Area residents meet Holocaust survivor
Pastor Vincent Estill, Bible Way Baptist Church in Rossville, and David and Margaret Bean, Ringgold City Directors, Christians United for Israel (CUFI) have returned from an informative sevenday tour of Poland with a CUFI group of 73 individuals with representation from across the U.S. and Brazil.
Holocaust survivor and historian Irving Roth led “the Living Witness Journey.” Roth set a goal to make all who traveled to Poland with him aware and witnesses of the Nazi atrocities against the Jewish.
He said, “That way, when I’m gone, you will be able to testify to the truth of what happened here.”
In 1945, Roth was 15 years old when Auschwitz concentration camp was liberated by the allies and American soldiers.
During the tour the mood was somber as the group traveled through the Treblinka, Majdanek, and AuschwitzBirkenau extermination and concentration camps. A candle-lighting service in the Lopuchowo Forest, where a mass extermination of the Jewish people occurred, was a heart wrenching experience. As Pastor Estill, David and Margaret looked at the ashes of the deceased, their shoes, prosthetic devices and other personal items, they heard from Roth the heartbreaking story of his experience.
Pastor John Hagee, founder and chairman of CUFI comments: “The Holocaust was the most horrific act of human depravity of the 20th century — and one of the most wicked in all of history — and its painful memory is a stark reminder that evil flourishes when it is not confronted by good men and women. Yet the memory of this horrific fact of history is quickly disappearing along with the last surviving members of the generations that were eyewitnesses to Hitler’s mass murder of six million Jews.” (CUFI Newsletter, 2019)
Margaret Bean commented after the tour, “As Christians and as members of Christians United for Israel, we must all make every effort to remember what happened during the Holocaust, lest we forget and we allow history to repeat itself.”
Yom Hashoah, a commemoration of all people who perished in the Holocaust, will take place on Wednesday, May 1, at 7 p.m. at the Jewish Cultural Center, 5461 North Terrace Road in Chattanooga. A candle-lighting ceremony, a Holocaust survivor, and stories of their parents’ experiences by children of survivors will take place that evening. There is no cost to attend.
Article submitted by David and Margaret Bean, Ringgold volunteer city directors, Christians United for Israel.