Apples of Gold Jan/Feb 2026
I will never forget my first days serving with The Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry. Those days were 50 years ago, but they still feel like yesterday. This reminds me of Psalm 90:4, concerning how God sees time: “For a thousand years in Your sight are like yesterday when it is past, and like a watch in the night.”
I feel that my life truly began when I was 10 years old. That was when the Nazis came to Poland and started to persecute the Jews. They forbade us to buy and sell bread, seeking to starve us. Soon after, they led us to the death camps, initiating the Holocaust.
In those days, my mother looked at my two brothers, my sister, and me and saw how hungry we were. I was the youngest of her children, but she said to me, “You must learn to be strong. From now on you are no longer my child—now you are a man.” I was only a child, as gaunt as a skeleton. How could I be strong?
I was not afraid to be killed. In fact, I was jealous of those who were killed and no longer had to suffer. Many others in the Warsaw Ghetto gave money to the German soldiers so that they would be shot dead. I would have been happy to receive a bullet, but I had no money to pay them.
I spent six years of my childhood living this way. When the Nazis finally left Poland, I came to Israel with the help of the Jewish Agency for Israel. But when we arrived, no one greeted us with roses. A war for survival was coming to Israel, so I was ushered off the ship and into the army. Eight Arab countries were coming to destroy one little nation of Jewish people, many of whom had spent six years languishing in those death camps.
We Holocaust survivors did not come to rule but simply to live in the land God promised to the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Gen. 35:12). But the Arab countries came to Israel with confidence, hoping to cast us into the sea. We numbered only 500,000 people to the 150 million inhabitants of those countries, helpless on our own.
But God told us, “Fear not, you worm Jacob, you men of Israel! I will help you” (Isa. 41:14). He also said, “You are My servant, I have chosen you and have not cast you away” (v. 9). Living in a new land alone, I was also comforted by the words of Psalm 27:10: “When my father and mother forsake me, then the Lord will take care of me.”
God has never forsaken Israel. He has sent us out “as lambs among wolves” (Lk. 10:3), and we have obeyed. Our church congregation started with only a few people, and now nearly 300 attend. We enter the synagogues to share His love, though we sometimes face trouble from the ultra-Orthodox. But He has blessed us with great success in our ministry. Truly He promised, “Those who sow in tears shall reap in joy” (Ps. 126:5).
Though I am now old in body, I am young in spirit. I gladly bring the Lord’s salvation to the stiff-necked in Israel. This is not easy, even dangerous; but it is my greatest joy to bring His salvation to those who are far from Him. Through the prophet Isaiah, He said, “You are My servant, O Israel, in whom I will be glorified” (Isa. 49:3).
The apostle Paul wrote, “Let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart” (Gal. 6:9). Today, we are reaping the good fruit we have sown. We have prayed for the Lord to use us in His service, and we see His providence with our own eyes. We thank Him for always being with us and hearing our prayers.
From The Friends of Israel archives
