Abandoned

Today is Yom HaShoah, April 21, the day people worldwide remember the six million Jews killed in Hitler’s “great experiment” of eliminating the Jewish populous from Germany, Poland, and the surrounding countries.

On this date in 1965, I was sitting on some rocks by the Dead Sea talking with a remarkable older Jewish couple, both of whom were professors at the University of London, about the history of Israel and particularly the Dead Sea. This was their first trip to Israel and like me, (and I have been to Israel many times) one is never the same after visiting this Holy Land. The Dead Sea, the lowest point on the face of the earth and reputedly the location of Sodom, ancient city destroyed by God because of sin. (Ezekiel 47:8-9, Genesis 18, Zechariah 14:8). As was the case many times, when I visited the holy sites in Jerusalem, Hebron, Bethlehem, I wept openly that I had been privileged to visit these places where our blessed Lord had walked. I remember standing on the balcony of a hotel in Tiberius (and the manager had been kind enough to put this old blind man in a room at the top right, over the sea), my heart was thrilled as I thought of our Lord walking on the water there.

These two elderly German Jews, both victims of the Holocaust, were overcome with emotion, but they had so much empathy for me as they described the Dead Sea (1,248 ft deep, 42 miles long and 11 miles wide, 33.7% salinity). They wanted to make sure that I saw Masada, on an ancient cliff, the ruins of Herod’s palace, and so we went up on the cliff to Masada on cable car and they described the ancient artwork on the walls of the palace. ( It is significant to say here, that young Jewish military officers are required to scan the cliff on which Masada is located) It was in 70 AD that the last group of devoted Jews held out against the Roman legions, resulting in the death of all.

This Jewish couple from London was overcome with grief when they remembered their treatment in Auschwitz, where all of their family died in the German experiments conducted there. He said to me, with tears running down his face, “It was the mercy of God that brought the two of us out of Auschwitz and has allowed us to see these marvelous places.” When they learned that I was a disabled veteran, they both threw their arms around me and said, “It was not only the mercy of God, but the goodness of the people of the United States that we are alive.” I wish I could have shared with these two, a blessed Christian promise, when our Lord returns, and His feet touch the Mount of Olives, an opening will be made to the Dead Sea, and the salty water will become sweet.

Again, while traveling in Panama, I met another Jewish couple, Holocaust survivors, who still had their numbers tattooed on their left arms. Who, at the time, were living in Minneapolis. They shared with me details of their torture, which makes me want to throw-up when I hear the crocodile tears of liberal newscasters in this country, at this time, talking about how terrorist are treated with their nice food and nice accommodations at the POW camp in Cuba (GITMO). Those prisoners are treated better then this old 100% disabled veteran and from the reports, made public, eat much better than I do.

I traveled with this couple in South America to Rio de Janeiro, because I would eventually wind up in Buenos Aires. They wanted me to meet one of their friends, who was an artist in Rio, a survivor of Auschwitz, since they had never before met a blind art collector.  I did buy two paintings from him and I have since sold them in California.  But, one of the most remarkable experiences of my life, since I could not see the abuse, this artist pulled of his shirt and wanted me to feel the healed welts and broken bones of his back, dealt him by Nazi guards. I was dealing with Jewish people but I wanted to say to him, another Jew, perhaps the most brilliant man of the Middle East, educated at Tarsus, a remarkable conversion, stoned, beaten, shipwrecked, and at last beheaded, had as his remarkable testimony, “I bear in my body the marks of our Lord Jesus.” (Galatians 6:17)  Paul, who gave us sixteen books of our New Testament, went through, perhaps the first holocaust. When I have toured several Holocaust museums, when I saw a large piece of soap in a synagogue in North Africa made from the very flesh of Jews in the Holocaust, I thought of Lincoln's words at Gettysburg, “The world will not long remember what happened here.”

In this world of isolation due to total blindness, I listen to several radios and I am keenly aware of how little the people of this country prize their democratic republic, the opportunity available to everyone, the individuals, both military and civilian, who have given so much to make it possible and I weep with the knowledge of the unconcern of most citizens, even the members of my own family and the friends who know me best.

For many years, I have been writing of my experiences as a disabled citizen, as a world traveler, as a committed Christian. For many years, pithy letters were published in newspapers, knowledgeable articles were published in disability, religious and political magazines (Command, Help and Food, Christianity Today).  But, with the takeover of politically correct, liberal atheist politicians and media writers, there is no room for anything decent about, anything anymore, nor is their interest in the knowledge of those who have “been there and done that.”

From years of Bible study, historical investigation, to say nothing of my academic scientific scholarship, we now have a nation of illiterate intellect. In my world of business, real estate, securities and other interest in which even a blind man can excel, I asked one of my book keepers, “Why is it that these people who work for me have so little respect for me.”  She said, “They have no respect for anyone, not even their own parents.” 

On that day, when the Vietnam war was in full protest and I was still in the hospital, a Korean conflict veteran, mostly students and others from Chapel Hill (where I had graduated) and at Duke University, were in the streets. I was on the second floor of the Duke Eye Center (still undergoing eye surgery which was finally finished at Massachusetts Eye Infirmary) directly across the street from the veterans hospital, when a black nurse in terrible terms, told this patient in the bed, how much she hated the military and then proceeded to spit on me.  Shortly after, my mother and sister, after a long trip, had arrived, cleaned me up and then made arrangements to get me out of Duke hospital, when Dr. Banks Anderson Jr assured us that nothing like that would happen again. I knew then, just I am more certain now, than ever that the Holocaust, not just against Jews, but in this country, against everything that is decent is already going on without furnaces. On this Memorial day to the six million Jews who were slaughtered in the death chambers of Hitler, we should remember the holocaust of the most innocent of life, small babies, killed at the rate of 3,500 each day in the abortion industry of this nation, largely financed through planned parenthood and by your tax dollars. 

I am one of the fortunate ones, lived a long life, known the success of business and, though blind, have sensed the smells and sounds of an exciting world which our Creator made for us. I have stood in the great cemetery in the Philippians where over 17,000 are buried, I have stood in the great cemetery of Normandy where over 9,000 are buried. We gave what we did for your right of free speech and all the other rights of the American citizens.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.