By Charles Gardner, Israel Today—
With the annual Holocaust Memorial Day in view, it is worth being reminded not only of how many perished, but also of those who escaped the jaws of Nazism – often miraculously.
It is a little known fact that in spite of terrible persecution in Eastern Europe, thousands of Jewish people were very open to the message of Jesus. In fact, research is currently being undertaken on the so-called ‘Messianic’ believers who died in the Shoah.
Among those who experienced miraculous deliverance from the death camps was Jakob Jocz, a Lithuanian-born third generation follower of Yeshua who became an evangelist to the Jews of Poland under the auspices of CMJ (the Church’s Ministry among Jewish people), a British-based international society already reaping a plentiful harvest of souls throughout Europe and North Africa by the 1930s.
Such was the response to their work that the Warsaw branch CMJ chief Martin Parsons expressed the need for over 700 staff rather than the mere ten suggested at the time.
Jocz was sent to Birkenhead, near Liverpool, to train for Anglican ordination, and when he returned to Poland, he wrote: “In spite of anti-Semitism and increasing hatred, the Jews met us in many places with an open mind and with great readiness to hear the gospel.” Continue Reading…