Restoring the Record: European Jews on the Eve of the Holocaust
On the Eve: The Jews of Europe Before the Second World War
Bernard Wasserstein, Simon & Shuster, 552 pages.
Professor Bernard Wasserstein, a distinguished academic who holds an endowed chair in modern Jewish history at the University of Chicago, has painted an extraordinary portrait of Jewish civilization in Europe on the eve of its destruction. His goal was “to capture the realities of life in Europe in the years leading up to 1939, when the Jews stood, as we now know, at the edge of an abyss”; to “breathe renewed life momentarily into those who were soon to be dry bones”; and to restore forgotten individuals to the historical record, without “special pleading or sentimentality.”
He has produced a book covering virtually every aspect of Jewish pre-war life — politics, religion, society, culture, language — in the four geographical zones that comprised Europe: (1) the Western democracies, in which Jews had been emancipated for several generations; (2) Germany and areas absorbed into the Third Reich, where Jews were being systematically stripped of citizenship, property, and economic rights; (3) Eastern Europe, where anti-Semitism was a significant element in politics and public policy, and (4) the Soviet Union, where Jews had upward social mobility after 1917 until the emergence of Stalin. He makes it clear the Jews faced existential threats in all four areas of Europe.
In the 1920s, European Jews appeared to be flourishing, recognized as citizens in every country in which they lived, the best-educated ethnic group in Europe, shining in all fields of science, theater, and literature, forming the heart of musical life. But in the following decade the “specter of the Jew” haunted Europe:
Simultaneously feared and despised as a Christ-killer, a devil with horns, subversive revolutionary and capitalist exploiter, obdurate upholder of an outmoded religion and devious exponent of cultural modernism, the Jew was widely regarded as an alien presence. Increasingly excluded from normal society and extruded from common human fellowship, the Jew was transmogrified from fellow citizen into bogey, a subhuman, at best an inconvenience, eventually almost everywhere a hunted beast. Even before the outbreak of the Second World War, this was true not just in those areas of Europe already directly ruled by the Nazis but over the greater part of the continent.
By the end of the decade, the Jews were in crisis both internally and externally. Internally, they faced a grim demographic future, with declining fertility rates, increasing intermarriage, widespread apostasy, and large-scale emigration. Externally, they found that the liberalism and socialism in which they had placed their hopes had failed them; secularism and assimilation ultimately did not protect them; and the rationalist and universalist principles they thought underlay modern society turned out to be false.
The problem was not limited to Germany; anti-Semitism was prevalent across the continent, and “Christian morality, which in the past had set some limits to the worse excesses of Jew-hatred, showed no capacity (nor, in the case of the Roman Catholic Church, much readiness) to restrain racist brutality.” In his final chapter, Prof. Wasserstein notes that by the end of the decade, talk of a “return to the ghetto” was common in Jewish discourse (reflected in Jacob Glatshteyn’s bitter Yiddish poem: “Good night, wide world/Big, stinking world/At my own command/I return to the ghetto”); liberals and leftists urged Jews not to succumb to a “deathly egocentrism” and to retain their faith in the brotherhood of men. Neither strategy succeeded.
Prof. Wasserstein writes that, by the end, the European Jews reflected “the agitated ineffectuality of flies sealed in a bottle, slowly suffocating.” With the Germans invading Poland and the British closing off immigration to Palestine, he ends with this sentence: “Wholly defenseless, largely friendless, and more and more hopeless, the European Jews, on the eve of their destruction, waited for the barbarians.”
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The metaphor of ineffectual flies suggests that nothing could have been done. It has echoes from the story of the scouts that Moses sent to view Canaan, who reported the Canaanites were giants and “we looked like grasshoppers to ourselves.” The scouts are traditionally condemned for viewing themselves as weak and ineffectual, demoralizing their people, and requiring Moses to argue with God for another chance. Prof. Wasserstein’s metaphor is particularly unfortunate because he has omitted from his book the prophetic 1938 Warsaw Tisha b’Av address by Vladimir (Zev) Jabotinsky — the scout who saw the abyss most clearly and proposed the boldest response.
Not only was Poland the heart of European Jewry, with the largest Jewish population of any country (and Warsaw the city with the largest Jewish population in Europe); it was the center of Jabotinsky’s Zionist movement, which by the late 1930s had nearly 100,000 young Jews in its training camps worldwide. In his address, Jabotinsky set forth both an alarm and a vision:
For three years I have been imploring you, Jews of Poland, the crown of world Jewry, appealing to you, warning you unceasingly that the catastrophe is nigh. My hair has turned white and I have grown old over these years, for my heart is bleeding that you, dear brothers and sisters, do not see the volcano which will soon begin to spew forth its fires of destruction. I see a horrible vision. Time is growing short for you to be spared. I know you cannot see it, for you are troubled and confused by everyday concerns. … Listen to my words at this, the twelfth hour. For God’s sake: let everyone save himself, so long as there is time to do so, for time is running short.
And this was his vision:
And I want to say something else to you on this day, the Ninth of Av: Those who will succeed in escaping the catastrophe will live to experience a festive moment of great Jewish joy: the rebirth and establishment of the Jewish state! I do not know whether I myself will live to see it – but my son will! I am certain of this, just as I am certain that the sun will rise tomorrow.
Mainstream Jewish leadership savaged Jabotinsky for what they called his “evacuationism.” In 1936, he had published an evacuation plan, similar to the one Max Nordau had proposed in 1920, to move to Palestine a large part of the Jewish populations of Poland, Hungary, and Romania (which together had nearly half the Jews of Europe) over a ten-year period. Jabotinsky secured support from the three governments, but Chaim Weizmann, the leader of the World Zionist Organization, opposed the plan, and the British vetoed it.
The sad result of what happens when character, or lack or it, morality, or lack of it, good, or lack or it, are distributed to people without names or faces but only ethnicity, by people who DO have names and faces.
There is not a doubt in my mind we today have an analogue to this in America. The difference is, at least for now, that the haters are as physically peaceful as those Jews of Europe were, perhaps even, in their way, dedicated to remaining peaceful. So, instead of putting people they don’t like on trains out, they are putting people they DO like on trains in. Into the country, into institutions.
The intellectual and philosophical imperatives and space are otherwise the same – and the goals. This is how a culture goes insane – it is slowly, and over time. And it is what happens when institutional racism and justice are confused as being the same.
It seems abjectly clear that many Jewish historians are/were not fit to shine Jabotinsky’s shoes.
Guess what? My sons, hardly young men to sniff at (MIT & Caltech educated engineers)view Jabotinsky as their role model. In fact, part of their reasons for making aliyah had to do with his teachings. I have no doubt, they would never even think to ask, was he short, tall, fat or skinny.
It says alot more about historians who dwell on such nonsense than it does about the subject. For shame.
Thank you, Adina! Wonderful comment and kol ha kavod to your sons who made aliyah! A good way to strengthen Israel even more.
It would be interesting to learn what percentage of German Jews voted for the Nazi party.
It would be interesting just what percentage of a**holes wonder just that.
So, it appears that the Jews of Europe were warned by Jabotinsky of the coming of something like the Holocaust in unmistakable terms way back in 1938 and probably earlier, but establishment Zionist leaders wanted nothing to do with what they derisively termed “evacuationism,” which apparently did not fit into their plans for the Jews of Europe, and although the three European countries with the most Jews were OK with Jabotinsky’s plan to evacuate the Jews of Europe to Palestine over a 10 year period, the Brits were also against it.
Seems as if European Jews, especially those in Germany, felt rooted and secure enough to ignore this warning, as they told themselves—I suppose—that “It can never happen here,” in the heart of European “culture.”
Given their long history of being discriminated against, persecuted, expelled, and driven from one country to another, it can be said that the Jews as a people are, if nothing else, survivors, and the list of Nobel prize winners, the number of renowned Jewish scientists, physicians, philosophers, businessmen, and creative artists attests to the notion that the Jews—an almost infinitesimal fraction, well under 1% of the Human race–are, in general, man for man, smarter and more driven than other ethnic/cultural groups.
So, it has always been puzzling to me why—from what I have gathered from the things I have read—the overwhelming majority of Jews in pre-WWII Europe weren’t able to sense/figure out that the Holocaust or something horrific like it was looming over them, and that as many as possible of them, the vast majority of them that had the means to do so, didn‘t pack up, pick up stakes, and ran as far and as fast as they could to escape it but, instead, essentially stood in place, frozen in indecision and fear, hoping against hope that it would not happen, until it was just too late to run.
The article is written from a Jabotinskyite POV. The “established” Zionist leadership organized as many ships as they could that tried to slip under the British “radar”. Those who got caught were often returned to Europe, where they perished. The Zionist leadership wasn’t all powerful – they couldn’t get all the money they needed for all that was needed, and the ships to carry millions of people, and bypass the Brits, and build the country, and make the desert bloom, and dry the swamps, and feed the people, and defend them, and educate the children, and and and. And few people believed there would actually be a systematic genocide – it’s not like there was a recent precedence in Europe.
The Jewish “establishment ” (BenGurion et al) were only interested in saving those who agreed with them secular Jewish leftists. Others they would refuse to have anything to do with. They fought their political opponents harder then they fought either the nazis or the Brittish.
I would caution anyone against using that kind of talk: I think there were just one or two other renowned scientists, physicians, philosophers, businessmen, and creative artists in Europe and continue to be. Were what you say true, Jews would’ve been on the top of the pony in their N.African and middle eastern enclaves like the British East India Company in India. Jews clearly benefited from larger European culture and used it to great effect in the British Mandate. Everyone has brains: the clear difference is in the way people think, not whether they can. America got to where it did, not because we were smarter, but because we saw with the clearest eyes once freed from Old World stupidities – it’s a matter of perception.
It is that lack of perception that is killing America now, not a lack of brains. You don’t need perception to say 2+2=4, but you do need it to figure out a guy in a nice tuxedo with flowers can be as every bit as much of a racist or murderer as a guy with a swastika. In America, we have become dazzled by appearances. We used to trust by deeds, now we trust by looks.
dazzled by appearances and looks falling for a fast-talking guy in a nice tuxedo with flowers, in Germany back then they fell for a fast talker in uniform, high boots, a mustache, “der schone Adolf, the beautiful Adolf.”
Today it’s the Jew-hating black political Left: James Cone, Rev. Wright, Louis Farrakhan. By an amazing coincidence, all prominently connected to Obama’s Trinity United Cult. For many years I’ve thought of Farrakhan as Hitler without an army. And thank the lord.
a second mass murder of Jews in the making, it’s der schoner Obama who is the darling charmer, President of the United States, who took office with 4 out of 5 enchanted Jewish voters under his spell, and, with a goodly majority of them ready and willing to anoint him once again, and to follow him blindly this time to their doom, may now fully realize the dreams of his mentors, James Cone, Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, et al.
Seth,
The answer to your question of why didn’t the Jews run is as follows. Most of the Jews in the countries mentioned were dirt poor. If they had some form of subsistence they clung to it in pure desperation. It wasn’t that they didn’t want to leave, they didn’t have the means to leave. The shtetel songs sing of poverty and suffering not of joy and affluence.
Where could the Jews go?
Recently, my brother in law had played a trick on me. He gave me an article to read, an article regarding relationship between jews and arabs in Middle East. I was extremely impressed with how on point the author was and how amazingly accurate his assessment of current situation was. Then I looked at the name of the author and date of publication – it was Jabotinsky, written in 1920s.
Seth, two points: in modern usage, Jabotinsky was the zionist, not the local jewish leaders of the time.
Second, and far more important, I can tell you what the Jews of Europe did that was a huge, disastrous mistake: they threw their Esthers out of the family, and refused to accept their Ruths.
The book of Esther is about a young girl who was given in marriage to a non-jewish king, but her former fiancé kept contact with her, and when one of the king’s ministers decided to initiate a pogrom, she was able to intervene and save her people from a massacre.
The book of Ruth is about a foreign woman who married a man who later died, and who escorted and helped her mother-in-law to return to her own people. Ruth eventually married within the tribe, and was counted as one of the ancestors box both King David and Jesus.
In Europe, if a child married outside the tribe, the parents would pretend they had died, putting a black wreath on their door and sitting shiva (the Jewish mourning period, similar to a wake). As a result, they did not get the warning the Esthers of the time could have given, and they didn’t get the help of their Ruths. If they had not separated themselves from their own children, they would have had ties of both blood and friendship with a far larger portion of the population, and the Nazis would have had far less quiet in which to pursue their ends.
Huh??
You’re very confused. Your account of the story of Esther is inaccurate, and Ruth was a convert – she had joined the nation and the religion (she said to her mother in law: “Your nation is my nation and your god is my god”). Jews had non-Jewish friends. A few of them risked their lives to save their Jewish friends or neighbors, others didn’t. Most people won’t risk their lives and the lives of their children to save friends. The problems was not Jews excluding themselves from society, but Jews being excluded from society – in your rush to blame the Jews for their own genocide, you obviously didn’t bother to read the article:
And as for “blood”, European Jews are racially mixed, but to the Nazis it didn’t matter. Even if you only had a Jewish grand-grandfather you were “contaminated”.
That was meant for #5 valerie.
Valerie’s account of these stories is accurate according to my Christian Bible and the 1969 Jewish Complete Bible. Where ever do you differ?
“The problems was not Jews excluding themselves from society, but Jews being excluded from society – in your rush to blame the Jews for their own genocide, you obviously didn’t bother to read the article.”
People from our inteligence service(Jan Karski) and our government tried to tell British and US governments that Germans were starting mass murder of Jews but neither Brits nor Americans nor the Jews in these countries listened to what Poles tried to tell them. Polish people had documents, photos but your people did not believed them.
In Poland in 1941 Heinrich Himmler issued a law that anybody who would help a Jew was automatically condemned to death. In other countries there were no such “laws”
Have you ever asked yourselves why there was such a laws in Poland?
And why so many Poles have been honored by Israeli government because they helped Jews?
As for the Jews being excluded from the society – some of them were excluded and some of them excluded themselves. Many Jews had their own customs, their own schools, their own shops and they did not want to meet unbelievers. Did not want to have much contact with unbelievers.
Nevertheless I would not say that Jews should be blamed for their own genocide, that would be ridiculous. However I hate it when some Jews do not know well their own history. Particularly Jews in the USA.
Let me give you my impression of Poland as handed down by my family. The Germans didn’t find it necessary to make a Pole hate a Jew. They were brought up hating Jews. There were plenty of Poles who aided and abetted the Germans. There were Polish massacres of Jewish Shtetels without German participation. Even the Polish underground, formed to fight the Germans, would kill a Jew on sight. Poland had pogroms after the war was over. And, that my dear can be documented.
I wasn’t thinking in my comments above about a centrally planned mass exodus, so much as I was thinking of individual Jews, families, and small groups of relatives and friends, who feared what was about to happen sufficiently to leave their homes and countries—such as they were– and to try to make their way out of Europe on their own. However, to what destination–in those years—I am not sure.
Would they have been—had they succeeded –like the anxious “stateless” transients in “Casablanca”? Presuming they had the transportation and money to get there, could they have realistically expected to be allowed into/welcomed by countries in South or Central America, Africa, some places in Asia, the Pacific islands?
My guess is that denial, helped along by inertia played a major role here. You had a home place and position in your particular society–even if a difficult one–you knew the people, the lay of the land, you were familiar with and accustomed to it, and you didn’t want to give up the familiar for the “unknown” and strange so, you stayed and prayed.
The Jews of Europe flocked to the US until 1924 when the US government decided that some people were more preferable than others. Jews were classified with Eastern Europeans and Southern European and therefore limited to coming into this country by strict quotas. Overseas the British violated their own Balfore Amendment and the edicts of the League of Nations by limiting the number of Jews who could immigrate to Palestine. It needs to be noted they didn’t limit the Arabs of the region from immigrating to Palestine.
I thought Jews were classified by whatever country they were from. Thus German Jews were considered Germans, Italian Jews Italians, Polish Jews Poles, and Russian Jews Russians.
Incidentally, it is perfectly sensible to prefer immigrants from certain countries to those from other countries. The immigration policy of every country should serve the interests of that country and of its people.
Jews were given a quota. It was still in force when the ship the St. Louis brought a shipload of Jews from Germany right before WWII. Even though they had been approved for entry to this country, they had come here as much as a year too early. Some came with just a few months to go. All were denied entrance and sent back to Nazi Germany. Subsequently they were sent back to their death.
Stan, I agree that it is sensible to prefer certain groups over others in immigration policy. If you will let me know your ancestry, I will work to try to limit any more of your ethnicity from entry to this country.
Israel’s building an unprecedented high tech fence to keep out sub-Saharan Africans so don’t pretend you have some wish 1 million Sudanese lived in Israel or that nothing’s being done to prevent exactly that. Perhaps many will be sent back to their death.
hits on a besieged Israel, because the tiny country can’t handle 1 million sub-Saharan Sudanese refugees.
Why doesn’t Obama find a way to help them? Oh, wait, he’s backing the folks they’re running away from.
Flail Burton,
Lets look at Israel’s current situation. It has a border along the Negev that is 120 miles long with no line of division between Egypt and Israel. Recently Hamas attacked through this open border killing people, attacking a school bus where one student was killed. Since the Moslem Brotherhood has taken over Egypt, Hamas, the Salafists, and Al Queda have had a free hand most of the time bringing weapons to Gaza. This latest attack over the border signaled something entirely new. Since this happened the Israelis have called up 22 mechanized brigades to patrol that border. That’s how serious the Israelis see this situation. In normal terms that’s called cause and effect. That’s the reason for the high tech fence. It is much cheaper to build and maintain a high tech fence than to keep 22 brigades mobilized.
As for you linking the Sudanese refugees to the high tech fence, that’s the kind of propaganda linkage used by Hamas, Nazis, Leftists and other scum to try to discredit Israel. Your attempted smear attack was weak at best and way to easy to counter. Go back to your loon school and come back with something better. I’ll be glad to take you on any time, just bring it. Please come with something better than this. Up yours!
There is no doubt the fence is to defend in the way you describe, but to suggest is has nothing to do with sub-Saharan Africans or that you would cozen a million of them in Israel reveals how hollow your original remark was.
http://www.jpost.com/Defense/Article.aspx?ID=267473&R=R1
Whilst you havent quite put a fine point on the idea, you are absolutely correct Stan. Just look at Israel’s immigration policies, for example.
The Euro Christian Nations need to get their mojo back.
Dear Mr. Velocity,
I would like you to tell me all about Israel’s immigration policy, everything you know. Keep in mind that Israel was established to be a Jewish homeland. In that vane it has accepted everyone who claims to be Jewish. They even use the measure that the Nazis used to determine Jewishness, that is if you are 1/8 Jewish, you are a Jew. That aside Israel accepts all ethnicities, as long as they are Jewish. Let me list a few: Ethiopians, Abudabi (African Jews), Bnai Menachem (Southeast Asian Jews), Hebrews (a sect of American blacks), Conversos who discovered their Jewish roots (Mexicans, Spanish, Latinos), and South American Indians who converted to Judaism. Nobody is turned away………..as long as they are Jewish.
Again, let me know everything that you know. I am waiting.
Mr. Wasserstein,
re: “showed no capacity (nor, in the case of the Roman Catholic Church, much readiness) to restrain racist brutality.”
I have been thinking about what you wrote. I am a Catholic and have also wondered if the pope could have done more than he did. I know he hid Roman Jews in Catholic institutions, but when millions died in eastern Europe, that is very little. I am not a university scholar. I have a bachelor and masters degree from my youth and now in retirement have been reading history out of pure curiosity.
I am halfway through Will Durant’s 1,000+ page volume “The Reformation”
So far Mr. Durant has taught me:
1) One hundred years after Martin Luther initiated reforms, 80% of Germany was Lutheran or pietist or other Protestant sect. Many Catholics lost property and fled or converted. Of the remaining, only 20% of Germans stayed Catholic.
2) The 20% Catholic German population was heavily concentrated in Bavaria, Baden, or Alsace-Lorraine. My own ancestors came to the USA 150 years ago from two of these areas. Germany had become hostile to the Catholic minority.
3) Prussian protestants dominated the German military and had much economic power.
4)German dislike of Catholicism lasted for hundreds of years. Today in the USA there are still accusations of “papist” such as Luther made.
Of all the countries Hitler went to war with, only one: Poland,was profoundly Roman Catholic. Mussolini established a dictatorship in Catholic Italy, drafted its young men, and set up totalitarian state control, complete with spies, like Hitler did in Germany.
We know Poland was taken apart. Hitler’s plan was to systematically destroy the Jewish population and to enslave the Roman Catholic slavs, as “fuhrer serfs” in fields and factory.
French Catholicism has been a joke since Napoleon who literally de-constructed the church, appointed his friends and relatives to high church offices, and basically destroyed what little religious character of the church remained. (My husband has visited distant French cousins and religion is a laughable there. His country cousins have mass said once a month by a visiting priest) The French revolution had already whittled down the Catholic priestly population, it issued arrest warrants by the hundreds for priests, causing thousands to flee as refugees.
At the time of WW II most of Europe’s population had been protestant for 400 plus years. While all the great cathedrals of Europe were built during pre-Lutheran times, outside Poland, Spain, part of Germany, and Italy) nearly all had become secular museums or the property of protestant sects. Europe is NOT a Catholic continent and hasn’t been for over 400 years.
In the modern era it is inconceivable that the head of a large religious organization could not have taken preventive measures, if not action, in the face of immense and evil criminal behavior. But, who, other than Catholics in Poland, might possibly found out mass death was gong on, when the camps were placed in remote locations where civilians were forbidden access?
Did the pope ever receive reliable information about the death camps in Poland and then not act on it?
What would have constituted reliable information? How could it be verified? If he had spoken against the Axis, even on general principal of the warfare killing innocent civilians, how many of the Europe’s small cadre of Catholic priests, nuns and bishops would have been immediately rounded up in retalition and marked for death?
Looking back on events of 70 years ago requires the ability to absorb all the aspects of that time. But I have read accounts of USSR and Iron curtain life, enough to suggest that absolute naked tyranny changes a population, (possibly akin to the Stockholm syndrome?) A powerful police-state government with no regard for human life is a force unto itself.
One more point. In my historical readings it was suggested that Hitler’s father was the step-uncle of Hitler’s mother, forbidden in marriage. She was pregnant, and they were married, though that baby and the next one also, (due to genetic problems of consanguinity?) The account stated Hitler ordered the church and village destroyed after he came to power to hide his terrible secret: family intermarriage. Is it possible he was genetically flawed from his birth?
The predominantly Catholic countries which fell to Nazi influence were: Poland, France, the Netherlands, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Austria, and Romania. Also Switzerland colluded with the Germans although they weren’t controlled by them. Jews fared best in Protestant France where the Huguenots were present and in Romania where the king did whatever he could from deporting the Jews.
The predominantly Catholic countries which fell to Nazi influence were: Poland, France, the Netherlands, Czechoslovakia,…
Are you saying that Poles liked Nazis? Or perhaps that Poles fought Hitler because they liked his ideology?
It is quite strange that so many Polish people died in concentration camps and that millions of them lost their lives fighting someone “under whose influence they fell”.
BTW I really did not wanted to mention it but because you wrote that “Poland – and Poles – fell under influence of the Nazis” I found a really strange thing. The thing is, percentage-wise one of the nation (or religion) most likely found in NKVD were Jews**. Can you tell me why that was so?
The historical research IS supporting this statement.
ella,
My sources say nothing about the percentage of Jews in the NKVD. You say that you have sources or documentation to make such a statement. I would like to see them if possible. On the other hand secular Jews were enamored by socialism because it offered them an illusion of equality and not being persecuted. I don’t doubt that the NKVD had secular Jews in it, just like there are secular Jews in the Left wing today. I suggest that what you are saying may have a moderation of truth and I can accept that. However, Jewish participation in the “Socialist Struggle” has been painted into a form of anti-Semitism. I heard the term Jewish Bolsheviks which is used to bash Jews. Look at your source with an open eye and see if it is overtly anti-Semitic. Just because somebody holds to be a historical source don’t make it true, or totally true. History has been rewritten on us many times. Blood libels exist in many forms. All you have to do is read some Moslem source propaganda and you will see some of the vilest forms of it ever printed. Yet I am open to examining your sources.
I don’t see a parallel with Jew bashing and any other group. Moslems have by far killed more Christians than any other group; yet, I don’t see the hatred toward them that people have against Jews. Please explain that to me. Is it that we are all guilty of dioscide? Please examine the motivation of your sources.
Please look at my comment N#14.
As they say, one of Hitler’s early actions was to take peoples guns. Look, many small minorities like Jews have gone extinct throughout history. It’s a surprise Jews even exist, given the violence heaped upon us. But one thing different in America is that we are armed. Next time around we will shoot back.
1890. before my grandmother (buby) set foot on the ship that would take her and an infant son to america, she turned around, walked back and spat on the russian ground.
her brothers, at 11 and 15 years of age, walked out of russia, hiding in the forests so they would not be captured by the czar’s army, and used as cannon fodder on the front lines. jewish boys never came back. making their way to palestine, they were among the zionists who drained the swamps, the brothers eventually dying of disease.
a few decades later, my father’s cousins who had been raised in germany, knew it was time to get out. being orderly, they sent their furniture on to america. the furniture, i was told, did arrive. his cousins’ never did.
if anyone thinks jews are going to give up israel or give up jerusalem, bring it on. we’ll be here.
Sorry Valerie, but your explanation is not credible. Jews always over their history had a lot of Esthers and Ruths, though less Ruths, but in any case enough. And especially in the highly assimilated communities of Germany Esthers were treated well.
We are indeed survivors, for the evolution vector was always in that direction. But in large we are as dumb as everybody. I see it very well here in Israel. As for Jabotinsky, he was obviously perceived as a fanatic, only interested in bringing jews to Palestine, were they were not welcome. Where they were surrounded by enemies, and where there was no job.
What would you do in their place? What are you doing in your place? Sooner or later terrorists will get nuclear bomb. Where do you think it will explode? Do you still live in New York, Los Angeles?
Who actually believes to Netanyahu in the West? And even in Israel? We believe and we don’t. One cannot accept the terrible prospects. Who can? Besides, the future in Israel was always seen as disastrous, at least during the last 80 years. People come here, because they don’t understand this reality, or due to their ideology, as Jabotinsky, Trumpeldor, Ben Gurion, …, me
.
In correction of my own post and to Judy.
I’ve just understood: we are not survivors. We are descendants of those who lived, it is true. But we are very opposite of survivors. It is not we, it is our people, our religion who survive. We are professional self-sacrificers for the idea, sometimes a bad idea. And our main feature is not smartness, but stubbornness.
That is the reason why jews are very active in any revolution, that is the reason why jews vote for Obama, that is the reason why Israel rose. That is the reason, why I still hope it will persist.
As for the real survivors – they are not with jews now. Their children are now Italian, Spanish, German, English, Polish, Russian, Ethiopian, who not?
The Rabbis especially were instrumental in convincing Jewish populations to stay put, that is why they are so despised by the majority now – they were wrong then, very wrong. No one listened to Zhabotinsky the Prophet, the most accurate predictor of Jewish history since Yeshu`a the Nazarite two thousand years previous.
Ella, I am not sure about NKVD, but high percentage of jews was probably in CheKa. There were almost no jews in MGB, and practically zero jews in KGB, which was Judenfrei. All these names are the names of the same organization – Soviet Gestapo. I hope there are not many jews in FSB.
The reason is simple: look at my post N# 12. They fought for the idea of the highest justice, for communism… Cold head and flaming heart … No pity to your class enemy … The idea died with them. They were eaten alive by that very organization.
I don’t know if you will read this or not. This kind of baiting game is like what I’ve seen here in the black community. For instance, there will be a discovery that there was a Jewish slave owner, and there were a few. A paper will come out in the black community that THE JEWS WERE THE SLAVE OWNERS. We aren’t lilly white in all matters; but, we aren’t anything close to what they want to portray us. Shalom.
What precisely is your point?
On Saturday I participated in a walking tour of the Old Central Bus Station in Tel Aviv – this is the small area in which thousands of Sudanese, Eritrains Nigerians Ghananians, South East Asians plus other nationalities have gathered,in very crowdedbad conditions, to live. The Israelies who have lived there for years are themselves hardworking poor people with a very low standard of living. The area closely resembled Zimbabwe not Israel. In the main square hundreds of people were lying around on the grass, a wedding was taking place under a tree, in the far corner there were lines of seated mourners being very quiet in respect of a departed loved one. In the streets there were shops and shoppers, goods layed out, fruit and vegetable vendors plying their goods. Singing of gosple music was in the air from the various churches the bomb shelter used as a lending library is jampacked with books, the human spirit of life was pulpable. One thing was missing from these people’s eyes, in spite of all the difficulties that they were experiencing,fear! Imagine,NO FEAR-after escaping the murdering Sudanese and then the shooting and killing by the Egyptians. The situation is so complicated and it is clear that somehow there needs to be a solution but the people of Israel can be proud that all these illegal infiltrators call home, collect monies to pay the Beduins smugglers who beat and rape them on their journey through the Sinai desert, telling their brethren to do whatever they can to get to Israel where they will be safe!!!
If the United Nations and the international community spent an iota of the time on what is happening in the countries these people are fleeing from instead of attacking the country they are fleeing to, there might actually be a way to save these people from the conditions they are living in. But that would involve courage and genuine concern for real human rights violations. Why do that when you can attack Israel and the Jewish people – a favorite UN and international community pasttime.
correction
100,000 made it out…