One of the reasons why the United States of America got off to such a great start is
because we had total educational freedom. When the Constitution was written, there was
already by then a great variety of teaching institutions. The Dames Schools were colonial
preschools in which children were taught the three R’s in preparation for going on to an
academy. The academy was a private school run by an educational entrepreneur. It
prepared students for higher learning or a trade or profession. They were considered the
most appropriate educational institution for a free people. Their responsibility was to the
parents who put their children in the academy.
Home tutoring was also very common in those days. There was no such thing as
“compulsory school attendance.” Parents were free to provide their children with any
fonn of education which met their needs. Children were taught to read and write in the
Dames Schools, which were keenly aware that Biblical literacy was an absolute necessity
in a society based on the teachings of the Bible.
In New England, laws had been passed requiring parents to educate their children. This
spurred the creation of Common Schools throughout the region. Towns hired teachers to
run such schools. Their main function was to prepare the students for future studies in
the colleges. They were owned and operated by the local folks who usually paid the
schoolmasters with commodities rather than money.
The beauty of this high degree of freedom was that education was practical, its
foundation based on reality. Whatever was taught was intended to improve the
knowledge, skills, and aptitUdes of the students. The community’s basic purpose in
education was to pass on to the future generation the knowledge, wisdom, religion and
morals of the previous generation. There was no such thing as religious neutrality. The
United States was a Christian nation and all agreed that children should be inculcated in
the tenets of Christianity. And anyone who went into the education profession knew its
spiritual purposes.
But then the question arises: why did Americans give up educational freedom so early in
their history when its benefits were so obvious? Believe it or not, it had nothing to do
with economics or poor teaching. Literacy was very high and education was available to
everyone. There were even excellent charity schools that provided education for the
children of the poor. There was no need for the government to get involved in education.
.
But in Boston, the government did get involved in establishing the Boston Latin School,
an elite school to prepare students for Harvard. It was funded by the city even though the
parents of the students could easily have paid its costs. But the liberals in Boston were
already looking to government to establish an elite institution separated from the church.
What happened to create this state of mind? It was the rise of the Unitarian heresy at
Harvard among the descendants of the Puritans. Intellectual pride became the spearhead
of religious Liberalism.
T
The Unitarians no longer believed in the Trinity or in the divinity of Christ. If Christ was
divine it was in the sense that we are all divine. But while Christ was considered a great
teacher, he was not considered to be the source of salvation. The Unitarians also rejected
Calvin’s view of man as being innately depraved who needed to be saved by Jesus Christ.
The Unitarians believed that man was basically good, and that all he needed was a good
secular education to achieve moral perfectibility.
And so the Boston Unitarians launched a strong campaign to create government primary
schools in which Calvinist teachings would be eliminated. They were successful because
they learned how to influence the press, control the legislature, and get what they wanted.
As the public school movement grew, the orthodox were in a dilenuna as to whether or
not to support it. In 1849, the orthodox General Association of Massachusetts decided in
favor of support with this very important stipulation. They wrote:
If after a full and faithful experiment, it should at last be seen that fidelity to the
religious interests of our children forbids a further patronage of the system, we
can unite with the Evangelical Christians in the establishment of private schools,
in which more full doctrinal religious instruction may be possible.
There is no question that the “full and faithful experiment” has been a colossal failure,
and that millions of Christian children have been spiritually harmed. While many parents
have taken their children out of the public schools, and hundreds if not thousands of
church schools have been founded, the vast majority of Christian parents still put their
children in these anti-Christian public schools. In other words, we have still to learn the
lessons of history.
The Blumenfeld Archives http://blumenfeld.campconstitution.net/main.htm
Camp Constitution’s Hal Shurtleff had the opportunity to interview Elena Barbera, producer of the powerful documentary American Groomer. In this short call to action documentary, Elena goes into the history of groomers, and who funds them from Alfred Kinsey to the Sex Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) to today’s groomers who have access to promote their perversion in many of our nation’s schools. From her website:
American Groomer is a documentary revealing the disturbing truth about sexualization of children in American schools.
The average citizen is totally unaware of the societal, physical, emotional, and behavioral dangers of this appalling, astonishing fetish.
Kids are being introduced to kink, taught incomplete science behind STDs, and are being encouraged to make dangerous choices.
And in the majority of states, it’s perfectly legal to show your kids the filthiest porn available in school. Yes, really.
Please join our mailing list below for behind-the-scenes updates on filming, release dates, and more.
Produced by Elena Barbera (of SonnyFaz and Elena The Based Mother on YouTube and Rumble).
https://americangroomerfilm.com
(A link to an audio version of the interview: https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/shurtleffhal/episodes/2025-01-31T15_26_38-08_00
We encourage readers to host showings of this documentary.
First Liberty Institute has dispatched a letter to a Connecticut school district suggesting that it reconsider its demands that a devout Catholic teacher purge her workspace of a crucifix – or get fired.
“Requiring a teacher to purge their workspace of anything religious is blatant discrimination that violates the First Amendment,” explained Keisha Russell, a senior counsel at the legal organization.
“The Supreme Court said in the recent Kennedy decision that teachers have the right to engage in personal religious expression under the Free Exercise Clause, including when students are present.”
The institute said it sent a letter to officials at the New Britain School District on behalf of Marisol Orroyo-Castro, who has been a teacher for three decades.
The letter calls on the district to reinstate her, after she was placed on administrative leave for refusing to “remove a small crucifix from her workspace.”
The legal team explained:
Marisol has taught in the Connecticut public schools for 32 years. For the last 10 years, she has placed a crucifix by her desk along with other personal items such as student artwork and a church calendar. As a devout Catholic, the crucifix reminds her to pray and helps her remain calm throughout the day as she faithfully teaches her students.
On Friday, December 6, 2024, she was brought into a meeting with the vice principal and abruptly told that unless she removed the crucifix by her desk by Monday morning she would be disciplined for insubordination. She was later told she could put the crucifix in a drawer or under her desk, so students wouldn’t see it.
After she did so, Marisol started to sob, feeling as though she “hid it under a bushel,” rather than let her light shine. After many tears and prayer, she returned the crucifix to its original location. She was then suspended without pay for two days during the holiday season as the school waited for her to comply and hang the crucifix under her desk in a place the school administration called her “private space.” Now, she is on administrative leave during the grievance process. The school district said it is considering whether to terminate Marisol.
The lawyers noted that other teachers are allowed to display photographs of family and friends, images of Wonder Woman and Baby Yoda, a miniature of the Mona Lisa, promotions for the New England Patriots football team, inspirational quotes and much more, including a mug referencing a Bible verse.
But the district won’t tolerate a crucifix.
In the letter, the attorneys explain, “Under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, and under the Connecticut Constitution, the District may not abridge its employees’ free speech rights, nor their rights to freely exercise their religion.”
Then the letter cited the Kennedy precedent from the U.S. Supreme Court.
“Fewer than three years ago, in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the Supreme Court held that a public school football coach could not be fired for engaging in personal prayer, even when he did so visibly at the 50-yard line of the stadium after home games.”
First Liberty Institute also represented Kennedy in that case.
Fox reported First Liberty Institute is working with WilmerHale law firm on the case.
First Liberty Institute said while on leave, Castro has been “pressured to resign or retire early and sign an agreement not to sue the district.”
The threats also have included her termination.
Tony Gasper, the superintendent, claimed, “We will not allow any teacher to use their position of authority to impose their personal religious beliefs or infringe on the civil rights of students. Our commitment is to ensure a learning environment where all students feel respected.”
Originally published at American Thinker
After finding evidence that the “man of God” and “moral conscience of our nation,” the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., participated in the rape of a parishioner, engaged in numerous sex orgies, received cash payments from known communists, and admitted that he was a Marxist, King biographer and Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Garrow wrote of King, “There is no question that a profoundly painful reckoning and reconsideration inescapably awaits.”
Black Democrats and White liberals rail about the gains derived from the Civil Rights Movement. I ask, “What gains?” If murder, poverty, and mass incarceration are gains, you may have a point. In an attempt to make him untouchable, liberals have protected King’s counterfeit legacy by sealing his FBI files until 2027. Nevertheless, his reckoning is here.
But that reckoning shouldn’t occur exclusively because of King’s immoral behavior. It shouldn’t happen because the “Good Reverend’s” best friend, Ralph Abernathy, in his book And the Walls Came Tumbling Down, described King beating a woman and sleeping with two others at the Lorrain Motel the night before his death. Or because Arthur Schlesinger recorded Jackie Kennedy saying he was “terrible, phony, and tricky.” Or that Black Major League Baseball player Don Newcombe reported to the FBI that King was a “drunk” and had an illegitimate child by a woman married to a sterile Los Angeles dentist. Or because King allowed the dirty world of politics to turn the Black church into a puppet of the atheist and racist Democrat party.
No. This reckoning should happen because Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement have failed Black people. They managed only to elect many Black Americans into office, with most of them belonging to the same evil Democrat party that had necessitated the Civil Rights Movement by enslaving, raping, castrating, and oppressing Black Americans for over one hundred and fifty years.
After fifty years of following King’s failed ideology, consider these results. On June 4, 2020, the Washington Post reported “no decrease in Black and White citizens’ wealth gap since 1968.” The Brookings Institution reported that in 1965, only 24% of Black children were born out of wedlock. In 2020, it was 69.4 (approximately a 300% increase). Between 2019 and 2020, Blacks made up 11% of the population but 50% of all murders. In May 2019, Penn State and UCLA reported that school segregation is getting worse.
This is King’s legacy. Why are we celebrating it?
In explaining how to recognize a false prophet, Jesus said, “A tree is known by the fruit it bears.” He said you cannot get bad fruit from a good tree. The fruits of the Black community, almost unanimously, are rotten to the core.
What good has come from Martin Luther King’s movement for Black America? The American Black community is at the bottom of nearly every socio-economic statistic. The Black family is weaker. The Black church is more apostate. The Black economy is nonexistent. Black government is corrupt. Black education is terrible. Are we celebrating failure, or was this their intention?
To have been a Christian minister, it is illuminating that King’s ideology is anathema to Christianity, manliness, and American freedom. Consider this: after attempting to integrate an all-White hotel in 1965, when asked what he wanted, King reported replied, “My dignity.” I hate this story. God gave all of us our dignity, but King and his minions taught America that White people held the dignity of Black America in their hands, and we had to beg them to release it.
His low opinion of Black people was on full display when he said Black people could not pull themselves up by their bootstraps because “they did not have boots.” He told us non-violence is a Christian virtue. That is not true. There is no virtue in strong Christian men allowing their wives and children to be beaten, raped, and murdered as King demanded. Non-aggression is a Christian virtue, not non-violence.
Forced integration or forcing others to allow you to be where you are not wanted or not invited is not a Christian or manly virtue. It is offensive to force your presence upon another, and Jesus taught that we should never offend unless it is for his sake and never our own. To do otherwise defines you as a stalker. A stalker can never be loved — only pitied, as most Black Americans are today.
In his epic “I Have A Dream” speech, reportedly written by his White communist handler, Stanley Levinson, King planted a sense of perpetual slavery in the minds of every Black person when he said, “One hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation, the Negro is still not free.” That is not true. I was born free. God gave me my freedom.
In that speech, he placed in the Black mind the blasphemous idea that government is above God when he said we have come here to cash a check from America guaranteeing our unalienable rights. That isn’t true. Our unalienable rights are given to us by God. According to John Locke, these rights are irreversible, unsellable, and nontransferable.
Cementing in the minds of Black Americans and America the belief in Black inferiority, he delivered his most quoted line: “I have a dream that one day my four little children will not be judged by the color of their skin.” You wish not to be judged only by something that shames you. One should never be ashamed of something that God gave him. Furthermore, Christianity teaches that we cannot and should not try to control the actions of others. The stupid, ignorant racist should not be concerned about me. I am never concerned about his judgment or bigotry. We can only control ourselves. There’s nothing wrong with the color of my Black skin. You are welcome to judge me by it. Underestimate me at your peril.
He ended this epic speech by doubling down on the fact that Blacks were not free, and we needed the permission of White people to be free by saying “knowing that we will be free one day” and on a certain day we can say, “Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, we’re free at last.”
Let me reiterate: I was born free. No man can set me free. I just am.
His speech set in motion decades of Black victimization and White guilt. It is recited from every classroom in America, indoctrinating future generations to believe the lie of Black inferiority and the goodness of government dependency. Instead of being recited, it should be re-evaluated, condemned, and placed in the trash bin of history beside the Dred Scott and Plessy v. Ferguson rulings.
These King statements that have long been a part of America and are canon in Black American thought must be pulled up, root and stem. White Americans are not responsible for and cannot solve the problems of Black people. No other racial group in America carries this badge of inferiority, depending for all their future success on the actions of another racial group. Most comprehend the insanity of this ideology, and the present condition of Black society testifies to its epic failure. Therefore, King’s reckoning is at hand, and as with the old Confederacy, it’s time for a reconsideration.
Regarding King, Jim Tott wrote, “Toward the end of his life, a major poll found that nearly two-thirds of Americans held an unfavorable opinion of the civil rights icon.” On March 4, 2015, CBS News ran a story titled “Have the goals of the civil rights movement been achieved” Fifty-four percent of all Americans and 72% of Black Americans say no.
With all the speeches, marches, and pieces of legislation, with no success, it is time to understand that King was wrong. Black Americans cannot garner love and respect through legislative coercion. History has proven that it is a waste of time even to seek it. We should spend our time trying to control and improve ourselves, praying for and protecting ourselves from people who mean us harm, while cherishing the people we love.
There is evidence that King’s new society that teaches pity, not esteem, begging instead of earning, and stalking instead of standing has bred an insidious self-hate among Black people. Sadly, wherever Black people live in close proximity with one another, they hurt, disrespect, and kill each other on an industrial level while aborting their children at three times the level of white women.
When stalking, begging, and pity didn’t work, King resorted to violence. He contracted out his violence to a third party. He used the gun of the federal government to force the racist Democrats to allow Black Americans into their presence. Intentionally or unintentionally, King placed Black America into the sad position where they are now not respected, but pitied; where they are not wanted, but tolerated; where they do not earn, but are “given” — thus leaving too many of these Black people filled with hate, pride, envy, and grievance, devoid of gratitude, never satisfied, always complaining, and never saying “thank you” or thanking God.
This line of thinking has produced a generation of Black people where there exist mostly victims and their victimhood-supporters and allies: Black Lives Matter, the Congressional Black Caucus, the NAACP — all marvelous beggars, cowards, and thieves.
Taylor Branch, in his book Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, called Martin Luther King, Jr. “a pawn of history.” He is that and much worse. He is a weapon the left wields in the Democrat party, designed to keep America in condemnation and Black people in their place.
King’s aforementioned amoral actions are germane only in the sense that they match the amoral outcomes of the Civil Rights Movement. Blacks must take their place as free men and women, complete with all of its dangers and glories. Black men of honor must reject all condescending overtures of affirmative action, the pity of Critical Race Theory, and the weakness of “anti-racist theory” from our former oppressors. We must compete, earn, and defend as all free men do.
Because of King’s abusive behavior toward women, David Garrow concluded his piece on King by saying these actions “pose[] so fundamentally a challenge to his historical stature as to require the most complete and extensive historical review possible.” This may be true. But the wretched condition of Black America is the primary black mark on King’s legacy and the ultimate reason for his re-evaluation.
Until Black Americans reject King’s ideology and accept that we should be esteemed by instead of ashamed of the color of our skin; that we, not White America, hold our dignity in our hands; that our rights come from God, not government; that we are and always have been free, and that we should never stalk, beg, and compare ourselves to White America or anyone ever again other than our former selves, Black America will remain at the bottom of every socio-economic statistic in the Western world.
Dangerous freedom over safe slavery; justice over equality; strength and honor over pity, envy, and stalking. This is the true face of America and what God intends for all people.
Vince Ellison is the author of several books including Crime Inc and the producer of the documentary “Will You Go to Hell For Me. Please visit his website https://vinceeellison.com/
Sam Blumenfeld wrote this 18-page double spaced essay back in the 1970s:
Sam ended the essay with this:
“The choice for Christians today is quite clear. They cannot continue to put
their children in Satanic schools if they wish to preserve the values,
the unalienable rights derived from God, on which this nation’s
origin is based and on which its future survival depends. America
abandoned its early Christian schools for the wrong reasons. It
must now get back to them for the right reasons. The purpose of
life is still and will always be the glorification of God, and the
function of education, in the words of R. J. Rushdoony, is the
“preparation of man to glorify God, to enjoy Him, and to serve Him
in and through a chosen calling.” This is the knowledge we should
be imparting to our children, at home or in school, and that is the
only way we shall be able to preserve the priceless heritage of
freedom our founding fathers bequeathed us.”
The Blumenfeld Archives
Artwork details: Title: The Inauguration of Washington as First President of the United States, April 30th 1789 – At the Old City Hall, New York – The oath of office was administered by Chancellor Livingston of the States of New York – Mr. Otis the Secretary of the Senate holding up the Bible on a crimson cushion.; Publisher: Currier & Ives (American, active New York, 1857–1907); Sitter: George Washington (American, 1732–1799); Date: 1876; Medium: Hand-colored lithograph; Dimensions: Image: 8 7/8 × 12 1/2 in. (22.6 × 31.7 cm); Sheet: 13 1/2 × 17 11/16 in. (34.3 × 44.9 cm); Classification: Prints; Credit Line: Bequest of Adele S. Colgate, 1962; Object Number: 63.550.455
From 1986 to 1999, Sam wrote a monthly newsletter called “The Blumenfeld Education Letter.” They are all available in the Sam Blumenfeld Archive. Many of them are timeless especially this one from June 1987-“Eugenics and the Making of a Black Underclass.” Sam traces the racist history of Eugenics and how it was created and embraced by the so-called progressives in the United States. A link to the newsletter is below. Please help share this vital information far and wide
http://blumenfeld.campconstitution.net/1987/BEL%2002-06%20198706.pdf
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(The following article was written by Sam back in 2011. This article is part of the Sam Blumenfeld Archives: http://blumenfeld.campconstitution.net/main.htm
The year 2011 marks the 123rd year since the publication of Edward Bellamy’s famous
utopian novel, Looking Backward, in which the author depicted a happy, socialist
America in the year 2000. In Bellamy’s optimistic fantasy, greed and material want
ceased to exist, brotherly harmony prevailed, the arts and sciences flourished, and an
all-powerful and pervasive government and bureaucracy were efficient and fair.
The book became enormously popular, selling 371,000 copies in its first two years and a
million copies by 1900. Its influence on American progressive educators and
intellectuals was enormous. In fact, it became their vision of a future American paradise
in which human moral perfectibility could at last be attained.
The extent of the book’s influence can be measured by the fact that in 1935, when
Columbia University asked philosopher-educator John Dewey, historian Charles Beard,
and Atlantic Monthly editor Edward Weeks to prepare independently lists of the 25 most
influential books since 1885, Looking Backward ranked as second on each list after
Marx’s Das Kapital. In other words, Looking Backward was considered the most
influential American book in that 50-year period.
John Dewey characterized the book as “one of the greatest modern syntheses of humane
values.”
Even after the rise of Hitler’s National Socialism in Germany and
Marxist-Leninist communism in Russia, Dewey still clung to Bellamy’s vision of a
socialist America. In his 1934 essay, “The Great American Prophet,” Dewey wrote:
“I wish that those who conceive that the abolition of private capital and of energy
expended for profit signify complete regimenting of life and the abolition of all personal
choice and all emulation, would read with an open mind Bellamy’s picture of a socialized
economy. It is not merely that he exposes with extraordinary vigor and clarity the
restriction upon liberty that the present system imposes but that he pictures how
socialized industry and finance would release and further all of those personal and private
types of occupation and use of leisure that men and women actually most prize today….
“It is an American communism that he depicts, and his appeal comes largely from the
fact that he sees in it the necessary means of realizing the democratic ideal….
“The worth of Bellamy’s book in effecting a translation of the ideas of democracy into
economic terms is incalculable. What Uncle Tom’s Cabin was to the anti-slavery
movement Bellamy’s book may well be to the shaping of popular opinion for a new
social order.”
Bellamy envisaged America becoming socialist by way of consensus rather than
revolution. In turn, Dewey, who spent his professional life trying to transform
Bellamy’s vision into American reality, saw education as the principle means by which
this transformation could be achieved. He spent the years 1894 to 1904 at the University
of Chicago in his Laboratory School seeking to devise a new curriculum for the public
schools that would produce the kind of socialized youngsters who would bring about the
new socialist millennium.
The result, of course, is the education we have today–a minimal interest in the
development of intellectual, scientific, and literacy skills and a maximal effort to produce
socialized, politically correct, individuals who can barely read.
Today, many years later, the University of Chicago stands as an island of academic
tranquility in Chicago’s Southside, surrounded by a sea of social and urban devastation
caused by the philosophical emanations from Dewey’s laboratory and other departments.
Charles Judd, the university’s Wundtian professor of educational psychology, labored
mightily to organize the radical reform of the public-school curriculum to conform with
Dewey’s socialist plan.
According to Dewey, the philosophical underpinning of capitalism is individualism
sustained by an education that stressed the development of literacy skills. High literacy
encourages intellectual independence which produces strong individualism. It was
Dewey’s exhaustive analysis of individualism that led him to believe that the socialized
individual could only be produced by first getting rid of the traditional emphasis on
language and literacy in the primary grades and turning the children toward socialized
activities and behavior.
In 1898, he wrote a devastating critique of traditional Three R’s education, entitled “The
Primary-Education Fetich (sic),” in which he took to task the entire centuries-old
emphasis on literacy. He wrote:
“The plea for the predominance of learning to read in early school life because of the
great importance attaching to literature seems to me a perversion.”
He then mapped out a long-range, comprehensive strategy that would reorganize primary
education to serve the needs of socialization. “Change must come gradually,” he wrote.
“To force it unduly would compromise its final success by favoring a violent reaction.”
If what he was advocating was so beneficial, why would it favor a violent reaction?
The simple fact is that when parents send their children to school they want them to
become good readers. They don’t send them to school to become socialists.
Obviously, Dewey had learned a lot from the Fabian socialists in England whose motto
was Festina lente–”Make haste slowly.”
Part of the new primary curriculum was a new method of teaching reading, an
ideographic method that teaches children to read English as if it were Chinese, by simple
word recognition, as if each word were like a Chinese character. It was called the
“look-say or sight” method. In fact, it was at the University of Chicago that Charles
Judd’s protégé, William Scott Gray, developed the Dick and Jane reading program which
in the 1930’s became the standard method of teaching reading in American schools and
has caused the devastating epidemic of functional illiteracy in America.
By 1955, the reading problem had become so severe that Rudolf Flesch felt compelled to
write a book about it, Why Johnny Can’t Read. But it didn’t move the educators to
change anything. They were firmly committed to Dewey’s plan to create a socialist
America. Indeed, in 2007, the National Endowment for the Arts released a somber
report on the state of American literacy. Its chairman, Dana Gioia, stated: “This is a
massive social problem. We are losing the majority of the new generation. They will not
achieve anything close to their potential because of poor reading.”
False doctrines lead to tragic consequences. Chicago’s Southside, New York’s Harlem
and East Bronx, Boston’s Roxbury, and other such third-world type enclaves in American
cities, peopled by the new American underclass, all of whom have attended American
government schools, are the making of the arrogant eugenicist doctrines, policies, and
strategies of the progressive movement. Progressives, of course, will never admit
responsibility for the human wreckage they have created. In fact, they have deified Dewey,
attributing the failures of progressive education to everything but Dewey.
Meanwhile, Bellamy’s consensus utopia is far more remote today than it was in 1888.
The present economic mess created by the socialists in Washington–with, unfortunately,
some help from the Bush Administration–cannot possibly evolve into anything Bellamy
would have recognized. At least back then many intelligent people entertained the
delusion of human perfectibility and that utopia was possible.
Today, after the horrible events of the 20th century, we know that Bellamy’s basic
analysis of capitalism and human nature was false. But the fact that diehard socialists
still exist in America and occupy the highest ranks of power in Washington is proof that
man is indeed a fallen creature and capable of the kind of evil that destroys nations. We
survived John Dewey and Edward Bellamy. But will we survive Obama?
(Thankfully, we survived Obama and thanks to the efforts of people like Sam, the homeschool movement is flourishing as more and more parents realize how destructive government schools are to their children. Please join the Blumenfeld Archive-link above-and share it as widely as possible-Ed)
The Blumenfeld Archives
One of the most inspiring stories of peace through Christ among ardent enemies unfolded in a potentially volatile setting. Here is the World War II story of a German mother, her 12-year-old son, three American soldiers, and four German soldiers — each of the three parties previously unknown to one another, and how they came together to celebrate Christmas in 1944 in the height of the Battle of the Bulge.
On December 16, 1944, the Germans initiated a massive campaign against the Allies in the Ardennes Forest, a mountainous region extending throughout Belgium, France, and Luxembourg on the Western Front. Over 250,000 German troops mounted a blitzkrieg, attempting to divide the Allies in a major offensive. This set the stage for the Battle of the Bulge. Heavy snowstorms erupted unexpectedly, forever changing the course of this infamous battle and possibly World War II, along with the individual lives of millions of people, and particularly nine individuals one Christmas Eve.
The soldiers were fighting in trenches, on the plains, and on mountain sides. Supplies came to a devastating halt. In thousands of cases, there was no ammunition, no food, no medical help, no shelter, no jackets, no gloves, wet socks and wet worn out boots, no heat, and separation from their platoons! Soldiers were using newspapers and curtains from the wreckage of houses and cabins that were bombed to wrap their feet.
In the Ardennes Forest an American soldier was shot in the upper leg and was bleeding to death. Two fellow American soldiers tried to help him get behind the American line several miles away. Additionally, they were starving and freezing. There was deep snow on the ground, and a heavy snowstorm erupted. Disorientation set in. They wandered aimlessly in the Ardennes Forest for three days.
In the distance they saw a cabin and approached it. When they got close to the front door, the two lay their wounded soldier on the snow.
One of the soldiers knocked on the cabin door. Inside was a German mother named Elisabeth Vincken and her 12-year-old son Fritz. Because their home in a nearby city had been partially destroyed when Americans bombed the area, Mr. Vincken sent his wife, Elisabeth, and their son, Fritz, to their cabin.
Mr. Vincken remained behind to repair their house and business. His plan was to join them at the cabin when he completed the restoration of their home. He had hoped to be done by Christmas Eve and celebrate Christmas with his wife and son at the cabin. But he did not show up due to the severe snowstorm.
Mrs. Vincken heard the knock, opened the door and there stood two American soldiers with weapons, and a third laying in the snow. She did not know English, nor did the Americans know German. But one of the Americans spoke some French, as did Mrs. Vincken. So in broken French and with some sign language, they explained that they were lost, hungry, close to death, and that the soldier laying on the ground was shot and bleeding to death. The American soldiers asked for any assistance in terms of shelter and food for the night, so that they could start in the morning to find the American lines.
There was a German law forbidding German citizens from harboring enemy soldiers. Mrs. Vincken could be shot for providing any assistance. But it was a Holy Night—Christmas Eve. Mrs. Vincken was Lutheran. So Mrs. Vincken let them in. Had Mrs. Vincken turned them away, the American soldiers would not have forced their way in. They would have continued on and hoped to survive the night. Mrs. Vincken was not a sympathizer for the Allied forces at all. She was a Christian and would have assisted anyone needing humanitarian help.
Mrs. Vincken sent Fritz to get six more potatoes from the shed outside and to bring in the rooster. She was going to prepare a Christmas Eve supper for the American soldiers. She went to work in the kitchen preparing supper. Shortly thereafter, there was another knock at the door. So, she assumed more American soldiers had arrived needing help.
She opened the door and turned as white as a ghost. There stood four German soldiers with weapons. Mrs. Vincken greeted them. They had lost their way in the forest during the snowstorm. Separated from their unit with no food nor warmth for days, they were hungry and feared they might die in the sub-freezing weather with no help in sight. Mrs. Vincken stepped outside and shut the door to speak to the German soldiers privately.
She explained that three American soldiers came and that one was severely wounded and bleeding to death, and that they are inside. She said, “It is the Holy Night and there will be no shooting here.” And she told them that they could eat as much as they wished. She then asked them to give her their weapons. They agreed. She had them lean their weapons against the cabin outside.
She then went inside and shut the door and informed the American soldiers that they had guests, but that they would not be harmed. She explained that there were German soldiers who likewise needed help and that they will come inside for supper and stay the night. She then asked for their weapons, and they agreed. She took the American soldiers’ weapons outside and leaned them against the cabin with the German soldiers’ weapons. Then she invited the German soldiers to come inside.
So there they were. The German soldiers were on one side of the living room and the American soldiers on the other side, facing the opposing side while Mrs. Vincken prepared Christmas Eve supper. The silence was very apparent. Out of the silence emerged the voices of the German soldiers singing the German hymn “Silent Night” in Latin. “Silent Night” was renowned in both German and Latin. The Lutheran denomination in those days held mass in Latin. So German Lutherans often sang in Latin. Then their American brothers in Christ joined in in English. Tears came down the faces of the German and American soldiers as they sang ‘Silent Night.’
The German soldiers brought out of their supplies a flask of wine and a loaf of bread. They shared their wine and bread with the American soldiers. With tears running down their faces they had communion. Then one of the German soldiers began speaking in perfect English to the American soldiers and said he was a medical student. He offered to operate on the wounded American soldier.
For several hours this German soldier operated with no anesthesia. It was such a meticulous and intense operation that his forehead was perspiring. Finally, he got the bullet out and bandaged up the wounded American soldiers. He said that the cold weather prevented infection from spreading. Mrs. Vincken had finished preparing the Christmas Eve supper. She invited them to the table and prayed, “Komm, Herr Jesus, and be our guest.” They had Christian fellowship that Holy Night.
According to Fritz, in an interview in later years, “There were tears in her eyes and as I looked around the table, I saw that the battle-weary soldiers were filled with emotion.”
In the morning, Mrs. Vincken gave them back their weapons and said she would pray for their safety. The German corporal showed the Americans on their own map how to get back behind American lines and gave them his compass. The German soldiers and the American soldiers all shook hands and went in opposite directions. Fritz later recounted, “She asked them to be very careful and told them, “I hope someday you will return home safely to where you belong. May God bless and watch over you.’”
In 1965, Mrs. Vincken passed away. Mr. Vincken had likewise passed away in the 1960s. Fritz Vincken and his wife moved to Hawaii and he opened up Fritz’s European Bakery in Kapalama, a neighborhood in Honolulu. For years he told the story of what happen that solemn Christmas Eve.
In 1985, President Ronald Reagan, 40th president of the United States, had heard the story and re-told it during a visit to Germany, saying, “The story needs to be told and retold because none of us can ever hear too much about building peace and reconciliation.” The story caught on like wildfire.
In March 1995, Unsolved Mysteries dramatized the event and put it on national television. The American soldier who had been shot was Ralph Blank. Ralph was residing at Northampton Manor Nursing Home in Frederick, Maryland. He had been telling the story the same way Fritz had been for decades. But when he saw it on Unsolved Mysteries, he went public with the story.
Fritz flew to Frederick, Maryland to become reunited with Ralph Blank. When Ralph saw Fritz again, he said, “Your mother saved my life.” Fritz was very pleased that his mother had received credit for saving the lives of seven American and German soldiers. Ralph told Fritz where one of the other American soldiers was located. So, Fritz went to see him as well.
None of the German soldiers came public with their stories. It could be that none of them were still alive and may have been killed during the war.
Fritz passed away in 2002. But the historical account of peace through Christ on that legendary Holy Night — Christmas Eve, 1944 — remains as a testimony of the peace that passes understanding which only comes from an abiding relationship with Jesus Christ. Paul the Apostle said, “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will protect your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7, MEV).
The power of the cross of Christ brings peace through Christ no matter what your circumstance may be. — ASSIST News
About the writer: Chaplain, Major James F. Linsey, USA (Ret.) is the chief editor of the Modern English Version and the New Tyndale Version Bible translations. An ordained minister with the Southern Baptist Convention, he is the founding president of Military Bible Association, the mission of which is to raise funds to donate copies of The Military Bible and The Leadership Bible to the troops. He is a highly sought after speaker for conventions, seminars, and churches.