from: THE TWENTIETH TRAIN

Retold from Marion Schreiber's The Twentieth Train by Dr. Jim Denison

The date was April 19, 1943. A train departed from Mechelen transit camp in Belgium bound for the death camp at Auschwitz. It was the twentieth such train to make the journey and was transporting more than 1,600 Jews to their deaths.

Three men were determined to stop it and free as many prisoners as they could. Their leader was a young Jewish doctor named Youra Livchitz. Brilliant and charismatic, Youra was also a writer and actor. Fluent in Latin, Greek, German, and French, his future was unlimited. He was joined by two non-Jewish friends, Robert Maistriau and Jean Franklemon.

The three were armed only with a lantern, a pistol, and two sets of pliers. They covered the lantern in red tissue paper to simulate a stop light and set it on the train track. When the train came to a halt, Youra fired his pistol to draw the attention of the Nazi soldiers. Robert and Jean jumped onto railway cars and used their pliers to pry open the doors.

Inspired by their actions, some of the Jewish prisoners sprang into action as well, making their way out of the cars and leaping to the ground. In all, 231 Jews fled the train that night. Twenty-three died in the attempt, while the others escaped into the countryside. Not one of them was betrayed back to the Nazis by the Belgian people.

Youra Livchitz was not so fortunate. He escaped the Nazis that night and continued his efforts on behalf of his fellow Jews, but he was eventually betrayed by a traitor and arrested. He escaped prison but was betrayed again and executed. Jean Franklemon and Robert Maistriau survived the war, dying in 1977 and 2008, respectively.

The Dallas Holocaust Museum displays a quotation by Albert Einstein:

"The world is too dangerous to live in-not because of the people who do evil, but because of the people who sit and let it happen."

Scripture is clear: "Whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin" (James 4:17).

What evil is God calling you to prevent? What "right thing" is He calling you to do?

I'll close with a statement by Youra Livchitz displayed prominently at the museum:

"The finest of all human struggles is against what we are and for what we should become."

Let's renew that struggle today.