DON'T DRIVE ME AWAY

     A lot of Jews were killed in a terrible Kaunas (the second largest city in Lithuania) ghetto. Just on October 28, 1941 around ten thousand people were shot. One day, the nazis and the Lithuanian police killed all the children. They were lured out of the houses with music. Those, whom their mothers didn't let go, were killed on the spot, right in front of the mothers.
     For a while the killing stopped, but in 1943 the ghetto came under the jurisdiction of the SS. The killing began anew.
     A young, 30 year old, Jew stood naked on the edge of the ditch. He was one of the first to be wounded and fall under the fire. Other bodies fell on top of him. Terrified, he tried to climb out of the ditch. He grabbed the edge of it with his hands. Laughing, a policeman stuck his hands with a bayonette. He fell back.
     He lay in the ditch until the night. Under him the pile of the bodies moved and moaned. At night he crawled out and walked toward the distant lights. He found a distant stead and somehow climbed over the fence; used a sheet hanging in the yard to cover himself.  With his wounded hands knocked on the door.
     A young woman opened it. He slumped against the doorpost and whispered: "Help me!".
     She pursed her lips. "Get out of here," - she said - "If they find you , they'll kill me and my children. Get out! Go back, where you came from!"
     He begged: "Don't drive me away, please!" He stood there, half naked, with injured hands and bloody head. She just kept repeating: Get away!"
     All of a sudden, from behind the curtain ran out a little blond girl. She hugged her mother's legs, raised her head and said: "Mommy, don't push him away: he is our Lord, Jesus Christ!"
     The family hid and cared for the man until he joined the forest guerillas. He fought in most daring operations. His comrades were surprised by his total lack of fear. He was killed at the very end of the war.
     I met and talked to the girl in 1988. She was 50 - younger, than I am now. I listened to her with the with the goose bumps running up and down my body.
At the end I said: "Well, yes, of course, you saw an exhausted man in a white robe with bloody hands and head, You were little, you made a mistake."

    She calmly looked in my eyes and carefully shook her head: "You don't understand, It really was Jesus."


Eugene Royzman
Source: http://roizman.livejournal.com/1652237.html