Yom HaShoah "THE" Holocaust

What is on my mind? Yom HaShoah aka "THE" Holocaust. 

As a secular assimilated Jew born in "The Golden Medina" of America I became a proud Zionistic Israeli after I first arrived in 1974 to volunteer on Kibbutz. I can remember all those encounters and things that I experienced when I first "came home". That changed me and my life forever.

When I left Kibbutz Gonen in March of 1976 and moved to Maalot before my call up as a Single Soldier to the IDF in September of 1976. I would take my laundry to the WIZO laundry center which was run by two older "Ashkenazic" settlers of the Townlet of Maalot which was founded as a Transit Camp "Maabara" in 1957, here in the very north of Israel in the "peripheral area".

The "Maabara" that has become the City of Ma'alot, was for those "Jews of Arab Lands" who had been ethnically cleansed from their homes by Arab hatred, was comprised mainly of Moroccans -from the French controlled as well as Spanish controlled (and YES there is a difference) and other "Jews of Arab Lands" Libya, Tunisia, Egypt and Yemin.

I met these two wonderful women, who treated me as a long-lost nephew, when I first went to get my laundry done. Hannah (z"l) was married to Mordecai Rosen(z"l) and Hassiya (z"l) was a widow. I never learned anything about Hassiya's husband. Hannah and Hassiya, had met while slave laborers of Birkenau. Mordechai was a survivor of Auschwitz.

Hannah (z"l) and Hassiya (z"l) had gone out of their way to help me many, many times as a "Chayal Boded".

I will never forget one time, while on a short leave from the IDF. I helped Mordechai move some items in his workshop-he was a welder and machinist. Without prompting him one day as we sat drinking coffee, Mordecai told me this story regarding his arrival to the hell known as Auschwitz to pass on. Here are his words:

"Before my family and I were rounded up and shipped from the Ghetto in Lodz. I had been a young naive Yeshiva Boucher, an Orthodox Jew, who lived by the commandments and the Mitzvout in happier pre-war days.

My family and I had just turned 17 when we arrived at Auschwitz on a very cold rainy winter evening in 1943 after a long train ride in a cramped cattle car, packed in like sardines so that we could not sit.

We were undernourished, freezing and starving. We had not eaten for days it seemed, nor did we have water to drink. During the train ride those who stood near the windows would break the icicles off the bars and pass them to others to suck on for water. When we stopped on the way the two buckets that served us toilets were dumped and rotten vegetables were thrown in to feed us by the SS guards.

When we arrived at Auschwitz my mother and father were very weak, they could hardly stand. The SS guards screamed as we were forced down from the train, beaten and whipped into line.

As we got off, we passed some of my friends' parents who had died of starvation while on the journey. Their stiff frozen bodies were thrown off the train like you would sacks of potatoes.

The uniformed guards on the railroad siding held whips or clubs in one hand and some, their dogs in the other. There were Jews in stripped uniforms who picked up the dead and loaded them on trolleys while some gathered our meager belongings on the platform.

One of the scarecrows in stripped uniforms came close and whispered to me; "If you wish to live tell them that you are a cabinet maker! Do not tell them you are a Yeshiva Boucher!"

I couldn't understand, at that moment, just why my mother, father and younger sister were separated from us and what would happen to them. The stern looking Nazi Officer in a SS uniform with a mere flick of his hand motioned them away.

I moved forward towards the man in the well-kept uniform with cold eyes with my younger brother, who with the flick of his hand would motion "left or Right" - "Life or death".

As the night sky turned darker the lights came on and we shuffled forward. The Officer with the cold eyes spoke. My 15-year-old younger brother and I were asked our profession I said cabinet makers. We were experienced carpenters and expert cabinet makers. So, with a "flick" of his gloved hand we were pushed and beaten towards the camp.

I never saw my other family members again....

Of all the hundreds of Jews who arrived on our train, religious and non-religious ALL vanished.

Later as we stood outside in the freezing cold in the issued flimsy "stripped pajamas" with the wooden clogs that passed for shoes waiting before being beaten and sent to our barracks. It appeared that as the wind shifted towards us that white flakes like snow began to fall on us. And as I stood there I could remember seeing the chimneys, of what I learned later to be the crematorium glowing red against the darkening night sky. Occasionally red-hot sparks of ashes flew out from the chimney to the sky, adding more flakes that floated in the air swirling around us.

One of the Jewish Kapos pointing to the red-hot pieces of flesh rising in the air to the sky said to us; "You see that, that is your loved ones fleeing to heaven."

And as he said this, I bowed my head and said the Kaddish for my parents and siblings that I now realized I would never see again. And as I stood there I made a vow that I would survive to honor their memory and the memory of all who died."

So the next time that you meet or encounter one of these non-Zionistic "Non-Jew" Jews remind them of Mordecai Rosen's story that hatred does not see Secular, Orthodox or Zionists they see ONLY Jews. And when the haters murdered our family members and cremated them the haters did so mereky because they were Jews. They do not care if you deny your Jewishness. For them Jews of all forms are made into the same ashes!

In the words of Abba Kovner; "Trust No One!! Be AWARE, be on your guard and be ARMED! Strike first and strike quickly. Do not stop to mourn your fallen until victory is ours!"

This is THE message we MUST remember on this day Dahm Yisreal Nokem!!! Never means Never Again!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mODTRvz7RL0

I Will Always Remember You

As sun down the day before Erev Yom HaZichron - memorial day for the fallen of the IDF- approaches we in Israel sadly remember; our brothers and sisters, our fathers our uncles and aunts who unselfishly gave to create and defend OUR nation. 

For those who mourn it is always a time of memory. 

As the days after Passover pass occaisionally your mind reminds you of the memory of the person that once sat in that space around the Seder table. As the mind is given sometimes, especially in the evening, you smile and remember. 

Sometimes it is a song he liked sometimes it is simply triggered. In the stillness you hear his voice his laugh and in your mind you see that smiling face. Sometimes you see a boy walking, running or playing like him on the street. 

For me, my wife and my children, Yom HaZichron is a special day. For we took it upon ourselves as a bond of honor to be the family of a fellow American immigrant and a young man who was, like a little brother to me, David Sklar z"l.  

David Sklar z"l was the son Chaya Sklar z"l who was mortally wounded on the outskirts of Beirut in June of 1982 in the "First War in Lebanon". 

After the death of his mother David Sklar z"l has no family left in Israel and it was with honor that I and my family readily volunteered to "adopt" him.

David was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on the 4th of June 1962 and at the age of 9 his "family" made Aliyah to Hertzliya. 

David and his family; his older sister Deborah and his mother Chaya, who was divorced, moved to Maalot a very short time before I had entered the IDF as a "Chayal Boded" in September of 1976.

His mother Chaya Sklar z"l worked at that time as a secretary to Elaine Kopp - later Levitt another recent divorcee, had also recently move to Maalot from Jerusalem with her two teenaged children Mike and Marla. Elaine was in charge of a Jewish Agency Volunteer for Israel program.

It was Chaya z"l, who stopped to talk with me as I walked home from the "WIZO" laundry center early that Thursday morning while on a 72 hour pass from the IDF during "Operation Litani" in March of 1978. 

Chaya, the omnipresent "Jewish mother", told me that there was a new single American Olah (Immigrant) named Rena who had made Aliyah from Far Rockaway NY who had recently arrived in Ma'alot. Chaya and Elaine both urged me that I should "Make an effort" to meet Rena.

It is a common story that our children all know of how I waited that fateful Thursday evening, on the "advise of Chaya", for the transit that transported the workers home from Nahariyah Hospital to arrive in front of the Merkaz Klita. As I was exhausted from being in Lebanon I fell asleep on the bench. 

Rena ,a registered nurse(RN) who had just begun to work at Nahariyah Hospital, was returned "home" after working an evening shift at 10:30 PM. The noise of the slamming of the sliding door of the van woke me.

As I sat on the bench opposite the building I allowed her a few moments to enter her apartment before going into the building and knocked on her door to do as Chaya advised; "Introduce yourself".  

I knocked on the door and after a few moments Rena opened the door slightly and peeked out. I quickly said; "Hi my name is Yakov, and Chaya said we should meet." Whereby Rena instantly replied; "Hi, I am Rena and I am tired" and she closed and locked the door. That was March 23rd 1978 we were married January 16th 1979 in Ma'alot. We are the only two American Jews so far who have met and married in Ma'alot.

David, his sister Debra and Chaya lived in the "New Binyan HaMalit"-"the elevator building" near today's Shouk (Marketplace). It is the only multi (8) storied building to have been built in Maalot and it's saving grace one can say or novelty, was that it had an elevator.

It is located on the street below where my first apartment was. As a "New Single Immigrant" I was "issued" a small one room 42 sqm apartment by the Amidar Government Housing Authority across the hall from my neighbor and good friend Kenny Sherman. 

Kenny was also a new inductee to the IDF but he was in the paratroopers as  a Chayal Boded. When we happened to be home on leave at the same time we would sit and talk for hours drinking beer and listening to my extensive album collection.

David had only recently entered Yad Netan Junior High School near Akko and he was like a little brother to me. David would relate to me his experiences and secrets in life as any younger brother would to an older one. Our friendship was close since it was quite evident he was badly treated and ignored as a child by his father who abandoned them before divorcing Chaya. 

David was in need of an "older" brother a father figure to be there for him. And yes my being there also alone with no family also drew me close to him as well.

In the months before my induction into the IDF I was working at a local factory and in the evening when I came home sometimes David would come around to visit and talk since I had a fairly extensive collection of books and albums that I had brought with me from the USA. 

Upstairs in the same Amidar apartment building 431 Jabotinsky lived Ilana Black a divorced woman from England who was a painter. Ilana had a teenage daughter Sharon who was away at a boarding school. Ilana would invite Kenny and me to share Shabbat evening meals with her. Occasionally, David and Sharon -when she was not in school would  come to visit, to talk or just to listen to the music.

As a 14 year old fatherless boy growing up in Ma'alot, David drew close to me as though a "big brother" because of our background as Americans and of course the ability to converse in English. 

On Shabbat our very small "Anglo -Saxon" community would meet for a football, softball or baseball game near the water tower (symbol of the township) of Ma'alot near the infamous Netiv Meir Elementary school -scene of the horrific Massacre in Maalot in May of 1974.

After I completed my army service in 1978 I had worked in factories in warehouse and supply management. I was not thrilled with the job and the pay. So, in April of 1982 the wife and I decided to go back to the USA for me to complete my University degree that I had stopped when I supposedly left to "volunteer" on Kibbutz for "only" six months in Sept. 1974.

Rena and I knew that "tensions were high" and we Israelis were embittered by the highly apparent and consistent failure of UNIFIL to prevent terrorist incursions into Israel. 

It was only a matter of time that something serious would occur because of the constant threats and intermediate mortar and artillery shelling from what was euphemistically called "Fatahland" - the area south of the Litani river in Lebanon. 

Over the period of time since "Black September" of 1970 when the PLO was kicked out of Jordan and became entrenched in "Fatahland" in southern Lebanon. 

The UN, like today, has consistantly failed in their mandate to prevent terrorism. 

In 1982 "Fatahland" had become a PLO "no-go zone" after the Lebanese "Civil War" in 1975. Lebanese civilian residents had fled and the neutered Lebanese Government had given Fatah free run over the area.

As David Sklar z"l sat there on our couch with our son David, I could feel his deep sadness of our upcoming departure. My last words to him were like those of any "Older big brother" to watch out. I warned him to make sure and promise me that he would wear his body-armour vest!

As I mentioned we left Israel with our oldest son David in April of 1982 and moved in with my parents in Birmingham, Alabama, so I could restart University to complete my degree. We choose to go to Birmingham mainly because of the expense of University and available housing. 

Rena was able to find immediate employment as an RN in the Children's Hospital in the large University of Alabama Birmingham Medical Center, as we looked for an Apartment. We finally found a nice apartment not far from my parents and moved in. 

I had just started my first semester in a local Junior College to "get back into the rut of learning" when the conflict began. At first, I had thought of going back to my unit, but my commanding officer said for me to stay in the USA. 

I was not at home when the wife Rena received the phone call that fateful June day. The call had come from another ex-American friend Daphne Even-Zohar who was living in her father's apartment on the floor below our apartment building located at 327 Keren Hayesod Street in Ma'alot. Daphne called to inform us of the sad news about David's death. 

When I came home from school and Rena told me that David was killed. All I could think of was to rush back to my unit but I realized that to do so would overturn all the plans we had made to improve our family. We stayed and we of course missed the burial and the "Shiva- mourning period" in Israel.  Both Rena and I mourned his passing.

Members of David Sklar z"l IDF tank crew

I later learned from his commanding officer and his tank crew the sad events of his death....

It was a hot July morning in Southern Beirut. There was a lull in the fighting. His tank was parked to guard a road block. 

David had eagerly volunteered to be in "communication" -to listen to the radio chatter. 

The commander of the tank crew related to me that David sat outside on the engine cowling of the hot tank on the front near the driver seat.

The Palestinian "Alphabets"-one of the various terrorist organizations- had been raining down mortar fire all day and all the previous night. The tank crew was exhausted. They had been "buckled up" inside their old stifling humid modified US Made M-60 Abrams tank during the shelling. 

Suddenly the shelling ceased. Evidently the PLO terrorists had exhausted their supply of mortar rounds and they had to resupply. The lull lasted several hours, so the soldiers began to relax.

It was hot and very humid the soldiers became too lax. They opened or removed their old heavy Viet Nam War vintage surplus -read US AID - body Armor vests.... suddenly they could hear the echo of the "thump" sound as a mortar round is fired. David who was wearing the VRC helmet of the communications didn't hear it. The round landed nearby throwing a long piece of shrapnel from the 122 Soviet made mortar round that pierced his body as he unsuspectingly sat there.

His fellow crew members rushed him across the crossroads underfire to the IDF medical unit casualty station. The doctor immediately saw the long shard and how it had seared and cauterized in David's chest. He called for immediate air evac to Rambam in Haifa. A special medic evac helicopter that had been on standby in the air arrived.

David lingered on for another 24 hours or so...his mother and sister were able to see him before he died...and was buried in the Military part of the cemetery of Ma'alot which is between the Arab village of Tarshiah and Moshav Meona where the photo of his tank crew, Rena and I was taken.

Chaya angered over David's death argued non-stop with Deborah the daughter and she became fed up and left for America. 

After David's death Chaya grief stricken had become very religious and extremous in her views and had moved to Kiryat Arba. She died of cancer not long after and is also buried in the civilian part of the cemetery in Ma'alot.

Because David had no family to represent him on Yom HaZichron (Memorial Day)  I notified the Municipality that my family would gladly "adopt" him and represent him at the ceremonies on Remembrance Day. 

All our children who have also served in the IDF have willingly participated in the evening memorial day for the fallen ceremony by lighting his candle on the stage over the years. 

We do not want David's sacrifice to be forgotten and we as fellow American Immigrants took the mantle with pride to be his family.

Though most of my children have moved on to the "Greater Tel Aviv" area the wife and I will still attend the ceremony in his honored memory.

Memories and History

"Each moment in history flashes by us. Many are precious and unique, yet some are vile, some vulgar and some are ugly ones."

As I sit here in my #COVID-19 Safe-space, in front of the Facebook prompt "What is on my mind". I sit here in deep contemplation of human existence -mortality if you may-and the direct link between historical incidents and the human mind to remember those fleeting moments in History and the fickle memory of man

When I first sat down, after making my morning cup of coffee, in front of my computer. I had noticed a post on Facebook this morning regarding today being the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald near Weimar in Germany. A camp that was judged second only to Auschwitz in the horrors it imposed on its prisoners it was "Liberated" on the 11th of April 1945 the newspaper headlines glared at that time: "US Army reaches Buchenwald ... It was the very first camp to be liberated by American troops".

WOW...

And then I remembered as a historian that some four months before on January 27th, 1945, the horrific Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army during the Vistula–Oder Offensive.

And as I sat there, with the coffee in front of my computer I began to contemplate just how many reading this post know this or even care to know this?

I then thought of the "first person human memory" link to Yom HaShoar (Holocaust Remembrance Day) and specifically those Holocaust survivors, who experienced first hand the horrors and how they are slowly dying away. That the physical link to the actual experienced events; the scenes, the smells, the emotions, the human touch those factors of humanity are being slowly lost to eternity.

As I was sitting here, I the son of a "baby boomer" a child of a GI who served his country in WWII, realized we are also getting nearer to VE Day. VE Day (Victory in Europe Day) celebrating the formal acceptance by the Allies of World War II of Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender of its armed forces on the 8th of May 1945.

THAT day that was the long anticipated day of the defeat of Nazi Germany. It was, according to the allowed Western point of view, what "ALL" the Allies aspired for in Europe in WWII.

For those Jews in hiding in Nazi Occupied Western Europe they prayed and looked forward to "D-Day", that needed first step to Victory in Europe and defeat of the dreaded Nazi Regime.

Those of occupied Europe especially the Jews lived day by day in deep and agonizing anticipation to their "deliverance". We can read these feelings expressed to "Kitty" in the "Diary of Anne Frank". For Anne and for very many other Jews regretfully D-Day was already too late.

For those too young to know, WE privileged Jews, the "baby boomers" the son's and daughter's of the greatest generation in America, Canada, Great Britain. WE can still hear the voices. Those voices of our Momma's or Dad's sometimes speaking in somber tones of "it". That "IT" which is mark of Cain on humanity.

As a young child I remember helping my grandfather with his millinery business and how one day I found him sitting in the office holding a letter sobbing. As he saw me quickly removed the letter and pictures and stuffed them in a drawer of his large roller top desk. When I asked him, "Why are you crying?" I never learned why but I can guess that like many of "US"-"WE" the "luckier" Jews, those whose grandparents who had left the "Pale of settlement" in the 1880's or before had family members somewhere in Europe whom our families never heard from again. Those family members who oh so desperately tried in vain to leave Europe but were not given visas to enter many countries and above all the Homeland promised to us in Eretz Yisrael, where the gates where sealed by Arab hatred and British complicity in their "White Paper".

As to history -You, our son's and daughter's and especially our grandchildren. YOU DO know the meaning of (...-) dot dot dot dash the 'V' for victory” motto derived from the opening of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony and the famous message in two parts in the poem broadcast by the BBC to the FFI or French Forces of the Interior which referred to the French resistance fighters in France from Paul Verlaine's poem "Chanson d'automne."

Les sanglots longs
Des violons
De l'automne
"When a sighing begins / In the violins / Of the autumn-song".

Then, on June 5, to signal that sabotage efforts should begin, the next three lines were sent:

Blessent mon coeur
D'une langueur
Monotone
"My heart is drowned / In the slow sound / Languorous and long."

You may not or may never have heard the infamous line, "The Longest Day"; those words uttered by Field Marshal Erwin Rommel recalled in a book by Cornelius Ryan published in 1959, telling the story of D-Day, the World War II invasion of Normandy and later in the classic black and white movie.

Ask any millennial today, "What do you know about WWII? or What is the importance of June 6th? and at the most they will show an uncaring or unwillingness to listen...to grandpa....

With the wave of Jews finally allowed to leave Russia in 1990 the full extent of the Russian military's participating in the capturing and releasing of some of "OUR" family members became fully known. Very few are aware of the extent of the Jewish "Resistance"- the "Partisans" made famous recently in the 2008 movie "Defiance" with Daniel Craig.

For many of us raised in the school systems in the West we do not know of the contribution of our fellow Jews of the Soviet Union. We do not fully know the true importance of WHAT this day means to "US". Not just ALL freedom loving people but specifically to "US" ...."WE" Jews the wandering Jews.



What this day means is expressed here in this rare BBC recording from April 20th 1945, where inmates at Bergen Belsen Concentration Camp freed from death sing what they now longed for in OUR anthem of hope 'Hatikva' to finally have a land of our own.