“For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little.” (Isaiah 28:10)
‘The setting of this unusual passage is most sobering. Both the people and their priests in Israel’s northern kingdom (personified by “Ephraim”) were in gross rebellion and drunken disobedience to the Lord. They were even ridiculing God’s prophets who were trying to call them back, complaining that they were being treated like schoolchildren. In effect, they were saying: “Are you presuming to teach us as you would freshly weaned infants, going line by line, with rule after rule?”
Whereupon God replied that He would use people of another tongue to come in and teach them what they refused to learn from Him. These precepts He had been trying to teach them should have provided true rest and refreshment, but now learning these lessons would prove to be their undoing. What should have been a blessing to them would become their condemnation.
How desperately do modern Christians need to heed these same words! They profess to believe God’s Word, but they study it only superficially, compromise its doctrines, and disobey its instructions. “For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God” (Hebrews 5:12). Most Christians of today, like the Corinthians of old, are still “babes in Christ” (1 Corinthians 3:1). Thus, it really is necessary for their teachers to bring the Word of God to them “precept upon precept, line upon line, little by little.” “Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God” (Hebrews 6:1).’https://www.icr.org/article/12803/?utm_source=phplist9420&utm_medium=email&utm_content=HTML&utm_campaign=June+11+-+Here+a+Little%2C+There+a+Little
‘TEL AVIV, Israel (ChurchMilitant.com) – The International Criminal Court (ICC) is considering an investigation into Israel’s “blatant and extreme” violations of the Nuremberg Code after Jewish conscientious objectors to the nation’s mandatory COVID-19 vaccination regime sued the government for “crimes against humanity.”
Chairs on Tel Aviv beach: Israel introduces ‘medical apartheid’
The Anshe Ha-Emet (People of the Truth) fellowship — comprising Israeli doctors, lawyers, campaigners and concerned citizens — complained to the ICC prosecutor at the Hague, accusing the government of conducting a national “medical experiment” without first seeking “informed consent.”
“When the heads of the Ministry of Health as well as the prime minister presented the vaccine in Israel and began the vaccination of Israeli residents, the vaccinated were not advised, that, in practice, they are taking part in a medical experiment and that their consent is required for this under the Nuremberg Code,” the Anshe Ha-Emet suit states.
Tel Aviv-based firm A. Suchovolsky & Co. Law argues that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s agreement with Pfizer and Netanyahu’s own admission make it clear that Israel’s warp-speed vaccination campaign “is indeed a medical experiment and that this was the essence of the agreement.”
Netanyahu contracted with Pfizer to receive “a huge quantity of millions of vaccine portions” in exchange for giving the company secret and personal medical information about people “without their knowledge or consent in advance,” Anshe Ha-Emet alleges.
Labeling the China-virus inoculation as “an innovative medical treatment” that introduces a “synthetic mRNA to the body” (the vaccine has only recently obtained FDA approval in the United States — an approval that is not final and was obtained in an emergency procedure only) and detailing 22 side effects of the vaccine, the complaint notes that the “long-range influence of the treatment” is not scientifically tested and the “long-range effect and safety of the treatment on its recipients are unknown.”
“The Nuremberg Code, written after Nazi doctors were put on trial for performing their medical experiments on concentration camp prisoners, stipulates that it is deeply unethical to force or coerce a person to take part in medical experiments,” Jewish anthropologist Karen Harradine told Church Militant.
“Laying out guidelines for medical experimentation, the code states: ‘The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential,'” Harradine explained.
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla triggered outrage when he called Israel the “world’s lab” for the Pfizer-BioNTech experimental vaccine during an NBC News interview in February.
Bourla now says he regrets using the phrase “world’s lab” when referring to Israel, though he does not regret choosing Israel as a case study to examine the jab’s efficacy.
Bourla was forced to cancel his visit to Israel in March after it emerged he had not been fully vaccinated using the second shot of his company’s own vaccine because he does not want to “cut in line.”
Mark P. Dillon, head of the ICC Office of the Information and Evidence Unit, acknowledged receipt of the suit on March 13, noting that it would be treated according to “the provisions of the Rome Statute of the ICC.”
However, Dillon’s letter clarified that the acknowledgment letter does not mean “an investigation has been opened; norwill be opened by the Office of the Prosecutor.”
“The complaint for violation of the Nuremberg Code has been accepted and The Hague International Criminal Court is sitting on the bench. … We will continue to update,” Ruth Machnes Suchovolsky, a lawyer representing Anshe Ha-Emet, wrote on social media.
In an interview with French-Canadian poet and author Guy Boulianne, Suchovolsky described Israel’s medical dictatorship:
It’s terrible what’s going on here. People get sick with paralysis. And the media hide it. It is a real slaughter. A 34-year-old woman, mother of four, cannot move half of her body. She is in a wheelchair. They vaccinated 81% of the Israeli army indiscriminately. We don’t have a choice about what kind of world we’re going to experience for our children. We have to fight.
Meanwhile, in a blog article titled “31 Reasons Why I Won’t Take the Vaccine,” rabbi Chananya Weissman called the China-virus jabs “the greatest medical experiment in the history of the human race.”
“It is purposely not being portrayed as the greatest medical experiment in the history of the human race, and the fact that it is a medical experiment at all is being severely downplayed,” Weissman wrote.
The orthodox rabbi, author of seven books and columnist for The Times of Israel, explained:
Were they up-front with the masses, very few would agree to participate in such an experiment. Manipulating the masses to participate in a medical experiment under false pretenses violates the foundations of medical ethics and democratic law. I will not allow unethical people who engage in such conduct to inject me with anything.
The horror stories are already coming in at warp speed, but the politicians are not the least bit concerned; the medical establishment is brushing them aside as unrelated or negligible; the media is ignoring it; the drug companies are steaming ahead at full speed and those who raise a red flag continue to be bullied, censored and punished. … I will not be their next guinea pig in their laboratory. I will not risk being the next “coincidence.”
Ilana Rachel Daniel, health advisor for Israel’s new Rapeh Party — contesting the forthcoming elections on the platform of freedom from lockdowns and forced vaccination — has also protested Israel’s vaccine passport in a series of interviews.
The International Criminal Court at The Hague
“They’re making this green passport where half the population cannot get into theaters or malls or all sorts of things unless you have taken the vaccination. They are creating a medical apartheid,” Daniel said.
“This is what a Holocaust looks like in 2021,” Daniel told English journalist James Delingpole. “It’s terrible. It’s a very, very, very frightening situation. They are not letting children as young as 16 take their matriculation exams without taking this injection.”
Israeli Gilad Rosinger from Radiant Israel described the green passport system as a “pre-holocaust agenda.”
“If you do not submit to this wicked, demonic, tyrannical agenda; if you choose to say, ‘you know what, I’m not ready to participate in this experimental program,’ then you are now considered a second-class citizen in Israel,” lamented Rosinger, the grandson of a Holocaust survivor.’https://www.churchmilitant.com/news/article/israel-hauled-before-hague-for-vaccine-holocaust
My wife and I (who are in our 70’s) went to the GP yesterday and the China virus vaccine will be available to us in late March. It isn’t the Pfizer vaccine but who knows the long term effect these vaccines will have on the body? Well, here’s another article on the vaccine that China caused.
March 1, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — While in January a group of independent doctors concluded that experimental COVID-19 vaccines are “not safer” than the virus itself, a new analysis of vaccine-related death rates in Israel demonstrates that this may indeed be the case to dramatic levels.
A re-analysis of published data from the Israeli Health Ministry by Dr. Hervé Seligmann, a member of the faculty of Medicine Emerging Infectious and Tropical Diseases at Aix-Marseille University, and engineer Haim Yativ reveal, in short, that the mRNA experimental vaccine from Pfizer killed “about 40 times more (elderly) people than the disease itself would have killed” during a recent five-week vaccination period. Among the younger class, these numbers are compounded to death rates at 260 times what the COVID-19 virus would have claimed in the given time frame.
While the full mathematical analysis may be found in the article itself, the authors demonstrate how among “those vaccinated and above 65, 0.2 percent … died during the three-week period between doses, hence about 200 among 100,000 vaccinated. This is to be compared to the 4.91 dead among 100,000 dying from COVID-19 without vaccination.”
“This scary picture also extends to those below 65,” the researchers continued. During the five-week vaccination process “0.05 percent, meaning 50 among 100,000, died. This is to be compared to the 0.19 per 100,000 dying from COVID-19 (who) are not vaccinated … Hence the death rate of this age group increased by 260 (times) during this five-week period of the vaccination process, as compared to their natural COVID-19 death rate.”
As reported by IsraelNationalNews (INN), Seligmann is of Israeli-Luxembourg nationality, has a biology degree from Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and has written more than 100 scientific publications. INN reports the researchers “have no conflicts or interests other than having children in Israel.”
Yativ and Seligmann stipulate that even these “estimated numbers of deaths from the vaccine are probably much lower than actual numbers as it accounts only for those defined as COVID-19 deaths for that short time period and does not include AVC and cardiac (and other) events resulting from the inflammatory reactions.”
Nor do these numbers “account for long-term complications,” they write.
In addition, within several months they expect “mid- and long-term adverse effects of the vaccination as ADE (Antibody-dependent Enhancement)” begins to become manifest in those who have received the experimental Pfizer vaccine.
As explained by America’s Frontline Doctors (AFLDS), ADE “is when anti-COVID antibodies, created by a vaccine, instead of protecting the person, cause a more severe or lethal disease when the person is later exposed to SARS-CoV-2 in the wild. The vaccine amplifies the infection rather than preventing damage.”
AFLDS provides an example of a vaccine produced to fight the Dengue fever, which resulted in deaths of 600 children in the Philippines due to ADE, and the filing of criminal charges against the decisionmakers in 2019.
For these reasons and more, AFLDS and many other doctors strongly discourage the use of these experimental vaccines for most people while only acknowledging that it may be plausible for those over 70 years of age, yet acknowledging that such injections are “a higher risk than early or prophylactic treatment with established medications” (sources here, here, here, and here).
Given these death rates, Yativ and Seligmann also have harsh criticism for the severe pressure being imposed upon the population by Israeli authorities to receive these shots. According to INN, the researchers call these draconian efforts “a new Holocaust.”
In the past weeks, Israel’s government made headlines when they a “green pass” system, allowing people who have been injected to receive a green code, which then grants them entry into places such as entertainment and leisure facilities.
As the country reopens after a two-month lockdown, the green pass would be given only to those who had been injected, not to people who tested negative for the virus. The proposed benefits include access to “non-essential” businesses as well as not being required to self-isolate if identified as a close contact of a confirmed case of COVID-19, and not having to self-isolate after a return from a what the government calls a “red location.”
Despite there being no proof that these experimental vaccines actually prevent transmission of the virus, Israel’s minister for health, Yuli Edelstein, said upon the release of the vaccine “passport” that “(g)etting vaccinated is a moral duty. It is part of our mutual responsibility.” He went further, declaring, “Whoever does not get vaccinated will be left behind.”
The green pass needs renewing every six months, and despite holding one, an individual must still abide by masking and physical distancing rules. The Jerusalem Post also reported that legislation is being considered to grant employers the right to refuse unvaccinated people entry into the workplace.
‘If Israelis are confused by the fact that their government treats them like laboratory pets, if they wonder why their freedom to travel, to socialise or even earn a living have evaporated, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla produced a genuine answer yesterday. In an interview on NBC Bourla said:
“I believe Israel has become the world’s lab right now because they are using only our vaccine at this state and they have vaccinated a very big part of their population, so we can study both economy and health indices.”
I have no issue with medical experiments involving humans if the participants are fully aware of all possible circumstances and considerations involved in their consent. This didn’t happen in Israel. By means of ‘green passports,’ the government practically threatens to penalise anyone reluctant to participate in a ‘lab’ experiment for a giant pharmaceutical company with a very problematic record.
The results of this Pfizer-Israeli experiment aren’t necessarily encouraging. Though it may be possible, as some studies suggest, that most vaccinated people have at least short-term protection from Covid-19, no one can deny the astonishing fact that in just 8 weeks of mass vaccination the total number of Covid-19 deaths in the Jewish State almost doubled from the number accumulated in the prior ten months.
Since Israel morphed into a nation of Guinea pigs, a virus that used to prey on the elderly and those with severe health issues has now changed its nature completely. After just 2 months of a ‘successful’ mass vaccination campaign, 76% of new Covid-19 cases are under 39. Only 5.5% are over 60. 40% of critical patients are under 60. The country has also detected a sharp rise in Covid-19 cases amongst pregnant women, with more than a few in critical condition. In the last few weeks, new-born Covid-19 cases saw a large 1300% spike (from 400 cases in under two-year-olds on November 20 to 5,800 in February 2021).
The evidence collected in Israel points at a close correlation between mass vaccination, cases and deaths. This correlation points at the possibility that it is the vaccinated who actually spread the virus or even a range of mutants that are responsible for the radical shift in symptoms above.
When CEO Bourla was asked by NBC whether one could infect others after receiving two doses of the vaccine, Bourla admitted:
“It is something that needs to be confirmed, and the real-world data that we are getting from Israel and other studies will help us understand this better.”
If CEO Bourla isn’t sure whether his ‘vaccine’ prevents the spreading of the disease, why is he selling it around the world? Why should any government allow this substance being used until all necessary precautions have been taken? Furthermore, in the light of the emerging concern that the vaccinated can spread the disease (which CEO Bourla doesn’t deny), what is the meaning of the ‘green passport’? I guess that such a document could be easily replaced by a ‘gullible certificate’ awarded to those who were foolish enough to turn themselves in.
But Bourla doesn’t have to wait much longer for the ‘results’ from his ‘lab.’ I can provide him with the most relevant numbers assuming that either he or anyone else in Pfizer can read basic graphs. Every country that fell into the mass-vaccination trap has seen a similar unprecedented spike in cases and death.
The following collection graphs point at the undeniable correlation between mass vaccination and an exponential surge in Covid-19 cases and deaths. The spike in cases is often detected just 2-3 days after the launch of the mass vaccination campaign.
At the time Israel vaccinated itself, it was witnessing a sharp exponential rise in morbidity and death. Palestine, literally the same land, saw its number of cases and deaths plummeting
At the time Israel vaccinated itself, it was witnessing a sharp exponential rise in morbidity and death. Palestine, literally the same land, saw its number of cases and deaths plummeting
Bourla and PM Netanyahu should make an intellectual effort and explain to us how it’s possible that in Gaza, an open-air prison and one of the most densely populated pieces of land on this planet, the numbers of Covid-19 cases are minimal and without a ‘vaccine.’
But Palestine is not alone, as the situation in Jordan is similar. While Israel saw its Covid-19 death figures breaking through the roof, Jordan’s Covid-19 deaths from mid-November onwards look like a slippery slope.
Britain went through a similar, if not identical, tragic experience. It launched a mass vaccination campaign on 7 December just to see its numbers of Covid-19 cases and deaths rising like never before.
At the time, Britain saw its NHS crumbling, while the kingdom’s neighbours that were slow to make a decision on vaccination saw their Covid-19 numbers dropping rapidly.
I am obviously not the only one who sees that something went dramatically wrong in Israel. A group of dissenting researchers who looked into the numbers involved with the current Pfizer Israeli experiment published a detailed study two week ago. “We conclude” they wrote, “that the Pfizer vaccines, for the elderly, killed during the 5-week vaccination period about 40 times more people than the disease itself would have killed, and about 260 times more people than the disease among the younger age class.”
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”.
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
‘Ofogh TV marked the Iranian regime’s annual anti-Israel hatefest, “Al-Quds Day,” by airing a video titled “The Flood of Jerusalem,” which contained both Hebrew and Farsi.
“In the video, Jerusalem is completely flooded and black fedoras, typically worn by Orthodox Jews, are seen floating above the water and washed to shore,” MEMRI reports. The video concludes by quoting from Ayatollah Khomeini’s book: “If every Muslims were to pour one bucket of water, Israel would be washed away in the flood.”
‘It is the morning after the Beth Israel Synagogue in Los Angeles’ largely Jewish Fairfax district was vandalized Saturday night with graffiti that read “Free Palestine,” and “F- Israel.”
After Editor-in-Chief Lisa Daftari broke the story Saturday night on social media with a photograph of the graffitied building, prompting thousands of posts and comments condemning the vandalism, The Foreign Desk traveled to the synagogue Sunday morning to meet individuals scrubbing down the graffiti.
“I showed up this morning to clean off the shul (synagogue) and saw my cousin was already here doing the same,” said Judy Friedman, who said her great grandfather was the founding rabbi and her grandfather was the president of the congregation “for decades.”
“It’s just been our family’s synagogue, and I’m sad. I’m sad for our city. Just so sad for our city,” Friedman, who said she was alerted to the vandalism the night before by a text from the police department.
Ironically, breaking of glass and vandalism is all too familiar to the synagogue’s congregants, who are mainly Holocaust survivors and their families. Friedman tells The Foreign Desk that the congregation was founded by survivors.
“I don’t know what to say. Most people are not this. The overwhelming majority of police are not this and the overwhelming majority of protesters are not this. I don’t want this to define us,” Friedman, who is active in the progressive non-profit Zioness organization, said.
In response to some who questioned why the announcement board in the photograph was still about the holiday of ‘Purim’ which took place in March, Friedman confirmed that the synagogue had not been operating for a while, both because of COVID-19 and because they may now use the building for other purposes.
“ I feel sorry for the kids who started the peaceful rally and now might be afraid,” Friedman said. “This is not how it was supposed to be.”
The graffiti comes as protests consumed Los Angeles Saturday into Saturday night and throughout the country after George Floyd, 46, died in a pin-down by a white Minneapolis police officer, who pressed his knee on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes. The officer, Derek Chauvin, was arrested on Friday and charged with third-degree murder.
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
