NEVER AGAIN

Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day this year began on Wednesday evening. The official ceremony was held in Warsaw Ghetto Square, Yad Vashem, on the Mount of Remembrance, Jerusalem.

Attempts to compare the Holocaust to other genocides have been vigorously opposed by both Jewish and non-Jewish academic institutions worldwide.

Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Centre provided the following definitive description;

“The Holocaust was unprecedented genocide, total and systematic, perpetrated by Nazi Germany and its collaborators, with the aim of annihilating the Jewish people. The primary motivation was the Nazis' anti-Semitic racist ideology. Between 1933 and 1941 Nazi Germany pursued a policy that dispossessed the Jews of their rights and their property, followed by the branding and the internment of the Jewish population. This policy gained broad support in Germany and much of occupied Europe.

In 1941, following the invasion of the Soviet Union, the Nazis and their collaborators launched the systematic mass murder of the Jews. By 1945 nearly six million Jews had been murdered. 

 was no escape. The Nazi There murderers were not content with destroying the communities; they also went after every Jew hunting them down ruthlessly. The crime of being a Jew was so great, that every single one had to be put to death – the men, the women, the children; the dedicated, the disinterested, the apostates; the healthy and creative, the sick and the indolent – all were meant to suffer and die, with no reprieve, no hope, no possible amnesty, nor chance for alleviation.

Most of the Jews of Europe were dead by 1945. A civilization that had flourished for almost 2,000 years was no more. The survivors dazed, emaciated, bereaved beyond measure, gathered the remnants of their vitality and the remaining sparks of their humanity, and rebuilt. They never meted out justice to their tormentors – for what justice could ever be achieved after such a crime? Rather, they turned to rebuilding: new families forever under the shadow of those absent; new life stories, forever warped by the wounds; new communities, forever haunted by the loss.”

For various reasons the United Nations chose to hold its Holocaust commemoration in January. It emphasised that, “Holocaust commemoration and education is a global imperative in the third decade of the 21st century. The writing of history and the act of remembering brings dignity and justice to those whom the perpetrators of the Holocaust intended to obliterate. Safeguarding the historical record, remembering the victims, challenging the distortion of history often expressed in contemporary antisemitism, are critical aspects of claiming justice after atrocity crimes.”

The Washington Post noted that there are 161,400 Holocaust survivors in Israel, a dwindling population that is widely honoured but struggling with poverty.

About a third of Israel's Holocaust survivors live below the poverty line, with many sustained by government stipends and donations, according to a group that represents survivors.

An Associated Press report claims that the coronavirus pandemic and Israel’s overwhelming force during the Gaza war helped fuel a worldwide spike in antisemitism last year.

Israeli researchers claim that the prominence of political extremism and the reach of social media also may have intensified the ancient phenomenon of scapegoating Jews in recent years.

“Antisemitic events notably increased in 2021 in many countries with major Jewish populations, including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Australia.

French authorities, for instance, reported a 36% jump in antisemitic incidents involving physical violence, from 44 to 60. The United Kingdom saw a 78% jump in incidents of assault, from 97 to 173. The number of antisemitic incidents in Canada rose 54%, from 173 to 266.

Extremist and violent ideas have always been out there, but “you really had to make an effort decades ago to be exposed to them,” said Uriya Shavit, head of the Centre for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry at Tel Aviv University, which issued the report. “Today, it’s so easy to access them.”

 Despite the phrase "never again" long linked to Holocaust commemoration, almost half (47%) of the Israeli public are concerned that another Holocaust will strike the Jewish people, according to a new survey. 

The poll was conducted just days ahead of Holocaust Remembrance Day by the Pnima movement and first published in the Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom. 

The survey found that women expressed more anxiety about another Holocaust compared to men (55% versus 42%) and that younger Israelis are especially fearful – 24% of Israelis under the age of 24 said that they were very worried about a second Holocaust, in contrast to just 12% of Israelis over the age of 45.

Notably, religiously observant Israelis are more worried about an ensuing Holocaust. Israelis who define themselves as Haredim responded that they were very concerned about the likelihood, as opposed to just 11% of Israelis who identify themselves as secular.

The ongoing threat from the Iranian regime, which has repeatedly declared its intent to annihilate Israel, no doubt contributes to Israelis' distress over another Holocaust. 

 Motorists stop to observe Holocaust Day

Among Holocaust survivors living in Israel, 63 percent were born in Europe. Among European survivors, 37% are from countries of the former Soviet Union, 12% from Romania, and 5% from Poland. An additional 2.7% are from Bulgaria, 1.4% from Hungary, 1.4% from Germany, and 1% from Czechoslovakia or France.

An additional 18.5% of survivors are from Morocco and Algeria, where they suffered discrimination and harassment under the Nazi-allied Vichy government. A further 11% are from Iraq, survivors of the Farhud pogrom of June 1941. Seven percent are from Libya and Tunisia, countries that during the Holocaust passed racist laws against Jews and imprisoned their communities in labour camps. Some of the Jewish community were also sent to Italy’s Giado concentration camp in Libya.

There’s a tendency to overlook the fact that Jews in North Africa also suffered discrimination internment and death.

In early 1941, Erwin Rommel was appointed by Hitler to establish the Afrika Korps and effectively supplant the militarily incompetent Italians in the Middle East.

Earlier, in September 1940 Italian air force bombers returning from a failed attack on a British target dropped their bombs on Tel Aviv, killing 137 civilians.

Mussolini had entered the war in the Middle East in the hope of creating a new Roman Empire. Italian radio boasted that “the sword of Titus” once more threatened the Jews of Palestine — recalling the Roman conquest of Judaea almost two millennia before. The Arch of Titus in Rome, the broadcast stated, would commemorate a twentieth century victory of the Italians over the Jews. Despite such delusions of grandeur, the British easily defeated Italian attempts to take Egypt and Palestine.

In the Yishuv, (the Jewish settlement in Palestine,) the Chief Rabbinate ruled that daily prayers should be recited for a British victory after Rommel’s initial successes in 1941. More air-raid shelters and hospitals were being constructed. National institutions such as the Jewish Agency, the JNF and the Hebrew University urged their employees and members to volunteer for the Allies’ war effort. A battalion of Australian troops paraded down the main streets of Tel Aviv in the hope of promoting enlistment.

Fortunately, the little-known “Carmel Plan” never eventuated.  Rusty iron rails driven into the ground in the Dania quarter of Haifa are the only reminders left of what was known as the "Carmel Plan."

These rails were supposed to have served as barriers against the tanks of Rommel's Afrika Korps quickly approaching Palestine in 1942. The plan was to turn Mount Carmel into a Masada-like mountain fortress from which the Jews of Palestine would fight to the death if the German forces broke through the last line of British resistance at El-Alamein.

Although the Jewish community in Palestine forgot its differences with the British over the White Paper and joined the allied war effort the British refused to supply their Jewish allies with arms to defend themselves because they feared they might not be returned.

Gershom Gorenberg an American-born Israeli journalist, and blogger, specialising in Middle Eastern politics and the interaction of religion and politics relates to the battle for North Africa during the Second World War in a book published recently- “War of Shadows: Codebreakers, spies, and the secret struggle to drive the Nazis from the Middle East,”.

Gorenberg claims that the reason the Jews living in Palestine under the British Mandate escaped an extension of the Holocaust was because the British drew a line in the sand at El-Alamein.

“What saved the Jews of the land of Israel/Palestine from the Nazis was an army made up of people from Britain, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, India and a half a dozen other countries. They weren’t defending Palestine, they weren’t defending the Jews, they were defending the British empire.”

Gorenberg’s book also brings to light the oft-overlooked plight of North African Jews during World War II, the hundreds who were killed and thousands more who were sent to concentration camps and labour camps, as well as the legitimate threat of a much wider extermination campaign by Nazi Germany during that period. Only in recent years has the plight of North African Jews during the Holocaust been widely discussed, with recognition by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Remembrance Centre and inclusion in the Israeli Education Ministry’s Holocaust curriculum, though some historians maintain that this area remains insufficiently acknowledged.

 To sum up, never again means we can only rely on ourselves. The IDF is the strongest military force in the Middle East. The various international ‘rights watchers’ are uncomfortable with the idea of a strong Israel. They spend disproportionate efforts and money in maligning us.

I like our clout! When Hamas, Hezbollah or any other terrorist organisation fires a shot the IDF responds disproportionately. The rights watchers invariably condemn our “swatting a fly with a sledge hammer” response, but in the Middle East that’s the only language our enemies understand.  

 

Have a good weekend.

 

 

Beni,                                                                           28^th of April, 2022.