The salvation of Ukraine does not depend on American aid or political compromise, but on national repentance
By Pastor Werner Oder
I have been praying about Ukraine, as so many have, since the Russian invasion of 2022. Actually going to Ukraine felt a step too far, especially as I had been given a very uncomfortable message for a people immersed in loss and suffering. But the more I prayed, the more I knew I should go. I also had the opportunity to attend a conference organised by Stanislaw Gawel of Chevra Ministries from Zilina, Slovakia. They are wonderful believers and great lovers of Israel. Then two further signs came, confirming that the door for this trip was open. My friend Pavol Strezo invited me to join him and his team on a special reconciliation tour. (Photo, Werner Oder with Pavel Strozo, leader of a reconciliation ministry, at the prayer breakfast)
There are at least 2,000 sites in Ukraine where over a million Jewish men, women and children were slaughtered, some before the Nazis even arrived. I particularly wanted to visit the town of Stanislawow (now Ivano Frankivsk), where two members of my father’s Einsatzgruppe (death squad) participated in a massacre that the Jews named ‘Blood Sunday’. On 26 July 1941, Wilhelm and Johann Mauer took part in the killing of 12,000 Jews who were then buried in a mass grave. So I accepted an invitation to visit this site, knowing full well I was breaking the conspiracy of silence. In German, we call this silence in German ‘das Todesschweigen’, where the murder of Jewish people is hushed up and their murderers are protected. (Photo, repentance at the memorial service for Jewish Ukrainians slain during the holocaust)