While Awitz stands as the grim face of the Holocaust, Along Good ruled nearby Krakov Blau with equal brutality.

He was a butcher with a uniform, a man who shot prisoners from his balcony for sport.

He lived in luxury while thousands starved and died under his command.

But his reign of terror didn’t last forever.

When the war ended, the man who once acted like a king of death faced a public trial and the rope.

Ammon Leopold Goth was born on December 11th, 1908 in Vienna, Austria during a time when Europe was still recovering from the First World War.

His family was well off.

His father ran a respected publishing company and his parents were part of Vienna’s middle class.

They were strict Catholics who valued discipline and tradition.

They expected Ammon to eventually take over the family business.

But even as a teenager, Gut didn’t want that life.

He wasn’t interested in books or running a company.

He was more drawn to power, to politics, and to big dangerous ideas.

In 1925, when he was just 17 years old, he joined the Austrian Nazi Party.

At that time, the party was still underground.

It hadn’t taken over Germany or Austria.

But Gut was already getting involved in illegal activity, helping smuggle weapons and deliver messages for the party.

As he got deeper into the movement, he became more radical.

He believed in the Nazi idea that Germans were superior, and he supported violence to achieve those goals.

By 1930, Gut was moving between different Nazi organizations, building a network of connections.

One year later, in 1931, he officially joined the SS, the elite paramilitary wing of the Nazi party.

This was a major step.

The SS would later become one of the most feared groups in all of Europe, running concentration camps, killing squads, and more.

Gut moved up quickly.

He was smart, loyal to Nazi beliefs, and willing to do whatever it took.

During the early 1930s, he worked in several SS units, especially the SS Toten Forband, the group that later controlled the concentration camps.

He was trained not only in military tactics, but also in Nazi ideology.

The SS didn’t just want soldiers, they wanted fanatics who would never question orders.

Got fit that mold perfectly.

Even before World War II started, he was involved in violent actions against Jews and political enemies in Austria.

After the Nazis took full control of Austria in 1938 during the Anelos, Go’s role became even more important.

He helped arrest and terrorize Jewish families in Vienna and nearby cities.

By late 1942, the Nazis had reached a point of no return in their mission to wipe out Europe’s Jewish population.

Their plan called the final solution wasn’t just about relocating people anymore.

It was about complete extermination, systematically killing every Jewish man, woman, and child they could find.

Across Poland and other occupied countries, ghettos were being emptied, trains were packed with human cargo, and camps were being built or expanded to handle the massive scale of killing.

It was during this time that Goth was handpicked for a role that perfectly matched his ruthless nature.

The SS needed someone they could count on, someone brutal, efficient, and loyal to Nazi ideology.

They didn’t just want a manager.

They wanted an executioner with a badge.

That’s when G was assigned to oversee the creation of a new labor camp just south of Kakov, Kraov Plasho.

When G arrived in 1943, the camp was still under construction.

Barracks were going up, fences were being installed, and prisoners had already started arriving to work on building their own prisons.

But Goth didn’t want to treat the camp as a work site.

To him, it was a stage for total control.

He saw himself not as a commander, but as a ruler, and he acted like one from day one.

The liquidation of the Krakov Ghetto was one of the first major actions as commandant.

It was more than a military operation.

It was an act of terror.

Over a few days in March 1943, the streets of the ghetto were filled with gunfire, screaming, and chaos.

The operation was so violent that even some Nazi soldiers were shaken by it, but not good.

He led the charge, inspecting houses, shouting orders, and watching as families were torn apart.

His decisions were made quickly and without mercy.

A gesture of his hand could mean life or death.

Once the ghetto was destroyed, G focused on turning Plasho into his own domain of cruelty.

Unlike other camps where there was at least some structure or written rules, Plasho operated on pure fear.

Prisoners were constantly unsure of what might get them killed.

It wasn’t just physical exhaustion from labor.

It was the psychological torture of never knowing what might set God off.

He was unpredictable and enjoyed creating that fear.

On some mornings, he would have prisoners line up for roll call, then randomly shoot one just to assert dominance.

On other days, he might decide that a group was too slow and have them executed.

There was no real system, no appeals, no reason, just got personal mood.

He also had two dogs, Rolf and Ralph.

These were not just guard dogs.

They were trained to maim and kill on command.

Prisoners learned to avoid eye contact with them, to move silently, and to do anything that might keep them off the dog’s radar.

Yet, nothing was ever enough.

If Goth wanted to make an example of someone, all he had to do was snap his fingers or say a word, and the attack would begin.

The guards under Goth didn’t need much encouragement to follow his lead.

They mimicked his behavior, often taking pleasure in beating or executing prisoners for the smallest infractions.

Life there wasn’t just hard.

It was built to break people mentally and physically.

The camp had no running water in most areas, and the barracks were overcrowded, cold in winter and sweltering in summer.

Lice and rats were everywhere, and diseases like typhus spread quickly.

There were no beds, only wooden planks or floors to sleep on.

Blankets were rare, and so were any signs of basic hygiene.

People were forced to live packed together, often shoulder-to-shoulder, with no privacy and no dignity.

Even the food rations were designed to keep prisoners weak.

Some resorted to eating grass or chewing on wood just to feel something in their stomachs.

Those caught stealing food or hiding leftovers were beaten or executed in front of others as a warning.

The children of the camp, especially those who survived the liquidation of the ghetto, were treated with shocking cruelty.

They were never meant to live long.

The Nazi system didn’t see any use for children who couldn’t work.

Many were separated from their parents on arrival.

Some were beaten for crying or trying to hold on to a parents hand.

Others were used in twisted medical experiments by visiting SS doctors.

The day Goth ordered over 500 children to be removed from the camp left a mark on every survivor.

As the war dragged on and the tide turned against the Nazis, the regime became more focused on hiding its crimes.

That’s when Operation 105 began in full force.

The idea was to erase all signs of the mass murders that had taken place, not just in Plasho, but across occupied Poland.

Goth became one of the central figures in this operation at the camp.

He assembled special units made up of Jewish prisoners known as Zunder Commandos and forced them to dig up old mass graves.

Most of these graves had been quickly covered over during the worst of the killings in 1943.

What they found were bodies in various stages of decay.

The stench was unbearable.

Workers wore no protection, no gloves, no masks.

Their job was to drag the corpses out, stack them like firewood, and douse them with gasoline.

Prisoners in this special unit weren’t allowed to speak, eat properly, or even rest.

They were watched at all times.

Once their job was done or once they were too sick to continue, Goth had them killed.

The next group would then be brought in to replace them.

It was a neverending cycle of horror designed to make sure no one could bear witness when the war finally ended.

Goth didn’t just oversee the process.

He took personal interest in it.

Survivors said he would sometimes visit the burning sites unannounced.

He’d walk around checking the piles, sometimes with a cigar in hand, commenting on whether the corpses were burning fast enough.

While thousands of prisoners in Kraov Blau were starving, freezing, and dying in filth, Goth was living like a king just a few steps away.

Inside the camp, he had a large villa built for himself.

It wasn’t just a basic house.

It was filled with expensive furniture, carpets, artwork, and fancy dishes.

Almost everything in that house had been stolen.

Goth helped himself to whatever he wanted from homes, luggage, and bodies of murdered Jews.

He wore expensive clothes, drank the best alcohol, and held private parties with other SS officers, acting as if nothing around him was wrong.

He didn’t just steal things.

He also took people.

Goth forced a young Jewish woman named Helenas to work as his personal maid.

She was only a teenager when he pulled her out of the group and told her she now worked for him.

Every day she cleaned his house, served him food, and lived in constant fear.

She later said she never knew what might set him off.

He had a temper, and he was violent.

Even being too quiet or too slow could lead to a slap, a scream, or worse.

She once witnessed him kill someone just for walking past the villa too slowly.

God’s cruelty wasn’t something he tried to hide.

People saw it every day.

Other Nazi officers, camp guards, and even civilians who visited the camp, all of them knew he was violent, unstable, and dangerous.

But most were too scared to challenge him, and many didn’t care.

In Nazi Germany, men like Goth were allowed to do whatever they wanted as long as they got the work done.

At the same time, G had a personal life that was just as twisted.

He had a mistress named Ruth Irene Calder.

She was a German woman and a strong Nazi supporter.

She met Goth while he was still running the camp and moved in with him.

In 1944, she gave birth to their daughter, Monica Goth.

Even though Calder saw how brutal he was, she stayed with him.

Years later, she admitted that he was a violent and terrifying man.

But back then, she chose to stay silent and enjoy the life his crimes had built.

Gut’s corruption went beyond just mass murder and violence.

Even by Nazi standards, he was stealing too much.

The SS had rules about where stolen money and items were supposed to go.

Anything taken from Jewish prisoners, whether it was gold teeth, rings, or cash, was supposed to be handed over to Nazi authorities and added to the war funds.

But Goth wasn’t doing that.

He was pocketing much of it.

He kept gold, art, and jewelry for himself.

He used prisoner labor for personal deals and took bribes from businessmen who wanted to use slave labor in their factories.

This kind of corruption made him a liability.

By then, complaints had started building up, not from prisoners, but from other Nazis and SS members who either didn’t like him or wanted his position.

His crimes were no longer hidden.

His violent outbursts, constant executions, and illegal deals were too much.

So in September 1944, the SS arrested Goth.

They charged him with theft, illegal use of property, black market trading, and abuse of power.

It was rare for the Nazis to arrest one of their own unless the situation got out of hand.

He was removed from his position at Kraov Plasho and an internal investigation began.

He was supposed to be tried by the SS courts, but the chaos of the war and Germany’s crumbling military situation kept delaying things.

G never actually faced punishment from the Nazis.

Before they could finish their investigation or hold a full trial, the war was almost over and the Third Reich collapsed.

The time for real justice finally came.

In May 1945, just days after Germany surrendered, Goth was captured by American soldiers in Austria.

He didn’t have time to plan an escape.

He was already on the radar.

His name had come up during early interviews with Holocaust survivors.

Many of them remembered him clearly.

When the Americans found him, they handed him over to the new Polish government.

Poland had suffered deeply during the war, and Kraov Plasho was on its soil.

The Polish authorities quickly requested God’s extradition and it was approved.

He was brought back to Kraov.

By now, the evidence against him was massive.

Survivors gave powerful testimonies.

Documents were found, including Nazi reports and camp records that showed his name on orders for mass executions.

There were photographs, witness statements, and even former Nazi guards who gave information about his behavior.

His trial began on August 27th, 1946 in a Krakov courtroom.

The charges were clear.

He was accused of personally murdering prisoners, ordering the mass killing of thousands and stealing from the people he had helped to destroy.

The trial lasted several weeks, and during that time, survivors spoke out in detail.

Goth didn’t try to hide what he had done.

He admitted that people had died under his command, but he used the same excuse many other Nazis gave.

He said he was just following orders.

He claimed the system was bigger than him and that he was only doing what his superiors told him to do.

But this time, that excuse didn’t work.

In the end, the court found him guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The evidence was overwhelming.

On September 13th, 1946, just a few weeks after the trial began, the sentence was announced.

Amongut was to be hanged.

What made it even more meaningful was where the execution took place, Montalupic Prison in Kov, the same city where he had once been feared.

When the day of his execution came, many survivors were there to see it.

They watched as he was finally held accountable.

He was 37 years old.

Now, for them, it wasn’t about revenge.

It was about justice.

The final moment that closed one of the darkest chapters of their lives.

While Ammon was in charge of Krakov Blau, it’s estimated that over 8,000 people were murdered in that camp.

Some were executed in mass shootings.

Others died from starvation, disease, or exhaustion.

The total number of people who passed through the camp is believed to be around 30,000.

Most of them never left alive.

Even after G’s execution, the full truth about his crimes kept coming out.

Survivors wrote books and gave interviews.

They spoke of the fear they lived in every day while he ruled over them.

Some worked in his house and saw firsthand how twisted he was.

Others watch their families get taken away and never come back.

Helen Yonas, his maid, later shared how she once thought she wouldn’t survive another day, but she did, and her words helped the world understand the full picture of G’s crimes.

His daughter, Monica Herfig, was born just before his execution.

For many years, she didn’t know what her father had done.

When she finally learned the truth, she was shocked.

She later appeared in a documentary called Inheritance where she met Helen Yonas face to face.

Ammon’s name might have faded into history like many other Nazi officers, but in 1993 the world saw his crimes brought back into focus.

That year, director Steven Spielberg released the film Schindler’s List.

It was based on the true story of Oscar Schindler, a German businessman who saved over,200 Jews by hiring them in his factory and protecting them from deportation.

In the movie, Rafe Fines played Ammon Gut.

He captured his twisted behavior, his coldness, and the way he killed without thinking twice.

Fines later said that learning about Gut’s real personality deeply disturbed him.

The more he read about G’s actions, the more shocked he became.

Even though it was just a movie, fines could feel how evil God truly was.

The film didn’t try to show everything that happened in Kraov Plasho.

That would have been too much.

But even the small parts it showed were enough to horrify viewers around the world.

That contrast between Gaut and Schindler became a powerful message.

Both were German, both had power, and both lived at the same time.

But while Schindler risked his life to save Jews, Goth used his power to destroy them.

Today, the Krakov Plashel site still exists, though most buildings are gone.

It’s marked as a memorial.

People visit it to remember the lives lost there and to learn what really happened under Nazi rule.

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Muslim Teacher Faces Execution for Reading the Bible — Then Jesus Did the Unbelievable – YouTube

Transcripts:
My name is N Jan.

It means light of the world in my language.

I did not choose this name.

My mother gave it to me 32 years ago in Kabul, Afghanistan.

She could not have known then what that name would come to mean.

She could not have known that one day I would meet the true light of the world in the darkest place imaginable.

Two years ago, I was sentenced to death by stoning in Afghanistan.

The charge was apostasy, leaving Islam, following Jesus Christ.

Today, I stand before you alive and free, and I want to tell you how I got here.

I want to tell you what God did.

But to understand the miracle, you must first understand the darkness.

Let me take you back to August 2021.

That was when everything changed for Afghanistan and for me.

>> Hello viewers from around the world.

Before Nor shares her story, we’d love to know where you’re watching from so we can pray for you and your city.

Thank you and may God bless you as you listen to this powerful testimony.

>> I was a teacher.

I had been teaching for 8 years at a girl’s school in Cabbell.

I taught literature and history to girls aged 12 to 16.

I loved my work.

I loved seeing their faces light up when they understood something new.

When they read a poem that moved them.

When they realized that learning could open doors they never knew existed.

These girls were hungry for education.

Their mothers had lived under Taliban rule before.

In the 1990s, when women could not work, could not study, could barely exist outside their homes, these mothers wanted different lives for their daughters, and I was helping give them that chance.

Then the Taliban returned.

I remember the day, August 15th.

I was preparing lessons for the new school year.

We were supposed to start in 2 weeks.

I had my lesson plans laid out on my desk.

I had borrowed new books from the library.

I was excited.

Then my father came home early from his shop, his face gray with fear.

He turned on the television.

We watched the news together.

The government had fallen.

The president had fled.

The Taliban were entering Kabul.

My mother began to cry.

She remembered.

She had lived through their rule before.

She knew what was coming.

Within days, everything changed.

The music stopped playing in the streets.

The colorful advertisements came down from the walls.

Women disappeared from television.

The news anchors were all men now, all with long beards, all wearing turbons.

Then came the decrees.

Women must cover completely.

Women cannot work in most jobs.

Women cannot travel without a male guardian.

And then the one that broke my heart, girls cannot attend school beyond the sixth grade.

Just like that, my job was gone.

Just like that, the futures of millions of girls were erased.

I will never forget going to the school one last time to collect my things.

The building was empty.

The classrooms where girls had laughed and learned were silent.

I walked through the halls and I felt like I was walking through a graveyard.

These were not just rooms.

These were dreams that had died.

I stood in my classroom and I looked at the empty desks and I wept.

I thought of Miam who wanted to be a doctor.

I thought of Fatima who wrote poetry that made me cry.

I thought of little Zara, only 12, who asked more questions than anyone I had ever taught.

What would happen to them now? What would happen to their dreams? I took my books home in a bag.

I felt like I was smuggling contraband.

In a way, I was.

Knowledge had become contraband.

Learning had become rebellion.

The next months were suffocating.

My world became smaller and smaller.

I could not work.

I could not go out without my brother or my father.

I had to wear the full burka, the one that covers everything, even your eyes behind a mesh screen.

I felt like a ghost, like I did not exist.

I would see women beaten in the streets by the Taliban’s religious police for showing a bit of ankle, for laughing too loudly, for walking without a male guardian.

I saw fear everywhere.

The city that had been coming alive after years of war was dying again.

But it was not just the rules that suffocated me.

It was the cruelty behind them.

It was the way they justified it all with Islam.

I had grown up Muslim.

I had prayed five times a day.

I had fasted during Ramadan.

I had read the Quran.

I believed in Allah.

But this this did not feel like the faith I knew.

This felt like something else.

Something dark and angry and hateful.

I started having questions.

Questions I could not ask anyone.

Questions that felt dangerous even to think.

Is this really what God wants? Does God really hate women this much? Does God really want half of humanity to be invisible, to be nothing, to be prisoners in their own homes? I would push these thoughts away.

Questioning your faith is dangerous in Afghanistan.

Questioning Islam can get you killed.

So, I kept my doubts locked inside my heart.

And I prayed and I tried to believe that somehow this was all part of God’s plan that I could not understand.

But then something happened that changed everything.

It was January 2022, 6 months after the Taliban returned.

I was at home going slowly crazy with boredom and frustration.

My younger sister Paresa came to visit.

She was crying.

She told me about her friend Ila.

Ila was 16.

Her family had married her off to a Taliban fighter, a man in his 40s.

Ila did not want to marry him.

She begged her family not to make her.

But they had no choice.

The Taliban commander wanted her.

And you do not say no to the Taliban.

The wedding happened.

Ila was crying through the whole ceremony.

She was a child.

A child being given to a man old enough to be her father.

Parisa told me this and she said something I will never forget.

She said that when Leila’s family was asked about it, they quoted a hadith.

They quoted Islamic teaching to justify giving a child to a grown man.

They said the prophet himself had married a young girl.

So this was acceptable.

This was Islamic.

This was right.

I felt something break inside me that day.

I felt angry.

Truly angry.

Not at the Taliban, not at Leila’s family, but at the system, at the interpretation, at the way faith was being used as a weapon to hurt and control and destroy.

That night, I could not sleep.

I lay in bed and I stared at the ceiling and I prayed.

I prayed to Allah and I said, “Is this really what you want? Is this really your will?” I got no answer, only silence.

The silence felt heavier than any answer could have been.

It was shortly after this that the idea came to me.

If I could not teach officially, I could teach unofficially.

If girls could not go to school, I could bring school to them.

I started small.

I contacted three mothers I knew from before.

Women whose daughters had been in my classes.

I told them I could teach their daughters in secret in my home.

just basic literacy and math, just enough to keep their minds alive.

The mothers were terrified.

They were also desperate.

They said yes.

That is how the secret school began.

Three girls in my family’s living room twice a week.

We would tell neighbors we were having Quran study.

We were careful.

We kept the real books hidden.

We had Islamic texts on the table in case anyone came to the door.

But underneath we were teaching literature, mathematics, history.

We were keeping the light of learning alive in the darkness.

Words spread quietly.

By March, I had seven girls.

By May, 12.

We had to move locations constantly.

One week in my home, one week in another mother’s home, always rotating, always careful.

We were like ghosts appearing and disappearing, teaching in whispers.

The girls were so hungry to learn.

They absorbed everything like dry ground absorbing rain.

They asked questions.

They wrote essays.

They solved equations.

They were alive in those moments.

Truly alive in a way they could not be anywhere else in the Taliban’s Afghanistan.

But I was always afraid.

Every knock on the door made my heart stop.

Every stranger who looked too long made me nervous.

The Taliban had informants everywhere.

Neighbors reported neighbors.

Family members reported family members.

One word to the wrong person and we would all be arrested.

The girls could be beaten.

I could be imprisoned or worse.

There were close calls.

Once a Taliban patrol was going door todo on our street doing random inspections.

We were in the middle of a lesson.

We had 30 seconds.

We hid all the books under floor cushions.

We brought out Qurans.

We covered our heads completely.

When they knocked, we were sitting in a circle reading Quranic verses.

They looked around.

They questioned us.

And then they left.

My hands did not stop shaking for an hour afterward.

Despite the fear, I kept teaching.

I had to.

Education was the only hope these girls had.

Without it, they would be married off young, trapped in homes, never knowing what they could have been.

I could not let that happen.

Even if it cost me everything, I had to try to give them a chance.

But as I taught them, something was changing inside me.

The questions I had pushed down were rising back up stronger.

Now I would read the approved Islamic texts we used as cover and I would see things I had never noticed before.

Contradictions, justifications for things that felt wrong.

The more I read, trying to find peace, the more troubled I became.

I witnessed things that haunted me.

A woman beaten in the street for letting her burka slip and show her face.

The Taliban fighter who did it quoted Quranic verses as he struck her.

I saw a young girl, maybe 14, whose hands were cut off for stealing bread to feed her siblings.

They did it in public in the square.

And they called it Islamic justice.

They called it God’s law.

I would go home and I would pray and I would ask, “Is this you? Is this what you want?” The silence from heaven was deafening.

One evening in June 2022, something happened that I think now was God’s hand, though I did not know it then.

I could not sleep.

The questions in my mind were too loud.

I got up in the darkness and I took out my phone.

This phone was my secret.

Most women were not supposed to have smartphones.

The Taliban wanted to control all communication, but I had one bought on the black market, hidden in my room.

I used it rarely and only late at night, connecting to my neighbor’s Wi-Fi that I had hacked the password for.

That night, I opened the phone and I started searching for answers.

I looked for Islamic scholars who might explain things differently.

I looked for interpretations that made sense of the cruelty I was seeing.

I read arguments and debates between different schools of Islamic thought.

Some of it helped a little.

Some of it made me more confused.

Then by accident, I clicked on a link that took me to a website I had not intended to visit.

It was a Christian website in Farsy.

Someone had translated Christian materials into my language.

My first instinct was to close it immediately.

Christians were kafir infidels.

I had been taught this my whole life.

Their book was corrupted.

Their beliefs were wrong.

To even read their materials was dangerous to my soul.

But I did not close it.

I do not know why.

curiosity maybe or desperation or perhaps God’s hand on my heart.

Though I would not have believed that then I read for maybe 5 minutes.

It was about Jesus, about his teachings, about love and forgiveness and peace.

It was simple.

It was beautiful.

It was nothing like what I had been taught Christians believed.

I closed the phone and I tried to forget what I had read.

But I could not forget the words stayed with me.

Over the next weeks, I kept thinking about it.

I told myself I was just curious.

I told myself I was just trying to understand different perspectives to be a better teacher.

I told myself many lies to justify what I was doing.

Late at night when everyone was asleep, I would take out my phone and I would go back to that website.

I would read more about Jesus, about his life, about what he taught.

The more I read, the more confused I became.

This Jesus seemed different from anything I had known.

In Islam, Isa is a prophet, yes, but a distant figure.

Here in these Christian writings, he was something more.

He was close.

He was personal.

He spoke to people with such love and such authority.

He healed the sick.

He defended the oppressed.

He elevated women in a time when women were nothing.

He challenged the religious leaders who used faith as a tool of power.

I found myself drawn to his words in a way I could not explain.

When I read his teachings, something in my heart responded.

It was like hearing a voice I had been waiting my whole life to hear.

But this was dangerous.

I knew it was dangerous.

I was playing with fire.

If anyone knew I was reading Christian materials, I could be arrested.

I could be beaten.

My family could be shamed.

The secret school would be destroyed.

Everything would be lost.

Yet, I could not stop.

By September 2022, I was deep into something I could not pull myself out of.

I had found websites with entire portions of the Bible translated into Farsy.

I read the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John.

I read them over and over.

I read about Jesus touching lepers when everyone else rejected them.

I read about him talking to the Samaritan woman at the well, treating her with dignity when her own people shamed her.

I read about him defending the woman caught in adultery, saying, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

” I read the sermon on the mount, “Blessed are the poor, blessed are the meek.

Blessed are the persecuted.

” I read these words in my dark room under my blanket with my phone hidden, terrified someone would hear me crying because I was crying.

These words touched something deep in my soul.

They spoke to the questions I had been asking.

They spoke to the pain I had been feeling.

They spoke to a hunger I did not even know I had.

Still, I told myself I was just learning, just exploring, just satisfying curiosity.

I was still Muslim.

I still prayed the five daily prayers.

I still fasted.

I still believed in Allah.

I was not converting.

I was just looking.

That is what I told myself.

But I was lying to myself.

Something was changing.

Something was shifting in my heart.

A door was opening that I did not know how to close.

In October, I found something that changed everything.

I found a website where I could download a complete Farsy Bible, not just portions, the whole thing, Old Testament and New Testament, everything.

There was a download button right there on the screen.

I stared at that button for a long time.

My hand hovered over it.

I knew that if I pressed it, I was crossing a line.

Possessing a Bible in Afghanistan was dangerous.

Possessing it as a Muslim was apostasy.

If anyone found it, I could be killed.

But I wanted it.

I wanted to read more.

I wanted to understand.

I wanted to know the truth.

Whatever the truth was, I told myself I would just download it, just read it, just satisfy my curiosity, and then I would delete it.

no one would ever know.

So, I pressed the button.

The file downloaded.

I saved it in a hidden folder on my phone, disguised with a different name.

I held my phone in my hands, and I felt like I was holding a bomb.

This little device now contained something that could end my life.

I did not read it that night.

I was too afraid.

I put the phone away and I tried to sleep, but sleep would not come.

The next afternoon, I was alone in my room.

Everyone else was out.

I locked my door.

I took out my phone.

I opened the hidden folder.

I opened the Bible file.

And I started reading.

I started with Genesis, with creation, with God speaking light into darkness.

I read for hours.

I lost track of time.

I was absorbed in these ancient words, these stories I had heard about but never really known.

the flood, Abraham, Moses, the Exodus, the prophets.

Then I moved to the New Testament, back to the Gospels I had read before, but now with more context, more depth.

I read Acts about the early church about persecution, about believers being scattered, but faith spreading anyway.

I read Paul’s letters.

Romans, Corinthians, Ephesians, words about grace, about faith, about love, about freedom in Christ.

I did not understand everything.

Some of it was confusing.

Some of it seemed to contradict what I had been taught.

But some of it was so clear, so beautiful, so true that I felt it in my bones.

By December 2022, I had read the entire Bible once.

I was reading it again.

I had also found something else, an audio Bible.

Someone had recorded the entire Farsy Bible, every book, every chapter, every verse read aloud by native speakers.

I downloaded it onto a small USB drive I had bought.

This was safer than having it on my phone.

A USB drive could be hidden more easily.

It could be destroyed more quickly if needed.

I would listen to it at night lying in bed with tiny earphones hidden under my headscarf.

I would listen to the words washing over me in the darkness.

I would hear the voice reading Isaiah, Psalms, the Gospels, Revelation.

I would fall asleep to these words.

I would wake up to them.

They became the soundtrack of my secret life.

One night in late December, I was listening to the book of John, chapter 14.

Jesus was speaking to his disciples, comforting them, telling them not to be afraid.

Then I heard these words.

I am the way, the truth, and the life.

No one comes to the father except through me.

I sat up in bed.

I rewound and listened again and again.

These words struck me like lightning.

Jesus was not just claiming to be a prophet.

He was claiming to be the only way to God, the only truth, the only life.

This was not something a prophet would say.

This was something God would say.

I felt something crack inside me.

A wall I had been building to protect myself, to keep myself safe, to stay in the religion I had been born into.

That wall was crumbling.

And on the other side was Jesus looking at me, calling me.

I was terrified.

I was exhilarated.

I was confused.

I was more certain than I had ever been about anything all at the same time.

I did not sleep that night.

I lay in darkness listening to the audio Bible and I wrestled with God.

I wrestled with the truth.

I wrestled with what this all meant.

If Jesus was who he said he was, then everything changed.

Everything.

My life, my faith, my identity, my future, everything.

By the time dawn came, I was exhausted.

But something had shifted.

I did not have all the answers.

I did not understand everything.

But I knew one thing.

I believed Jesus was real.

I believed he was who he said he was.

I believed he was calling me.

I just did not know what to do about it.

The next days and weeks were a blur of confusion and fear and strange peace all mixed together.

I kept teaching the girls.

I kept living my outward Muslim life.

But inwardly, I was changing.

I was becoming someone new, someone I did not fully recognize yet.

I wanted to talk to someone about what I was feeling.

But who could I tell? My family would disown me.

My friends would report me.

The girls I taught would be horrified.

I was completely alone with this secret.

Alone except for Jesus, who was somehow becoming more real to me than anything else in my life.

It was January 2023 when something happened that I think now was God preparing me for what was coming.

We had a close call with the secret school.

Very close.

We were teaching in a house on the east side of the city.

Nine girls were there.

We were in the middle of a mathematics lesson.

Suddenly, we heard shouting outside.

Taliban trucks.

A raid on the house next door.

They were looking for someone.

Some man they suspected of working with the former government.

We froze.

The girls looked at me with terror in their eyes.

If the Taliban searched this house too, we were all finished.

I made a quick decision.

I told the girls to hide the books under floor cushions.

I told them to sit in a circle.

I brought out a Quran.

I told them to bow their heads like we were praying.

They obeyed immediately.

We sat there in that circle, heads bowed.

And I heard the Taliban next door breaking down the door, shouting, dragging someone out.

We heard a man screaming.

We heard gunshots.

We heard a woman crying.

And we sat there, heads bowed, pretending to pray, barely breathing.

I do not know what made me do what I did next.

I should have recited Quranic verses.

I should have said Muslim prayers.

But instead, in my mind, I prayed to Jesus.

I prayed desperately.

I prayed, “Jesus, if you are real, if you hear me, please protect us.

Please hide us.

Please do not let them come here.

” We sat like that for what felt like hours, but was probably 10 minutes.

The noise next door continued, shouting, breaking glass, a woman weeping, but no one came to our door.

No one knocked.

No one searched our house.

Eventually, we heard the trucks drive away.

We heard silence.

I opened my eyes.

The girls opened theirs.

We looked at each other.

We were alive.

We were safe.

They thought we had just been lucky.

But I knew something different.

I knew someone had heard my prayer.

Someone had protected us.

That was the day I stopped lying to myself about what was happening.

That was the day I admitted the truth that was growing in my heart.

I believed in Jesus.

Not just as a prophet, as my Lord, as my savior, as the son of God.

I still did not tell anyone.

I still lived outwardly as a Muslim.

I still prayed the five prayers, though my heart was elsewhere.

I still fasted during Ramadan, though I felt like a hypocrite.

I was living a double life and it was exhausting.

But what choice did I have? To confess faith in Christ in Afghanistan was to choose death.

So I kept my secret.

I kept teaching.

I kept reading the Bible in hidden moments.

I kept listening to the audio Bible at night.

I kept praying to Jesus when no one could hear me.

And I kept hoping that somehow someday I would find a way to live honestly, to live as the person I was becoming.

I did not know then that my time was running out.

I did not know that someone was watching me.

I did not know that soon everything would fall apart and I would face the choice I had been avoiding, Christ or death.

But God knew he was preparing me.

He was strengthening me.

He was getting me ready for what was coming.

The storm was gathering.

I just could not see it yet.

Asked two, the hidden word.

It was February 2023 when I first prayed to Jesus out loud.

I know the exact date because it was the anniversary of my father’s heart attack 3 years before.

He had survived, but that day always brought back memories of fear and helplessness.

That morning, I was alone in my room, and I felt overwhelmed with gratitude that my father was still alive.

Without thinking, without planning, I knelt down and I whispered, “Thank you, Jesus.

Thank you for my father’s life.

” The words came out before I could stop them.

And the moment they left my mouth, something changed.

Speaking his name aloud made it real in a way that thinking it never had.

It was like a door had opened between my inner world and my outer world.

For months, Jesus had been my private secret.

Now I had spoken to him out loud in my room in Kabell, Afghanistan, where speaking that name could get me killed.

My heart was pounding.

I looked around as if someone might have heard me even though I was alone.

But along with the fear came something else.

Peace.

A deep unexplainable peace that filled my chest and spread through my whole body.

I stayed kneeling there for a long time just feeling that peace, just being in that presence.

From that day on, I began praying to Jesus regularly, always in secret, always in whispers, always when I was sure no one could hear.

I would pray in the morning before anyone else woke up.

I would pray at night after everyone was asleep.

I would pray during the day if I found myself alone for even a few minutes.

I would lock my door or hide in the bathroom or stand in the kitchen pretending to cook while I whispered prayers to the God I was coming to know.

I was still outwardly Muslim.

I still went through all the motions.

Five times a day, I would wash and face Mecca and go through the physical movements of Islamic prayer.

But my heart was not in it anymore.

My heart was somewhere else.

My heart was with Jesus and I felt guilty about the deception.

But I did not know what else to do.

To stop praying as a Muslim would raise questions I could not answer.

To start praying as a Christian would mean death.

So I lived this double life.

And it was exhausting and terrifying and also strangely beautiful because even though I was alone, I did not feel alone.

Even though I was hiding, I felt seen.

Jesus was with me.

I could not explain it.

I just knew it.

I felt his presence.

When I prayed to him, I felt like someone was actually listening.

When I read his words, I felt like someone was actually speaking to me.

It was intimate and real in a way I had never experienced in all my years of practicing Islam.

Around this time, I started memorizing scripture.

I did this partly for practical reasons.

I could not always have my phone or USB drive with me.

If someone discovered them, I would be exposed.

But if I had scripture in my heart, no one could take that away from me.

I could carry it safely.

I could access it any time.

And so I began committing verses to memory.

The first passage I memorized was Psalm 23.

I had read it dozens of times.

Every time I read it, I cried.

It spoke to my soul.

So, I decided to learn it by heart.

I would read one verse, then close my eyes and repeat it.

Read another verse, repeat it over and over until I had the whole psalm fixed in my mind.

The Lord is my shepherd.

I shall not want.

He makes me lie down in green pastures.

He leads me beside still waters.

He restores my soul.

I would whisper these words to myself throughout the day when I was afraid, which was often.

When I was teaching the girls and worried about being discovered.

When I heard Taliban trucks driving through the streets.

When I saw women being beaten or humiliated, I would whisper, “The Lord is my shepherd.

” And I would feel courage return.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.

These words became my anchor.

In a country that had become a valley of death’s shadow, where evil seemed to rule, where fear was everywhere, these words reminded me that I was not alone.

God was with me.

Even here, even in Taliban ruled Afghanistan, even in my secret hidden faith, he was with me.

I memorized other passages, too.

John 14 where Jesus says, “Let not your heart be troubled, and I am the way, the truth, and the life.

” I memorized Romans 8 about nothing being able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

I memorized parts of the sermon on the mount.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

That verse struck me particularly hard.

Persecuted for righteousness.

That is what would happen to me if my faith was discovered.

I would be persecuted.

I would be punished.

But Jesus said that was a blessing.

He said the kingdom of heaven belonged to such people.

It was a strange comfort.

It did not make me less afraid, but it made my fear mean something.

It gave purpose to the risk I was taking.

The audio Bible on my USB drive became my most precious possession.

Every night, I would wait until the house was quiet.

I would lock my door.

I would take out the USB drive from its hiding place.

I had hidden it inside a small cloth bag that I kept inside a box of sanitary supplies.

No man would search there.

Even if Taliban raided our house, they would not look in such things.

It was the safest place I could think of.

I would plug tiny earphones into my phone, then connect the USB drive, and I would lie in bed listening to the word of God being read to me in my own language.

The voice was calm and gentle.

It felt like Jesus himself was sitting beside my bed, reading to me, comforting me, teaching me.

I would fall asleep to the sound of scripture.

It gave me dreams that were peaceful instead of the nightmares that haunted most of my sleep.

One night in March, I was listening to the Gospel of Matthew.

The reader reached chapter 5, the sermon on the mount.

Jesus was teaching about loving your enemies, about praying for those who persecute you, about turning the other cheek, about going the extra mile.

These teachings were radical.

They were opposite of everything I saw around me.

The Taliban taught hatred of enemies.

They taught violence and revenge.

They taught domination.

But Jesus taught something completely different.

Then I heard these words, “You have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.

But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your father who is in heaven.

” I stopped the audio.

I rewound and listened again.

Love your enemies.

Pray for those who persecute you.

I thought about the Taliban.

I thought about the men who had taken away my job, my freedom, my country.

The men who beat women in the streets, the men who had destroyed any hope of a future for Afghan girls.

These were my enemies.

And Jesus was telling me to love them, to pray for them.

I did not want to.

I wanted to hate them.

I did feel hate for them.

They deserved hatred.

They deserved judgment.

They deserved punishment.

But Jesus said to love them.

I lay there in the darkness struggling with this.

It felt impossible.

It felt unfair.

Why should I love people who were doing such evil? Why should I pray for people who would kill me if they knew what I believed? But the words would not leave me alone.

Love your enemies.

Pray for those who persecute you.

I realized that this was not just teaching.

This was a command.

And if I truly believed Jesus was Lord, if I truly was following him, then I had to obey even when it was hard, especially when it was hard.

So I started praying for the Taliban.

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