[00:00:00] The Missional Life - Dan: All right. Welcome back to Mission Life Podcast. Today we have Jack or Jochen Werfel on the show. Jack is a Holocaust survivor whose new autobiography, My Two Lives, recounts his survival journey as a young boy in Nazi Germany. After losing his family and facing persecution, Jack eventually built a new life in the U.

[00:00:16] The Missional Life - Dan: S., founding one of the nation's largest insurance firms. His story is one of remarkable resilience, courage, and determination, making him a vital voice in today's conversation around anti Semitism. Jack, welcome to the show.

[00:00:28] The Missional Life - Amanda: Welcome.

[00:00:29] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: Thank you. Thank you. Happy to be here.

[00:00:33] The Missional Life - Dan: Absolutely. Jack. It's truly an honor to have you here with us today.

[00:00:37] The Missional Life - Dan: After learning about your incredible journey, it's, it's clear you've inspired countless people. And so we're curious after all these years, what made you decide to finally share your story and my two lives?

[00:00:49] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: Well, it's funny. So many people ask me over the years in this country here They thought my life was kind of unusual, and they would say, Why don't you write a book?

[00:01:00] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: And I kept telling them, I said, You know, there are probably thousands of other people who had a similar life like I did, and who would be better writers, and I'm pretty busy. So, I never wrote a book. And then, two and a half years or three years ago, in 20 22, , Dana and her husband Tom sat me down and said Jack, you gotta write a book. It's just for the family, so that our children and their children and their grandchildren and on and on that they will always know. Where we're from originally, how we got to this country, what happened to your family, and so on.

[00:01:43] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: And we got to have this information written by you because you're the only one who really knows. So, Well, Dana and I have a special relationship. She works with me in my company. She runs my company now. I'm 92 years old, so she's helping me a lot. I'm his

[00:02:03] daughter. I don't know if I said that before.

[00:02:05] She helps me a lot.

[00:02:08] The Missional Life - Dan: That's

[00:02:09] awesome.

[00:02:09] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: Welcome. And There's one person I can't say no to, and that's Dana. And when she asked me to write the book for just for The family, I said, okay, I'll, I'll try it. And I did. And somehow when the book was published, it got out into the public exact exactly how, I don't know.

[00:02:30] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: And all of a sudden there's a demand for my book. And I think so far I've had 27 interviews like yours now from television and radio stations in the last year, year and a half. And it's been very interesting. And for one thing, because I'm telling my story and I find that in this country, so many young people have no idea About what happened in the Third Reich and what happened with Hitler and so on and so on.

[00:03:11] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: And so

[00:03:12]

[00:03:12] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: The reason why, why I wrote the book and why I continue to push and promote the book.

[00:03:20] Wow. Amazing.

[00:03:22] The Missional Life - Dan: So I'm doing the math. So that puts about 1932. Is that, is that about right?

[00:03:27] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: That's when I was born, yes.

[00:03:28] The Missional Life - Dan: Okay. As you were growing up, you grew up in in a family, it sounds like , in Austria. Yes, that's correct. And it sounds like your, did your, did your dad work for, for the president or the, the leader of Austria then?

[00:03:40] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: Yes, yes. He worked for Mr. Scherzenegger in Austria, yeah.

[00:03:44] The Missional Life - Dan: So can you tell us a little bit? What are some of your earliest experiences or memories throughout the thirties as you began to see this unfold in a very intimate way? I mean, you were, you were there in Austria. Your dad was in close proximity to a lot of these inner workings.

[00:03:57] The Missional Life - Dan: What are some of your initial memories of what was about to transpire from the thirties into the early forties?

[00:04:04] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: Well, my initial family, my initial memories with my family. I had a wonderful family, a wonderful mother and father, and even though my father would take a train and we lived in a little village called Gutenstein, which is just a few miles outside of Vienna, and he would come home every night and we would go pick him up at the train station.

[00:04:30] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: These are the things I remember, and the locomotive would be turned around on a turnaround to go back to Vienna. And those are my memories, and on Sundays my parents would take us for a long walk through the mountains and the woods, and I remember that, and I remember these huge snails everywhere in the woods, little things like that, you know, as, as a child, and yeah, and of course I had a brother, my brother Peter.

[00:05:04] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: And the two of us pretty much did everything together. My mother ran the house. She was always worried about us when we were playing outside in the front yard because the gypsies would come by. And on the road, we were right on the road, our house, and she was always afraid that the gypsies may pick us up and take

[00:05:25] us.

[00:05:25] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: And this, this actually happens, you know. This actually happened in those days, yeah. So those are some of my memories, my childhood memories from, from those days. And then what happened, you know as we were getting, getting older, a little older, four or five years old, if that's older. I heard my parents talk about what may happen that Hitler from Germany is planning to take over Austria and make it part of Germany.

[00:05:59] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: He was actually born in Austria, you know, Hitler was, in a little town called Braunau. April the 20th. Don't even remember the year right now, but I should. So we heard that Hitler was going to come in and my parents were a little worried about what would happen to Shushnik, the president, and to my father and other people in the government because they were very much against The Anshlos.

[00:06:32] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: Yeah. So anyway, my parents were really worried about about what would happen to them and And with us being there.

[00:06:43] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: So my grandparents at that time lived in Berlin. And strangely enough, they felt that Berlin was a safer place than Austria at this time. Because, you know, Berlin, I mean, Germany really was a wonderful country at that time, you know. People had you know, science, medicine, literature, everything just was so good in Germany and came from Germany and, and a lot of the Jewish people in I should tell you that my father was Catholic, and my mother was Jewish.

[00:07:22] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: And when your mother is Jewish, then you are also considered Jewish, the children. So, anyway, they decided to send us to Berlin, where my mother's parents lived at that time. And They finally did. They sent us to Germany. The first thing they did Oh, I should also say when my mother and father got married my father was excommunicated from the Catholic Church because he was not allowed or by Catholic means he should not marry a Jewish woman.

[00:08:01] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: So when we got to Berlin, the first thing they did is they took us to a Catholic church in Berlin and baptized my brother and myself Catholic so that we would not have to say that we're Jewish as we arrived there. We would simply say when people said, well, what are you? What is your religion? We are Jew, you know we're Catholic, we're Christian.

[00:08:29] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: So we lived then with our parents there for a couple of years. Had a very, very good time. We loved our parents. Our father would take us for walks also every weekend, and we would go to the Berlin Zoo, which is one of the most famous zoos in the world. And after that for ice cream, and hey, kids our age, we were about six years,

[00:08:53] six years

[00:08:53] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: old.

[00:08:54] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: This was a great life for us in Berlin, you know. My mother at this point left Austria. And went to Czechoslovakia, to the Czech Republic, rather, at that time to be safer there than she would have been in Austria. As Hitler came into Austria, as they had expected Mr.

[00:09:17] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: Churchnick and my father, and they were all immediately arrested by Hitler's people, put on a train and sent to a concentration camp right north of Berlin called Sachsenhausen.

[00:09:33] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: And so he was locked up in that concentration camp. And my mother was in Prague. Well, a few years later or not even that much later Hitler decided that he also ought to take over the Czech Republic. And he did. And there were a lot of Jewish people in the Czech Republic, and especially in Prague where my mother was.

[00:09:56] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: So my mother decided she better get out of there and got on some kind of a coal train, a train that was bringing coal to Germany from Austria, and she took that train and, and went to Berlin to live where her parents and where we were. And the meantime, my grandfather, was worried about us as things in Berlin also were beginning to get worse and worse with the Hitler people and the NSDAP or whatever they called it at that time.

[00:10:38] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: And, and so he sent us to a to a camp in northern Germany on the North Sea I don't know if you can picture it, but there's Hanover, there's Oldenburg, and then comes the North Sea and the islands up above. So there was a camp there, and my grandfather was in the first World War. A soldier, a German soldier, and he was in France.

[00:11:06] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: He sat in those and battled the French at that time, you know, and he was later on awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroic behavior during that war. And it's all such a great honor. . Anyway, he was stationed up there on the North Sea at one point and knew about this camp, and he sent Peter and myself to this camp, and he knew the lady of that camp, and the lady of this camp a very, very fine woman I lived with her for, we were supposed to go there just for a few weeks.

[00:11:51] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: Or maybe a month or so, while my grandfather was paying her. And we were there for seven years. Believe it or not. But, it was a tremendous hiding place for us. Because the lady who ran the home Her name was Irma, and we called her Aunt Irma, Tante Irma. Aunt

[00:12:14] The Missional Life - Dan: Irma.

[00:12:14] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: Yeah. And she was a wonderful woman, and she knew that our mother was Jewish. And she knew, and she met my parents. So she knew them. Wow.

[00:12:31] The Missional Life - Dan: Was it dangerous with them knowing that you were descendants of of Jews? Was it dangerous for them to, to give you care and dad to house? Yes.

[00:12:40] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: Definitely it was. And the Gestapo and the SS came several times to the camp to question Tante Roma as to who are these boys.

[00:12:51] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: So she would simply talk them out of it and say, I adopted them, they're my kids, they're Catholic kids, blah, blah, blah. And somehow we always get away with it. So we had Tante Roma protecting us. We had we were Catholics now, and now we had a teacher in Dangas, in in the summer camp. And we would go to the village school every day.

[00:13:17] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: It was a two room school. One class was from first to fourth grade and the other one was from fifth to eighth grade. And that was the end of school there. So we, that's the kind of school we went to. But the teacher was wonderful. He loved us and he was very nice to us, and he was a friend of Tanderma's.

[00:13:39] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: So somehow, Tanderma let him know who we were and why she kept us. She wanted to save us. And even though our teacher was an SS person, and after school, At one o'clock every afternoon, he would put on his black SS uniform, get on his motorcycle and go to his SS meetings. So it was just an amazing thing.

[00:14:08] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: So we had our teacher, our pillar. We had Santa Irma. We were Catholics now. And now there was one other thing, and that is Santa Irma said, well, you know, I got two children. And she had a son and a daughter, and both of them are in the Hitler Youth, because you've got to be in the Hitler Youth around here, otherwise they question you.

[00:14:28] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: Why are you not? So you two have to be in the Hitler Youth. So we joined the Hitler Youth.

[00:14:35] The Missional Life - Dan: What is the Hitler Youth? Can you explain what that is for our listeners?

[00:14:38] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: The Hitler Youth is a it's, it's similar to the Boy Scouts in this country, except Hitler has a special program, the Nazis had a special program as to how to train us.

[00:14:51] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: I can show you a picture here where I was six years old, and when we would come out of class every afternoon even when I was still in Berlin going to, that's where I had started the school when I was six years old, we had to march. Out of our classroom, down in the, behind the school, we would have to practice marching.

[00:15:15] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: We had to practice the Hitler salute with our right arm up. And then even a little later on, they would even train us in, in how to use simple weapons. such as hand grenades, bazookas, and stuff like that. Okay, now, I want to go back for a minute to the camp where we were. And my mother had come back to Germany, as I told you, from the Czech Republic.

[00:15:46] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: And my father was still in a concentration camp, Sachsenhausen, near Berlin. So my mother wanted to see us and have us with her. So she rented a separate apartment and asked Aunt Irma to send the boys back to her, for a little while anyway, so she could at least spend some time with her sons. So she did.

[00:16:09] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: She lived, she rented that apartment in Berlin and we went to Berlin and we lived there with her. And one day she, my mother put us on a mission. She said, here's a letter. I want you to deliver this letter for me, this envelope. You take the subway from here, we were right near the subway station there.

[00:16:33] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: Okay. Go to such and such a station, change to another train, get off at such and such a station, which we did. And when you come up the steps from the subway, there will be a gentleman, and he will have a code word for you. And I'll give you the code word. When he says the code word, you give him the letter, the envelope, in which we did.

[00:16:56] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: And we gave him the envelope. And he gave us an envelope and we went back into the subway and started back home the same way we came. And as we came up the street, right on the corner where the subway is, we could see our house where my mother had rented. It was a large apartment house. And all of a sudden we noticed that there were all sorts of SS cars and Gestapo cars sitting in front of this big apartment house.

[00:17:27] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: And we decided rather than going in, asking my mother now we would wait and see what would happen. So we waited on the corner and watched what was going on in front of the building. And to our surprise it happened to be our mother who was carried or taken out of the building, put into a Gestapo car, and they all left.

[00:17:53] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: And my Mother told us some weeks before, if anything like this should ever happen, that she gave us an attorney's name, Mr. Grossman, and she said, you call him and he will take care of you as to where to sleep, and we'll decide, he'll decide what to do with you. So we But before we did that, and my mother was now arrested, we were determined to see our mother.

[00:18:19] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: So it took us three days and we found out which prison the Nazis took my mother to in Berlin. There were several Gestapo prisons and SS prisons. And we found where, and we just ran into the prison, and there were, of course, SS guards in various places, but they didn't pay any attention to us little kids, you know, we were just little kids.

[00:18:45] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: So we ran around and We looked out of the window and we saw down below in the yard people walking, and we recognized that our mother was one of the people who were walking out in that little park down below. And then after a few minutes, the people all went back in. Now we had to find out where our mother was, where in this prison, and we walked from floor to floor until we finally found her cell.

[00:19:14] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: And my mother was terribly surprised and she said, boys, you shouldn't have come here, but I love you so much. And it's wonderful of you to do this, but you I'm in great danger here because if they catch you here, the same thing is going to happen to you that's happening to me. They're going to keep you here, and they put you in a jail.

[00:19:35] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: So, get out of here, and go call Mr. Grossman, and which we already had by that time. So we ran out of the prison and just at the gate there was an SS there who decided that maybe they ought to talk to us. And he was there with us and we fought him for a little while and we tore each other we tore each ourselves away from him and ran down the streets through Berlin and Well, we were, at our age, we were just a little faster than the SS men, so, after a little while, we had lost him, and we were without him.

[00:20:13] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: And we went back to call Mr. Grossman to tell him what had happened, and he sent us back by train, back to our camp on the North Sea to Tantahumma. And we stayed there for seven months. years, as I mentioned to you. And we now we're pretty much protected because we were Catholic and we were the Hitler youth.

[00:20:38] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: Now we had to join that we had to meet every week. And as I said, it's similar like the Boy Scouts, except you learn how to march, you learn how to use weapons and all of that. Also, you do also do a lot of athletics and As a matter of fact, I still have, it's, I think it's in the book where we had a a competition of something like 30, 000 kids and I won second prize in throwing a grenade or something.

[00:21:09] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: Wow. And I still have the The certificate with the Hakenkreuz up on top, I think you know what the Hakenkreuz is, the symbol of the Nazis, and signed by them, and so, That was, that was our saving. So we had a wonderful teacher. We had Tanturama and we were Catholic and we were in the Hitler Youth and believe it or not that saved us.

[00:21:37] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: In the meantime, my mother. was sent to Auschwitz. We didn't know for a long time what had happened, but finally her pillar, our teacher who was SS found out that she was taken to Auschwitz and she was killed there. In the meantime my grandparents and all my other relatives were all put on trains and taken to Auschwitz and various other death camps and they were all killed.

[00:22:12] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: So the only people from our family who survived were my brother and I, and my father who was still in the concentration camp. In 1945 the American troops came into Germany and they opened up the concentration camps and my father was given his freedom, but he was terribly, terribly sick at that point, and he was sent to a place that I visited later on and talked to the people there.

[00:22:48] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: They tried to keep him alive, but both of his lungs were gone, and after two months He died. So, now we lost our father, we lost our mother, and we lost all of our, all of our relatives. We did have, when, when Hitler came into Austria originally, my father had four brothers and two sisters. My two sisters had become nuns, Catholic nuns.

[00:23:21] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: The boys, the four brothers of my father, said to my father, you know, you're going to stay with Chushnik here with the president until Hitler comes in, and God only knows what's going to happen. We're leaving. So the four brothers left, went to Spain, from Spain to Cuba, from Cuba eventually to Ecuador, where they spent the rest of their life, built a nice business there, and have a lot of relatives.

[00:23:48] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: key to Ecuador now. Because, because of that. So, that's about the story, and then, then we, of course our relatives in Ecuador wanted us to come there, and they made all arrangements for us to come to Ecuador. And What happened is the government changed and as all our papers and everything was finished and we were already set on a ship to go the new government in Ecuador voided all the documents and papers and again, we couldn't go.

[00:24:27] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: It was all gone, all dead again, our plans there. So now we went to the Americans and we asked there if we could go. And also for another year or two there was no chance to get out of Germany. But all of a sudden, one day, we got a call from We got a call from the American Army in southern Germany and they said, we found all the records of your father, your mother, your family.

[00:25:00] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: We know that your boys are still here. And we have an organization here. It's the European Association for Children who were stuck like that and had certain reasons why they should be given preference and taken to America. And we went to a DP camp from there and then eventually put us on an airplane and we flew from Bremen, Germany to Glasgow, Scotland and from there to Halifax and from Halifax.

[00:25:38] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: Well, we lost an engine on the way in, but just thank God the plane landed. Everything was okay. We just had to wait there for one day until they fixed the engine, and then we arrived in New York. That was the day of happiness for me. I, and my brother, we, we wanted to go so badly to the United States and get away from Germany and get away from Hitler.

[00:26:06] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: The time after the war was over, and we still were in Germany for a few years, those were very, very tough years, because all the Germans from East Germany came over to the West because they didn't want to sit there with the Russians, because they weren't treated as well by the Russians as they would be with the Americans, the British, the Canadians, and the So we even had people from Berlin come And they had to live with us because they had no place to live.

[00:26:36] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: So they lived with us in the house. This was all before we went to the United States, of course. There are some, you know, Now I was in the, in the United States and I was the happiest man in the world. I've never seen so many cars in my life and I said, Oh God, if, if I can one day have a car like this, I'd give anything, you know, and the skyscrapers and I got everything was just so fabulous and just so happy to be away from Germany and to be, to be there.

[00:27:14] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: After I immediately went to school, got myself a job, I met a German fellow who worked for Maryland. We, this was in Baltimore. Yeah, there's another story I should tell you. The time we were in New York We had to wait six months till the army got our papers together because we were not allowed to go to school or to work or anything because we had no papers.

[00:27:44] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: But they kept us in a very nice place together with other children who came from Europe under this under this organization. And So we were in New York, and I spent a lot of time in the library in New York City, New York City Library, and decided that where did I want to go once I had my papers?

[00:28:05] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: Because then we could go anywhere in the United States, and I picked San Francisco. So when the day came and I got my papers, someone had told me, go by Greyhound bus, it's the cheapest way to travel. So I went to the Greyhound bus station, And I said, I would like to go to San Francisco and I didn't have much money, just a bunch of change and things and I put it on the counter and the lady counted it and she said, well, you don't have enough money here to go to San Francisco.

[00:28:34] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: I said, well, how far can I go? And she said, Baltimore. And I said, and I said, is that on the way to San Francisco? And she said, yes, more or less.

[00:28:49] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: So my brother and I went we ended up in Baltimore and I'm still here today, you know, that's why we got here.

[00:28:56] The Missional Life - Dan: What an amazing story and I'm just listening to How you were so excited to land in the U. S. Because you were finally away from kind of that repressive regime and all that you experienced there.

[00:29:11] The Missional Life - Dan: And a lot of that was the anti semitism that you experienced. And I know that's a really important message that you have for today that you are noticing some very similar things that you grew up under. And now that's beginning to manifest itself within our culture. And so I just was wondering if you could speak to that, how some of the different things that you're noticing, some of the undertones, maybe some of the languages, some of the actions that you're noticing, and some of the things that we should, as a culture, as a country, as believers, be aware of and take notice of and, and begin to potentially take action against.

[00:29:46] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: Yeah. You know, my book, my book was actually published about the same day that the war started with Hamas and Israel. And ever since then I decided that my book had to help somehow to, to, to bring peace. eventually. But what really worried me and what really bothered me was that all of a sudden, the universities and the colleges here in this country all became were all not for Israel, but rather for the Hamas people and their people and a lot of anti Semitism.

[00:30:27] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: And You know, I could never understand it. Ever since I was a child, I would always ask what is anti Semitism? I know what it means, what it's supposed to mean, but why? What are Jewish people doing that's so bad? I just couldn't figure it out. And I still haven't figured it out to this day, you know? I think the Jewish people in every country that they lived, they added a lot in various things.

[00:30:52] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: And they were always right there with industry, with, with medical things, with in schools and universities, there were teachers, there were everything, and it it was very, it's very difficult, and I'm still concerned right now. I never thought that in this country that I would see something.

[00:31:14] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: like this this antisemitism, which is coming back also in Germany and other countries. It's really all over the world right now. And I just hope that my little book can do a little bit by people reading it. I mean, it's just for a few people, you know, there are millions of people who should really learn, you know, how to deal with antisemitism and how to deal with antisemitism.

[00:31:34] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: About this and young people in this country just don't know anything about that period of time. It's just amazing. Between the ages of something like 13 and 28, there were only 30% of those people who knew what happened during days day, those days, and what this was all about. It's just amazing.

[00:32:03] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: I can't understand why the schools in this country did not teach about what happened in those days, you know. It was just, just totally amazing to me.

[00:32:18] The Missional Life - Amanda: And it really, it truly was not even that long ago that it happened. I mean, both my grandfathers actually served in World War II one in the Navy and one in the Army.

[00:32:29] The Missional Life - Amanda: And I remember seeing their jackets, their, You know, I, I have my one grandfather's dog tag for this identification. And

[00:32:36] The Missional Life - Dan: share with him about that. So

[00:32:38] The Missional Life - Amanda: my, yes, my grandfather he actually was a lieutenant. He led a troop of US soldiers into Hitler's hometown in Austria, and he helped take down the Nazi flag and reclaim that territory for the rightful people.

[00:32:54] The Missional Life - Amanda: So, that wasn't that long ago in the grand scheme of history, and all of a sudden this shift is happening, and, you know, we just so appreciate you taking the time to do this interview along with so many other people, we're very grateful that you did write your book, because your story, it needs to be shared, Because unfortunately, like you said, education has not done the greatest job of the realities of what happened in those times.

[00:33:26] The Missional Life - Dan: And as we hear history repeat it comes back around and you're beginning to see some of that shift and you're seeing some of those things that you saw at the child begin to happen again and this country, which is astonishing

[00:33:38] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: exactly. That's what concerns me so terribly, you know?

[00:33:42] The Missional Life - Dan: So having lived through it a first time.

[00:33:45] The Missional Life - Dan: And seeing the onset of it potentially here a second time, what would you say we should be aware of and what are some of the different things that we should potentially do to resist such a movement and to stand up for those who don't have a voice?

[00:34:01] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: Teach! teach people. I mean, this is, this is the past.

[00:34:08] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: This is very important information to know. Look what could happen in this country and people get to know that. And I just don't understand, you know, when all this business started a year or two years ago, where, you know, universities and colleges here and the heads of those universities were asked to go to Washington and talk to

[00:34:33] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: to the senators and, and, and congressmen there, and they had no answer. They had no answer why this was happening or what should be done. It was just amazing. I couldn't believe it. And I, I still don't understand how this is all going to end up. I, I just, I just hope for the best, you know, but there certainly are things.

[00:35:00] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: that are similar to what happened in Germany in all those many years ago, that just in a different fashion. But again, it could, it could end up in a, in a similar horrible way. That's what worries me. But I wanted to tell you another little story here. When Before, before the Americans and the Allies came in, my brother and I in the evenings we would sometimes listen to the British Broadcasting Company to find out what the news really was.

[00:35:37] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: Of course, it was forbidden, and if you get caught, you know, you'd be in trouble, but we did it anyway. We needed to know, and one day, I'm listening to it, and here I hear that the Americans on Omaha Beach and Utah Beach, that they had landed, and they were making some progress in France moving toward, toward Germany, and God, that was just, oh, we were just so happy.

[00:36:06] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: But we couldn't talk to anyone about it, you know? This was just for us, for my brother and myself, and we were so happy. Yeah. So, I knew that this had happened. Now, years later, I'm in the United States. I'm here three years, and I get drafted in the United States Army. Even though I was not a citizen but you could get drafted.

[00:36:30] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: So I was drafted and here, this was my new country and I didn't worry about it. And I thought, yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll be happy to defend my new country, my own country, the country I so much loved and looked forward to a great life. And it, it was just. Just such a, a strange thing. So, now I'm in the United States Army, and this is during the Korean War, and we all figured I was in the 101st Airborne Division for basic training, and We were all going to Korea.

[00:37:11] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: Well, it so happened that one day I was called and they said, we just noticed from your Form 20, which are your papers, that you speak German fluently. And I said, yes. And he said, well, we were just in Germany training the new German army, the Americans were, and the French and the British and so on. And we need interpreters.

[00:37:35] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: So we'd like to send you to Germany. to Germany as an instructor. So, I said, yeah, that's fine with me. Because Korea was very tough. A lot of my friends never came back from there for basic training. So, anyway. So I went to Germany as an, as an interpreter, and one day I was coming back from my office back to the billets where we lived, where our rooms were, and someone said company commander wants to see you.

[00:38:08] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: So I walked in to see the company commander and he said Corporal Wurfel, he said I was a corporal by then I watch you every day coming across the parade ground. You have a very good walk, you walk very straight I have a feeling that you would be very good for our color guard. Now this is entirely up to you.

[00:38:30] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: This is the 1st Infantry Division you are in now. There are 20, 000 men, and you would be the one who's responsible for our flag and the American flag being in the Color Guard. I said, it's an honor. As far as I'm concerned, I'd be more than happy to be in the Color Guard and carry the flag. So, I was in the Color Guard.

[00:38:56] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: Now, guess what? A few months later, I was called in by the company commander and he said, you're going to Normandy. I said, why am I going to Normandy? He said, for the 10 year anniversary of D Day. Wow. This is the day that I listened to on the British Broadcasting Company when this actually happened. And here, 10 years later, I'm going to Normandy.

[00:39:23] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: And I'm in the color guard and Churchill was there and Eisenhower was there and DeGaulle were there. They were all there watching us marching and carrying the American flag. It was, it was just unbelievable for me. I was so proud. Just imagine coming from where I came and all of a sudden I'm in the American Army.

[00:39:47] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: D Day. The day when the Allied forces finally got hold of Hitler was the beginning of it. And here I am, carrying the American flag and marching in front of all these people. It was unbelievable. One morning at five o'clock they woke us up and they said, We need the color guard. Five o'clock in the morning?

[00:40:14] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: Yes. What happened is they wanted us to come down to the beach in our uniforms with our flags and they had a bugler there. And we were standing there on the beach, in Omaha Beach. The sun was rising. We were looking out over the British Channel, and the bugle is playing, and we are dipping the flag. Can you imagine the feeling that I had? Yeah. I mean, it was just. I was so honored, you know, I never thought that anything like this would happen to me, you know, it was just unbelievably marvelous.

[00:40:55] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: I was getting goosebumps when I tell the story now, I still get the goosebumps.

[00:41:01] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: So that was just a little, little story I wanted to tell you from from my Army days in in the United States, you know?

[00:41:09] Wow.

[00:41:10] The Missional Life - Amanda: Oh, I would love to ask you, with all the experiences you went through, you know, seeing, seeing your mother be taken away, knowing your father was in a concentration or labor camp, and, losing family, how, how did you guard your heart with all that did you have a period of struggle with any, unforgiveness or, feelings of bitterness that tried to get in, how did you overcome those difficult situations to move forward?

[00:41:44] The Missional Life - Amanda: And,

[00:41:44] The Missional Life - Dan: accomplishment accomplished. Yeah.

[00:41:47] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: It wasn't easy at times, you know, but if you want to live, and if you believe in God, and this is what you want, you can find a way you can almost do anything you want on this planet. If you try hard. And that's what my brother and I did. We decided, even though we lost everybody we knew and our entire family, our parents, our grandparents, the people who were the most loving people who we loved so much we lost everybody.

[00:42:22] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: But With that feeling and that feeling of strength that we got to make it we made it. We got through it. And it wasn't easy at times. It was very, very difficult. And all I can say is I'm glad that my brother and I, we had each other. He lives now in in Australia and he's 90, he'll be 94 in January.

[00:42:45] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: It's amazing that both of us, we lost all our relatives so early and here the two brothers, the only two who are left, we're now in our nineties now, both of us. So I think that's kind of a blessing.

[00:43:02] The Missional Life - Amanda: Absolutely. And I just want to point out to the listeners what you said about how you and your brother decided you made a decision.

[00:43:11] The Missional Life - Amanda: It wasn't easy to, walk through those things and move forward, but you decided you set your face in, in the direction you wanted to go. And we're very blessed in that process. So, you know, that's so encouraging for people who have been through any type of difficult circumstance that they feel stuck, you know, to have your story, where you went through some of the most horrendous experiences in your childhood and, are sitting in your office of your very successful insurance company.

[00:43:47] The Missional Life - Amanda: Thank you with your family and, all the blessings that have come.

[00:43:52] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: You're so right. And one of the greatest blessings is that I met my wife from El Salvador. I met her at, at a party for, in Washington for the embassies at New Year's, New Year's Eve. And I met there and pretty much fell in love with her that night.

[00:44:10] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: And Yeah, we eventually got married. She used to be Miss El Salvador, a matter of fact and she came and lived with me in Baltimore, and we were lucky enough to have four beautiful children, four girls. You met my middle girl, Dana who has never had another job. She always wanted to work with me and wanted to be.

[00:44:33] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: With me in this business. So that was another blessing for me and it's a blessing to this day.

[00:44:41] The Missional Life - Amanda: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:44:44] The Missional Life - Dan: Amazing. So, as we kind of bring this to a close, First of all, where can readers get your book? And what would you hope that the reader most takes away from your book as they sit down and read through your autobiography?

[00:44:59] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: Well, it's just to show you how horrible life can be. And it can happen to anyone, it can happen here, it can happen tomorrow if you're not careful. And you just have to be strong. And get through it and know what you want and go for it and believe in God. And somehow it works out and it worked out for me and I just hope for this country that nothing like this will ever happen here.

[00:45:29] Yes.

[00:45:31] The Missional Life - Dan: And , where can the listener purchase your book?

[00:45:34] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: Oh, you can go to Amazon and order my book, yeah.

[00:45:38] The Missional Life - Dan: Alright. Listeners will have those those links for you in the show notes. One final thought from you jack. For the listener that's going through a tough time, who's going through tragic situations in their own life, tragic experiences, what would you say to the listener?

[00:45:52] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: Yeah, it's not easy it's very difficult. I think you, you have to, first of all, have a very strong belief, and you've got to believe in God,

[00:46:03] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: and you can do anything, I found out. You can do anything you want to do on this planet. You just have to try. And it's not easy. You have to work very hard. You have to have strong beliefs. And you have to help others. Because this is not a world for one person. This is a world for billions of people. And work on that. And it'll work out.

[00:46:34] The Missional Life - Dan: Again, the book is My True Lives, written by Jack, or Jochen Werferl. A person who's truly lived a missional life. And so we just want to thank you so much for being on the show today. Thank you so much for sharing your story and, and listening to your daughter and writing down your experiences for those of us who can gain insights and learn from that and be aware of what's going on in our country and take action to defend what we do have.

[00:47:00] The Missional Life - Dan: Yes.

[00:47:02] 'Jochen' Jack Wurfl: Yeah. Well, thank you so much having me on your show. It means a lot to me.

[00:47:09] The Missional Life - Dan: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.