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You May Never Be the Same :: By Jan Markell
Holocaust Memorial Day this year in Israel spans April 23-24. I met a Holocaust survivor a few decades ago, and I may never be the same. When I connected with Anita Dittman, I had her recount her harrowing story. She captivated me. Had you met her, you might never be the same either.
Anita and I spent weeks together as she relayed a story of deprivation, marginalization, starvation, separation, loneliness, isolation, fear, and faith. How could this woman, then in her 50s, even stand up straight? She had lifted 100-pound items as a teenager as the Nazis perpetrated forced labor on her and her mother. They had been abandoned by her Aryan father.
She had made two failed escapes from concentration camps. She didn’t have sufficient food for 12 years. At one point, she sent all of her meager rations to her mother, who entered a camp before Anita was taken.
Once in a camp herself months later, Anita chopped down trees in a forest in the bitter winter with barely enough clothing on. At the end of the war, she walked across part of Europe on a wounded and infected leg to see if her mother had survived Camp Theresienstadt.
God’s Breathtaking Intervention
Was I just looking at a living miracle? I think so—and this survival story would go on to leave a lasting mark on millions of people. A fertile imagination could not make up the scenes and scenarios that were a part of her life from ages 5 to 17. God’s constant intervention was nothing less than breathtaking.
Tyndale House published Angels in the Camp in 1980 – just one version of a book that would have almost a 40-year lifespan, assorted publishers, and more than one title. Books have short shelf lives. Only a few classic stories survive the test of time, as has Anita Dittman’s story.
The Messiah’s Faithfulness
Anita’s book, now titled Trapped in Hitler’s Hell: A Young Jewish Girl Discovers the Messiah’s Faithfulness in the Midst of the Holocaust, has affected people around the world, of all ages. Grade school children sat motionless as she related her ordeal in person until age 88. They have no concept of war, concentration camps, deprivation, and starvation. They don’t know the meaning of the word separation other than waving goodbye as they head to summer camp.
Teenagers who lead a carefree life were stunned at her testimony and wrote her from many countries. Their world knows nothing of the dreaded knock on the door when family members are hauled off by the jack-booted, heartless Gestapo.
Demonstrating God’s Forgiveness
Every fall Anita Dittman stood behind a book table at my annual prophecy conference and signed hundreds of her books, now published by Lighthouse Trails. A German lady came up to her one year and wept. She apologized for the insanity of the Third Reich. What were they thinking? Anita always forgave these folks.
When Government Becomes God
The decades have raced by, but during that time, millions more have learned that letting government become god as the Germans did is not a good idea. Today in 2025, she would be 96 if she were still alive. Her life verse was Romans 8:28 – that all things do work together for good for those who love God. Anita reminded every audience of that. That we really are under the shadow of His protective wings (Psalm 91:4).
Never Again Is Now
Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel, is just a few days away this year, and Jews of the world will collectively say, “Never again!” In Israel, cars will stop when a siren wails, and many will stand at attention wherever they are. Israeli children will climb off their toys and stand motionless for two minutes.
Yet a world without God will continue to oppress and persecute. The targets will be heavily Jews and Christians. Please don’t forget those who languish under deplorable conditions, and never forget that one single tyrant can unleash a nightmare on millions of innocent people.
Hating Jews is the oldest pastime. It’s the oldest hatred. It not only never dies, it gets worse every year. That is evident from the carnage on October 7, 2023, near Gaza. Not everyone will even finish reading this article. It is just of little interest to many. Or, they have sympathy for Hamas.
The Holocaust is ancient history—and yet it keeps resurfacing in different times and places. But in 2025, it is accentuated as the world cheers for Hamas and denounces the Jews.
I never thought I would see the day. Nor did you if you are honest. “Never again” is now, as we race towards the Tribulation, when the Jews will be the focus of the Antichrist and his short-term kingdom. Today is just a warm-up act.
Some Things Never Die :: By Jan Markell
(Note from Jan: I wanted to write a current article on Israel and her impending war with Iran, but then the good folks at “Harbinger’s Daily” resurrected an older article of mine. Since the topic is Israel, I share this instead. Its message is still urgent. Look up the online newspaper (https://harbingersdaily.com/), as they feature many of your favorite writers and teachers! And please, won’t you “pray for the peace of Jerusalem”? (Ps. 122:6). As prophesied in Zechariah 12, the world is abandoning her one by one.
As I state in my book, Trapped in Hitler’s Hell, quoting Dr. Natan Kellermann, there is something unprecedented about the European Holocaust. For the first time in the bloodstained history of the human race, a decision was birthed in a modern state, in the midst of a civilized continent, to track down, register, mark, isolate, dispossess, humiliate, concentrate, transport, and murder every single person of an ethnic group as defined by the perpetrators.
This was targeted at an ethnic group who so generously contributed to the culture of the world; to a people who have borne the brunt of enmity towards them because they dared to be different and dared to insist on their difference.
Six million Jews were killed in Europe and replaced with 20 million Muslims. They burned a culture, thought, creativity, and talent. They destroyed the chosen people, truly chosen, because they produced great and wonderful people who changed the world.
They Knew but Did Not Act
In 2017, Benjamin Netanyahu made the accurate and stunning statement that the Allies knew all that was going on and did very little. He stated, “If the powers in 1942 had acted against the death camps — and all that was needed was repeated bombing of the camps — had they acted then, they could have saved 4 million Jews and millions of other people.”
He continued, “The powers knew, and they did not act. When terrible crimes were being committed against the Jews, when our brothers and sisters were being sent to the furnaces, the powers knew and did not act.”
Can you imagine? Talk about a chronicle of apathy.
He stated three causes for the organized slaughter — widespread anti-Semitism, global indifference, and the weakness of the Jewish people in the Diaspora.
It Wouldn’t Warrant Our Resources!
Entire books were written about the Roosevelt Administration and their apathy towards the suffering. FDR had been in office just one week when the first concentration camp was opened — Dachau. He knew plenty but didn’t seem to care. Yes, many U.S. Presidential administrations have made serious mistakes with their policy towards Israel and the Jews, but none so grievous as FDR and his cronies, who had hardened hearts beyond comprehension.
The idea of bombing the railroad tracks into the camps was brought to the attention of Roosevelt’s State Department. Their response was this: “Such an operation would, in any case, be of such doubtful efficacy that it would not warrant the use of our resources.”
Translate that: The Jews are not worth our time and resources.
Then Came a Modern-Day Cyrus!
It is not an overstatement to say that the nation of Israel might not have been re-born had FDR been President in 1948. On the other hand, President Harry Truman cast the first U.N. vote for the right of the nation to be re-born out of the ashes of the Holocaust. He also relaxed immigration laws to allow Jewish victims of WWII into the U.S. In 1946, he sent a delegation to tour the refugee camps in Europe and realized these Jews needed a home. He was a modern-day Cyrus!
On December 17, 1942, the Allies issued a proclamation condemning the ‘extermination’ of the Jewish people in Europe and declared that they would punish the perpetrators. Why not go a step further and put an end to the carnage, or at least slow the destruction, by bombing the railroads into the camps?
The utter shock of senior Allied commanders who liberated camps at the end of the war may indicate that this understanding was somewhat limited. Gen. Eisenhower had his troops take pictures of the liberated camps, admitting that few would believe the severity of the Holocaust without this evidence.
Mankind’s sinful, fallen nature prevented the rescue of up to four million Jews and many other non-Jews who were in the camps. World leaders looked the other way as early as 1942. They even knew about the gas being used in the gas chambers.
It Could Never Happen Again! Really?
Today, similar apathy exists concerning the slaughter of Christians around the world, particularly in parts of Africa. Not even our pulpits address this. It is a second holocaust that world leaders can’t seem to be bothered with.
I realize World War II is now considered ancient history — an era from long ago that has slipped from the memory of many. Surely, they said, it could never happen again. Really?
But anti-Semitism never dies. Satan is obsessed with exterminating God’s covenant people because they are the key to the last days, and the last days spell Satan’s doom.
And apathy never dies, either. Millions perished because of that deadly combination.
Today, we are seeing more lawlessness and the spirit of the Antichrist as millions demonstrate for Hamas and “Palestine” and against Israel and the Jews. Not much has changed since 1938. And a lawless U.S. government is pro-Iran in spite of their cries of “death to America.”
The last days are upon us where up is down, black is white, and evil is good. And you are here for such a time as this to be salt and light.
Terry James Prophecy Line 