The Soldier's Uniform

[Music] Tokai is a picturesque little town of old buildings nesting stalks and wine cellars located in northeast hungary in the 17th century the Jews of modern-day Poland and Ukraine were drawn to this region by trade in Tokai the syrupy amber tinted wine that was very popular at the courts of louis xiv of france and peter the great of russia soon there was a thriving Jewish community in the region whose life centered around the synagogue in the center of town today it's still the largest building in talk I but it's empty and the community that once thrived and worshipped here is gone their memory and heritage is kept alive by a few remaining members who faithfully open the prayer room on special occasions and holy days when they are joined by descendants of Tokai Jews from overseas sadly in Tokai now the Torah is only read a few times a year because there aren't enough Jews left to form a minyan the quorum of 10 men for a formal prayer service such is the devastation that was meted out on this community it's been tragically decimated you see in the dying days of World War two the Nazis knew that they'd lost the war and were due they showed their rage in one final horrific act of hatred and brutality in Eastern Europe the Jewish women children and elderly of Hungary were rounded up and sent to extermination camps in Germany and German occupied Poland all able-bodied Jewish men had earlier been put into slave labor battalions and now the final orders came through that the men were to be taken on a death march to the extermination camps in Germany as well the commanding officer of one such battalion was Zoltan kuba knew he had to make an agonizing decision he could ensure his own safety and March the Jewish men under his command to Germany and certain death in the gas chambers or he could risk his own life and defy the order and lead these men back to Hungary and freedom that's the fatal choice that confronted Zoltan Kabini this is his story a story of courage defiance and honor it's a story that will surprise you and inspire you [Music] zoltán kuben ye was Hungarian and he was an unlikely Nazi for one he was a soldier who refused to carry a gun in the heady days of 1936 idealistic young men from all over Europe and from all over the world had flocked to Spain to fight the rise of right-wing nationalism General Francisco Franco supported by Hitler's Nazi Germany had started civil war in Spain and the idealistic Zoltan went to Barcelona to report on the war against fascism zoltan's life was turned upside down during his time in Spain but it wasn't because of the war instead it was because there in Barcelona he met a man called Struve ER who introduced him to the Bible and the good news about Jesus zoltan accepted Jesus became a Christian and was baptized in 1942 zoltan returned home to Budapest the capital of Hungary for a time he supported himself by selling Christian books from door to door after that he worked in leadership in a church organization in January 1943 Zoltan married the love of his life in Budapest later that year a son was born the recently married couple called him Martin Martin was just 6 months old when his father was called up into the Hungarian army because of his qualifications Zoltan was given the rank of Warrant Officer Zoltan had no choice in the issue of joining the Hungarian army or not he was simply conscripted but the amazing thing is that the Hungarian army was allied on the side of Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany the same ideology that Zoltan had opposed in Spain seven years and the question for Zoltan was how would he face this challenge when this was also contrary to his values God's commandments say you shall not kill and so he wouldn't he would go to war but to save life not to take it so now Zoltan kuben ye was in the Nazi allied Hungarian army and to continue his story it's important to understand what was going on in Hungary at the time the nation of Hungary was allied with Germany during World War two however in 1944 the Hungarian government initiated secret negotiations with the Allies and when Germany found out it occupied Hungary and established its own Nazi back puppet government that happened in March 1944 two months before kuben ye had been conscripted into the Hungarian army in 1940 all the Hungarian Jewish men of military age were taken away to forced labor battalions the vast majority of them never saw their families again it was the fateful encounter between one of these Jewish forced labor battalions and Warrant Officer Zoltan Kabini in a Russian forest that was to decide the fate of many live in the spring of 1944 the men were working in the Bryansk forest in Russia many of the men had already died from malnutrition and the harsh conditions deep in the forest some of them in from the labor battalion made contact with the partisans these Jewish resistance fighters said to them listen why don't you just overpower your guards take their rifles and come and join us the men in the labor camp at a very heated discussion about this idea many were in favor of it others argued what about the old and the sick minima wouldn't we be endangering them eventually they decided not to rise up against the guards but a few days later the men who drove the wagons into town to get supplies never returned the following day another 20 men went missing from the work detail that all run away to join the partisans the commanding officer of the labor battalion decided that he had to do something so he decided to use decimation where they would line them in up and kill every tenth man when the commanding officer told them in they naturally reacted with fear and terror the commanding officer decided that he needed authorization for the decimation and that he would travel to go Mel 300 kilometres west where the German headquarters were to get official approval meanwhile the men were to be locked up in the compound in the forest the men waited in fear for the commanding officer to return not knowing who would live and who would die the commanding officer had gone in a horse and wagon and along the road a truck had spooked the horse which had bolted and pulled the wagon into a ditch the officer was thrown out and ended up with a broken leg the driver and the commanding officers aide young Jewish men from the labor battalion took him to hospital but they didn't mention the purpose of the injured commanding officers visit the German command sent another Hungarian officer to replace him that officer was Zoltan Kabini now as soon as could be near arrived he gathered the Jewish men together and said to them I can understand why you want to escape but you have to understand that I cannot protect you from the consequences if you do that if you will all stop trying to escape I will try to protect you as best as I can everyone agreed that they would stop trying to escape and trust cabina to help them and from that very first day things got better Morten Fuchs was one of the men and a survivor of that forced labor battalion he said Zhu Bing Yi was very different from all the commanding officers we had before him the rest had been cruel treating us horribly we still works long hard days with little food but he was kind and respectful to us he protected us against the abusive German orders for physical labor by negotiating on our behalf he always saw turrets that we had humane lodging and enough food every day was a struggle for survival but Kabini said about creating a sense of community among the men he was also respectful of the men's religious practices and encouraged them to keep their faith alive even when all humanity appeared to be lost the men had to work every day even on Yom Kippur their most holy day accepted on that day they all faster kuben Yi came out to the fields and fasted with them and allowed them to pray during their breaks he even arranged for an extra ration of food for the men that evening another example of his kindness was how kuben Yi treated one of the men in particular his name was Isaac Goodman and he was a great scholar and also very well educated in Judaism Isaac was strictly kosher and for years he had only bread jam and Marjorie he was frail and weak and found it difficult to do the heavy work that all the men had to do his life was endangered so Kabini appointed him to be the camp rabbi and then he didn't have to go out to work instead once a week he had to deliver a sermon he was the camp clergyman and that was the extent of his duties one morning as they were being marched to a new location they took a break by the side of the road and as was his custom kuba nu allowed the men to pray during their break and so the men were in the middle of their prayers when suddenly they saw a group of officers with soldiers coming toward them in trucks the men quickly stopped pray but Isaac Goodman was so devout that he just continued to pray the men all urged him to stop but he wasn't going to let anything interrupt his prayers so kuba new quickly put Isaac in his own place up front in the wagon and covered him so that he could finish his prayers and not be caught there resumed marching with Kabini marching in front of the wagon as the soldiers passed by these are just a few examples of the many ways that Zoltan continually interceded and helped them in to make it easier for them to survive at the very end of the war the Nazis could see that they were going to lose and there was no more need for the workers kuben ye received orders to march them in toward Germany to a concentration camp where they were all to be killed instead of obeying orders Kabini sabotage them and at risk of his own life decided to try to save the lives of his men so he marched them in the opposite direction back toward Hungary along the way kuba nee managed to hide the men in barns and farmhouses one day they were hiding in a farm near the city of mish Colts in Hungary when suddenly the Hungarian military police came and arrested them all under orders from the Nazis the military police then escorted them on a forced march in the direction of Germany and the death camps during this time Kabini refused to abandon them and was always by their side trying to help them and encourage them as best he could one night while the 140 men were all sleeping in a barn they were woken by Kabini urgently whispering to them get up quickly and quietly we need to leave right away what has happened was that some of the battalion guards had gotten the military policemen nice and drunk and when they'd all finally fallen fast asleep Kabini had come to get the men so that they could escape so they crept out of the barn and ran and marched as fast as they could the whole night in the opposite direction towards Hungary after two or three days the men arrived in the large Hungarian city of bellagio Mott from there they could hear the booming of artillery and the explosion of bombs Kabini a sheltered them in different cellars in the city and hid them from danger at night no one could sleep everyone was scared because they could hear the noises of the war coming closer and closer at that time there was still around 140 men in the Jewish labor battalion one morning the men are well to an unusual calm the noises of the war had disappeared instead they heard the voices of soldiers speaking but not in German or Hungarian instead they were speaking in Russian the men carefully picked out and slowly emerged from the cellar in which they'd been hiding they realized that the town was being liberated the war was finally over when the Russian soldiers saw the men from the labor battalion they knew immediately who they were from the yellow armbands with a labor camp numbers and so the Russians were very friendly to them very soon the streets were filled with people some of them were Hungarian soldiers who were scouring to quickly change out of their uniforms and into civilian clothes and hide among the peasants that way they wouldn't be caught by the Russians when they saw this the men from the Jewish labor battalion went quickly to find cabin they told him what was going on and encouraged him to quickly change from his uniform and blend in with the other people but cubanía refused they begged and pleaded with him to do as they asked but instead he said no I won't I haven't done anything wrong I have nothing to be ashamed of I am proud to have saved the lives of you men I'm an honorable member of the hungarian army nothing will happen to me he just stood his ground when the Russian soldiers came to arrest him the men tried to protect Zoltan like he had protected them they pleaded with the soldiers saying this is a good man he saved our lives don't take him but the Russians wouldn't listen and they took Zoltan kabini away the men in the Jewish labor battalion were devastated what could they do to help their commanding officer now well they knew that could mean you had a wife and child living in Budapest so they agreed to try to help him by helping his family after the war life was hard for everyone so they took turns to send her packages of food supplies every month in response the men would always receive a thank-you note from her after about a year she sent word not to send anymore because she had found a good job and could now provide for herself and her son Martin she also told them that she had received word about a husband that he had died in Siberia where he had been taken as a prisoner of war he had died from typhus in a labor camp there and was buried in an unmarked grave but Zoltan kuba news story doesn't end there the reason why we know Zoltan cabinas named today is due to one of the prisoners in the Jewish labor battalion morten Fuchs and his daughter Marta they just couldn't let curb in your story in in an unmarked grave in the frozen wastes of Siberia more than 40 years after these events Morton was embarrassed and ashamed to admit that he had forgotten the name of the man who had rescued him and so many others so Morten made it his mission to find out his rescuers name he didn't want his commanding officer forgotten and Morten wanted to make sure that the man who had saved his life and the lives of so many others was honoured at Yad Vashem Yad Vashem is the world Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem here the Righteous among the Nations are honored these are Gentiles non-jews that took great risks to save Jews during the Holocaust so sook started writing to as many of his labor battalion friends as he could find perhaps they could remember the name of the man who had saved their lives although they all seemed to have forgotten his name they all replied that they remembered the man's goodness and compassion to them finally after many months Fuchs received a letter with the name he was looking for the name of Zoltan kuba knew next Fuchs prepared the documentation to send to the world Holocaust Remembrance Centre because the second witness was required he obtained the testimony from isaac goodman remember him the young man who became the camp rabbi well isaac wrote this a day before we were liberated Zoltan was looking for me to make sure I had food to eat he brought me some cooked potatoes because he knew and respected that I being a very religious man didn't eat from the regular food he was a very religious seventh-day Adventist and many times we used to discussed together passages from the Bible Morten Fuchs himself read the following words Zoltan Kabini was a true human being in the deepest sense of the word during this catastrophic events when civilized intelligent people were blind ears with irrational hatred and innocent people mothers with babies in their arms were slaughtered he was a man risking his own life he stood up for and defended the innocent persecuted people the memory of salt and Reuben ye deserves the highest honor that a person could possibly deserve for his altruistic heroic and self-sacrificing activities and so it was that in February 1990 the name of Zoltan Kabini was inscribed with the Righteous among the Nations at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and in February 1994 martin cuban ye received the certificate and medallion of honor on behalf of his father from a Yad Vashem representative three months later martyr the daughter of survivor Morten fruits stood here on the second floor of the synagogue and took I the first Holocaust commemoration ever was being held in the town to mark the 50th anniversary of the destruction of the Hungarian Jewish community here martyr Fuchs on behalf of her father told the story of how Zoltan Kabini had saved the lives of some of the only Jewish men from this town who had survived the war as everyone present broke into spontaneous applause martyr left the microphone and walked to the back of the hall where Martin Zoltan kuben his son was standing he had never had the chance to know his father she looked into the son's eyes that were now filled with tears and said I want to thank you for your father I am here in this world because of what he did in saving my father afterwards martyr asked him the crucial question that had haunted her and her father for years why didn't your father take off his uniform and save himself as he had saved so many others the son answered I've also often thought about why he didn't take off his uniform I think it was because he was such a religious man who was always honest and never lied for him it would have been a lie he hadn't done anything wrong so why should he take the uniform off and that is the mystery at the heart of Zoltan cabinas story perhaps it's easy for us to say well what cabina did was irrational and even wrong and foolish he would have done nothing wrong by taking his uniform off he would not only have saved himself but he would have saved his wife and son much sorrow and grief but here's a question to think about could the sultan kabini who courageously saved so many others without thought for himself have been the same man who removed his uniform and deceived others to hide among the peasants at the heart of curbing his character there seems to have been an unshakable sense of integrity and honor he was guided by moral and religious principles he held firm to principles that he simply would not betray even though khibiny were a military uniform he answered to a far higher commanding officer than anyone in the Hungarian army it was the Bible that taught him that he ought to obey God rather than men in one of the darkest eras in which the world was plunged into brutality and horror it was the Bible that kept kuben he firmly focused on what was good and right and I'm sure that Zoltan kabini knew this verse from the Bible well from John chapter 15 and verse 13 greater love has no one than this to lay down one's life for one's friends Jesus is talking about how he would lay down his life for us his friends Kabini was prepared to lay down his life because he had learned to love like Jesus so let me ask you where are you heading in your journey through life do you need direction and purpose in your life have you experienced the love of God it was the love of God that transformed an ordinary person like Zoltan cubanía into a hero and it will do the same for you like kabini you too can leave a mark on this world for good yes you can make a difference if that's what you wish why don't you join with me in this pray dear Heavenly Father we thank you for the life of Zoltan Ruben ye were so thankful that his name and his memory can be preserved we know that you want us to leave a legacy of love and kindness in this world so father pour your love into our lives and may we share that love with others we ask this in Jesus name Amen the story of Zoltan kuben ye is so inspiring he certainly did do the right thing he made the right choice but sometimes in our own lives we don't always know just what the right thing is well if you'd like to be able to perceive God's will for your life better and ensure you make right choices and do the right thing then I'd like to recommend the free gift we have for all our viewers today it's the popular reading guide God's plan for my life you'll find it most helpful in guiding you regarding how to make right choices so please don't miss this wonderful opportunity to receive the gift we have for you today here's the information you need phone or text us at 436 triple three triple five in Australia or Oh - OH four double - 204 - in New Zealand or visit our website tij dot TV to request today's free offer and we'll send it to you totally free of charge and with no obligation write to us at GPO box 274 Sydney New South Wales 2001 Australia or p.o box seven double six seven three Manukau Auckland - two-for-one New Zealand don't delay call or text us now you [Music]

Channel: The Incredible Journey

Views: 11,442

Keywords: Zoltan Kubinyi, Second World War, Courage, Life’s Journey, Christian Journey, Jews, WWII, Adventist, saving lives, times of crisis, helping those in need

Id: AAM_IUgL5Ec

Length: 28min 30sec (1710 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 25 2020