Weaverville, NC
H: (828) 645-2872
Waziff@aol.com

Travel Regions: 1–4, additional in summer

Adjunct Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Mars Hill College, Holocaust survivor, freelance writer, author

Translating biblical texts is a difficult undertaking. Errors that have occurred in this process range from the sublime to the ridiculous. Texts have been mistranslated intentionally to serve polemical purposes and unintentionally because the translators did not know any better. In Judaism there are to this day laws that may be based on nothing more than a mispronunciation of two vowels centuries ago. In the New Testament, quoting an Old Testament text with a slightly changed syntax in Greek has been used to prove the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy. When an ancient Hebrew idiom is no longer understood and is translated verbatim into English, this results in a passage we would rather not read in a worship service. This program is scholarly and serious, but results in a bit of laughter as well.

Program requirements: lectern, microphone

Two Christian Responses to Hitler and the Holocaust: Barmen and Le Chambon

Much has been written about the silence of the German churches during European Jewry’s tragic extermination known as the Holocaust during Adolf Hitler’s German regime. Why did the German church leaders not speak out against the genocide? Why did the Roman Catholic Church not excommunicate Hitler, a Roman Catholic? Why did European Christian communities do so little to save their Jewish populations? Why did Christian men and women prefer to look away when their Jewish neighbors mysteriously disappeared? Why did German Christians not protest against the Holocaust once its brutalities had, by 1942, become common knowledge? Why did the churches not live by Jesus’ and their own teaching that a Christian “love one’s neighbor as oneself”? This program consists of a juxtaposition of the actions of a small Christian congregation in Le Chambon, France, which managed to save three thousand Jews, on the one hand, and the absence of any kind of saving action on the parts of the German Protestant and German Roman Catholic churches, on the other hand. Dr. Walter Ziffer also briefly discusses the role of the German “Confessing Church” and one of its outstanding members, Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Program requirements: lectern, microphone

Witness to the Holocaust

In this very personal program, Dr. Walter Ziffer informs his audience of the difficulties of surviving during the German genocide known as the Holocaust and of the importance of maintaining vigilance so as to prevent a repeat of this atrocity. The program also counteracts contemporary revisionist distortions of the Holocaust. As a Jew and a native of Czechoslovakia, Ziffer shares first-hand experiences of his town’s invasion by German Nazi troops on September 1, 1939, the first day of World War II, the two years following the occupation, deportation in June 1942, being conscripted into forced labor, which led to the deaths of most of his family members, and his induction into the German concentration camp empire. This is also the story of his first love—a love decimated by Nazi brutality which has left a mark that persists to this day. Using accounts from his own experiences, Ziffer describes the treatment received by prisoners, liberation by the Soviet army, and beginning a new life after the war.

Program requirements: lectern, microphone