a little controversial to some, however, it will make you think; I hope!
‘Is it right to do one monstrous wrong in order to produce a world-changing positive impact on all deprived, desperate, deformed, diseased, and dying people of the world? The Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky, in perhaps the world’s greatest novel The Brothers Karamazov, seeks to answer that question.
The character Ivan Karamazov, a flaming atheist, blames God for permitting the innocent to suffer. (Don’t they all?) Then Ivan asks his brother Alyosha, a professed believer, if he would do a bad act if it resulted in the eternal happiness of mankind. His required act would be to torture an innocent child after which this eternal happiness would come into existence.
Ivan asks, “Would you consent to be the architect under those conditions? Tell me honestly!”
“No, I wouldn’t agree,” said Alyosha quietly.
Neither would I. The basic premise doing evil that good may come of it is flawed.
It is tempting to do one act of cruelty that would give sight to every blind person, permit the crippled to walk, and eliminate all deadly diseases in the world. However, my refusal would not be a lack of concern for others but because of personal honor, responsibility, and accountability. Every person on earth must give an account for his or her own actions.
I am not responsible for decisions made by world leaders; however, I must give a personal account for what I do and my motives for doing it. Even if doing wrong would result in much good, I cannot do it—no matter how strong my altruistic desires may be.
That now brings me to a very practical, personal, and problematic decision made in time of war. What are my obligations before God for actions in time of a national emergency?
I have often silently questioned the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (neither was a vital military target) to end WWII and restore relative peace, permanency, and prosperity to the world. After much thought, I would not have dropped those bombs nor done the bombings of Hamburg and Dresden!
It has been long recognized that bombing of enemy barracks, communication centers, railroads, airports, and fuel depots was acceptable, but never targeting civilians. Churchill changed that followed by Hitler’s nightly bombing of London.
No, I am not a pacifist. I believe in personal defense and I believe a nation must defend itself. Japan attacked us; we had to respond. Roosevelt had cut off Japan’s oil supply, basically a death blow to an oil-starved nation, so the Japanese leaders retaliated; however, they did attack us. But was there justification for dropping the atomic bombs killing 185,000 innocent civilians?
The experts told us that up to a million American lives would be lost if an invasion of Japan were launched. Moreover, the argument was made that in killing so many people in nuclear blasts, it would drive Japan to the negotiating table; however, Japan had been willing to surrender but not “unconditionally” as required by the Allied Powers. That is what continued the war.
If I had been a soldier during WWII, I suppose I would have been a pilot since I later became one and a plane owner. I would have had no problem being a fighter pilot since that is a one-on-one fight between two soldiers in defense of their nation’s objectives. However, if I had flown over Hamburg with a load of bombs knowing there were thousands of innocent people below that had nothing to do with the war, I could not have pushed a button and released the bombs on innocent people. From 42,000 to 45,000 people died in the destruction of Hamburg with more people dying in that bombing alone than in the entire German bombing campaign against England!
Many would call my refusal to bomb German civilians treason to my country but I’m convinced it is faithfulness to God; however, this is one time I must not be too hard on my critics. I might be, notice I said, I might be wrong; but my Bible-based conscience says I’m right.
During the closing stages of the war in 1945, Churchill reveled in bombing the German populace and refugees as they tried to escape from Germany. He knew terror worked. Churchill revealed his desire to use terror bombing in a memorandum in November 1942 in which he declared that “all the industrial cities should be attacked in an intense fashion, every effort being made to terrorise and paralyse the population.” Yes, Churchill was a terrorist, but he was “our” terrorist and President Roosevelt agreed with his decision to terrorize and kill civilians. Stalin was delighted.
Dresden was an old city with few military targets (and not one anti-aircraft gun) and was crowded with refugees from Breslau fleeing the Russian advance into Germany. Breslau had experienced a killing field that cost the lives of 170,000 civilians. The refuges and Dresden citizens, thinking they were relatively safe were shocked on the night of February 13, 1945 to see 800 RAF bombers drop more than 1,400 tons of bombs and more than 1,100 tons of incendiaries over the city creating a massive firestorm that incinerated an estimated 25,000 to over 300,000 civilian deaths!
The Dresden bombing was the most controversial and tragic bombing of the war. Even a certified butcher would have difficulty defending it.
About six months later, President Truman decided to end the war by using the atomic bomb against Hiroshima and Nagasaki; but contrary to what most people think, it was not a universally approved decision. However, it was a popular decision in America at the time.
Under Secretary of the Navy Ralph Bird, General Curtis LeMay, Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, former President Herbert Hoover, and President Truman’s chief of staff Admiral William Leahy had voiced protests about using the bomb but their protests had no impact on Truman’s decision.
The President, no doubt thinking it was the wise decision, ordered the Japanese cities to be bombed in August of 1945. In 1946, Truman ordered a U.S. Bombing Survey to be done a few months after the two Japanese cities were bombed, and it decided, “Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.”
The use of nuclear bombs killing 185,000 innocent people within a few days and injuring 135,000 more was unnecessary, and the nuclear genie was released from the bottle.
It was discovered years later that many famous, powerful American officials disagreed with the decision to use the Bomb.
Norman Cousins, a famous author, editor, and aide to General MacArthur, asked the general about dropping the bomb and “He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor.”
General Eisenhower confessed, “The Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing” (Newsweek, 11/11/63).
Soon after the bombing of Japan, Admiral William F. Halsey, commander of the Third Fleet, was publicly quoted as stating that the atomic bomb was used because the scientists had a “toy and they wanted to try it out…The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment…It was a mistake to ever drop it.”
Concerning the war in Europe, Hitler said, “Terrorism is the best political weapon for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death.” The definition of terrorism is “the targeting of innocent civilians to achieve a political goal.” Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin used terror against a German terrorist with a bad haircut and funny mustache who had grandiose military ambitions.
The Allies, ostensibly taking the high ground in all matters, decided to become temporary terrorists!
Only God requires and deserves unqualified obedience. However, to quote Alyosha, the youngest of the Karamazov brothers, “If God is dead, everything is permitted.” But God is not dead. He’s not even sick. And it is He to whom each person is responsible.
The dropping of atomic bombs on Japan and the unnecessary bombing of civilians was wrong; but then only a fool or fanatic says military leaders always make the right decisions.
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
1John 2:18 Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time. As the United Nations plays footsie with the Marxist, Muslim, Leftist, Loony, Lovies Christians are being persecuted for their faith.
‘A Christian teenager was sexually assaulted by his Muslim employer in early June. The boy’s father and brother were then beaten for trying to seek justice for him. — Persecution.org, June 19, 2020, Pakistan.
“These Muslim Fulani herdsmen have been attacking our communities because we are Christians. Their desire is to take over our lands, force us to become Muslims, and if we decline, they kill us….” — Ibrahim Agu Iliya, Morning Star News, June 3, 2020, Nigeria.
Police killed a man after he cited his Christian faith as reason not to falsify his testimony, as police were urging him to do….Police were trying to get Younas to recant his eyewitness testimony against a Muslim family accused of murder…. When beating him did not yield results, they tried to bribe him…. “During the attack, one of the officers shouted, ‘We will teach him a lesson for insulting us!'” — Persecution.org.; June 25, 2020, Pakistan.
“Is it wrong to have another religion? Is Christianity wrong?” — Fitri Handayani, a woman who converted from Islam to Christianity, describing her ordeals at the hands of her family, YouTube; June 17, 2020, Indonesia.
“These are our houses. In ten years, none of you will be left here and then your homes will be ours anyway.” — Kurdish representative in Qamishli to Christian family; World Council of Arameans (Syriacs); June 17, 2020, Syria.’ https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16274/persecution-christians-june-2020
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
