Poster Child of Nazi Party Turns Out to Be Jewish
In 1935 Germany, Hessy Levinson Taft, then six months old, won a photo contest to be the face of the perfect Aryan baby. It is said that out of hundreds of photos, hers was chosen personally by the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, thus making her the poster child for the rise of the Nazi Party. Her image soon appeared on the cover of the Nazi family magazine Sun in the House, not to mention on posters and placards, and even postcards.
Ironically, Hessy wasn't Aryan at all! Her parents were Latvian Jews.
So how was her photo even entered in the contest?
The photographer who took the photo later admitted that, unbeknownst to her parents, he had submitted it, hoping to mock the Nazis' racial supremacy theory. "He succeeded," says the The Holocaust Chronicle, "beyond his wildest dreams."
The truth of the deception has been known for decades, but it's making new headlines as Taft, now 80 yrs old, recently donated a copy of the magazine cover to Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial. "I feel a little revenge," the Telegraph quotes her as saying. "Something like satisfaction."
Click the link to source above to view the magazine cover.
No one wants to be mocked, especially by those you're busy mocking! But that's how God's justice works. Mock Him or His people, and you can count on being the butt of your own joke in the end.
"The LORD mocks the mockers but is gracious to the humble" (Proverbs 3:34, NLT).
Spiritual Amnesia
"We all forget things sometimes," reports CBS news. 'It can even be funny, up to a point. But memory loss is often serious, [as] in the case of one rare form of memory loss - amnesia - sudden."
Can you imagine forgetting who you are?
One September day in 2001, a 33-year-old Texas woman named Norene got into her car to go to work. As she tells it ... “There's a freeway here in Dallas and I began driving up the freeway, and I got as far as Denton, Texas, but I didn’t know where I was.”
The next thing she remembers is waking up in a hotel room in an unknown city, without friends or family. She had no idea how she got there.
Norene explains, “When I woke up the next morning, I sat up and I didn't recognize the room. I didn't recognize the purse that was sitting on the floor, or the clothes that were lying over the chair. I didn't recognize myself in the mirror. I didn’t even know my name.”
This type of amnesia is very rare and comes on suddenly. It can last for hours or even months and affects only two-tenths of a percent of the population.
With Norene, it took her more than a year to recover her memory.
She explains, “You know, I lost 33 years, and I had to slowly regain that back. And it is precious to me. And I've done as much as I can and everything I can to build on that."
Perhaps there was a time when you were growing in Christ, and then something changed—the pressures of your job, marriage, or family overtook you. Maybe your health started to deteriorate. The next thing you know, you experience spiritual amnesia. You have forgotten all you know about resting and trusting in Jesus. You've forgotten what it means to cast all your burdens on him. You have forgotten his manifold promises.
You’ve forgotten who you are in Christ!
“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing" (John 15:5, NIV).
"But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more?" (Galatians 4:9, ESV).
"And since we are his children, we are his heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory" (Romans 8:17, NLT).
Grace Is Just Too Easy
Those who work hard to earn their salvation often respond to the message of grace with, “If that were true, if it really were a free gift with no strings attached, I’d accept it and then do whatever I wanted.”
What such a response reveals is that serving God isn't what they don't really want to be doing; they're only doing it to appease God.
Of course, such a reaction fails to comprehend the nature of the gift itself. The gift isn't a license to do whatever we want but a deposit of love that brings with it a whole new set of desires. Those who receive this gift are energized by the presence of the Holy Spirit to love God as freely as they have been loved by God. The gift of eternal life isn't replacing legalism with license, it's replacing legalism with love.
The lack of self-awareness among those who feel this way is truly astounding. Without realizing it, they are freely admitting that without the threat of God’s judgment, they would lack the motivation to please God. They are of the opinion that they need fear in order to keep them from going off the rails. What they don't realize is that God doesn't want their fear, He wants their love.
Just doing what we want isn’t love. Serving God after receiving salvation as a gift is love.
"Jesus replied, 'Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again'" (John 3:3).