| Aug 11 @ 2:12 PM |
The Truth of Love
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Heaveninawildflower
Posts: 15,205
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I received this from a friend, who happens to be Jewish - somehow I think this is God at work, without a single prayer being said as much as felt. I've Snoped it, and they're still researching it.
[QUOTE]
A Girl With An Apple
(This is a true story and you can find out more by Googling Herman Rosenblat. He was Bar Mitzvahed at age 75)
August 1942. Piotrkow, Poland.
The sky was gloomy that morning as we waited anxiously. All the men, women and
children of Piotrkow's Jewish ghetto had been herded into a square.
Word had gotten around that we were being moved. My father had only recently died from
typhus, which had run rampant through the crowded ghetto. My greatest fear was that
our family would be separated.
'Whatever you do,' Isidore, my eldest brother, whispered to me, 'don't tell them your
age. Say you're sixteen.
'I was tall for a boy of 11, so I could pull it off. That way I might be deemed valuable as a worker.
An SS man approached me, boots clicking against the cobblestones. He looked me up and
down, and then asked my age.
'Sixteen,' I said. He directed me to the left, where my three brothers and other
healthy young men already stood.
My mother was motioned to the right with the other women, children, sick and elderly people.
I whispered to Isidore, 'Why?'
He didn't answer.
I ran to Mama's side and said I wanted to stay with her.
'No, 'she said sternly.
'Get away. Don't be a nuisance. Go with your brothers.'
She had never spoken so harshly before. But I understood: She was protecting me. She
loved me so much that, just this once, she pretended not to. It was the last I ever
saw of her.
My brothers and I were transported in a cattle car to Germany.
We arrived at the Buchenwald concentration camp one night weeks later and were led
into a crowded barrack. The next day, we were issued uniforms and identification
numbers.
'Don't call me Herman anymore.' I said to my brothers. 'Call me 94983.'
I was put to work in the camp's crematorium, loading the dead into a hand-cranked elevator.
I, too, felt dead. Hardened, I had become a number.
Soon, my brothers and I were sent to Schlieben, one of Buchenwald's sub-camps near Berlin.
One morning I thought I heard my mother's voice.
'Son,' she said softly but clearly, I am going to send you an angel.'
Then I woke up. Just a dream. A beautiful dream.
But in this place there could be no angels. There was only work. And hunger. And fear
A couple of days later, I was walking around the camp, around the barracks, near the
barbed-wire fence where the guards could not easily see. I was alone.
On the other side of the fence, I spotted someone: a little girl with light, almost
luminous curls. She was half-hidden behind a birch tree.
I glanced around to make sure no one saw me. I called to her softly in German. 'Do you
have something to eat?'
She didn't understand.
I inched closer to the fence and repeated the question in Polish. She stepped forward.
I was thin and gaunt, with rags wrapped around my feet, but the girl looked unafraid.
In her eyes, I saw life.
She pulled an apple from her woolen jacket and threw it over the fence.
I grabbed the fruit and, as I started to run away, I heard her say faintly, 'I'll see
you tomorrow.'
I returned to the same spot by the fence at the same time every day. She was always
there with something for me to eat - a hunk of bread or, better yet, an apple.
We didn't dare speak or linger. To be caught would mean death for us both.
I didn't know anything about her, just a kind farm girl, except that she understood
Polish. What was her name? Why was she risking her life for me?Hope was in such short
supply, and this girl on the other side of the fence gave me some, as nourishing in
its way as the bread and apples.
Nearly seven months later, my brothers and I were crammed into a coal car and shipped
to Theresienstadt camp in Czechoslovakia.
'Don't return,' I told the girl that day. 'We're leaving.
I turned toward the barracks and didn't look back, didn't even say good-bye to the
little girl whose name I'd never learned, the girl with the apples.
We were in Theresienstadt for three months. The war was winding down and Allied forces
were closing in, yet my fate seemed sealed.
On May 10, 1945, I was scheduled to die in the gas chamber at 10:00 AM.
In the quiet of dawn, I tried to prepare myself. So many times death seemed ready to
claim me, but somehow I'd survived. Now, it was over.
I thought of my parents. At least, I thought, we will be reunited.
But at 8 A.M. there was a commotion. I heard shouts, and saw people running every
which way through camp. I caught up with my brothers.
Russian troops had liberated the camp! The gates swung open. Everyone was running, so
I did too. Amazingly, all of my brothers had survived;
I'm not sure how. But I knew that the girl with the apples had been the key to my survival.
In a place where evil seemed triumphant, one person's goodness had saved my life, had
given me hope in a place where there was none.
My mother had promised to send me an angel, and the angel had come.
Eventually I made my way to England where I was sponsored by a Jewish charity, put up
in a hostel with other boys who had survived the Holocaust and trained in electronics.
Then I came to America, where my brother Sa
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| Aug 11 @ 2:28 PM |
The Truth of Love |
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kattsmeow
Posts: 21,239
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I can finish this story for you Heaven.
Eventually I made my way to England where I was sponsored by a Jewish charity, and put up in a hostel with other boys who had survived the Holocaust. I trained in electronics. Then I came to America, where my brother Sam had already moved. I served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, and returned to New York City after two years. By August 1957 I’d opened my own electronics repair shop. I was starting to settle in.
One day, my friend Sid who I knew from England called me. “I’ve got a date. She’s got a Polish friend. Let’s double date.”
A blind date? Nah, that wasn’t for me. But Sid kept pestering me, and a few days later we headed up to the Bronx to pick up his date and her friend Roma. I had to admit, for a blind date this wasn’t so bad. Roma was a nurse at a Bronx hospital. She was kind and smart. Beautiful, too, with swirling brown curls and green, almond-shaped eyes that sparkled with life.
The four of us drove out to Coney Island. Roma was easy to talk to, easy to be with. Turned out she was wary of blind dates too! We were both just doing our friends a favour. We took a stroll on the boardwalk, enjoying the salty Atlantic breeze, and then had dinner by the shore. I couldn’t remember having a better time.
Herman and Roma
We piled back into Sid’s car; Roma and I sharing the backseat. As European Jews who had survived the war, we were aware that much had been left unsaid between us. She broached the subject, “Where were you,” she asked softly, “during the war?”
“The camps,” I said, the terrible memories still vivid, the irreparable loss. I had tried to forget. But you can never forget.
She nodded. “My family was hiding on a farm in Germany, not far from Berlin,” she told me. “My father knew a priest, and he got us Aryan papers.”
I imagined how she must have suffered too, fear a constant companion. And yet here we were both survivors, in a new world.
“There was a camp next to the farm.” Roma continued. “I saw a boy there and I would throw him apples every day.”
What an amazing coincidence that she had helped some other boy. “What did he look like?” I asked.
“He was tall, skinny, hungry. I must have seen him every day for six months.”
My heart was racing. I couldn’t believe it. This couldn’t be.
“Did he tell you one day not to come back because he was leaving Schlieben?” Roma looked at me in amazement. ”Yes. “
“That was me!”
I was ready to burst with joy and awe – flooded with emotions. I couldn’t believe it. My angel!
“I’m not letting you go,” I said to Roma. And in the back of the car on that blind date, I proposed to her. I didn’t want to wait.
“You’re crazy!” she said. But she invited me to meet her parents for Shabbat dinner the following week. There was so much I looked forward to learning about Roma, but the most important things I always knew – her steadfastness, her goodness. For many months, in the worst of circumstances, she had come to the fence and given me hope. Now that I’d found her again, I could never let her go. That day, she said “yes.” And I kept my word. After nearly 50 years of marriage, two children and three grand-children, I have never let her go
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| Aug 11 @ 2:54 PM |
The Truth of Love
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bevrice
Posts: 11,145
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Yes, that is a wonderful story. I first read it in Guideposts Magazine.
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| Aug 11 @ 2:54 PM |
The Truth of Love |
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uncrazy
Posts: 1,489
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Beautiful story ladies. This is how God I see in the bible works with man...merciful, compassionate, loving. All traits found in christianity, buddhism, and many others.
The unloving acts of God, grasped tightly by so many yet using the words "his works are beyond our human understanding of God" to me is nothing but an excuse to keep something available to justify new inhumane acts in his name should they hold the reins of power.
There are yet more pockets of people ready to hang a man behind a store in America for his color or creed than we might dare imagine.
Thank you.
[Edited on 8/11/2008 3:00 PM]
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| Aug 11 @ 2:58 PM |
The Truth of Love
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Heaveninawildflower
Posts: 15,205
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Thanks Katt!
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| Aug 11 @ 3:09 PM |
The Truth of Love |
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bevrice
Posts: 11,145
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Here is another one I love. It was in Guideposts Magazine, too, the first time I read it.http://www.praisethelordwestbabylon.com/TableCloth.html
The brand new pastor and his wife, newly assigned to their first ministry, to reopen a church in suburban Brooklyn, arrived in early October excited about their opportunities. When they saw their church, it was very run down and needed much work. They set a goal to have everything done in time to have their first service on Christmas Eve.
They worked hard, repairing pews, plastering walls, painting, etc, and on December 18 were ahead of schedule and just about finished. On December 19 a terrible tempest - a driving rainstorm hit the area and lasted for two days. On the 21st, the pastor went over to the church. His heart sank when he saw that the roof had leaked, causing a large area of plaster about 20 feet by 8 feet to fall off the front wall of the sanctuary just behind the pulpit, beginning about head high. The pastor cleaned up the mess on the floor, and not knowing what else to do but postpone the Christmas Eve service, headed home. On the way he noticed that a local business was having a flea market type sale for charity so he stopped in. One of the items was a beautiful, handmade, ivory colored, crocheted tablecloth with exquisite work, fine colors and a Cross embroidered right in the center. It was just the right size to cover up the hole in the front wall. He bought it and headed back to the church.
By this time it had started to snow. An older woman running from the opposite direction was trying to catch the bus. She missed it. The pastor invited her to wait in the warm church for the next bus 45 minutes later. She sat in a pew and paid no attention to the pastor while he got a ladder, hangers, etc., to put up the tablecloth as a wall tapestry. The pastor could hardly believe how beautiful it looked and it covered up the entire problem area.
Then he noticed the woman walking down the center aisle. Her face was like a sheet. "Pastor," she asked, "where did you get that tablecloth?" The pastor explained. The woman asked him to check the lower right corner to see if the initials, EBG were crocheted into it there. They were. These were the initials of the woman, and she had made this tablecloth 35 years before, in Austria. The woman could hardly believe it as the pastor told how he had just gotten the Tablecloth. The woman explained that before the war she and her husband were well-to-do people in Austria. When the Nazis came, she was forced to leave. Her husband was going to follow her the next week. He was captured, sent to prison and never saw her husband or her home again.
The pastor wanted to give her the tablecloth; but she made the pastor keep it for the church. The pastor insisted on driving her home, that was the least he could do. She lived on the other side of Staten Island and was only in Brooklyn for the day for a housecleaning job.
What a wonderful service they had on Christmas Eve. The church was almost full. The music and the spirit were great. At the end of the service, the pastor and his wife greeted everyone at the door and many said that they would return. One older man, whom the pastor recognized from the neighborhood continued to sit in one of the pews and stare, and the pastor wondered why he wasn't leaving.
The man asked him where he got the tablecloth on the front wall because it was identical to one that his wife had made years ago when they lived in Austria before the war and how could there be two tablecloths so much alike. He told the pastor how the Nazis came, how he forced his wife to flee for her safety and he was supposed to follow her, but he was arrested and put in a prison. He never saw his wife or his home again all the 35 years in between.
The pastor asked him if he would allow him to take him for a little ride. They drove to Staten Island and to the same house where the pastor had taken the woman three days earlier. He helped the man climb the three flights of stairs to the woman's apartment, knocked on the door and he saw the greatest Christmas reunion he could ever imagine
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| Aug 11 @ 11:31 PM |
The Truth of Love
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Jankia
Posts: 9,092
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Fascinating stories ladies and thankyou for the joy I it gave me in reading them. 
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| Aug 12 @ 12:06 AM |
The Truth of Love |
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kattsmeow
Posts: 21,239
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Your welcome Heaven! A truely inspiring story.
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| Aug 29 @ 10:59 AM |
The Truth of Love
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Loreli
Posts: 20,161
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How sweet!
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| Sep 14 @ 9:13 PM |
The Truth of Love |
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16knots
Posts: 3,627
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Love isnt so good. It has a component missing....
Wisdom.
Without it love can be as destructive as any thing else.
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| Sep 14 @ 9:20 PM |
The Truth of Love
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Aeromuse
Posts: 2,573
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Killjoy 
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| Sep 14 @ 9:24 PM |
The Truth of Love |
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16knots
Posts: 3,627
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It's true though but when that is understood, it provides an understanding to develop a deeper meaningful love....
but.... but......
another negative aspect of love is that it can be transient.....
...but..... but....... understanding that can help develop a permanent love.
Now, we can have love not just as love but love based on wisdom and permanent....
some real love... love...
Oh okay I'll shut up!
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| Sep 14 @ 9:28 PM |
The Truth of Love
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kattsmeow
Posts: 21,239
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Love is patient, love is kind.
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It is not rude, it is not self-seeking.
It is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails.
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| Sep 15 @ 6:24 AM |
The Truth of Love |
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bevrice
Posts: 11,145
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THE SMELL OF RAIN http://www.2jesus.org/inspstories/rain.html
A cold March wind danced around the dead of night in Dallas as the Doctor walked into the small hospital room of Diana Blessing. Still groggy from surgery, her husband David held her hand as they braced themselves for the latest news.
That afternoon of March 10, 1991, complications had forced Diana, only 24-weeks pregnant, to undergo an emergency cesarean to deliver the couple's new daughter, Danae Lu Blessing. At 12 inches long and weighing only one pound and nine ounces, they already knew she was perilously premature. Still, the doctor's soft words dropped like bombs.
'I don't think she's going to make it', he said, as kindly as he could. "There's only a 10-percent chance she will live through the night, and even then, if by some slim chance she does make it, her future could be a very cruel one". Numb with disbelief, David and Diana listened as the doctor described the devastating problems Danae would likely face if she survived. She would never walk, she would never talk, she would probably be blind, and she would certainly be prone to other catastrophic conditions from cerebral palsy to complete mental retardation, and on and on. "No! No!" was all Diana could say. She and David, with their 5-year-old son Dustin, had long dreamed of the day they would have a daughter to become a family of four. Now, within a matter of hours, that dream was slipping away.
Through the dark hours of morning as Danae held onto life by the thinnest thread, Diana slipped in and out of sleep, growing more and more determined that their tiny daughter would live - and live to be a healthy, happy young girl.
But David, fully awake and listening to additional dire details of their daughter's chances of ever leaving the hospital alive, much less healthy, knew he must confront his wife with the inevitable. David walked in and said that we needed to talk about making funeral arrangements. Diana remembers 'I felt so bad for him because he was doing everything, trying to include me in what was going on, but I just wouldn't listen, I couldn't listen.' I said, "No, that is not going to happen, no way! I don't care what the doctors say; Danae is not going to die! One day she will be just fine, and she will be coming home with us!" As if willed to live by Diana's determination, Danae clung to life hour after hour, with the help of every medical machine and marvel her miniature body could endure. But as those first days passed, a new agony set in for David and Diana. Because Danae's under-developed nervous system was essentially 'raw,' the lightest kiss or caress only intensified her discomfort, so they couldn't even cradle their tiny baby girl against their chests to offer the strength of their love.
All they could do, as Danae struggled alone beneath the ultraviolet light in the tangle of tubes and wires, was to pray that God would stay close to their precious little girl. There was never a moment when Danae suddenly grew stronger. But as the weeks went by, she did slowly gain an ounce of weight here and an ounce of strength there. At last, when Danae turned two months old, her parents were able to hold her in their arms for the very first time. And two months later - though doctors continued to gently but grimly warn that her chances of surviving, much less living any kind of normal life, were next to zero. Danae went home from the hospital, just as her mother had predicted. Today, five years later, Danae is a petite but feisty young girl with glittering gray eyes and an unquenchable zest for life. She shows no signs, what so ever, of any mental or physical impairment. Simply, she is everything a little girl can be and more - but that happy ending is far from the end of her story.
One blistering afternoon in the summer of 1996 near her home in Irving, Texas, Danae was sitting in her mother's lap in the bleachers of a local ballpark where her brother Dustin's baseball team was practicing. As always, Danae was chattering non-stop with her mother and several other adults sitting nearby when she suddenly fell silent. Hugging her arms across her chest, Danae asked, "Do you smell that?" Smelling the air and detecting the approach of a thunderstorm, Diana replied, "Yes, it smells like rain." Danae closed her eyes and again asked, "Do you smell that?" Once again, her mother replied, "Yes, I think we're about to get wet, it smells like rain. Still caught in the moment, Danae shook her head, patted her thin shoulders with her small hands and loudly announced, "No, it smells like Him. It smells like God when you lay your head on His chest."
Tears blurred Diana's eyes as Danae then happily hopped down to play with the other children. Before the rains came, her daughter's words confirmed what Diana and all the members of the extended Blessing family had known, at least in their hearts, all along. During those long days and nights of her first two months of her life, when her nerves were too sensitive for them to touch her, God was holding Danae on His chest and it is His loving scent that she remembers so well.
And Jesus called the children around Him ...
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| Sep 17 @ 4:47 PM |
The Truth of Love
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16knots
Posts: 3,627
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Albert Einstein:
Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.
Albert Einstein:
How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?
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| Sep 21 @ 2:30 AM |
The Truth of Love |
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waterfire
Posts: 2,905
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Great posts ladies!
Kats I loved
Love is patient, love is kind.
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It is not rude, it is not self-seeking.
It is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails. :
Someone who has felt love knows the truth of it and also knows that wisdom and love go hand in hand
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| Sep 21 @ 7:51 AM |
The Truth of Love
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sail_dancer
Posts: 8,495
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It is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails. I think someone should read this to the god of Abraham. Based on this, he is far from a loving god.
Peace
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| Sep 21 @ 10:36 AM |
The Truth of Love |
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16knots
Posts: 3,627
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Someone who has felt love knows the truth of it and also knows that wisdom and love go hand in hand
Actually no, they dont go hand in hand.
Love is part of compassion. Wisdom can exist without love but not without compassion which contains love.
Love: strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties;
2: attraction based on sexual desire : affection and tenderness felt by lovers;
3: affection based on admiration, benevolence, or common interests;
Compassion: a sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it.
Wisdom:1 accumulated philosophic or scientific learning : knowledge b: ability to discern inner qualities and relationships : insight c: good sense : judgment d: generally accepted belief;
2: a wise attitude, belief, or course of action.
Compassion and wisdom go hand in hand.
Love can exist with or without wisdom and compassion hence why in some circumstances it can be evil.
Ironically this is why there are so many in matchdoctor 
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| Sep 21 @ 12:50 PM |
The Truth of Love
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waterfire
Posts: 2,905
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Katt's post made me think of a different love not that chemical reaction we feel around another but a deeper one.
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| Sep 21 @ 8:32 PM |
The Truth of Love |
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ServantOfChrist2
Posts: 4,131
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Hey Sail_Dancer...those words of Katt's post that you apparently think quite alot of, are taken from His Word: 1Corinthians 13:4-8a. So I'm pretty sure the God of Abraham, (who you apparently know so little of), already knows them. He is the Author.
(So you won't have to tell Him about them. )
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