What If Your Past Makes It Hard to Believe in Jesus?What If Your Past Makes It Hard to Believe in Jesus?
The Call with Nancy Sabato
Olivier Melnick recounts how Holocaust trauma in his family and a guarded Jewish upbringing eventually led him to examine Scripture and trust Yeshua as Messiah. He also talks about anti-Semitism, biblical prophecy, and his work helping Christians support and share faith with Jewish people.
13:18•12 Oct 2026
From Holocaust Shadows to Faith in Yeshua: Olivier Melnick’s Journey
Episode Overview
- Family trauma, like Holocaust experiences, can shape faith and identity for generations.
- Honest engagement with Scripture and questions can move someone from resistance to belief.
- Interfaith relationships may prompt serious reflection about eternity and shared beliefs.
- Biblical prophecies about Israel and Jerusalem are presented as active and ongoing in history.
- Christians are urged to show practical, protective love to Jewish friends, making their homes a sanctuary in times of trouble.
“I was really procrastinating the inevitable. I'm going like, I have no reason not to believe this because that guy was very convincing based on scriptures from the bible.”
How do people find hope in the darkest times? This conversation on *The Call with Nancy Sabato* follows Olivier Melnick, who grew up in a Jewish home in France marked by deep Holocaust trauma and a complicated relationship with God. You’ll hear how Olivier’s mother, scarred by watching her father taken by the Gestapo and murdered in Auschwitz, lived in lifelong fear and couldn’t even step into the family cellar where he once hid.
Her pain shaped the atmosphere of Olivier’s childhood, where Jewish identity was kept quiet and faith in God felt shattered. As he puts it, his mother "was scarred for life" and "had lost hope and faith in God." Things began to shift when Olivier met the Californian woman who would become his wife. A committed Christian, she refused to marry him because, as she told him, "we don't believe the same" and she didn’t want eternity to separate them.
Instead, she challenged him to look at Scripture and handed him Hal Lindsey’s *The Late Great Planet Earth*. The prophecies about the Messiah and the idea of the rapture forced Olivier to confront what he actually believed. Reflecting on that season, he says, "I was really procrastinating the inevitable... I have no reason not to believe this." In the summer of 1983, he prayed to receive Yeshua as his Messiah and Saviour. The conversation doesn’t stop at his personal story.
Olivier talks about anti-Semitism, biblical prophecies in Ezekiel and Zechariah, and his work with Shalom in Messiah, equipping Christians to love and support Jewish people practically while sharing the gospel. He urges believers to make their homes "a sanctuary" for Jewish friends and to show genuine care backed up by presence, not just charity.
If you’re wrestling with painful family history, questions about God, or what it means to bridge faith traditions, this story might prompt you to ask: what would it look like for you to take the next honest step toward what you believe?
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