to assist with the needs of women with unplanned pregnancies.
Ohio Christian Alliance, PO Box 3076, Akron OH 44309 (330) 887-1922
D-Day Prayer Project Well Underway
We began in earnest our four-month fundraising campaign for the D-Day Landing Prayer Project. You can be part of history by helping to add this historical Presidential prayer to the WWII Memorial in Washington, D.C. by making a tax-deductible contribution to the OCA Ed Fund by clicking here. Our project goal is $300,000 by October 1st. Click on the DONATE button below.
Lost Songs of the Holocaust found in UA Archives 2017
Here with a wire recorder and wire spools that hold the voices of Jewish concentration camp survivors are, from left, James Newhall, who redesigned a useable recorder, along with the Cummings Center's Jon Endres, Dr. Jodi Kearns and Dr. David Baker.
In the final months of World War II, as Allied Forces began to liberate the prisoners of Nazi concentration camps, they captured on film the horrors they saw around them. Soon, the whole world saw — images of skeletal survivors bearing silent witness to what they and millions more had been forced to endure. Dr. David Boder was determined to give the survivors a voice. In the summer of 1946, the psychologist interviewed at least 130 Jewish survivors in nine languages in refugee camps in France, Switzerland, Italy and Germany. With a wire recorder — then considered state-of-the-art equipment — and 200 spools of steel wire, Boder preserved some of the first oral histories of concentration camp survivors. He also recorded song sessions and religious services. A portion of Boder's work has been archived at The University of Akron's Drs. Nicholas and Dorothy Cummings Center for the History of Psychology since 1967. But it wasn't until a recent project to digitize the recordings got under way that a spool containing the "Henonville Songs," performed in Yiddish and German and long thought lost, was discovered in a mislabeled canister. "I think it is one of the most important discoveries from our collections in our 50-year history," notes Dr. David Baker, the Margaret Clark Morgan Executive Director of the Cummings Center. "The songs were recorded at a refugee camp in Henonville, France. The Nazis made the prisoners sing some of these songs as they ran to their forced labor sites and back each day. "That we could give the world the melody to a song sung by those sentenced to their death through forced labor during one of the most unspeakable horrors of the 20th century is remarkable," Baker adds.
Retrieving the voices from steel wire proved challenging. While the Cummings Center had several wire recorders in its collection, none were compatible with the spools on which Boder made his recordings. James Newhall, a senior multi-media producer in Instructional Services at UA, led the search for just the right model. It took a year and it was actually his co-worker, Litsa Varonis, who spotted the unit on eBay. Varonis, now retired from UA, made the purchase and donated the recorder to the center.
Dr. David Boder included several interviews with concentration camp survivors in his book, "I Did Not Interview the Dead." — Photo courtesy of the Illinois Institute of Technology. It was her husband, Orestes Varonis, a retired electrical engineer, who provided Newhall with valuable advice as he redesigned the recorder to use modern electronic components. "There was a lot of time spent on research and experimentation," says Newhall. "The recorder no longer uses vacuum tubes or rubber tires, and is mostly built from new parts. It has a more simple, and accurate, drive mechanism." From there, Jon Endres, a multimedia producer/media specialist with the Cummings Center, was able to put the recordings into a digital format. "It felt like I was helping in some way to bring these voices to the present, voices that had become somewhat lost to the historical record," says Endres. "The discovery of this single canister holding a lost recording means that these songs can be heard again, they can be studied and they can inform us in a new way about the experiences, the joys and the frustrations of these displaced persons." The Cummings Center shared the discovery with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., and its staff helped with translations. The museum now has a digitized copy for its collection.
This odd-looking piece of equipment is the wire recorder that, once modernized, released the voices recorded in song at a refugee camp in Henonville, France, decades earlier. Researchers from around the world have contacted Baker, eager to visit the Cummings Center and study the Boder recordings. "These songs, in the voices of those subjected to unspeakable cruelty, are a reminder of the power of memory, the value of history and the indomitable human spirit," notes Baker. "Hearing them sing again after 70 years of silence gives the world a greater understanding of the circumstances and experiences of those who were witnesses to a dark chapter in human history."
Spring Freedom Banquet May 25, 2017. This year, honoring our veterans with the D-Day Landing Prayer Project. OCA President Chris Long presented the fundraising, construction and dedication phase which has begun on a 12-month calendar. The $600,000 upgrade to the WWII Memorial Monument for the Prayer's placement at the Circle of Remembrance will not be paid for by tax dollars but by private contributions from you and me. If we stay on schedule, the dedication will be June of 2018. This year's speakers included author and historian Bill Federer from the American Minute who gave an address from the notes of his book, "Prayers and Presidents" and Frank Gaffney from the Center for Security Policy who delivered a national security briefing to the attendees. Funds were collected through the OCA Ed Fund for the D-Day Prayer's construction. Make a fully tax-deductible contribution to add FDR's D-Day Landing Prayer in its entirety at the WWII Memorial in Washington, D.C. CLICK HERE
We began in earnest our four-month fundraising campaign for the D-Day Landing Prayer Project. You can be part of history by helping to add this historical Presidential prayer to the WWII Memorial in Washington, D.C. by making a tax-deductible contribution to the OCA Ed Fund by CLICKING HERE. Our project goal is $300,000 by October 1st.
National Day of Prayer on Thursday, May 4th. Join us is praying for our President, his cabinet, our state and national leaders, churches, schools, and families. II Chron 7:14, "If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and heal their land."
In a major breach of protocol, the State of the State Address by Governor Kasich before a joint session of the Ohio General Assembly in Marietta last week, did not open with a prayer from the clergy. OCA President Chris Long who was in attendance recounted, "There was a call to order by the Speaker of the House and Senate President, a call to quorum, the presentation of colors by the Honor Guard, and then the Senate President looked down at his notes as to what was next on the program. He seemed to pause as to wonder if they had forgotten something. He then announced Governor Kasich, who walked down the aisle to the stage with members of his cabinet. He greeted the audience, delivered his speech, there was the retirement of colors, and the conclusion of the assembly. What stood out to me and other attendees was the major omission of the opening prayer. This State of the State was held in Marietta in observance of the city's 228th birthday as the first chartered settlement of the Northwest Territory. Article 3 of The Northwest Ordinance states, "Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind..." Given the occasion and setting, it was especially bothersome that prayer was left out.
Since our nation's founding, prayer has been offered before the Continental Congress, the U.S. Congress, and in all 50 states of the union throughout our 240-year history. Prayer and divine guidance has been sought by our elected officials at the opening of each assembly. Before every Ohio House and Senate Session, prayer is offered by a visiting clergy member who has been invited by an elected official of that district for the purpose of offering the prayer.
I began to ask House and Senate Leadership why the prayer was omitted from the program. No one had an immediate answer, and we are still waiting for a response. We also phoned the Governor's Director of Legislative Affairs, Merle Madrid. He has not returned our calls. Since Governor Kasich chose to take the State of the State to remote locations away from Columbus, it is understood that his office has more direct involvement in the program schedule for the State of the State Address. The question of why the Governor and his people removed the prayer from the program has still not been answered, but in an environment when faith is under fire with Bibles being removed from military installations and religious freedom laws being ridiculed by the Governor as unnecessary, it makes one wonder why he now thinks that prayer is unnecessary. We would be interested to hear the Governor's reason for the removal of the opening prayer at his State of the State address."
Ohio Christian Alliance Urges Delay of Implementation of Online Voter Registration in Ohio to Safeguard Ohio's Vote S.B. 63, the online voter registration bill, has raised concerns that it may further threaten Ohio's election integrity. Ohio's elections process has been under some scrutiny over the past several years due to an increase in reported voter fraud cases, referenced in the Ohio SOS Post-Election Voter Fraud Reports May 2013, SOS December 2013 Report "Non-U.S. Citizens Register and Vote in the Battleground State of Ohio", SOS report March 12, 2015 in which it was reported that 436 non-U.S. citizens were registered to vote in Ohio, 44 of whom actually cast ballots, and the June 25, 2015 SOS report "14 Individuals Referred for Investigation for Allegedly Illegally Voting." Additionally, Franklin County reported more than 90 cases of double voting in the 2012 Presidential Election as reported in the Columbus Dispatch in June of 2013. Also, nineteen indictments were handed down in Hamilton County. A state-wide citizens' audit of Ohio county BOE's conducted in the aftermath of the 2012 Presidential Election also indicated a number of irregularities and suspicious activity through eyewitness accounts. What is clear in these reports is that voter fraud is a growing problem in the battleground State of Ohio, and more measures need to be enacted to get out in front of the problem. Ohio is a must-win state for the campaigns, and there are those who would game the election system to achieve a fraudulent advantage. To enact online voter registration at this time would be ill-advised. There are a number of concerns regarding the security of the online access and process of voter registration that S.B. 63 raises. What the general public has learned over the last several years is that no website is secure from hackers. When the secure websites of The Pentagon, The White House, The Office of Personnel Management of the U.S. government in which 21.5 million people were exposed, and the web site of Ohio then-Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner have all been hacked, then the insistence that this website will be completely safe is purely conjecture and wishful thinking. OCA President Chris Long stated, "When it comes to the value of the voting process in our Republic, we need to proceed with extreme caution before the suggestion of online voter registration is seriously considered. This is no time for a cavalier attitude concerning the voter integrity process in Ohio. At a minimum, our suggestion is to delay the implementation of this legislative proposal until 2017, and that a trial run should be conducted to assure that the security of the website platform can be verified before full implementation of online voter registration in the State of Ohio." ### Contact Chris Long 330-887-1922
WWII Memorial Prayer Act Signed Into Law by The President
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE July 1, 2014 It's official – The President has signed The WWII Memorial Prayer Act (S1044) into law. Earlier this month, the bill passed The U.S. Senate in a unanimous consent measure just in time for the 70th anniversary observance of the D-Day Landings. Last week, The U.S. House of Representatives passed the measure overwhelmingly by a vote of 370-12, and yesterday, The President signed the bill into law. The Ohio Christian Alliance would like to commend the bill's sponsors, Senator Rob Portman (OH) and Senator Mary Landrieu (LA), and Congressman Bill Johnson of Ohio's 6th District, who was the House sponsor, for their support of this historic legislation that will add FDR's D-Day Landing prayer to the WWII memorial in Washington D.C.
On this, the seventieth anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy, France, the U.S. Senate passed by unanimous consent S 1044 the WWII Memorial Prayer Act. The Ohio Christian Alliance would like to commend the bill's sponsors, Senator Rob Portman (OH) and Senator Mary Landrieu (LA), for their support of this historic legislation that will add FDR's D-Day Landing prayer to the WWII memorial in Washington D.C. This prayer will serve as a lasting tribute to those veterans who served the cause of freedom in defending the world against tyranny and oppression.
Ohio Christian Alliance President Chris Long stated, "President Roosevelt's prayer articulated the great crusade that was underway to liberate millions suffering under tyranny. He honored the war effort and paid tribute to the fallen and those veterans who fought courageously in the conflict. It is only fitting that succeeding generations learn of this prayer that was offered at that most poignant moment in our nation's history."
Ohio's Ban on Human Cloning and Animal-Human Hybrid
Today, we applaud the reintroduction of Ohio’s Ban on Human Cloning and Animal-Human Hybrid, H.B. 308, introduced by State Representative Andy Thompson of Ohio’s 95th District, along with eleven House co-sponsors. OCA President Chris Long states, “For the past ten years, OCA along with other pro-life organizations, has been working with members of the Ohio Legislature to ban embryonic stem cell research, human cloning, and in recent years, animal-human hybrid. Some medical laboratories have delved into the surreal world of intermixing animal and human DNA with no legal or moral boundaries. These experimental practices simply are outrageous! Animal-human hybrid research is currently being conducted in England, which many in the international medical community now consider to be a rogue medical state. This experimentation has also been conducted in U.S. laboratories, thus the need for legislative language to provide guardrails.”
Leading the testimony on this legislative ban will be Dr. David Prentice of the Family Research Council who states, “HB 308 provides common sense restrictions on human cloning and animal-human hybrid in Ohio. There are no valid medical or scientific gains that exist or will come from human cloning or hybrid techniques, rather these are abuses of science and should be prohibited. Our focus should be on lifesaving methods such as adult stem cells that put the patient first.”
Ohio Christian Alliance believes that no human life should begin and end as the subject of an experiment. We attest that a process that knowingly encourages human life to be created, manipulated for research, and ultimately destroyed is immoral and should be prohibited. And all who believe that human life, including nascent human life, is a unique and precious gift from our Creator have an obligation to support efforts to ban it. The bottom line is still that any ban short of a total prohibition on human cloning further devalues the sanctity of human life. Ohio Christian Alliance commends State Representative Andy Thompson and the co-sponsors of H.B. 308 for taking the leadership role in sponsoring this key legislation.
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For more information contact Chris Long 330-887-1922
FDR’s D-Day Landing Prayer Act in observance of the anniversary is read on the U.S. Senate floor by Senators Rob Portman and Co-Sponsor Joseph Lieberman.
