Depravity!

December 7th, 2019| Topic: RaMbLeS | 0

Josef Levkovich was a teenage slave laborer in the a Nazi concentration camp.

I was working at the Plaszow concentration camp, dismantling the remnants of a Jewish cemetery. The cemetery’s wrought iron fence—all 150 tons—was needed to make weapons for the Nazi slaughter of millions across Europe.”

Josef was high atop the fence, removing some bricks, when Austrian SS chief Amon Goth rode up on his horse.

Up on the fence, my job was to carefully remove each brick, then toss it down to another prisoner, but when  Amon Goth passed by, the other prisoner dropped the brick.”

Goth shot him on the spot.

Goth shouted to me: ‘Throw down a brick!’ I did, but Goth let it fall to the ground.”

Josef was ordered off the fence.

Goth yelled at me, took out his gun, and pointed it at my eyes. I knew my life was over. I said Shema Yisrael and blacked out.”

Josef awoke a few days later in the infirmary, in pain and with bandages covering his entire body. Apparently, an assistant of Goth had offered to beat up Levkovich, saving Goth a bullet.

Post-war, Josef became a Nazi hunter. One day, he was searching for clues at a POW camp near Vienna that held 30,000 German prisoners. He found Amon Goth.

Goth was arrested, put on trial in German court, and sentenced to death. In a quirk of poetic justice, the evil man was hanged in the Plaszow camp, on the same spot where he had sadistically murdered untold innocent Jews.

Levkovich is now 93. He confessed he had witnessed so much cruelty that nothing surprised him: sick Nazi guards made prisoners jump off cliffs; starving people roasted the body of a dead Russian boy for food.

Shortly before Goth was executed, Levkovich went to see him in his cell.

He bravely told The Butcher of Plaszow:

You are the worst—there is nothing like you. You did all those things and you’ll have to pay for it. You’ll be brought to justice.”

Goth’s last words?

Heil Hitler!”

It is mind-boggling to think that the same humanity that raised a Bach, a Rembrandt, a Shakespeare, and an Aristotle, can produce a Goth.

But, honestly, if we look closely at our own selves, there are Goths in each of us, aren’t there?

“The heart is more deceitful than all else
And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?
Jeremiah 17: 9

Yes, it is mind-boggling and incomprehensible to think that we have such potential evil within ourselves.

Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,
And in sin my mother conceived me.
Psalm 51:5

No one is exempt, no, not one!

“There is none righteous, not even one;
there is none who understands, there is none who seeks for god;
all have turned aside, together they have become useless;
there is none who does good, there is not even one.”
… for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
Romans 3:10–12, 23

And that’s why Jesus came, in his first Advent, to redeem the world from evil.

“You shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.”
Matthew 1:21

And that’s why Jesus is coming again, in his second Advent, to consummate redemption, once and for all.

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death;
there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.
“Yes, I am coming quickly.”
Amen! Come, Lord Jesus!
Revelation 21:4; 22:20

A blessed Advent to all!

SOURCES:
Aish.com, Daily Star