FOI in Action: Interview with Steve Conover:
The Friends of Israel (FOI) Executive Director Steve Conover recently returned from a trip to Poland. There he saw the concentration camps at Auschwitz and Birkenau, where many of the unspeakable tragedies of the Holocaust occurred. The weight of the atrocities that took place in Poland made for much solemn reflection on the depth of human depravity among the Nazis and the destruction the Jewish people faced. But in their suffering, God preserved His resilient Chosen People.
Later, Steve visited FOI Poland’s camps for Jewish children and their families. This safe, loving community of Jewish children enjoying fun activities together served as a beautiful picture of rebirth in a country once enveloped in darkness. The Jewish people have risen like a phoenix from the ashes of the destruction they once faced in Poland. FOI continues to minister joyfully each day, shining the light of the Messiah in the hearts of these Jewish families and others all throughout Eastern Europe!
Steve Conover: Thank you for joining us for The Friends of Israel Today. I'm Steve Conover, executive director of The Friends of Israel. With me is our host and our teacher, Chris Katulka.
Chris Katulka: Hello, everyone. We got a great show for you today and you're not going to want to miss it because I'm sitting down with you, Steve. It's our FOI in Action week where we highlight the ministries here at the Friends of Israel that are taking place all over the world. And today Steve is going to share about his recent trip to Poland where he walked through Warsaw, saw the sights of the Holocaust in Auschwitz. He reflects on the resilience of the Jewish people and the reality of history and why it matters to all of us today. So you're not going to want to miss this. This is a heavy one, but it's hopeful.
Steve Conover: Yeah, I'm looking forward to sharing about my experience, but first in the news, Turkish President Erdoğan recently escalated his rhetoric in the Middle East, accusing Israel of committing atrocities in both Gaza and Lebanon, while openly hinting at possible military intervention.
Chris Katulka: Well, Steve, here's my take. Iran's chants of “death to Israel" are becoming Erdoğan's threats of Turkish military action against the Jewish state. The Turkish president knows all too well that Hamas and Hezbollah in Lebanon are Iranian proxies bent on Israel's destruction. But see, that didn't stop him from political posturing. As the pressure builds, statements like these should not be dismissed lightly. They reflect a growing boldness among Israel's adversaries at a very volatile moment.
Chris Katulka: Well, normally when you tune into the radio program, you're used to hearing two voices, Steve Conover, who opens us, and then I get the great opportunity of teaching. But today, Steve Conover is going to share with us about his most recent visit to Poland. Steve has become our new executive director here at The Friends of Israel. And part of that is the trips of exploration to the ministries that we have all around the world and on his first stop globally was Poland, Steve.
And it seems like you have come back with so much to talk about from that trip to Poland and the visit with our Polish team. So I want to ask, when you got to Poland, you begin to think that Poland is almost exclusively connected to the Holocaust. So based on your time there, how has your perspective shifted regarding the longer history of the Jewish people in that region, even prior to the Holocaust, prior to the 1940s?
Steve Conover: Yeah, I appreciate that, Chris, because it really has shifted from before the time I had had an opportunity to spend in Poland. It's a story of contrast, really. To see the Warsaw ghetto and to see the Nazi desire to eliminate Jewish culture from that area is evident because they had to actually build on the rubble that there was so much rubble that they couldn't move it that they had to build on top of that rubble after the war. One of the things that really stood out to me is what's called the Umschlagplatz, and that was a memorial. And that memorial is at the starting point, which was a collection point for the Jewish community in Warsaw, and they were taken on trains from Warsaw to Treblinka. One of the things that was pointed out to me is that there are different kinds of camps that the Nazis had.
There are forced labor camps, but Treblinka was a camp that was actually an extermination or a death camp. And 300,000 Jewish people from Warsaw were deported from Umschlagplatz to Treblinka from there to their deaths. The contrast would be what we saw in the history surrounding the Jewish community in Warsaw. One of the best museums I've ever been in, it's called the Polin Museum, P-O-L-I-N. And it just shows the beauty and diversity of the culture for a thousand years, which was a real surprise to me of Jewish history in Poland. That's what the Nazis attempted to erase, that longstanding culture. What's more tragic is the Jewish people found safety there. For that entire amount of time, they were allowed to be there while much of Europe was deporting their Jews and persecuting them. They found safety in Poland, especially in the 16th and 17th centuries.
It was a center for the Jewish world. And Warsaw in particular, you had Warsaw as the second largest Jewish community in the world next to New York. The museum takes you through the golden age really of Jewish community there. They had printing and just beautiful cultural events and scholarly works. It was really flourishing during that time to the point where they have a recreation of a 1930s Warsaw. And just to walk through those streets was really incredible to see. But as I mentioned, because they were welcomed, that's part of what's so tragic because they were concentrated in one place, and that's where Hitler and the Nazis targeted. And of course we know what happened after.
Chris Katulka: Yeah. And it's really interesting how you highlight the fact that there was a golden age of Jewish people and how they fled from Germany to Poland. And that's where one of the largest Jewish populations grew over time. And today, the largest Jewish population is Israel in the world, which is just amazing to think that less than a hundred years later, now Israel is the largest Jewish population in the world. But I want to go back to Warsaw here. You used the imagery of a phoenix in your article that you wrote for Israel My Glory, to describe the resilience of Warsaw. So can you elaborate on where you saw the signs of hope or life rising from the rubble during this trip that you took?
Steve Conover: Yeah, Timothy Rabinek, who's been on our program. He's our field director for Central and Eastern Europe. He explained this to me, that Warsaw is known as the “Phoenix City.” And because of that, 90% of the Warsaw town, the city being razed by the Germans after an uprising in 1944, that's when Hitler ordered the city to be razed to the ground building by building. Timothy showed us these incredible pictures of there…just nothing. It looked like a bomb went off. They just went building by building and just razed the entire area. But now you see these modern skyscrapers just coming out of the ground. You see some old architecture from the 1950s that were put after the World War, but you just see these beautiful modern skyscrapers in Warsaw. And the people of Poland rebuilt that entire city. They reconstructed the old town that was completely destroyed.
They used 18th century paintings and they used architectural drawings from the time to accurately recreate that old town, which was pretty amazing to stand in that center or that square because it looked just like it would have in 1930s Warsaw. And it's actually a world heritage site now. But that's the geography, that's the land, that's what you see with your eyes, the buildings. But one of the most moving moments was our first night there was before our first full day of touring. We grabbed a quick dinner and on our way back up to our room, about to get on the elevator. And I see in the lobby two men sitting like we are, having a cup of coffee, having a very normal conversation. But the difference was these two men had kippas on, so I knew they were Jewish. And I got on that elevator, it hit me like a ton of bricks that 80 years later I got on the elevator, I looked at my wife and I said, "Hitler didn't win.”
Chris Katulka: Yeah, that's huge. And to think that Hitler didn't win, and yet he still was able to systematically murder six million Jewish people. And so you're able to stand decades later and say Hitler didn't win, but still six million Jewish people were systematically murdered at the Holocaust. And that's why during your visits, was there a specific moment, Steve, or a site that transformed that abstract number of six million down to something personal for you?
Steve Conover: Yeah. We visited Auschwitz and that's where I began to understand the individual experience of those six million. Six million is such a number you can't even begin to imagine. I mentioned that Umschlagplatz was where the Warsaw Jews were taken to Treblinka, 300,000 there, but Auschwitz was where all the Jews of Europe were gathered and sent. And the sheer scale of that really becomes tangible. You see the mind games that they played where they would have them write on their suitcases as if they had hoped that they would see them again to keep them under kind of an emotional control. You see these piles of suitcases and shoes and kitchenware. Even hair, the Nazis were using as a commodity, 15,000 pounds of hair. And they were using this hair to fill mattresses, to create felt. Just unthinkable, dehumanizing things, not to mention the unspeakable experiments, but it forced me to consider the individual when I saw all these very ordinary everyday items that were just collected.
You see the individual, not just that incomprehensible number. At the time, we were becoming new grandparents for the first time of a baby girl, and I have two daughters. And one thing that gripped me in Auschwitz was seeing this dress for a very young girl. And that's when it hit me like a ton of bricks, that this was a baby that would have, if it fit this dress, would have been old enough to interact, to clap, to smile, to giggle, to cry. And that really hit me that these are not people without stories, life stories, hopes, dreams. These are people that were raising families and simply because they were Jewish. So it helped me to see that these are six million individual souls made in God's image who were stripped of their dignity.
Chris Katulka: Well, hey, listen, we're going to take a break and we're going to come back with executive director of the Friends of Israel, Steve Conover, who's going to continue sharing his story and his experiences of going through Poland, especially now as the new executive director for Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry. And this matters much to us at the Friends of Israel because really Poland is at the heart and the DNA of our organization. After we were founded in 1938 as the Friends of Israel Refugee and Relief Society, once the war ended, we invested so much of our energy as a ministry into Poland because that's actually where our first executive director, Dr. Victor Buksbazen comes from. As a Jewish believer, he returned to Poland in order to share the good news of Jesus, the Messiah, and to continue ministry there. So again, Steve's visit is going to be really important.
Something that I believe is definitely going to mark who he is as a leader, as the leader of The Friends of Israel, guiding us into the future, supporting Israel and the Jewish people. So when we come back, we're going to hear more about his time in Poland. Stick around.
Steve Conover: Chris, Psalm 23 is probably one of the most familiar and comforting passages in all of Scripture, but there's a lot of depth we often miss in God's Word.
Chris Katulka: And that's exactly why I love our new video series, Psalm 23: Ancient Hebrew Wisdom for Today. Dan Price, one of our great teachers here at The Friends of Israel, takes you verse by verse through David's most well-known Psalm and really opens your eyes to the richness of the shepherd imagery rooted in Israel's culture.
Steve Conover: In this video, you'll begin to see how personal this Psalm really is, how David's walk with the Lord as his shepherd points us directly to Jesus, our Good Shepherd.
Chris Katulka: And Steve, the companion Study Guide is excellent. It includes Scripture, background insights, and thoughtful questions, making it ideal for personal study, family devotions, or small groups in Sunday school.
Steve Conover: If you're looking for deeper trust and encouragement in your walk with the Lord, I can't recommend this study enough.
Chris Katulka: So you can order your copy of the video series and Study Guide, Psalm 23: Ancient Hebrew Wisdom for Today at foiradio.org. Again, that's foiradio.org.
Chris Katulka: Welcome back, everybody. We are speaking, you might know him as the golden voice here at The Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry on our Friends of Israel Today Radio program, Steve Conover. But now he's also the executive director and the leader of our organization here. And he recently visited Poland to connect with a really amazing ministry that we have and a qualified team that God has put together in Poland to minister to our Jewish friends in Eastern Europe. And Steve's back to share about that story. So Steve, I know that you recently visited Poland and you went to, we were just talking about Auschwitz and now you also went to Birkenau. How did that differ from your experience in Auschwitz and what did it teach you really, the craziest part about it all is the depth of human depravity?
Steve Conover: Yeah. As I mentioned, Auschwitz, which is also known as Auschwitz I, where I really got to get my head around the individual experience of the Jewish person in the Holocaust. Auschwitz-Birkenau, which is also known as Auschwitz II, that's where I got to see the just sheer terrifying vastness of industrialization, really. Seeing the ruins of the gas chamber at the end of these rail tracks. You do. You see the depths of human depravity when God is rejected and hatred is allowed to go unchecked. When I say industrialization, the Nazis treated these mass killings like a business, as if it were something to build efficiency and to become more effective in the process of killing. And it really became easy for them. They were becoming very efficient at it. But then the guide said something I'll never forget. We got to the place where the ovens were in Birkenau and the problem the Nazis were unable to solve was the elimination of evidence, the actual burning of bodies was a slow process.
Those things were harder for them to do . And thank the Lord they didn't solve that part because as the guide told us, many more, maybe millions more could have been killed, could have perished.
Chris Katulka: As you're kind of walking through those places that are full of extreme darkness, you also had a chance to see some light and that light came from the representatives of The Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry serving in Poland, serving in Eastern Europe, where all of these atrocities took place. How did visiting the Friends of Israel camps, for instance, where Jewish children and families go to gather and to learn the Bible? How did this shape your understanding of the Friends of Israel's mission in Poland today?
Steve Conover: Yeah, we talk about contrast, talk about highs and lows. On the same day we were at Auschwitz, we got to visit one of the camps in the south. My experience has really reinforced what I believe in our mission here to be, and that combating antisemitism and how important that is for us. It's a spiritual battle. We talk about October 7th, 2023, but October 8th tells us a lot because that's when the Jewish people, the very next day, were targeted around the world as if they were the problem for Hamas massacring Israelis on their own soil. There were even conspiracy theories that Israel knew about this and they allowed these attacks. But what it just illustrated to me is that this is age old and it's Satanic. If I could read a few verses from Psalm 83, we referenced these verses at the Friends of Israel often.
This is upwards of 3,000 years ago these verses were written. Psalm 83:1-4, "Do not keep silent, O God. Do not hold your peace and do not be still, O God. For behold, your enemies make a tumult and those who hate you have lifted up their head. They've taken crafty counsel against your people and consulted together against your sheltered ones. They have said, “Come and let us cut them off from being a nation that the name of Israel may be remembered no more."” It just shows that Satan wants to stop God's plan. We see it with Herod and him feeling threatened when Jesus came the first time, killing children under two years old in Bethlehem to get rid of the Messiah. And we know Satan wants to stop God's plan for the future, which includes the Jewish people and Jesus reigning one day in Jerusalem.
But to see these camps, which the children come from places like Ukraine and Israel, they hear missile fire every single day. And one of the things that was really moving to me was the shelter that was provided by donations given to the Friends of Israel. These kids come to the camp and they feel safe in the shelter at home. So they actually start out some of them in that shelter. We saw these young kids in the shelter because that's where they felt safe. And once they realized there aren't any missiles, they hear the breeze in the trees, they hear the birds singing. Then they hear other kids laughing and then they come out and then you see them start to play. At one of the camps, we have two, one in the north and one in the south. On the particular day we were at the one in the south, they were making crafts.
They were scheduled to go swimming to make chocolate, and they were hearing God’s Word taught by our teachers in a very loving environment.
Chris Katulka: Yeah. And that provides a safety and a place for them to thrive and a place for them to learn God's Word. And again, you talked about that darkness and light contrast. That one minute you're going and you're walking through Auschwitz and the next minute, you're seeing the smiles on the faces of Jewish kids who are hearing God's Word. For some of them, maybe the very first time with our representatives. And again, you were talking about highs and lows, but it's even bigger than just the individual relationship that we're providing for these children. There's almost something going on globally that we have to talk about here. Coming away from Poland, what are some of the urgent warning signs and lessons that maybe you took away that you could share with us that we should be mindful about today's global climate?
Steve Conover: Yeah. As you said today, it fundamentally changed me and just my passion just only grew over that time and sense as I reflect back on it. The important lesson for me, partly is just our commitment to standing with Israel and the global Jewish community. It's not just about politics. It's rooted in a promise that goes back to the beginning. It goes back to Genesis 12:3. And at Friends of Israel, we take to heart that mandate that “God will bless those who bless Israel and curse those that curse Israel.” And that comes from Genesis 12:3. But we believe those words are as true today as they were a thousand years ago, thousands of years ago. So why does it matter now? As I think about that, in a world where antisemitism is on the rise, and we talk about that on the program all the time, it's a warning sign of a deeper moral decay in global society.
And we can't forget that God has a plan which includes a glorious future for Israel. And when you simply take God at his word, standing with the Jewish people, it's a spiritual and a moral necessity. That's the way we look at it. And we reject any teaching that would deny the Jewish people the right to their homeland, their ancestral homeland, or would deny their safety right here in our own neighborhoods. It doesn't mean we agree with every political decision that Israel makes. I don't even agree with every decision made in my own country. Who really does? That's just part of living in a society. We won't agree on everything, but it does mean we support Israel's right to protect its borders and its people. And that's why it's such a privilege at The Friends of Israel to provide tangible, meaningful support to Israel and the Jewish people.
Chris Katulka: Well, Steve, this has been enlightening and I really am thankful for even hearing the stories, both having this conversation now, you and I have talked about this personally in the past, and I know that it's changed you and your wife, Beth, as well. And I think this trip is going to help in so many ways continue to advance the ministry of the Friends of Israel, this trip that you had, and to continue to give us the vision that we have to love the Jewish people to life. And this becomes very much a part of our DNA that even goes back to our history. And that's why I want to invite you, our listeners. We're going to put a link on our website at foiradio.org because we want to provide you the opportunity to support the ministry that's happening in Poland. And you can support programs like the Holiday with the Bible, which is where Steve had an opportunity to see young Jewish kids and Jewish families come to a safe place to maybe hear the Bible for the very first time, to hear the Good News for the very first time, coming from Ukraine and Belarus and Latvia and Czech Republic and Poland itself.
So if you'd like to support these ministries, I encourage you to go to foiradio.org because there you can make not only a prayer, you can offer up a prayer to the Lord for this amazing ministry, but you can also contribute to this ministry to continue to see God's Word shared in Eastern Europe. Steve, thank you so much for being a part of the program today and sharing about this amazing experience.
Steve Conover: My joy, Chris.
Steve Conover: Thank you for joining us for today's episode of The Friends of Israel Today. Don't forget to order your copy of the video series and study guide, Psalm 23: Ancient Hebrew Wisdom for Today. You can order that at foiradio.org. Again, that's foiradio.org. Chris, where are we headed next week?
Chris Katulka: Well, first, let me say thanks, Steve, for sharing your experience. Next week, we just wrapped up a series on the tabernacle, and it was really enlightening to walk through the tabernacle from the east where the altar stood all the way to the Holy of Holies. But now we're going to talk about the worship that these Israelites brought, and that's why we're going to look at the various types of sacrifices that were there and really how Jesus fulfills all of them. So next week, we're going to look at the whole burnt offering.
Steve Conover: Join us then. As mentioned, our web address is foiradio.org. Again, that's foiradio.org. Our mailing address is FOI Radio, PO Box 914, Bellmawr, New Jersey, 08099. Again, that's FOI Radio, PO Box 914, Bellmawr, New Jersey, 08099. You can call our listener line. That number is 888-343-6940. Once again, that's 888-343-6940. Today's program was engineered by Bob Beebe. Edited by Jeremy Strong, who also composed and performs our theme music. Our executive producer is Lisa Small. Our associate producer is Sarah Fern. Our host and teacher is Chris Katulka. And I'm Steve Conover, executive director of The Friends of Israel. The Friends of Israel Today is a production of The Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry. Passion for God's Word. Compassion for God's Chosen People.
Psalm 23: Ancient Hebrew Wisdom for Today
One of the most beloved passages of Scripture, Psalm 23 is more than comforting poetry—it’s a timeless testimony of God’s personal care for His people.
This six-session study will guide you through the heart of David’s relationship with the Lord, his Shepherd, revealing profound truths that resonate just as powerfully for believers in Jesus today. Discover how this ancient Hebrew psalm found in God’s Word, offers wisdom, comfort, and assurance for today. It will lead you into deeper trust, reconciliation, and abiding joy in your Shepherd, Jesus Christ.
*Streaming also available!
Music
The Friends of Israel Today and Apples of Gold theme music was composed and performed by Jeremy Strong.
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