Family Talk

Dr. James Dobson: Welcome everyone to Family Talk. It's a ministry of the James Dobson Family Institute, supported by listeners just like you. I'm Dr. James Dobson and I'm thrilled that you've joined us.

Roger Marsh: Well, welcome to Family Talk, the broadcast division of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute. I'm Roger Marsh. Today we're bringing you an incredible story of courage and conviction. A word of caution though before we begin, this conversation deals with the Holocaust, so listener discretion is advised. Our guest today here on Family Talk is Amon, a Holocaust survivor from the Netherlands who was imprisoned by the Nazis for helping Jews to escape to safety. When she was captured, she was a young woman working for the resistance alongside her fiance, and her powerful testimony comes from her book Things We Couldn't Say.

During the next half hour, you're going to hear describe the brutal reality of life under Nazi incarceration. You'll also understand why she risked everything to fight for those who were being persecuted. She lived by the words of German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was executed for his beliefs. Bonhoeffer said, not to speak is to speak, and not to act is to act. Dietrich Amon's story is a sobering reminder that we must never forget what so many suffered and that ordinary people can be called to extraordinary bravery. Dietrich Amon went home to be with the Lord in 2019 at the age of 99.

Here now is Dr. James Dobson to introduce today's guest for this special edition of Family Talk.

Dr. James Dobson: The people who are listening to us on the radio have heard your testimony, many of them, when you've talked about your experiences in wartime Holland and the the atrocities of the of the Nazis and so on. As you think back on that era, do you deal with bitterness? I I know that you became friends with Corrie ten Boom, great Christian lady later after the war, and I know that the Lord had to deal with her hatred or at least the temptation to hate. And he forgave her for that hatred and she learned to forgive those oppressors, the Gestapo and so on.

Did you go through that as well?

Dietrich Amon: When everybody was being killed, yes, and in our family we lost a lot of people. My oldest brother and uncles and aunts and so many, my sister's fiance, my fiance, and then you are very bitter and full of hatred. But you know, you need some time and then you start thinking. And then slowly I got to to the conclusion that when I see injustice, I get fanatic. I get really upset. My hair goes up. And I thought, here I am with my character, which is getting very mad when I see injustice. And then I thought, I grew up in a Christian home, Christian family.

We knew the Bible. And the border of Germany is so close by. What would have happened to me if I had been born on the other side of the border in a home where they did not know God? And the young people in Germany were at 12, 13, 14 taken by Hitler, forced they if they wanted or not. And they had all they most liked it, but they had all to go in the Hitler Youth. And there for years they got beautiful uniforms. They were trained in weapons and in everything. And for day after day, year after year, they were indoctrinated.

The Jews are to blame for everything. The Jews are to blame. And they they were brainwashed. And they were ready to do. They were willing to do. I heard that the SS was trained in cruelty. That were the volunteers that when they started to study for the SS, they got a little German shepherd puppy. And they had 3 years, I think. So your dog becomes your friend. At their exam and with their own hands they had to kill the dog and break his neck. They were trained in cruelty. And I think if that was the training of all the young people in Germany, what would have happened if I had been born there, did not know God, but by the grace of God I might have been a fanatic Nazi?

Now you didn't think that through when you were in prison? Not in prison. This came slowly later. It needs time. It needs time. It is incredible that you and Corrie and others were able to forgive considering what you went through. Did you ever encounter anyone inside the prison from the other side, the Gestapo and the prison guards who showed any humanity or any sense of of shame or regret for what was being done to you? In the concentration camp there was a 19 year old beautiful girl and she was married to a man of 27.

And Ansha and she was beautiful. And they were 6 months married and they were arrested. They had helped allies and they found it out. So Ansha was in my barrack and slept close by in one of the rows. And I was afraid that Ansha would go crazy. And then Ansha had her birthday. I never forget, August 7. And in the distance we saw all purple flowers. And we had sometimes to march in the camp street. And there was one guard and he was an Austrian. I I got to know his name, Herr Krause. And when he saw us march, he looked with pity.

So I think maybe he was called to That's as close as anyone came to saying I'm sorry. Yeah. Yeah. He looked friendly and he looked kind of sad that I thought you have some feeling. And you know what I did the evening before Ansha's birthday? The windows were all open. We had no showers, no no we had only those no change of clothing. So it was warm and we didn't have clean clothing. So the windows were open, maybe otherwise it would have smelled and the 75 women. But I took a chance and he was on duty.

And he stood at the corner and I said, Herr Krause, Herr Krause. And he came close by. And I said, remember that beautiful girl Ansha and he knew who we were. He yes. I said, she has her birthday tomorrow. Will you please pick a purple flower? And he did it. And he gave me a half rotten potato. And I hollowed it out and stuck the flower in it. And out of my sock I pulled some wool and I made three holes and hung it. And when Ansha was asleep and we all slept over each other, I hung it on the wire of the bed above her.

And when she woke up the next morning she had a pot of flowers. And so this man had feeling.

Dr. James Dobson: Did she survive the war?

Dietrich Amon: She did, but he didn't. She was a widow at 20.

Dr. James Dobson: Oh my.

Dietrich Amon: And she later later married another resistance fighter. And he had been in so deep and he couldn't handle it. I visited her still later years later. And then she told me that this man, this her second husband, couldn't handle it. And he was deep depressions. Yeah. You know what the crazy thing was? We survivors felt kind of guilty for the thing.

Dr. James Dobson: Yes. Yeah. Have you heard that before?

Dietrich Amon: Oh yes, it's a very common in combat for those who have friends and and officers who are killed and they come home whole or he come home at all and feel like somehow that they they have no right to be alive. And this man had it so strong and she told me it was terrible. She lived on a flat in an apartment building, beautiful, the sixth floor. And on a Sunday morning she said, I went downstairs to get the paper. And her husband had jumped out of the window and he was lying there dead. So she has had a lot.

And I heard of several of my friends who after the war not not the people from the camp who couldn't handle it anymore started drinking and so. So that was

Dr. James Dobson: You told about having to wash the clothes that were bloody. Explain what happened there.

Dietrich Amon: That was the hardest thing. When I found out that this were executed men and I found that out via spy, then I started looking for the bullet holes. And I had to wash it. And we had to blood, you have to soak in cold water. So the troughs in which we had to work to wash ourselves, I had to fill this water and plug in and then throw those bloody clothing. And that was all blood of our Dutch young men. Most of them hadn't even had a trial. And then I started looking if I saw names I knew and I tried to memorize them that I could later tell the family maybe.

And then I looked where the bullet holes were. And that is when I got so angry because the Geneva Convention that all the countries had signed said, if you have to execute a person, it has to be done by three people, by machine guns and on the heart level. And I found that nobody ever knows I did it. You know that's to protect each and that it goes fast. And I found bullet holes here low in their intestines, which meant that they had been lying there for hours and bleeding to death. And then I was I reported it to the Red Cross when I came out.

And later there was a trial and I think like in Nuremberg and so. But I mean, there was such a cruelty that I mean, I was filled with hatred.

Dr. James Dobson: It's really difficult to imagine a people that cruel and that lacking in any kind of sensitivity. I understand what you just said about the training and the indoctrination. But we're human after all and it is very hard for me to understand how that could have occurred. I mean, that take innocent people and subject them to to such torture and such misery and then death.

Dietrich Amon: You know what I think? That we humans are much worse than animals and that are the people without God. But when we don't have God we an animal kills to eat. Without God I think we are capable of anything. Really.

Dr. James Dobson: Dietrich, um explain how you felt when you were suddenly released, that the Germans had bought your story. It was a lie that you had concocted and you made it sound plausible and they let you go. That was 1944. And you walked out of there a free lady. I mean, you were still sick, you were miserable, you were ragged. You know your future was very much in doubt. And yet you walked out of there free. What was that like?

Dietrich Amon: I was let out with another girl and that was when Corrie and Betsy were brought to Ravensbruck. And Patton was close by. That was all in the end of August 44. And in a few weeks later was that thing the bridge too far, the Battle of Arnhem. Just before that I got out. And I had uh said to a lady, we said, really if you want to get out, if you would get out, what day would you want? And I said, if I may choose, I said, I wanted to play a bright sunny day and I would like it to be a Saturday morning and then you can take a soak bath and shampoo your hair and clean underwear and clean clothes and Sunday go to church and thank God for freedom.

I said, but if it's pouring and it's Monday morning I'll go too. And you know what happened? Two weeks later on a radiant Saturday morning I was called out by one of the coolest and she said, you go to Germany. And deep down there was a little voice that said, no, you're going out. And

Dr. James Dobson: To be sent to Germany was a death sentence.

Dietrich Amon: That was practically at that time a death sentence. But that little voice and then an other Ansha also widow. She didn't know it. They heard it later. Her husband had been shot the night before. She was called and the two of us were marched to an other part as where we had come in. And we they opened the gate and there was nothing but sand, everywhere sand and trees in the and no path, only two wheel tracks and some horse manure. And they had been so cool and we stood there and very undernourished and we had to walk and which way do we go?

And we wanted to get away because we might open the gates again and say big joke back in. So and then we saw a little dot in the distance and we started walking. And this was the last year of the war, 44, and our farmers had never had any fertilizer and there was nothing anymore. So they for years they always collected all the manure from the horses, the pigs and the cows and everything. And when that pit that they put it in was full they pumped it in a wooden cart and those carts they spread all the stuff out over the field.

But they never scrubbed that cart. In a few days they did it again. And this was such a cart filled with filled to the brim as you know what manure. And a terrific smell. And the farmer was walking next to it and there was a seat behind the horse, but in 4 years never scrubbed. It was caked on anywhere and everywhere. And then he saw us and we were then young girls. He said, girls, you just came out of the camp. And he said, yes. And he didn't know if he should offer us the seat because it was caked on with you know what.

But to us I said it was a Cadillac. And we said, yes, please. He said, hop on. And he brought us to the railway station and there was the post of the Red Cross. We got bread. But when I was sitting on that car in my I had given all my clothes away. I had only a raincoat and underwear because I thought they go now to Germany and it was near September. So I was sitting there. And I was thinking, God is faithful and he is love and I think he has a sense of humor because isn't that isn't that a glorious exit out of a prison and a go on a manure Your parents had been praying for you all this time.

Dietrich Amon: Oh, I think that callus is on their knees.

Roger Marsh: Friend, you are listening to Family Talk and I'm Roger Marsh. Jumping in here for a brief moment, uh if you just joined us, this is a classic episode of the Family Talk broadcast. Our guest today is Holocaust survivor Dietrich Amon. She's speaking with Dr. James Dobson 6 years before she went home to be with the Lord in 2019. Okay, let's rejoin the conversation with Dietrich Amon right now and our own Dr. James Dobson right here on Family Talk. Why did they let you out?

Dietrich Amon: I think I acted so super stupid that I think and I had my little kicks out of that. When they talked to me I stood like that and my mouth half open. I don't know what you're saying. Can you speak Dutch? That I think they had did not have enough trains. And they brought the majority of the camp to Ravensbruck, Corrie and Betsy. They shot the men. They let the widows out because the men were shot. So And I think that they had a list. It is of course God in the end. But I think that when they came to me that they say Dietrich Amon, she's a border case.

She's too stupid to do anything and that they let me out for that. And then I went back. I had seen the evil. And I went full blast back. So many were arrested. So I had to I dumped right in it. And there were no trains anymore. The queen had said, don't use the trains. Every train will be shot by Spitfire. Don't take trucks. Don't do any bikes. The German If a German was walking they have done it five times to me. Halt your bike. And I had always dangerous stuff on me. So I gave it.

And one time I didn't have dangerous stuff. So I said, no. And he took his revolver and he shot it right next to my shoe. And he said, the next one go in. So you give your bike. And I walked the Netherlands. You've been there. I've walked from the Hague to Amsterdam. I've walked from Amsterdam to Amersfoort every day my rucksack on. I think that's why I'm now so fit. And sometimes you were so tired and I said to myself, if you just put one foot in front of the other and you keep doing that you get But you know, it was really amazing.

I mean, it was a very strange time.

Dr. James Dobson: Uh why did you go back into the battle? When you knew what awaited you, you knew that many of the people that you'd been in prison with had be there been shot or sent to Germany, which is worse in some ways. And they let you out kind of on a fluke. And you go right back into the resistance. What kind of woman are you?

Dietrich Amon: I had seen so much evil that everything in me wanted to do something against it. And then when I was walking the whole Netherlands people from front espionage, a guy that I knew, he knew me and he came. He said, Dietrich, you are walking the whole Netherlands. Would you be willing to do spying for the government? I said, sure. And they gave me big maps with the area where I worked, every tree, every wall and degrees. And then I had to make reports if I saw troop movements and if I saw ships in harbors and if I saw that they were building fortifications and then you had to measure a coordinator the degrees.

And I'd make reports and that went to the front. I got a little thank you note for front espionage. So now I after that evil experience I wanted to anything to get get them out of our country.

Dr. James Dobson: Well, the courage and the bravery that you showed, you don't think of yourself as a heroine, do you? I I do and a lot of other people do. Why do you not?

Dietrich Amon: You know no because I think the heroes and I hated when they used that word uh were in Germany, those in the lines then like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Niemoller. And I heard a few years ago that in Berlin so many Christians hid the Jews to me. That are the heroes that they had to rise up against their own government. But this power had marched in our country. I was furious. They had no right to be there. They touched our Jewish people we since maybe since 1600 and the Reformation and the persecution from the Portuguese Jews that they had lived in the night.

They were Dutch citizens. They had a right to be there. And here they come and they start torturing our people. I I was mad. And I mean, apart from this I still wanted to do something to get them out. And then that's God's will too. You can't let that they touch the apple of his eye. So it it was combined my indignation against all the evil and that they had such a arrogance and power. And it's clearly I mean, in every war they always say God is on our side. But this was so evil that I knew God was on our side, definitely not on the Nazis side.

And this you could say in other words I'm not always sure that

Dr. James Dobson: You lost your brother. Uh he died in a Japanese concentration camp.

Dietrich Amon: He was in a terrible prison in uh near Bandung, the Sukamiskin. And nobody got out of that prison.

Dr. James Dobson: They tortured him to death. How do you know that?

Dietrich Amon: Because we had many people, family who had jobs in Indonesia and they were all put in camps. But we had seen a chance to smuggle a little note out. And uh they heard later from others who there was one guy that I met who had come out of that camp. And he nearly apologized to me. And I said, did you know he came out of the Sukamiskin? And uh I was decorated by Prince Bernard and 39 people from whole America had to come to the Dutch embassy in Washington. And we all got a resistance medal.

And then that we had a evening meal in the Army and Navy Club. It was very beautiful. And I sat next to this man and the Indonesian people from Indonesia speaks Takato. Well, I have been there and And he spoke like that. I said, you come from Indonesia? He said, yeah. I said, where? And I said, my brother was there. And he said, but we all were victim. We all had resisted. He said, I was in the Sukamiskin. So I said, did you know my brother? He said, yes. And he was very quiet. And then he says to me like an excuse, I only got out because I was 15.

Like he had to excuse himself that he had survived. But my brother smuggled a note out to family. And in did he said, I have fought a good fight. Hence is the crown of life is for me. So we know that it was God's will.

Dr. James Dobson: Your sister's husband was shot.

Dietrich Amon: My sister's fiance. They it he was shot the first war day and he was placed on an a little airport outside the Hague. And the parachutist came down 6 a.m. And they shot him and his they have those buddies in they were both shot. So he was one of the first one to fall and she was engaged. This was May 10 and they would have gotten married in September.

Dr. James Dobson: Did such sadness, such incredible sadness during those war years. Little children orphaned, good people killed. Do you think it can ever happen again?

Dietrich Amon: Yes.

Dr. James Dobson: How did it happen?

Dietrich Amon: You know what were the worst thing in that prison? They rounded up the Jews, put them in. But every Tuesday and every Thursday night, in the night, they were rounded up out of their cells. And then we heard scream and it was heartbreaking. Mama, mama, mama. Children and parents and Oh, it was I wrote a letter. I said, I have to become hard. I can't handle this anymore. I'm cracking up. I'm cracking up. And he wrote that I may not get hard, but it was very very difficult.

Roger Marsh: You know it's hard to comprehend the evil that Dietrich Amon lived through. And yet she came out on the other side with a quiet strength and a faith that refused to let bitterness have the final word. You're listening to Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk. We've been featuring an unforgettable conversation Dr. Dobson had with Holocaust survivor Dietrich Amon, whose testimony is captured in the book called Things We Couldn't Say. If you'd like to revisit today's program or share it with a friend or family member, you'll find it when you go to drjamesdobson.org. You know Dietrich Amon's story raises one of the most difficult questions that there is and that is, how could a good God allow evil to happen?

Maybe you've asked something like that about your own life, about a pain that you can't make sense of. Well, if so, I'd like to point you to a free 10 day email series we prepared based on Dr. Dobson's best selling book When God Doesn't Make Sense. It won't hand you any easy answers, but it will walk you through the hardest valleys and show you how even those dark places can lead to a closer walk with the Lord. To receive your free 10 day email series When God Doesn't Make Sense, simply visit us online at drjamesdobson.org or jdfi.org and search for that title When God Doesn't Make Sense.

That's how you sign up. You know the mission of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute is to preserve and promote the family and the biblical principles upon which it is built. We are here to introduce as many people as possible to the gospel of Jesus Christ. So many times Dr. Dobson and I would have that conversation about our broadcast ministry and how many people it was actually impacting for the Lord. Dr. Dobson was passionate about defending the sanctity of human life, religious freedom and righteousness in our culture. That has been our calling since the foundation of the jdfi and it's our calling even today.

Now that Dr. Dobson has gone on to glory, but we simply can't carry this mission forward without friends like you. Your prayers and your financial support keep this ministry strong and help keep these broadcasts on the air for those who need to hear them. Now you can give securely when you go to drjamesdobson.org or if it's easier just type in jdfi.org. You can also speak with a member of our constituent care team. That number is 877-732-6825. That's 877-732-6825. Well, I'm Roger Marsh. Grateful that you spent some time with us today. Be sure to tune in again next time when Dr.

Dobson continues his conversation with Dietrich Amon, finishing her remarkable story about courageous choices that she made while surviving the Holocaust. That's coming up right here on the next edition of Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk, the voice you trust for the family you love. This has been a presentation of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute.

Dr. James Dobson: When should discipline of a child actually begin? Here's today's Dr. Dobson Minute with Dr. James Dobson.

Roger Marsh: Well, my answer may surprise you, but I think it should start as soon as possible after birth. Now obviously I'm not talking about physical punishment or anything negative. So what form of discipline is appropriate at that age? The answer is loving leadership. Parents should have the courage to do what's right for their babies, even if the child resists it. Dr. Bill Schlanerger, Nashville pediatrician and a good friend, said that new mothers will call him on the phone and they'll say, my 6 month old baby is crying and he seems very hot. The doctor asked if the child has a fever, to which mom replies, I don't know.

He won't let me take his temperature. These mothers have already yielded their authority to their infants. Good parenting and loving leadership go hand in hand. And both should begin on day one.

Dr. James Dobson: For more information visit drdobsonminute.org.