A God of Incredible Miracles

By: Shannon Kelly

On November 15, 2017, 87-year-old Selma Satonica entered the Grand Rapids, Michigan, courthouse and proudly took her oath of allegiance to the United States of America, finally fulfilling her goal of becoming a legal U.S. citizen. This moment was a dream come true for the native German; decades ago, she almost did not make it to America. As World War II ravaged her homeland, the odds of survival and escape seemed stacked against her. But Selma and her family knew that all things are possible with God. Through a series of remarkable miracles and answered prayers, Selma and her family were delivered from the perils of the war, spared from death time and again. “God helped us,” Selma declared emphatically.

Selma and her twin brother, Helmut, were born to Ferdinand and Elida Wutzke in 1930 in Slobodarka, Poland, then part of the Soviet Union and now the Ukraine. Their family would grow by three more children in the coming years. Although the family were ethnic Germans and spoke the German language, they also spoke Polish. After World War II broke out, this ability – along with many prayers – would help save their lives.

The Bolsheviks, a Russia majority radical group, began hunting down and exterminating anyone caught speaking German. The officers stood at the windows of peoples’ homes to eavesdrop. “We had to close the window, because the Russian Bolsheviks come listen if you talk German or Polish,” Selma recalled. “If you talk Polish, they let you go, but if you talk German, they take you.” Every time the family heard the Bolsheviks coming, they would pray to God, and Ferdinand instructed everyone to speak Polish. After hearing this language being spoken, the Bolsheviks left satisfied.

Though knowing Polish helped save them from the Bolsheviks, Selma and her family were in danger of being hauled to concentration camps for another major reason - their faith. Selma’s father owned a shoe shop, and as a Seventh-day Adventist, he closed it every Sabbath. Then came a dire warning that Selma remembers clearly: “If we don’t open it [on Sabbath], they take you away in the concentration camp.” To avoid this fate, a worker was hired to open the store for Ferdinand on Saturdays.

In 1939, Selma’s parents were forced from their home in Poland and moved to Freiburg, Germany. While awaiting placement, they stayed in a camp where they slept on straw mattresses and were served food containing pork. Selma’s parents explained to the SS commandant that, “We don’t eat pork. We’re Adventists.” The commandant threatened that those who did not eat the food provided and did not do as they were told should be shot, but the family did not back down. As usual, when faced with grave situations, the family prayed. God honored their integrity with a miracle. Instead of executing them, the SS commandant began serving them soup broth without pork, and cheese sandwiches. Seven months later, Selma and her family were settled in Southwestern Poland. The government evicted a family from their home so they could move in. Feeling terrible, Selma’s parents arranged a secret meeting with the evicted family to return the belongings they had been forced to abandon.

Selma’s new residence was close to a barbed-wire enclosed Jewish ghetto. The unwilling inhabitants had to be inside by five o’clock sharp every evening; if they were late, the consequences were deadly. Once, to her horror, Selma witnessed a Nazi shoot a Jewish man for arriving seconds late. “It was 5:01 - 1 minute after,” she recalls, “and the Nazi shot that guy.”

Selma and her family helped their Jewish neighbors every chance they got, often sneaking food to them under the fence. Each exchange was a risk to life should they be caught. Once, they almost were. “One Jew was so hungry,” Selma remembers. “My father sent me to the bakery to get some buns.” Selma delivered the buns to her father, who gave them to the Jew. A Nazi wearing civilian clothing saw the encounter. “The Nazi come up, he says, ‘For this, you could end up in concentration camp, that you feed the Jews!’” Her father breathed a prayer. Miraculously, the Nazi chose not to report the exchange. “I’ll close my eyes this time, but let it happen again and you’ll be in the concentration camp,” he warned.

Eventually, Selma and her siblings were forced to join the Hitler Youth program. Selma and her younger sister, Gunda, joined the Bund Deutscher Mädel (BDM), the female division of Hitler Youth. Part of their uniforms included wearing a Swastika arm band, something Selma hated. There was fear that the boys, Helmut and Willie, would be drafted. At the time, boys as young as ten were taken to war. God answered the family’s prayers and protected the Wutzke children from this fate. Their father, Ferdinand, did not escape the draft, however, and was deported to Hamburg.

Then, on January 18, 1945, during a blizzard, two German soldiers came to the family and instructed them to pack quickly. The German front was collapsing. Russians would invade within the hour, and their town would become a war zone. They had come to help the family escape, remembering the times the family had fed them. Together with two other families, Selma, her mother, and her siblings piled into the military truck and headed for a train depot 50 miles away. After prayerfully passing a perilous checkpoint, they arrived to find the station bombed out. The determined soldiers drove another 100 miles to the next train station. There, they found a train overflowing with passengers. Selma thought it looked like a Christmas tree, with people sitting on top and hanging from the sides. It was so packed that the conductor told Selma’s mother to wait for another train. Uncertain of what to do, the family prayed for guidance. After praying, a man dressed in black approached them. “He looked like Johnny Cash,” Selma says, grinning. He told them, “Take this train. This is the last one.” With that, the mysterious man vanished. Recognizing this as an angelic encounter, Selma’s family boarded the train, which was indeed the last.

200 miles later, the train arrived in Cottbus, Germany. Selma and Helmut were sent in search of food, having eaten nothing on their exodus. To their dismay, stamps were needed to purchase food, and they had none. As they stood wondering what to do, a gust of wind blew something against Selma’s shoe: a string of red stamps! These were bread stamps, and provided Selma with two and a half loaves of bread to share. “We come back by my mom in the depot, said, ‘Look, we got bread!’ My mother said, ‘Where did you steal that?’” Selma laughs. “We didn’t steal it! God provided.”

God also provided a joyous reunion for the Wutzke family; the miracles never ceased. With help from a Seventh-day Adventist Church, they found their opportunity to immigrate to America. A shoemaker was needed, which just happened to be Ferdinand’s occupation. The family leapt at the chance and sailed across the tempestuous ocean to begin a new life.