Good News about Holocaust Day

I am ending a kind of ritual I have observed for the past two decades. Every year, I wore my WWII campaign medals from April 19, the start of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, to May 9-10, when Germany surrendered in 1945. (Except for two special occasions,) I wore them on the inside of my outer garment. They were meant for myself, not for show. I was never into things like wearing medals, possibly as a result of having belonged to that youth movement so prominent in Warsaw`s ZOB and resistance in other ghettos.

We didn`t even applaud after one of us performed or sang for the kibbutz; nor expect it when we did. Even decades later, at an international scientific conference (in Aachen, Germany), I felt embarassed by (unexpected) applause as I was introduced, didn`t know how to react, then gave an army salute; hardly appropriate. I had not even written for the medals after discharge, but that was also as part of an organized protest against the detention (in Cyprus) of Jewish survivors caught while being brought to Palestine. My political Zionist commitment had ended years earlier, but I certainly expected my (and others`) few surviving European relatives who wanted to come to be welcome.

By the time I did write to the British Defence Ministry to get them, in the late 1980, that had long ceased to be an issue, and other things were. In our US Department of Agriculture laboratory, we had found ways for utilizing solar energy cost effectively, especially in agriculture, which could have contributed not only to alleviating the US “energy crisis” during the 1970s' first oil shock and boycott, but also the threatened imminent widespread starvation of millions in sunny poorer regions of the world. When the (allegedly top priority) work was obstructed surreptitiously, and, when the hints were not taken, a regime of terror was instituted, it occurred to me that, while it was nice to have such a pleasant, well paying job, I am still the same person who had not had to submit to the Nazi terror prostrate.

Being the only bachelor of the team, also having been the initiator of the project, I found a strong way to stand up to the obstacles, then the personal harassment unleashed, by pretending to myself that I was carrying out a task assigned by Mordekhai Anielewicz (who had also been to the same Vilna kibbutz while I was there during the !939-40 winter). It must have made easier taking some of the tough decisions, like going on a hunger strike at the lab. (In the San Francisco Chronicle's article on that , my boss was quoted as saying something like “putting one's job on the line sometimes helps”). So it was tied to an undertaking (in writing) that if a solar transition were achieved, never to accept any award, as for having done things “beyond the call of duty”; but that I did now want my campaign medals, which I then requested, and got.

To the best of my knowledge, it was a general feature of all ZOB organizations, not just those dreaming of a Zionist kibbutz life, to have little interest in achieving the status of a military hero. They knew the Nazi military machine would crush the uprising; while they were showing that it could not crush the human spirit. It may have been different for the ultraright “New Zionist” Revisionists of the Betar, whose dream was of military heroism while conquering by “blood and fire” an inflated Judea on both East and West Bank of the Jordan river. They set up their private “military" organization (ZZW) when it turned out that they would not be in charge on the basis of their militarism. I do not feel well informed about the details of their activities. In Antek's (disputed) account of those, they don't look very glorious, but he seems to be prejudiced on that. So am I and was already then, based on what I had seen in Vilna (where they did join the common Jewish resistance later).

Having walked from one end of Poland to the other, getting used to noisy bombs and cannon fire almost every day, some very close by, I had seen no blood spilled except for that inflicted by ill-fitting shoes on the feet of a kibbutz comrade left behind in Lublin (where we experienced one of the worst bombardments). But 3-4 months later, at our kibbutz in peaceful, newly Lithuanian Vilna (Vilnius), I saw the violently spilled blood on the faces of some of our people who had prevented Betar
tough guys from breaking up a meeting. Their grins made clear that they had not been the losers. Since I hadn't been along, I can't assure you of Betar having been responsible. But that I can have no doubt, based on much experience since, as to whom to believe on what happened in Warsaw, is no longer a matter of prejudice.

There seems to be no doubt that they put up a fight for a day or two; that there was a non Jewish, non fascist Polish nationalist unit with them who helped to then escape to the “Aryan” side (but they may have been betrayed subsequently and eliminated). They had fixed two flags, the blue and white and the red and white Polish one, on top of their tall concrete building. Since those could be seen easily from outside the ghetto, that seems like an important contribution to raising the spirit of many Poles, then others elsewhere in occupied Europe.

While military hero creation was not a serious factor in itself for the ZOB, it is evident, e.g. from Mordekhai Anielewicz's happiness about the Swit broadcast, that they did want the outside world, and posterity, to know that they, peace loving people, did fight back. The Bund representative in the Polish government in London exile took his life demonstratively, when he could not get serious attention paid to what was happening. Abba Kovner the Vilna commander (after the first, Wittenberg, was handed to the Gestapo), had emphasized a need to demonstrate that Jews do not go like sheep to the slaughter more easily than anyone.

But that does not agree with the intentions of some who are termed leaders among Jews. They want “diaspora” Jews to forget about what they did to defeat their mortal fascist enemies; e.g. in the Canadian, U.S., Soviet, British and other allied armies, but especially those who resisted under Nazi occupation. The aim seems to be to end reference to that war and substitute the term Holocaust written with capital H. And that no longer refers just to what happened in murder camps like Treblinka, where most of the pre-uprising Warsaw Jews were burned wholly. It can now be applied to people having had to remain in a building of the Swedish embassy in Budapest for weeks or months; and to people like Antek or Vladka; who may have survived because they fought back.

And then it becomes useful to some “leaders” to have the whole world observe a Holocaust Day. When? Can you think of a more preposterous day than the anniversary of the April day when the Jews received the SS and assorted quislings who had come to resume taking their quota of Jews to Treblinka, with Molotov cocktails and grenades, and chased them out? If you can, you may be eligible for appointment to a prestigious, well paying Jewish leadership position. If it had to be about Warsaw, the one day it couldn't be would have been July 22, when the big Aktion that ended the lives of hundreds of thousands got started.

Not that those in charge aren't aware of this. I for one, have written about it repeatedly. And there is no censorship in the US or Canada. There are more advanced methods of information control. I ought to bring up a recent example.

Meanwhile, if I wear the medals, it will be on the outside, for all to see. And that won't be the only change for whatever short time I have left now at almost 83. But my main concern cannot be to slow the sale of Jewish community remainders. I know how to lower the price of oil (gasoline) and food and make adequate food available for billions who lack it; and other such goodies, all on the way to a more beautiful world. But first here some beautiful news just emerging from Warsaw. An award for Marek Edelman, Antek's buddy. I like it. Occasion for a separate post.