Your Family Tree

Nicky Gumbel writes...

My father never spoke to me about his life before he had come to England and married my mother. I knew virtually nothing about his background. Three years ago I was contacted by The Judaica Museum in Berlin. They were doing some research into the Gumbel family. They sent me a copy of my family tree. I discovered that my great-great-grandfather was called Abraham Gumbel. My great-grandfather was called Isaac and his brother, Moses!

My father was Jewish. He qualified as a barrister and became a Doctor of Law at the University of Tübingen in 1927. Later he read Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampfand knew what was likely to happen to someone like him who was known as ‘Israelitisch’. He came to England and qualified as an English barrister as well. His sister and parents eventually came too. Many of the rest of his family perished in Dachau, Riga and other Nazi concentration camps.

The treatment of the Jewish people through the centuries has been complex, and at times tragic. Sometimes even passages in the Bible have been misinterpreted and misapplied as a weapon of abuse against the Jewish people.

The people of God in the Old Testament were the nation of Israel. The people of God in the New Testament are all those who put their faith in Jesus Christ. We share a common history and family tree. We worship the same God and, the apostle Paul tells us, the way of salvation is the same for us all.

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