Faces of Iron: Sarah

Stand for Israel | June 4, 2024

(Photo: IFCJ)

“If you can leave, leave… because the Germans are coming.”

This is the warning that Sarah and her family received more than eighty years ago, a warning that saved their lives. The Jewish family fled their hometown in Poland as the Nazis approached, set on ridding Europe of its Jews. Sarah’s family fled on a train, reaching Siberia, where they lived in the forest, near starvation, until war’s end.

Sarah’s family survived the war. They survived the Holocaust, unlike six million other Jewish people. But when they returned to their hometown, “There was nobody left.”

There was no one and nothing to come back to. So Sarah’s father said, “We are going to Israel.”
And for the past eight decades, this strong and faithful 88-year-old Holocaust survivor has made her life in Israel, in the land God promised His people, raising a family of her own and being part of the modern Jewish state’s growth in the wake of the Jewish people’s darkest chapter. It was, as it is for all Israelis, sometimes a difficult life. But it was a good life.

But then, on October 7th, Sarah again found herself targeted, simply because of her Jewish faith.
That morning, as rocket sirens sounded on the southern Israel kibbutz where she lives, Sarah was surprised burst into her home. These weren’t terrorists. These were Israelis, like herself. These were young people who’d been enjoying a nearby music festival when it was attacked by Hamas terrorists, and who had fled, reaching the nearby homes in search of safety and shelter.

The young people and Sarah reached her home’s bomb shelter just as the terrorists reached her community.

“They locked the door,” Sarah recalls. “There was a lot of bombing outside.”

Sarah and those in her shelter survived the attacks, unlike 1,200 others who were murdered by Hamas that day. As a child, after surviving the Holocaust, Sarah once thought, “It will never happen again.” But today, she is still unable to return to her home. Today, she and the rest of Israel find themselves under attack, as hatred and violence are once again targeting the Jewish people.

But today, because of the support of The Fellowship and our Christian friends around the world, this survivor also has strength and hope.