Walter Ziffer

In Dr. Ziffer's later years, his work mostly revolved around his teachings and lecturing at various higher education institutions and writings regarding Christianity's views towards Judaism, and guest lecturing about his experiences in the Holocaust. He published The Birth of Christianity from the Matrix of Judaism: From Jewish Sect to World Religion in 2006 and The Teaching of Disdain: An Examination of Christology and New Testament Attitudes Toward Jews in 2017 regarding these historical points of intersection between Christianity and Judaism which caused negativity and hatred.

In 1942, as a young teenager, Ziffer was seized from his home and taken to a Jewish Ghetto in what is now the Czech Republic. Soon after arriving in the Jewish Ghetto, Walter found unexpected happiness. Walter fell in love with a blonde girl named Lydia, and spent nearly all of his free time with her. After a few weeks of being together, Lydia told Walter that her and her family would attempt to flee the Ghetto and seek asylum in the Soviet Union. Before she left, she gave him a golden pendant from her necklace and engraved in the pendant were the words, I love you. Days after Lydia's escape, members of the Jewish community went to Walters dad and informed him that Lydia and her parents had been killed. Soon separated from his family, Ziffer was sent to seven Nazi slave labor Concentration camps throughout the war. At the age of 18, he was finally liberated by Soviet troops and eventually was able to reunite with his parents and some of his siblings, who had been held in separate camps and also survived until their liberation. He returned home and apprenticed as a mechanic, then, years later moved to the U.S. with only 5 dollars to his name, he later worked for General Motors as an engineer.

Walter Ziffer (born 5 March 1927 in Těšín, Czechoslovakia) to a German-speaking Jewish family was one of the many survivors of the German-led Holocaust. After immigrating to the United States, Ziffer received an engineering degree from Vanderbilt University, two master's degrees from the Graduate School of Theology of Oberlin College and a doctorate in theology from the University of Strasbourg in early Christian history, Biblical Hebrew and comparative religion. He is the author of many books including Confronting the Silence: A Holocaust Survivor’s Search for God and has spoken regularly throughout Western North Carolina regarding his experiences throughout the Holocaust.