As we grow older, I think we sometimes connect the dots of events in our lives that never seemed related before.

I have always told people I started reading about World War II and the Holocaust in fourth grade and never stopped. My first book was called something like Snow Treasure about a group of Norwegian kids who smuggled gold past the Nazis in Norway by carrying it down the mountains as they skied.

What I never put together until recently was that something else that happened in fifth grade kept me fascinated with the stories of the people of that era. My friend Agnes and I had spent one summer writing to penpals we found in a Penpal Club in an Archie comic book. Yes, real letters via snail mail.

My friend was named Judy Isaacs. She lived in Cleveland and was the first Jewish friend I ever had. Since we lived in Michigan, my family eventually arranged to meet Judy and her family at the Cedar Point Amusement Park near Toledo the following spring.

Since it was a warm day in May, we all arrived in short sleeved shirts. We found the people who looked like Judy, her two sisters, and her parents at the appointed time in the appointed place.

But wait! I was far too polite to ask why but Judy's mom had a tattoo. I had never seen a lady with a tattoo before in 1969. Her dad had one, too. And the tattoos matched. And they were numbers, not flowers or butterflies or something. Suddenly I could barely suppress a shudder. I realized why Judy Isaacs' parents were tattooed.

Later I learned from Judy that her dad, who was older, had an entire other family and lost them to Hitler's hatred. Her mom had only been a young girl when she entered the camps.

I don't think I ever won Judy to the Lord, though I remember witnessing to her later when she came to visit us for a few days. Oddly, I mark my own salvation a few years later, at age 14, though I knew enough to witness about Jesus at age 10 or 11.

My friend Agnes herself had Dutch parents who had had to house German soldiers in their homes and the neighbor in between our two houses, though they were German and not our favorite people, we found out later were possibly part of the German resistance to Hitler. At least one of my mom's friends in our neighborhood had been in the camps.

These folks almost all had what we would now call PTSD, but many of them were believers, too. God did not step out of history in 1939. Even then He was faithful. As He will be faithful to us if we ever suffer for the faith.