[Author]by WND Faith[/Author]
When politicians really get pompous, self-important, self-righteous and demanding of their own way, they are likened to a dictator, a totalitarian, somebody like a Hitler.
Often that comparison is a step too far, given Hitler’s responsibility for millions, literally, of deaths.
The person making the comparison this time, however, shouldn’t be discounted: she survived Hitler’s totalitarian reign. And she’s reported nightmares because what she sees now is so similar.
Holocaust survivor Anita Dittman, whose story is told in the project being released Tuesday, “Trapped in Hitler’s Hell,” lived through Hitler’s rise to power, dictatorship, and death.
She is warning America that she sees now the same conditions she saw then.
Including a leader who lies, fails to keep his promises and has visions of more than grandeur.
The 86-year-old recently told attendees at Olive Tree Ministry’s “Understanding the Times” conference that the 2008 campaign images of Barack Obama with halos around his head and the worship-like adulation from crowds gave her nightmares.
The adulation offered by many to Obama has been well documented.
Broadcast veteran Barbara Walters admitted what many news watchers have thought about people in the media and their adoration of Obama.
“We thought that he was going to be – I shouldn’t say this at Christmastime – but the next messiah,” Walters told CNN’s Piers Morgan.
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The response came after Morgan asked the co-host of “The View” why Obama has faced so much opposition, and “Why is he struggling so much to really fulfill the great flame of ambition and excitement that he was elected on originally in 2009?”
“He made so many promises,” she explained, then making the messiah comment.
Radio host Rush Limbaugh couldn’t help but weigh in on Walters’ messianic view of Obama.
“This is how the left promoted Obama. It’s how he promoted himself, and it’s how a lot of voters saw him,” Limbaugh explained on his national program.
“Believe me, she’s a believer. She’s not mocking or laughing at this. … If she were mocking it, she wouldn’t have paused and begged for understanding at Christmastime.”
He said media members bought hook, line and sinker “this messiah business” and actually considered Obama their political savior.
WND also reported MSNBC “Hardball” host Chris Matthews sounded somewhat scriptural when he described Obama coming to the MSNBC studios to do an interview with him.
Matthews gleefully told his reporter colleagues after the interview: “He came amongst us.”
Other messianic references to Obama seem to be multiplying of late. It was just days earlier when WND reported a new lesson plan for American school students, offered on an open marketplace for educators, was suggesting such a reference.
The lesson, created by Sherece Bennett, is based on the book “Barack Obama: Son of Promise, Child of Hope” by Nikki Grimes.
Kyle Olson reported the plan on his Education Action Group website, commenting that it casts Obama “in a messianic light. Literally.”
In one passage, Olson points out, a young Obama sees beggars and wonders, “Will I ever be able to help people like these?’”
The lesson even uses biblical references to describe Obama, explaining how he changed his name from Barry.
“One morning, he slipped on the name he’d been born with. The name of his father, Barack. For the first time in his life, he wore it proudly – like a coat of many colors.”
Hollywood personality Jamie Foxx’s commented at the Soul Train Awards: “Thank God, and our lord and savior, Barack Obama!”
The adoration of Obama has often strayed into near deification.
“Obama is, of course, greater than Jesus,” the Dutch newspaper Politiken opined in 2009.
Then there was British recording artist Sting’s suggestion that Obama could be the divine answer to the world’s problems.
“In many ways, he’s sent from God, because the world’s a mess,” he said in interview with the Associated Press.
Earlier, it was an associate editor at a college newspaper who wrote, “Obama is my Jesus.”
Maggie Mertens, the associate editor at the campus paper at Massachusetts’ Smith College, said: “Obama is my homeboy. And I’m not saying that because he’s black – I’m saying that in reference to those Urban Outfitters T-shirts from a couple years ago that said, ‘Jesus is my homeboy.’ Yes, I just said it. Obama is my Jesus.”
It’s all too familiar, said Dittman, a young girl in Germany when Hitler came to power.
The film, produced by WND founder, Editor and CEO Joseph Farah and directed by WND Films Vice President George Escobar, and a companion book are being released Tuesday.
It was the gushing adulation of Obama that really triggered nightmares, Dittman said.
And the fact that establishment media reporters didn’t question his qualifications or competencies, while conservative news outlets that investigated his birth certificate were openly mocked. Media also never asked him hard questions about his disturbing history of close associations with communists and terrorists that included Frank Marshall Davis, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, she said.
Obama’s empty rhetoric that energized his followers chilled Dittman, who compared it to lies peddled in Germany painting promises of a bright future.
“It’s a similar time,” Dittman said. “We are financially in a problematic time. So was Germany. Hitler came in, and he made himself the savior, and people ate it all up because he made it sound wonderful how he would straighten everything out … and that is happening today, too.”
Obama’s promises included no tax increases on the poor, a five-day waiting period to sign bills so people could read them and creation of the most open and transparent administration in history.
Instead, Obama’s scandal-riddled presidency has included rushed spending bills, increased taxes affecting all and an administration that strategized to sic the IRS and Department of Justice on conservative groups.
In Germany, Hitler focused on the people’s emotions, offering them promises of prosperity: good jobs for the many unemployed, a return to stability and security.
He held massive rallies, featuring marching bands and banners, all organized, orchestrated and broadcast to the masses, commanding audiences with appealing messages and empty promises.
“The only promise Hitler ever kept was killing the Jews,” Dittman said.
The state of America’s churches also concerns Dittman, who said German churches fell away from the Bible before Hitler came into power.
She said many American churches are likewise walking away from the truth of Scripture, turning from biblical truths and opening the door to deception.
“That’s how Hitler got into the churches,” she warned.
She also cited comparisons between Nazi Germany and America, including the country adopting socialized medicine, banning prayer from school and a growing fascination with mystical spirituality.
Markell said Hitler was fascinated with mysticism, because “he knew it would crumble the Christian faith.” She warned that Christian churches in America are likewise trying spiritual traps such as walking the labyrinth, “Christian” yoga and contemplative prayer.
During the 12 years Hitler was in power, Dittman suffered the kind of persecution she fears is in America’s future.
As a child, she was bullied by peers and teachers, publicly ostracized and condemned. She eventually was forced with her mother into the Jewish ghetto, where they lived in fear as they witnessed roundups, constantly battling starvation before and after being sent to a concentration camp.
Her story, as written by Markell and told in the WND documentary, portrays atrocities Dittman endured but leaves audiences uplifted, because of her constant focus on God and His amazing hand of protection over her.
“Anita has always been one who gives all the glory for her survival to the Lord,” Markell said. “And it was a daily survival, too, between 1933 and 1945. She had to call on God for supernatural wisdom (and) supernatural, just incredible, insight to escape, to survive. On and on and on, one scene after anther.”
She survived a Nazi nurse’s repeated diabolical attempts to kill her, was protected when forced out in the open during the bombing of Dresden, was provided protective “angels” in critically dangerous situations and, above all, given the grace to understand God’s wisdom in the verse she often quotes, Romans 8:28:
“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose.”
