Pain in my right leg causes me to wake up at night these days so I picked up Ruth Kluger's "The Last Escape" (a recent thrift store acquisition, seventy nine cents) about that Mossad agent's efforts to rescue European Jewry from the impending Holocaust. In it she mentions this passage from a speech by Ze'ev Jabotinsky to the Jews of Warsaw in 1939, with war clouds obvious on the horizon:
I state with shame that the people behave now as if they were already doomed. I have not found anything like it, neither in history nor in novels. Never did I read of such acquiescence with fate. It is as if twelve million educated people were put in a carriage and the carriage was being pushed towards an abyss. How do such people behave? One is crying, one is smoking a cigarette, some are reading newspapers, someone is singing - but in vain will you look for one who will stand up, take the reins into his hands and move the carriage somewhere else. This is the mood. As if some big enemy came and chloroformed their minds. I come to you now to make an experiment. The last experiment. I cry to you: Put an end to this situation! Try to stop the carriage, try to jump out of it, try to put some obstacle in its way, don't go like sheep to the wolf.
I read the passage in Kluger's book over three times, knowing that most of those who heard Jabotinsky's speech didn't listen. Virtually all died in the camps. The threats that Americans face today to their property, their liberty and their lives is not so obvious but still very real. We, too, must shake off the chloroform of the mind that surrounds us if we are to survive as free Americans.
With that thought, I fell asleep. But it is with me now in the daylight and I pass it along to those of you who will listen.
9 comments:
Thought Provoking.
Will someone write about Americans in 70 to 100 years and say the same thing?
Too many live in a world of Normalacy Bias, and can't see our coutry is dying, because they do not want to see what is going on.
Those of us who can see and prepare need to be ready to lead those who will see our of their Warsaw Ghetto when we get a chance.
We will need our several Bielski brothers, working in several areas, when "Give me Liberty, or Give me Death" becomes more than a bumper sticker in America.
Reminds me of the famous Patrick Henry speech, 'Give me liberty or give me death'.
Excellent!
My dad's side of the family are all jews from NYC. They are all passed on now, but when I was in high school, two of my great aunts sent me and my brother to Israel for two months to study at a high school for American jewish kids.
Our teacher was a retired Israely commando who had a minimum of 11 weapons on him at all times. He was a bad ass. He was giving us a lecture on the holocaust, and half of the kids were falling asleep. I think I stood up and yelled at them for falling asleep through their own destruction.
Oh well.
Mossad agent?
I am a little curious what that refers to. Mossad did not exist until 1949. Are you suggesting Kluger was an agent after the war? Can you clarify?
Most won't wake up until its blatantly obvious and many not even then. Just look at many of the responses to Massad Ayoob's blog post linked here a few days ago and the backlash when Ayoob mentioned the heroes during Katrina. All of those folks were deemed "cop-haters" and wackos for distrusting authorities.
Wouldnt've been Mossad before the war. There were three main military/politcal organizations in Jewish pre-State Palestine that had intel sections: the Haganah (Left wing), the Irgun (Right wing), and another splinter called the Stern Gang that broke off from the Irgun. I cannot remember each factions activities to save Jews, but they each played a role. Some negotiated with Nazis behind the scenes. Some worked underground or through neighboring countries.
Jabotinsky was a founder of Betar, that grew into the Irgun, led later by Menachem Begin. The Stern gang was led by Yitzhak Shamir. The Hagana had future Laborites like Yizhak Rabin, and Shimon Peres.
The Mossad was founded by Ben Gurion in 1949, long after the Holocaust.
You hear people continue to say "Never again!", but too many times they wait for someone else to do what is necessary to ensure "Never again!".
After all, did not many foolishly consider the Germans as one the most "civilized" people and culture in Europe? How bad could it get? What could go wrong? The truth was incomprehensible to many, what was necessary to change events too ugly to contemplate, and understood too late.
It is said that the surrender rate of American troops to German forces dropped and the will to fight rose after news of the massacre of captured Americans by the SS at Malmedy in the Battle of the Bulge was propagated. "Never again!"
Post a Comment