Christian Space 360

(Jerusalem, Israel) — In an historic moment in what I call “faith diplomacy,” the top Muslim religious leader in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia will visit the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in southern Poland for the first time on Thursday.

He will also participate a delegation of Muslim and Jewish leaders commemorating the liberation of Auschwitz 75 years ago this week.

The cleric’s name is Sheikh Mohammad Al-Issa, head of the Muslim World League in Riyadh.

I have met the Sheikh several times during my past two visits to the Kingdom and have spent many hours in dialogue with him. My Evangelical Delegation colleagues and I consider him a true friend who is genuinely interested in respectful inter-faith relations and advancing moderate Islam.

The Times of Israel has just published an excellent article previewing the Sheikh’s visit and quoting several experts on why it is significant.

“Joel Rosenberg, an Evangelical Christian and an American-Israeli author who has met with Issa twice in Saudi Arabia, said that he believed the Saudi religious leader has the backing of the Riyadh’s leadership to make the trip to Auschwitz,” the Times reported.

“He definitely would not be making this visit if the crown prince did not want him to do so,” Rosenberg said in a phone call, referring to Issa as in the “close orbit” of Prince Mohammed.

I commend the full story to your attention.

Let’s pray this trip helps 1.6 billion Muslims around the world learn more about the Holocaust, Jewish history and the importance of a sovereign and strong State of Israel. Let’s pray, too, that the Sheikh and his colleagues will one day be able to accept my invitation to come visit the Jewish, Christian and Muslim holy places here in Jerusalem and throughout the Land of Israel.

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• To pre-order my next thriller, THE JERUSALEM ASSASSIN, please click here. 
• To buy copies of THE PERSIAN GAMBLE in paperback, please click here. 
• To buy copies of THE KREMLIN CONSPIRACY in paperback, please click here.

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• Give your family a trip to Israel & Egypt in 2020! Join Lynn and me on The Joshua Fund’s “Prayer & Vision Trip” next October. Here are all the details and prices. Register today. 

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• Would you like to make a secure, tax deductible donation to The Joshua Fund (www.joshuafund.net)? Come help us educate and mobilize Christians to bless Israel and her neighbors in the name of Jesus, strengthen the Church in the Epicenter, preach the Gospel, teach the Word of God, care for the poor and needy in Israel (both Jews and Arabs) with food and other humanitarian relief, care for Holocaust survivors, and care for Syrian and Iraqi refugees and others. The Joshua Fund is a member in good standing of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability. Please click here to learn more. Thanks so much.

The post BREAKING: Senior Saudi Muslim leader set for “groundbreaking” visit to Auschwitz Thursday. Historic moment in faith diplomacy. (Honored to be quoted in a must-read Times of Israel article.) appeared first on Joel C. Rosenberg's Blog.

(Jerusalem, Israel) — As leaders from 46 countries arrive here to mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, The Jerusalem Post published a new column of mine on four of the most important — yet all-but-forgotten — heroes of the Holocaust.

Their stories urgently need to be told. Their names must be remembered. I say it’s high time to make a major motion picture or television series about such extraordinary heroism in the face of such barbaric evil.

To read the full column, please click here. For now, allow me to share a few key excerpts:

• “[On] April 7, 1944, the greatest escape in human history took place. That was the day that two Slovak Jews – Rudolf Vrba, only 19 at the time, and Fred Wetzler, barely 25 – managed to break free from the worst of the Nazi death camps….
• “The following month – on May 27, 1944 – two more Jewish men were miraculously able to slip out of Auschwitz in the dead of night. Arnost Rosin, then 30 years old, was also from Slovakia. Czeslaw Mordowicz, 23, was from Poland.
• “The four not only planned their escapes together, they eventually linked up in Czechoslovakia. There they wrote a first-hand, detailed, eyewitness report of the mass murder underway inside the death camp.
• “The report, known as ‘The Auschwitz Protocol,’ was translated into numerous languages and smuggled throughout Europe. Copies were sent to Hungary to warn the Jewish community of what the Nazis were really up to. Copies were also sent to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Washington and Prime Minister Winston Churchill in London, urging both men to take decisive action to liberate Auschwitz or at least bomb it out of existence….”
• “Sir Martin Gilbert, the British historian, has noted that their ‘Auschwitz Protocol’ was responsible for ‘the largest single greatest rescue of Jews in the Second World War.’ True, some Hungarian 300,000 had already been gassed by the time the report came to light. Still, the four men are credited with ultimately helping save 120,000 Jews in Hungary….”

In 2014, with the critical and wonderful assistance of the foremost Holocaust scholars at Yad Vashem, I wrote The Auschwitz Escape, a novel inspired by these remarkable men, hoping to draw more attention to them.

Yet, as I note in the Post, “more books and articles and essays need to be written about them. Conferences need to be held about them. Better yet, documentary films and dramatic, narrative TV programs and movies need to bring their story to the world.”

Note: What follows are the covers of the memoirs written by Vrba and Wetzler. Also pictured are some of my meetings with scholars at Yad Vashem — including with Dr. Yehuda Bauer, Dr. Robert Rozett and Dr. Susanna Kokkonen — back in 2013 and 2014, including viewing an actual copy of The Auschwitz Protocol preserved in the research vaults under Yad Vashem.

• I Escaped From Auschwitz by Rudolf Vrba

• Escape From Hell: The True Story of the Auschwitz Protocol by Alfred Wetzler 

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• To pre-order my next thriller, THE JERUSALEM ASSASSIN, please click here. 
• To buy copies of THE PERSIAN GAMBLE in paperback, please click here. 
• To buy copies of THE KREMLIN CONSPIRACY in paperback, please click here.

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• Give your family a trip to Israel & Egypt in 2020! Join Lynn and me on The Joshua Fund’s “Prayer & Vision Trip” next October. Here are all the details and prices. Register today. 

____________________

• Would you like to make a secure, tax deductible donation to The Joshua Fund (www.joshuafund.net)? Come help us educate and mobilize Christians to bless Israel and her neighbors in the name of Jesus, strengthen the Church in the Epicenter, preach the Gospel, teach the Word of God, care for the poor and needy in Israel (both Jews and Arabs) with food and other humanitarian relief, care for Holocaust survivors, and care for Syrian and Iraqi refugees and others. The Joshua Fund is a member in good standing of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability. Please click here to learn more. Thanks so much.

The post In 1944, the greatest escape in history took place — from Auschwitz. Four heroes need to be remembered. How about a major motion picture to tell the story? appeared first on Joel C. Rosenberg's Blog.

(Jerusalem, Israel) — God forbid that life should imitate art.

“As over 40 world leaders gather in Jerusalem this week to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz at the event Remembering the Holocaust: Fighting Antisemitism, the Palestinian Authority wants to disrupt the ceremony,” reports the Palestinian Media Watch. “The official P.A. daily published an op-ed yesterday literally calling for murder in order to ruin the ceremony.”

“One shot will disrupt the ceremony and one dead body will cancel the ceremony,” argued Palestinian columnist Yahya Rabah. To read the full quote, please click here. 

Such a threat — especially one published in an official daily paper — is unconscionable. It should be widely and firmly denounced by the Palestinian leadership and all who seek peace. Yet it underscores the urgency of getting Palestinians and Israelis back into direct peace talks, something the White House insists it is determined to do.

In the meantime, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz says the 5th Annual World Holocaust Forum will be  “the biggest event since the establishment of the state.” With it comes the biggest security and logistical operation here since 1948.

With Vice President Mike Pence, Russian President Vladimir Putin, British Crown Prince Charles and 43 other world leaders arriving in the next 48 hours, thousands of Israeli police officers, border guards, soldiers, intelligence officers and counter-terrorism commandos will be deployed this week. Their mission: to secure Ben Gurion International Airport, all roads into Jerusalem, the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial site where the main events will be held, all the hotels where the delegations will be staying and all the venues that will host side events and prevent any possible terror plots. 

Most Israelis are thrilled to see our capital the epicenter of global attention this week. Some, however, are chafing at all the road blocks, road closures and security checkpoints that will disrupt daily life for hundreds of thousands of people. But it’s all necessary. The last thing Israel can afford is a security breach at a moment like this.

That said, the newly published threat is eerily evocative of my forthcoming political thriller, The Jerusalem Assassin. In it, the American President calls for a peace summit in Jerusalem. Leaders converge on the Holy City. Israeli forces are deployed to protect them. A shadowy and previously unknown terror group is planning for the unthinkable. And Special Agent Marcus Ryker and his team have just 48 hours to hunt down and stop the terrorists before events spin out of control. The novel releases on March 17th. More details as we get closer.  

In the meantime, please join me in praying for the “peace of Jerusalem” — let’s especially pray that this week will be quiet and everyone who comes and goes will be safe. Thanks.

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• To pre-order my next thriller, THE JERUSALEM ASSASSIN, please click here. 
• To buy copies of THE PERSIAN GAMBLE in paperback, please click here. 
• To buy copies of THE KREMLIN CONSPIRACY in paperback, please click here.

—————————

• Give your family a trip to Israel & Egypt in 2020! Join Lynn and me on The Joshua Fund’s “Prayer & Vision Trip” next October. Here are all the details and prices. Register today. 

____________________

• Would you like to make a secure, tax deductible donation to The Joshua Fund (www.joshuafund.net)? Come help us educate and mobilize Christians to bless Israel and her neighbors in the name of Jesus, strengthen the Church in the Epicenter, preach the Gospel, teach the Word of God, care for the poor and needy in Israel (both Jews and Arabs) with food and other humanitarian relief, care for Holocaust survivors, and care for Syrian and Iraqi refugees and others. The Joshua Fund is a member in good standing of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability. Please click here to learn more. Thanks so much.

The post BREAKING: Palestinian columnist calls for assassination as 46 world leaders arrive in Israel. Eerily evocative of plot of my forthcoming novel, “The Jerusalem Assassin.” Here’s the latest as thousands of Israeli police and soldiers deploy. appeared first on Joel C. Rosenberg's Blog.

(Jerusalem, Israel) — Evil, unchecked, is a prelude to genocide.

With attacks against Jewish people spiking in the U.S., Europe and around the world, more than 40 presidents, prime ministers and other global leaders are coming to Israel this week to take a stand against anti-Semitism and to mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.

May I encourage you to take time this week to remember and discuss the horrors of the Holocaust with your children and grandchildren, neighbors and co-workers?

As a new decade begins, let this be a time to reflect on the horrific history of Nazi Germany and to discuss the importance of taking a stand against Jew-hatred — and all hatred — in our world.

If you need some resources, here are several that I’ve developed over the years:

• Watch this brief video report I made when I had the honor of visiting Auschwitz with several Evangelical pastors and their wives. 
• Read The Auschwitz Escape, or listen to the audio book. “As the Nazi war machine rolls across Europe, young Jacob Weisz is forced to flee his beloved Germany and join an underground resistance group in Belgium. But when a rescue operation goes horribly wrong, Jacob finds himself trapped in a crowded cattle car headed to southern Poland. Sentenced to hard labor in the Auschwitz labor camp, Jacob forms an unlikely alliance with Jean-Luc Leclerc, a former assistant pastor who was imprisoned for helping Jews. They’ve been chosen for one of the most daring and dangerous feats imaginable―escape from Auschwitz. With no regard for their own safety, they must make it to the West and alert the Allies to the awful truth of what is happening in Poland before Fascism overtakes all of Europe. The fate of millions hangs in the balance.”
• Read a column I wrote — “Remembering Four Heroes of the Holocaust” — that shares some of the true stories that inspired my novel, The Auschwitz Escape.  
• Watch this speech I gave to 10,000 Christian students at Liberty University — “Author Joel Rosenberg warns students to sharpen faith to fight evil.” 

Hope those are helpful. Now, here’s more on this week’s events here in Israel.

“At the invitation of the President of the State of Israel, over forty royals, presidents, prime ministers and parliamentary leaders from Europe, North America and Australia, will attend the Fifth World Holocaust Forum, entitled Remembering the Holocaust, Fighting Antisemitism,” notes a press release from Yad Vashem. 

“The World Holocaust Forum organized by the World Holocaust Forum Foundation in cooperation with Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, will take place on 23 January 2020 at the Warsaw Ghetto Square in Yad Vashem, Jerusalem,” the released stated. “The World Holocaust Forum will be broadcast live via satellite feed worldwide and via Yad Vashem’s website and Facebook page.“

The post From Pence to Putin, 40-plus leaders to arrive in Jerusalem this week to mark 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. How will you and your family remember the Holocaust this week? Here are a few suggested resources. #NeverForget #NeverAgain appeared first on Joel C. Rosenberg's Blog.