This is the first Yom HaShoah after my father's death. He died on August 25, 2021 (17 Ellul 5781) at age 98.
On the whole, our family was
comparatively fortunate. The Pater endured forced labor in Romania, and his
sister Golda lived to tell about her experiences at Auschwitz. A brother Chaim
Yitzhak survived probably by reaching Soviet lines.
Their youngest sibling Sarah died
at Auschwitz. Probably of starvation.
My paternal grandfather Eliahu
was killed during the war under unknown circumstances.
My father was also in no mental shape
to make it in America despite my mother's valiant efforts. So, he left when I
was a boy for Israel, where he ensconced himself in an insular haredi enclave
in B'nei Brak. We reconnected 30 years later.
Chaim Yitzhak reached Israel after
independence and married a widow who had several children and died before I had
the chance to meet him. I do not know where in Israel he was buried.
As I say, we were relatively
lucky. My father remarried and had two daughters. So as a grownup, I discovered
that I was not, after all, an only child. At his death, the Pater was blessed
with grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Yet he remained forever haunted.
Fortunately, he derived succor from his intense and genuine piety.
Many of my contemporaries – and most
of the kids I grew up with on the Lower East Side – have their own second-generation
Holocaust stories. We all process our experiences in our own ways.
I find it helpful to draw political
lessons from the Shoah.
1.
On January 30, 1933, Hitler came to power fair and square (more or less)
in a democratic election. Lesson: the masses are asses.
2.
Once the war broke out – the allies instituted an absolute ban on Jewish
immigration from Germany. The British kept the gates of Palestine closed to
Jews. Lesson: A safe and secure national homeland for the Jewish people
in Palestine must always be a haven for persecuted Jews. As a beacon of
decency, we must offer provisional asylum to others in desperation.
3.
In July 1938, the international community at Evian abandoned the Jews to
their fate. Lesson: do not rely on multilateralism.
4.
The Allies warned the Nazis in December 1942 that their atrocities would
be punished. But then, no concerted efforts were undertaken by the Allies to
stop the atrocities. Lesson: Israel must maintain sufficient might to do
whatever needs to be done to protect the national homeland of the Jewish people.
5.
On March 23, 1941, Himmler wrote to Hitler: "I hope to see the very
concept of Jewry completely obliterated." Lesson When Iran's Supreme
Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei refers to Israel as a "cancerous tumor"
that "must be eradicated"
take this miscreant at his word. Follow the Talmudic dictum -- "If someone
comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first."
6.
The Allies had confirmation by March 1942 and again in the Riegner telegram
of August 11, 1942, of the industrial and systematized destruction of European
Jewry and took no action. Lesson: Don't rely on the goodwill of
humanity. It is otherwise engaged.
7.
Jewish tribalism made cooperation even during the Holocaust difficult or
impossible.
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett noted that in
the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising "two Jewish organizations that fought the
Germans did so not as one body but rather as two competing organizations which
failed to cooperate amongst themselves. Those two organizations were the Jewish
Military Union, which belonged to the right-wing revisionist movement, and the
Jewish Fighting Organization, which belonged to the left-wing socialist
movement." Lesson: Those
who today play up our schisms and turn their backs on elemental partnership, who stoke divisions, who claim smug religious or ethnic supremacy within
our civilization, or who aid and abet the enemy as "useful idiots," are repeating the bitter mistakes of history. Damn them to
hell.
8.
Leaders like Churchill, sympathetic to Jews, were stymied in their
efforts to alleviate Jewish suffering. While Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and
countless others up and down the ranks of the State Department, military high
command, Foreign Office, etc. (and later Attlee and Bevin between 1945-1948) were
either outright Jew-haters or indifferent to Jewish survival. Lesson: Israel
must rely only on its own power for survival.
9.
The Holocaust only technically ended on May 8, 1945, with the liberation
of the last concentration camps. Afterward, Britain refused to open the gates of Palestine
and America dragged its feet in opening the immigration doors to its shores, forcing
some Holocaust survivors to remain in European DP camps (including in Germany) until
as late as 1950. Lesson: A secure and safe Israel is the only reliable
haven for Jews.
10. The New York Times and other newspapers buried
news of Nazi atrocities because of its anti-Zionism, out of Jewish self-hatred
(the owners were then assimilationist Jews), and staff antisemitism. Lesson:
The Times' legacy, metamorphosized, lives on in the progressive anti-Zionist media.
Let me add one more lesson: Stop universalizing
the Holocaust. Don't pedestrianize the Holocaust.
Don't shove Holocaust education
down anyone's throat.
Of course, there are universal
lessons to be learned from the Holocaust.
Nonetheless, what's most crucial and
where we should devote our energies is helping young Jewish people learn the
Zionist lessons of the Holocaust.
That is not something you can do at a museum abroad that deemphasizes the Zionist message.
On this somber day, in memory of my mother, Magda, and grandmother Rozsa, who were deported from their Hungarian village of Kisújszállás: The roundup first missed them because they didn’t “look Jewish,” until a neighbor yelled out, “They’re Jews. Take them as well.” (When they returned from Auschwitz-Birkenau after the war to try and reclaim some belongings, my mother heard a neighbor say, “Look, more of them are coming back than they took away.”) Near the end, they had been taken for labor in an arms factory and were liberated by the Americans. While I was growing up we used a metal spoon in our kitchen engraved with the words “US Army,” given to my mother by an American soldier. Unfortunately it got lost during a move, otherwise today it would be in Yad Vashem. - Judy Montagu
ReplyDeleteA moving, well written lesson we must never forget.
ReplyDeleteBeautifully written and thoughtful piece . I agree with the author that Zionism is the answer to the Holocaust but that as a political program it was legitimate even before 1933 ; and we don’t need the Holocaust to justify our existence as a sovereign nation.
ReplyDeletespeaking of the above I would only add that given our own history we could be more supportive of the Ukraine . I understand the Russian threat re Syria etc but we too need to stand up to this bully. Putin will smell our weakness and we will pay later .
In addition to it being the right thing to do supporting The Ukraine is also wise politically .
Sending love with hugs to you Elliot.Your thoughts are important and should be broadcast.
ReplyDeleteAkin to Elliot Jager's opinions, my parents who also survived the Holocaust, inculcated in me the belief that a strong Israel was necessary to ensure "never again". A few years ago, I accompanied 200 Israeli high school students to Poland and expected that they too would take away this message, that never again should this be allowed to happen to us. Instead, the message that many of them voiced was: never again should we (Israelis) become like them (the Nazis) vis-a-vis Jews and Palestinians in Israel. I'm still trying to process that.
ReplyDelete