Klara Biac: A True Example of Christ’s Love

by | Apr 13, 2023 | Caring, Example, God's Hands, God's Love, Sacrifice

With the threat of WWIII recently on all of our minds and our hearts, it is good to contemplate how the horrors of WWII brought out so much good in so many people.

Take Klara Baic, for example. She lived in Subotica in North Serbia. It was near the Hungarian border, and at the time it was under Hungarian rule. She was also a single mother to a 12 year old, and in that day, the Nazis were just starting to round up and deport Hungarian Jews to concentration camps. Unfortunately they were aided by the Hungarian people themselves. It was a good time to not be a Jew. And since Klara wasn’t a Jew, she could live in relative safety with her daughter.

If you were in her shoes, what would you have done if someone knocked on your door and asked you to harbour two Jewish boys?

Mirko Deneberg was 11 years-old, and his brother Paul was only 8. Their father had been rounded up and sent to forced labour from which he never returned. The boys, along with their mother, were sent to the Subotica ghetto, where they were forced to watch transports leaving regularly for Auschwitz. The boys’ uncle was exempt from deportation because of his marriage to a Serbian woman. He also carried a false baptismal certificate, and with this in hand, he broke into the ghetto one night and succeeded in smuggling out the two boys. And it was a good thing he did, because their mother was among those deported soon afterwards to Auschwitz.

Now that the boys were free, however, what would the uncle do with them? He tried to find people willing to care for them, and to some degree, he succeeded. But only for a few days at a time, and then, only for the promise of payment in return. In desperation, the uncle turned to a local priest who was known to have ties with the partisans. Through the priest, he was given the name of Klara Baic. She was his last hope for the boys.

I don’t know about you, but I might have thought twice before taking those two boys in. The price for hiding Jews was high indeed, and Klara also had her own daughter to think about.

But Klara didn’t think twice. She immediately agreed to take the boys. The boys would later recall that Klara would share everything with them, and that she did everything to save them. She prepared a hiding place in her neighbor’s yard in the event of a sudden house search or raid, and a few months later, she moved her daughter and the boys to the home of one of her relatives where they would remain until the liberation in October 1944. The boys’ mother miraculously survived Auschwitz and after the war she was reunited with her sons. Her boys were still alive, thanks to the courage of Klara Baic.

Klara really lived her faith. She understood the true meaning of love: “Greater love has no one than this, that a person will lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13 NASB). She risked her own life, along with the life of her daughter, to mirror God’s love for each of us. She had true faith, the kind that was accompanied by works. She lived the true meaning of James 2:18: “But someone may well say, ‘You have faith and I have works; show me your faith without the works, and I will show you my faith by my works.’” (NASB)

What about us? Will we also understand the meaning of God’s love for us? Will we accompany our declared faith in God by our acts of unconditional, selfless, sacrificing love? Let’s spend some time thinking about this today, and let’s let this be our prayer: Father God, may be follow in your steps. May our faith be so rock solid that we aren’t afraid to show it by our deeds. May our love be as selfless and sacrificial as Yours! In the precious name of Jesus, Amen!

In His love,
Rob Chaffart
Director, Answers2prayer Ministries

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Klara Biac: A True Example of Christ’s Love

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