By: Ali Elizabeth Turner
Four years ago, at the National Religious Broadcasters’ Convention in Nashville, I had the great privilege of interviewing Joseph Farah, who, with his wife Elizabeth, founded World Net Daily in 1997. WND is one of the largest Internet-based news and commentary sources on the planet, and has gone on to become a force to be reckoned with as the culture wars in our nation heat up.
Three years ago, I went to Israel on a tour that was headed up by Joseph and Elizabeth, who also happened to be on our particular bus. It was there that I got to know the man and his familyas can only happen while travelling under unusual circumstances; and on several occasions, I felt I was given a glimpse of his heart. Like me, once upon a time he had been a radical socialist, and like me, he had become a Christian. Unlike me, he was an Arab by blood. As followers of Messiah, he and I had come to love the people and land of Israel. Over a hotel supper table in the land of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,our conversations about the grace of God and overcoming our wacky pasts are treasured memories I consider to be one of the highlights of my life-changing trip.
Joseph and his crew have produced best-selling books and movies, and one film was nominated for an Academy Award. And now, they are bringing to the screen the story of a young half-Jewish girl who survived the Holocaust, and for reasons that defy logical explanation, she experienced Messiah’s love in the middle of it all.
The woman’s name is Anita Dittman, and she is a spry 90 years old. The name of the film that tells the story of her life is entitled, Trapped In Hitler’s Hell; and if you want to, you can help it get made and distributed to theatres. More on that in a minute.
WND film producer George Escobar, whom I also met while in Israel, had this to say about Anita:
“Anita Dittman is the only person I’ve ever met who survived the Holocaust. She was barely 18 when she escaped her second Nazi prison camp in 1945.
Abandoned as a child by her Aryan father eight years earlier, Anita was determined to reunite with her Jewish mother held at a death camp 200 miles away in Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia.
By the time I came to know Anita in 2014, she had just turned 87. I was interviewing her for a documentary about her life, based on the book Trapped in Hitler’s Hell: A Young Jewish Girl Discovers the Messiah’s Faithfulness in the Midst of the Holocaust,which she had co-written with Jan Markell nearly 20 years earlier.
I didn’t expect to become a close friend of Anita’s following that meeting. Or fall in love with her story.
By the conclusion of World War II, Anita had nearly exhausted her reserve of courage and compassion. In our journey with Anita, shewill have successfully drawn us personally through an age of darkness. Nonetheless, her resilience and liberating faith will shine like a beam of light through which we can find God’s glory, forgiveness and love.”
Now this leads to my question: Do yawanna help make a movie? Through the wonders of technology it is now possible for average people to help be a part of redemptive media, and WND has set up a GoFundMe account in case you want to get in on it. There are people, and not just a few, who try to convince the masses that the Holocaust never happened, let alone that a Jewish girl could come to a transformational relationship with Yeshua the Messiah. In an era when “snowflakes” are melting down over someone wearing a T-shirt that says, “Make America Great Again,” it is refreshing to hear the taleof someone who triumphed in every regard over the hideous hate of Nazi Germany.
George is hoping that WND readers will consider donating $5 to $10, the price of a designer coffee or lunch in order to help get the tale told. If you are interested in being a part of such a worthy endeavor, please go to https://www.gofundme.com/make-a-hit-movie-with-wnd.
