During World War II in my native Germany I experienced the Lord’s mercies many times. My wife Karla was also blessed with making her own experiences with the Lord, in the midst of the madness of war. As a child she lived in Cologne, a city which was brought down to rubble through bomb attacks. She lived with her family on the ground floor of a three story building.

Her family also believed firmly in God. In those days, to protect their own lives from the National Socialists, they had to hide their precious Bibles and Christian books from them. They also needed to protect these books from the bomb attacks. For this purpose they built a wooden box, which they hid, down in the storage cellar of their house. In emergencies, the cellar could also be used as a bomb shelter. They placed the books on the top of another wooden box, in which they were hiding their potatoes. These potatoes were food for the family for the whole winter.

This following miracle happened at the start of October 1944. At the sound of the bomb alarm, the grandmother, mother and three children went down into the shelter part of the cellar. The official nearest bunker, where the whole neighborhood was running to as fast as their legs could carry them, would have been a much safer place to be in a bomb attack, but grandmother had a broken hip, so the whole family stayed with her at home.

Through the bomb attack the electricity was cut, so they lit some candles and prayed earnestly for God’s protection. Every time a bomb hit the ground nearby, they could hear the dreadful crashing, and felt the ground shake tremendously. Suddenly, air pressure and dust blew their candles out, and then they knew what happened. After the enormous dust cloud finally settled a little bit, Karla’s 16 year old brother Bernie walked through the cellar. When he looked up, he could see from there through the first floor, the second floor, the third floor, and then through the roof of their house into the open sky. Immediately he shouted: “We have to get out of here, we have a bomb in the house!” Through an opening they all rushed to safety to the neighbor’s house on the left, and they wondered why the bomb did not explode.

Some time later when everything had settled, they found out what actually happened. A 600 kg bomb shot through the roof of the three story building and landed directly in that cellar, exactly on the box with the precious books. The bomb was supposed to explode and at the same time release phosphorus in all directions to incinerate everything around it. But it fell at such an angle, that it’s detonator broke, which was meant to set it off, and this, by the grace of God, allowed the bomb to fail it’s purpose.

The wooden box was shredded into a million pieces, and so was the box of potatoes. All disappeared into dust. But all the Bibles, and the books, were untouched. Only one of the books, which is still in our possession today, got a little pressure mark on some of it’s pages, and the whole family did not have one scratch. God did not let a mere 600 kg bomb destroy His word, nor His people.

We sincerely thank our Father in heaven for His protection and help throughout our lives. I am so glad that God protected Karla and her family during that terrible time. We can see if we trust the Lord, He will look after us.

John Altwein