In the hands of God

Bozóky Éva (szerk.)

In the spring of 1944, following the occupation of his country by Hitler’s armies, Hungarian pastor Gábor Sztehlo was torn from the quiet pastoral work he loved and given new commission. It was a task that thrust him, innocent and unprepared, into the eye of the greatest tragedy of the century. “Save the Jews”, was all his bishop told him that spring. A year later Sztehlo emerged – literally – from under the rubble of a destroyed Budapest, and behind him followed 2,000 souls who – as he would put it – had been saved for life. In this book, Sztehlo recounts the events of that year, specifically the desperate struggle to find hiding places for children the world was out to destroy. On a deeper level, . this once-naíve pastor details his twelve-month crash course on the nature of human baseness and goodness. At the end of it, he is able to affirrm what he had always believed as a theory but could not previously know as a fact: that what is saved from the abnegation of life is saved through and for the purposes of God’s love.