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| "Do Jews believe in life after death?" |
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Sirrom |
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Extreme Veteran Posts: 562   | HIGHLY SENSITIVE MATERIAL Some may question why I would post this newspaper report. Even though it is very descriptive and very disturbing it is my personal opinion that only by keeping stories such as this alive will mankind ever pause to consider the path they will take in the future. It is also an acknowledgement to the millions who died that their suffering is remembered and, with tears of empathy, we will never forget the great sacrifice they made because they believed and lived as Jews. While reading this report a person may conclude a state existed of ‘Chillul Hashem’ (literally, “G-d is not here”) But we should be reminded of the words of Rabbi Eliyauh, the Gaon of Vilna who said, “In the appreciation of the suffering that a person endures in this world, he can endure the Day of Judgment in the next world. The sufferings are added to the total of one’s mitzvot, and together they will outdo the number of trespasses.” Undoubtedly, therefore, the dead of Belsen passed directly to Gan Eden. I have deleted two paragraphs in this report because the description is so grotesque and inhuman that most readers would regret they ever read it. What you are about to read is more than the Marquis De Sade could ever conjure, and it is from his name that the term Sadism is derived. WARNING: DESCRIPTIVE MATERIAL - DISTRUBING San Francisco Chronicle Sunday, April 22, 1945 The German Fascists Did This THE HORROR OF BELSEN IS BEYOND BELIEF EVEN THE LIVING HAVE LONG SINCE DIED By William Frye Associated Press Staff Writer Belsen, Germany, April 21 - The dead were getting a burial today at this fearsome concentration camp - each nameless dead getting a ghastly burial. No coffins or flowers at this funeral. No tears or well-bred sympathy. No music. These naked corpses were hauled in trucks and dumped into a pit. Their pall bearers were SS (elite guard) men and women, now Allied prisoners. Their litany was the hoarse shouts of British soldiers, sick with disgust and fury, ordering these marked members of Hitler’s chosen legions about their horrible task. I saw Belsen - its piles of lifeless dead and its aimless swarms of living dead. Their great eyes were just animal lights in skin-covered skulls of famine. Some were dying of typhus, some of typhoid, some of tuberculosis, but most were just dying of starvation. Starvation - the flesh on their bodies had fed on itself until there was no flesh left, just skin covering bones and the end of all hope and nothing left to feed on. STILL SOME HOPE Tragically, there is still hope inside these still-breathing cadavers. As long as eyes can stare from the bodies scattered everywhere on the floors and on the ground there is hope. Hope in these for whom there is no hope. They are living but they cannot live. No food, no care can save them. Ahead of them is nothing - nothing but that pit with the bulldozer waiting to cover them with earth. Nothing - well, there is one thing, the knowledge that after months of bestiality there is suddenly, unbelievably, friendliness and goodwill among men. At least they will die aware of that. Countless thousands - some say 30,000, some say more - died without even that comfort, died horrible deaths before the British Second Army reached this camp on the Aller river southeast of Bremen Sunday. I saw these dead - hundreds and thousands - lying in ditches and against walls of drab huts and piled in heaps, each one in a grotesque attitude in a grotesque mound. Some were clothed, but most were naked. Their nakedness was of no account because there had long ceased to be anything recognizably human about then, even before the last flicker of life disappeared. I saw the living bodies beside these dead. Living - they still walked and talked and stared curiously, unemotionally at visitors and sniped cigarette butts tossed from a passing army car, went to the cook-house for food and knelt around fires. There were supposed to be 29,000 of them alive when the British arrived; living - but hardly men and women now, their spirits so broken and degraded that the nameless horror around them was without meaning or significance. I saw there was no sex, no shame, no modesty, no self-respect among these people - driven in a few months backward a million years towards primordial scum. Some habits remained. Women stood naked cleaning themselves with cans of water, unconscious of their flat, empty nakedness. Men, equally naked, also remembered the habit of bathing. Clothing to these people meant warmth, nothing else. FIERCED-EYED CHILDREN I saw children walking about in this hell. Children - the first I saw I’ll never rub out of my mind. A boy, perhaps seven, and his sister, maybe five. The knobs of their joints bulging through their thin clothes, faces like mummies, timorously sneaking up with small pails toward a water truck, their great fierce eyes intent on a chance to rush in and steal pails-full of water. Obviously they were unable to comprehend something being freely given. It was agony to watch their stealthy approach, keeping always behind a British soldier who was there helping all who came. I saw SS men and women, once torturing, brutal guards of this purgatory beyond imagination, put to labor loading the bodies of the people they had killed into trucks. I saw them at the pits unloading these human carcasses, dragging them through the sand and dumping them into a great hole half-filled with dead. I saw these dead - dead long beyond rigor mortis - tumble limply into the vast common grave that hid their namelessness forever. DEATH WITH THE LIVING I saw the living and dead lying beside each other in filthy huts - long, barracks-like buildings - the living no more able to rise than the dead. I saw men eating food just brought from the cookhouse, eating within a yard of corpses dead for days, unconcerned by the death beside them or by the stench from slow-burning heaps of rags impregnated with filth. Outside one of these huts within a barbed-wire compound I saw a smoldering heap of rags, and under it the half-burned body of a man, dragged out with the rags and undiscovered until the gradually consumed waste disclosed this one-time human among the ashes. Not that it would have made any difference to the others if they had known. Inside this hut I saw and heard something else. Inside this hut I choked and cried. What once were men lay on the floor clothed in rags. Already they lay in the same grotesque macabre attitudes of the corpses on the heaps a few yards away. A major who took me there, Maj. J.P. Fox of Dublin, Ireland, commander of field hygienic unit, told me “nothing can help these poor wretches. We can’t even feed them. They are too far gone to retain any food. They are dying and there is nothing we can do about it.” There they lay, already pushing through the gates of deaths. As we walked through the door they were cheered. We could see the light of deliverance flash into those dying eyes. One or two feeble, wasted arms came slowly up and waved a “V” sign slowly in the air. The ghosts of voices quavered something that sounded like “hurrah” at the sight of Allied uniforms. The major, another American correspondent and I staggered out of the hut, unable to speak and Maj. Fox said, “I think I have shown you all there is to see in this place.” But he had shown me only a little. There was more-much more A POLISH WOMAN EXPLAINS He showed me proof that the human spirit can survive even such calculated evil as was practiced in this abominable spot. He took me to the cookhouse and introduced me to a Polish woman who for several years had been an inmate of German prisons and concentration camps. We were received in her miserable little room in the cookhouse - hers since the liberation - as in a castle drawing room. She spoke English - brokenly, cautiously - but she spoke English, and talked. With restraint, with great care, without bitterness, she talked. This is what I heard: Josef Kramer, SS commander of Belsen now under close arrest, previously commanded Auschwitz, where children were taken from their mothers and burned alive, where gas chambers killed thousands, where Kramer kept his own orchestra to entertain him with Strauss waltzes while abominations were practiced under his command outside his windows. At Belsen Kramer’s predecessor, also of the SS, was kind and considerate - prisoners had enough to eat and proper medical care, and were treated as human beings. The vileness began with Kramer’s arrival five months ago. He instituted starvation as punishment, kept it up as a habit. He enjoyed the shuddering filthiness with a lascivious lust for degradation and death, that Belsen became. I heard that occasionally men starving in Belsen watched the dying with (54 words edited by poster). I heard that SS women tied one living and one dead together, and burned both on a smoldering heap of scrap leather and worn out shoes and boots, while linking hands in a hideous bestial dance macabre around this incredible pyre. I heard that their sadistic joy in watching the slow disintegration of humans into something less than beasts was not always enough to satisfy Kramer’s devils and witches - beating, chopping off fingers and other glittering savageries gave occasional zest to their jaded appetites. BEYOND HUMANITY I heard more - but I cannot go on. Once the woman faltered in her conversation. I asked how she learned English and she replied that there had been an English governess for two years for her little boy. But there are times when even a reporter may not ask questions - I not only do not know what became of the boy - I still do not know even Madame’s name. Once she broke entirely. Tears streamed down her face. That was when we left. She clung to Maj. Fox’s hand for a moment, said: “We will never forget. We still cannot believe people can be as kind as you have been to us.” What I saw and heard at Belsen is something never seen or heard of in the world before the Nazis created concentration camps of their own bestial, incomprehensible kind. Robbery, murder, rape - these twisted, warped, unhappy instincts any man who pauses to examine himself can find buried in his own nature. Normally there is a balance and the explosion never occurs. But here in Belsen there was a deliberate, calculated effort, in most cases successful, to force mankind down the ladder up which he climbed painfully through millenniums. There is the frightful thing beyond normal understanding. | ||
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Extreme Veteran Posts: 562 | Continuing with Israel’s War of Independence. Between May 19th and May 25th Israel’s War of Independence waged back and forth. The U.N. Security Council met often to discuss a cease fire with little results. Either Russia opposed something in the proposals or Britain opposed something. Eventually a cease-fire was ordered by the U.N. Between May 25th and May 28th the final battles were fought. The Kansas City Star Tuesday, May 25, 1948 ISRAEL SEEKS AID Weizmann, Provisional President of New Nation, Talks With Truman About Loan. WOULD LIFT ARMS BAN Jewish Leader in White House Call Says he is “Given Hope” of Embargo Step. Plan Revealed to Bring 15,000 Displace Persons a Month to Holy Land. Washington, May 25, (AP) - Chaim Weizmann, Israel’s provisional president, said President Truman gave him “some sort of hope” today the American government may lift its ban on arms shipments to the Middle East. Weizmann, here as the official guest of the American government, talked with Mr. Truman for thirty minutes at the White House. He related to a news conference afterward that he told the President the lifting of the arms embargo is “essential for the safety” of the Jews fighting off Arab attacks in Palestine. May Act Soon He said he got the impression the President might grant his request in the not too distant future. Weizmann said he and the President discussed the possibility of an American loan of 90 million dollars to 100 million dollars to the newly-recognized government of Israel. The loan funds, he said, are needed for certain military and reconstruction supplies. Weizmann said his government contemplates spending part of any American loan for “a few tanks, planes, anti-tank guns and quite a good deal of military tackle.” Weizmann said he believes some of the Arab countries will heed the United Nations cease-fire order in Palestine. Jewish army forces “will immediately evacuate” the Arab city of Jaffa once peace is restored, he said. He added: “We don’t want it. It doesn’t belong to us.” Weizmann said Jerusalem should be internationalized. Irked by ‘Invasion” Jerusalem is “a triple shrine to three religions,” he said and declared. “It is almost unbelievable the city should be invaded by Arab hordes under Christian leadership.” Weizmann said he left a letter with President Truman touching on various problems including Israel’s desire that the United States exchange full-fledged diplomatic representatives. Preparations are under way, he said, to bring 15,000 Jews to Israel each month from displaced person camps in the western zones of Germany and Austria. Weizmann stressed, however, money is needed to finance this mass migration because most of the refugees are destitute. | ||
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Extreme Veteran Posts: 562 | Final Report on Israel’s War of Independence Kansas City Star Friday, May 28, 1948 ARABS CONQUER OLD CITY Jewish Defenders Numbering About 300 in Final Hours of Last-Ditch Jerusalem Stand Surrender to the Legions of King Abdullah. INTO NEW PHASE More Important Battle Looms for the New Area Itself, now in Zionist Grip. GREATER FURY FOR TATRUN Thousands of Troops on Both Sides Are Joined in Combat Along Key Highway. London Orders 21 Officers Withdrawn From Trans-Jordan Forces in Palestine. King Abdullah’s forces announced the epic battle for the old city of Jerusalem ended today in the surrender of the last-ditch Jewish fighters. The fall of the old city, after two weeks of struggle between the Arab legion and a small force of Jews, may signal the beginning of a more important battle for possession of modern Jerusalem. Israeli forces say they hold most of the modern city. The Jews numbering about 300 at the end, had been pressed into three stone buildings for their last stand. Fight for Highway A greater battle by far and probably of decisive proportions, was reported joined by Jews and Arabs on the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway between Latrun and Bab El Wad. The Jews said both sides committed thousands of troops; the Near East radio called it one of the biggest battles ever fought in the Holy Land. The Arab victory at Jerusalem was the last in which British officers as such, were likely to participate during the Palestine campaign. The British foreign office said it had ordered the twenty-one officers lent to the legion to leave Palestine though not the legion itself. Brig. John Glubb, the Briton who commands the legion, was not affected. He is a major of the British army reserves, but overage and thus not subject to war office orders. The toppled and heavily damaged old city is but a fraction of Jerusalem. The Jews claimed control of most of the modern city, which controls the main east-west and north-south roads in Palestine. A large Jewish force and 90,000 Jewish civilians are in the modern city. Mid-Afternoon Climax. Joseph C. Goodwin, Associated Press correspondent inside the old city, confirmed the surrender. He wrote that the tired ragged Jews surrendered at 2L30 P.M. (4:30 A.M. Kansas City time). Those of fighting age were ordered to a concentration camp outside the city. Old men and children were turned over to the international Red Cross. Jewish negotiators said 1,500 to 1,600 of their people were in the old city, where the Jewish quarter has been shelled to ruins. The Arab victory meant Jews would be evicted from the old city, sacred to three great religions, for the first time in 3,000 years. The result had been certain for a week or more. Aram armor, artillery and manpower was simply stifling to the outnumbered Jews - hungry, parched and desperately short of ammunition. The battle for Latrun and Bab El Wad loomed as a key combat. It grew in intensity. On its outcome depended the supply for the Jews in Jerusalem. The Jews took two villages south of Latrun and the Arabs were reported drawing troops from Jerusalem to the fray. Planes Attack Camps. Jewish planes were reported to have attacked El Kuneitra and Baniyas in Syria, both Arab concentration points. The State department said the forty-one Americans forcibly removed from the American ship Marine Carp at Beirut, Lebanon have agreed to return directly to the U.S. Britain is working out a detailed alternative to the United Nations plan for splitting Palestine and will submit it to the security council, a foreign office spokesman announced in London. Start of Plan. The new British proposal for settlement was described as only the “beginnings” of a plan which Britain hopes can be forged into being through discussions in the security council. Its principles have not been sent to the United States government, the spokesman said. First hint of the British move was given to the security council yesterday by Sir Alexander Cadogan in proposing a 4-week truce in Palestine. Jewish denunciation of the British demand for an armistice appeared to doom the plan in infancy. London’s sudden new proposal calls for an arms embargo and a ban on entry of fighting personnel into the Holy Land for the month. In that period a final effort would be made to end the war. Artillery and air power were coming more and more into play in the 4-mile stretch where the Latrun battle raged. The scene is Arab territory about fifteen miles west of Jerusalem and twenty-one south-east of Tel Aviv. The Arabs- and possibly the Jews, too - threw air forces into the fight which spread for miles over the barren hills where Richard the Lion Hearted turned back from his crusade to Jerusalem. Airplanes Shot Down. Jewish headquarters in Tel Aviv announced that one Iraqi 2-engine plane of the Anson type was shot down in the Latrun area yesterday. On the Upper Jordan front, the Jews said they shot down two twin-engine Iraqi planes. The Jewish radio, Voice of Galilee, said Jewish air forces raided the El Kuneitra area in Syria, an Arab troop concentration point east of the Sea of Galilee. In Washington, Chairman Taber said today the House appropriations committee is satisfied the British are not using United States funds to finance Arab nations fighting Jewish forces in Palestine. He said the State department, in answer to a committee inquiry, reported that Britain’s payments to King Abdullah of Trans-Jordan are made under a treaty and are not in pounds sterling and not United States dollars. | ||
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Extreme Veteran Posts: 562 | New York Times July 3, 1944 INQUIRY CONFIRMS NAZI DEATH CAMPS 1,715,000 Jews Said to Have Been Put to Death by the Germans Up to April 15 By Daniel T. Brigham By Telephone to The New York Times. Geneva, Switzerland, July 2 - Information reaching two European relief committees with headquarters in Switzerland has confirms reports of the existence in Auschwitz and Birkenau in Upper Silesia of two “extermination camps” where more than 1,715,000 Jewish refugees were put to death between April 15, 1942 and April 15. 1944. The two committees referred to are the International Church Movement Ecumenical Refugee Commission with headquarters in Geneva, and the Fluchtlingshilfe of Zurich whose head, the Rev. Paul Voght, has disclosed a long report on the killings. This report says national “clean-up” are periodically ordered by the Nazis in various occupied countries and when they are enforced Jews are shipped to the execution camps. Totals compiled two months age show the following number of Jews “eradicated” in the two camps, excluding hundreds of thousands slain elsewhere: Poland………………..900,000 Netherlands…………..100,000 France………………..150,000 Greece………………. 45,000 Belgium…………….. 50,000 Germany……………. 60,000 Yugoslavia, Italy and Norway……………… 50,000 Bohemia, Moravia and Austria………………. 30,000 Foreign Jews from Various camps in Poland 300,000 Hungarian Jews Slaughtered To this total must now be added Hungary’s Jews. About 30 percent of the 400,000 there have been slain or have died en route to Upper Silesia. Discussing “malicious, fiendish, inhuman brutality” in the treatment of Hungarian Jews, the Ecumenical Commission says: “According to authenticated information now at hand, some 400,000 Hungarian Jews have been deported from their homeland since April 6 of this year under inhuman conditions to Upper Silesia. Those that did not die en route were delivered to the camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau in Upper Silesia, where during the past two years, it has now been learned, many hundreds of thousands of their co-religionists have been fiendishly done to death.” After a fortnight to three months’ imprisonment, during which they are “selected” or worked to death, the Jews were led to the execution halls, it was said. These halls consist of fake bathing establishments handling 2,000 to 8,000 daily. Cyanide Gas Caused Death Prisoners were led into cells and ordered to strip for bathing. Then cyanide gas was said to have been released, causing death in three to five minutes. The bodies are burned in crematoriums that hold eight to ten at a time. At Birkenau there are about fifty such furnaces. They were opened March 12, 1943, by a large party of Nazi chiefs who witnessed the “disposal of 8,000 Jews from 9 o’clock in the morning until 7:30 that night,” according to the report. | ||
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Extreme Veteran Posts: 562 | The headline of the following newspaper is: NC-4 Wins Ocean Flight For America This was the first trans-Atlantic flight which took place in May, 1919. An inside report of Judaic interest is printed below. This report was published one month before the signing of the Versailles Treaty formerly ending WW l New York Times May 28, 1919 DRAFTING TREATIES TO PROTECT JEWS Special Conference Committee is Framing Agreements with Newly Created States. Pairs, May 27. (Associated Press) - Acting on instructions from the Council of Four, a special committee of experts is drafting a series of treaties with the newly created States designed to protect minorities, and particularly to protect the Jews against discriminations of race, language, and religion, leading to disorders, riots, and progroms. The American member of the committee is David H. Miller. Among the other members are Viscount Corley, for Great Britain, and M. Berthelot for France. The treaties are supplementary to the German and Austrian peace treaties, both of which contain articles providing that the newly created States shall execute treaties guaranteeing the minorities protection in race, language, and religion. The one with Poland has already been submitted to its signature. One of those who assisted in drawing up the treaties, summed them up today as follows: “They guarantee substantially the same equality and freedom of race, language, and religion as we have in the United States. While it is difficult to frame any specific provision against mob violence, yet this usually results from racial discrimination, and, by establishing strict equality, we hope to eliminate the causes leading to riots.” The views of British and American Jews have been considered during the framing of the treaties, which, however, are not restricted to Jews, but cover all races and religions. Louis Marshall, President of the American Jewish Commission, yesterday handed the President a memorandum consisting chiefly of observations by Herman Bernstein, who has made a study of the condition of the Jews in war-stricken countries, of alleged ill treatment of Jews, and of reports reaching Mr. Bernstein from refugees. Wilson Pledges Safeguards to Jews. Washington, May 27 - Safeguards against religious discrimination in new States created as the result of the great war have been decided upon by the Paris Peace Conference. This was disclosed in a cablegram from President Wilson to Secretary Tumulty in response to a message sent by Rabbi Stephen S. Wise of New York City protesting against the reported massacres of Jews in Poland and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. Secretary Tumulty made public this telegram, which he sent to Rabbi Wise: “The President requests me to assure you, that the safeguards against religious discrimination which the President says he has so much at heart, will be embodied in the new arrangements by which the new states will be set up.” Fears Anti-Jewish Outbreak In Europe British Writer Say Red Leaders’ Crimes May Be Avenged Upon Hebrews. Special Cable to The New York Times. London, May 26, - The possibilities of a great anti-Jewish outbreak in Europe were never greater than now, says a Paris dispatch to the Westminster Gazette. “Much play has been made in England and France,” says the correspondent, “with the fact that the leaders of Bolshevism belong to the Semitic race. In certain other countries the words ‘Bolshevist’ and ‘Jews’ have become almost interchangeable and a keen American observer who has just returned from Russia is afraid above all that if Kolchak or any other military opponent of the Bolsheviki triumphed there would be such a slaughter of Jews as we have not yet seen. It must not be forgotten that at least two of the principal counselors of the Qual d’ Orsay on Polish and Russian affairs are notorious anti-Semites. The strange silence which has been preserved in the press upon the progroms which have already taken place is highly significant.” The correspondent quotes a provocative appeal from a Rumanian General to his troops, in which the statement was made: “The Jews have introduced terror and disorder and destroyed the Russian Army and assassinated the Russian Czar by the intermediary of their agitators - Lenin, Trotsky, Kerensky, and other Jewish chiefs. Hear, brother Christians! Rise like one man, and before the blood-stained Redeemer wash the Holy Cross with the innocent tears of widows and orphans! Victorious Christians, pray to God, and cleanse the Cross profaned by Judas when the enemies speaked like wolves into the heart of Bessarabia! Christian Rumanian troops precipitated into the Dniester all their enemies. His Majesty, Emperor Ferdinand l, when he learned these things, sent at once his army to defend the population and annihilate the enemy who had the intention of destroying the peaceful population.” The correspondent further says that when the question of founding a Jewish State was active before the Paris Conference, some of the strongest supporters of the Zionists were the violent anti-Semites, and that the reason for this apparent paradox was that the Russians, Poles, Ukrainians, Rumanians, Czechoslovaks, and others who have a Jewish population in their country, and who dislike that population, are only too anxious to get rid of the members of the race. If Palestine becomes the home of the Jews, he says, it is obvious that the Jew in European countries will be a foreigner. He argues that the founding of a Zionist nation means that the Polish Jew will be no loner a Pole, but simply a Jew. He will be expected to go to Palestine, and if he does not he may suffer deprivation of his rights in the lands in which he elects to live. The consequences, says The Gazette writer, can be easily imagined. So far from the status of the Jew being improved, it will be rendered intolerable. Ask Aid For Jews. Suffering in Poland “Tremendous,” Cables Hirschfeld. The following message, dated Warsaw, April 3, has been received by the Rev. Dr. H. Pereira Mendes, rabbi of the Spanish-Portuguese temple, Seventieth Street and Central Park West, from Isidore Hirschfeld, agent of the American Jewish Relief Fund, sent to Poland: Destitution and suffering in Poland tremendous. Urge America to help generously the needy ones here. Our paltry millions disgracefully insufficient. Hirschfeld Dr. Mendes said” “Since then, conditions have become worse through the cruelties and progroms of the Poles. Poland is now at the bar of the world’s judgment, for the world has to chose between Turkish atrocities in Armenia, German atrocities in Belgium, and Polish atrocities in Poland.” The Joint Distribution Committee of the American Funds for Jewish War Sufferers, of which Felix M. Warburg is Chairman, has received a cable from Paris announcing that the American Relief Administration has arranged special postal cards whereby people in Poland may communicate with relatives in America. These cards ultimately will reach the American Relief Administration in New York, and the Joint Distribution Committee will help find relatives in America whose addresses in many cases are unknown or have been changed since the war. This arrangement, perfected by the branch committee of the Joint Distribution Committee in Warsaw, of which Dr. Boris D. Bogen is the executive director, will make it unnecessary to continue registering the names of the persons in America who want to get in touch with relatives abroad. The registration of inquiries to be sent abroad in consequence, will be discontinued. | ||
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Extreme Veteran Posts: 562 | The following newspaper report was published in November, 1898 reporting an event which occurred in August, 1898. Although some of the concepts expressed and supported may not integrate well with Torah observant teaching, the report never the less is historic. To be posted in three parts: Harpers Weekly November 26, 1898 THE SECOND ZIONIST CONGRESS What a birthday party we have enjoyed! One year ago, on the closing day of the first Zionist congress, Dr. Theodor Herzl, author of Der Judenstaat and foremost in the leadership of the new Zion movement, casually remarked to a circle of friends: “The Roumanian Jews have long believed that the Messiah would be born on this day, the 29th of August. I now share their belief, for I too am persuaded that this day marks the birth of the Messiah, the dawn of the Messianic hope for my people.” In this wise the gifted standard-bearer of Zion silenced for all time the cavillings of those who had looked upon Herzl as a self-deluded pseudo-Messiah and, on the other hand, clearly proclaimed his personal conviction that Zionism was the - not a - solution of the Jewish question; that, in the memorable words of Max Nordau, “Der Zionismus ist die letzte, grosse moralische Anstrengung der Juden.” If, then, August 29, 1897, was the birthday of the Messiah, the 29th of August, 1898, may fairly be said to have been a glorious birthday feast. The former congress was convened in part in order that some estimate might be formed of the depth of sentiment in Jewry touched into life by the summons, “Let us journey back - in a higher sense, forward - to the land of our fathers.” In so far, therefore, the gathering of a twelve-month ago was experimental in respect of its plans of organization, and limited in the scope of its deliberations. So pronounced at the outset was this feeling of uncertainty as to the outcome, and insecurity as to the consequences, that the Russian delegates not unwisely refrained from public participation in the debates, fearful lest their eagerness to assist in the rebuilding of the Jewish nation might appear treasonable in the sight of the ever alert officials. One year had changed all this - in truth, one day, for ere the sun had set on the first day of the first congress a message had gone forth to the farthest ends of the earth, telling that this Jewish assembly, far from being an international conspiracy, was but the modern and popular expression of a noble and olden aim - the undying aspiration of the scattered remnants of a people to put an end to long centuries of sore travail and wandering and homelessness by creating a “Heimstatte” for themselves. And if one year ago the scorner was constrained to respectful silence by the dignity and fervor with which a “mercenary lot” pledged their devotion, like unto Arthurian knights, to the pursuit of an ideal, this year the would-be mockers were moved to admiration of the practical statesmanship with which these idealists had set about the realization of their hopes. One may have searched long and vainly for any sign of wavering or indefiniteness in the character of the second congress, for within a year Zionism had felt and tested and multiplied its own strength. The figures presented by the committee on organization were welcomed in proof of this, showing as they did that the number of organizations formally allied with the cause had increased nine fold within a few months. Statistics are scarce needed on this score, if we but think of the six million unhappy Jewish dwellers (citizens they are not) in Russia, Roumania, and Galicia alone, whom only the promise of release from persecution can save from the slough of abject despond by pointing comfortingly and encouragingly to the well-beloved home of their forebears. Of far greater moment than any witness to the spread of Zionism among the Jews is the proof, yielded in abundant measure at the various stages of the congress, that Zionism has not merely gained the friendly sympathy of the Christian world, but even arrested the attention of some of Europe’s crowned heads. No more watchful listener followed the proceeding of the congress than a certain visitor who is known to have been intrusted by his royal master, Emperor William of Germany, with the duty of preparing a report of the congress in all it many-sidedness. Again, on the last day of the congress, Dr. Herzl, in his official capacity as president of the congress, sent a message of congratulation to the Sultan of Turkey in honor of the celebration of his accession to the throne, to which the “Commander of the Faithful” immediately replied, by the hand of his Lord High Chamberlain, in terms most genial as compared with the ordinarily barren phrases of diplomacy. Will doubters now urge that Whlheim and Abdul-Hamid have likewise succumbed to the blandishments of the poetry and sentiment which are oft decried as the fatal charm of Zionism? We prefer to recall that these two rulers may some day cast the decisive vote in the settlement of one phase of the Eastern question. By reason of its situation, as well as its natural endowments, Palestine has been happily named “The Gateway of the East.” True, but the gate is shut and tightly barred. Who shall open it? The Turks? They lack the gift of initiative, as well as the genius of enterprise. They must be taught and trained to follow whither others have led. Shall the door be opened by one of the European powers? The proposition is unthinkable; against such aggrandizement an invincible concert of the nations would speedily array itself. Shall it not be left to the Jews to open that door, which has never been widely opened since it was closed against the outcasts of Judea? Inasmuch as Israel is destitute of ambition for temporal power or national supremacy, will not the Jewish reoccupation of Palestine be at one and the same time the simplest and noblest solution of one of the most perplexing phases of the great Eastern problem? To be continued. | ||
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Extreme Veteran Posts: 562 | Part Two Second Zionist Congress Harper’s Weekly November 26, 1898 We can do no more at this place than lightly touch upon the leading incidents which occurred in congress week; for although the delegates were nominally convened for three days, this the greatest synod of the Jews in the eighteen hundred years of the Diaspora, as the congress has justly been styled, lasted throughout the whole of the week, and even longer. On the Sunday prior to the actual assembling of the delegates the minister of the Anglican Church, who conducted services at the improvised chapel of a Basle hotel, pleaded earnestly and eloquently with his Christian hearers in behalf of Zionism. His stirring discourse derived a heightened interest from the frank admission on his part that he was born in Jerusalem, of Jewish-Christian parents, and had lived in the Holy Land until his nineteenth years. Sermon texts are not always of great moment-the personal testimony of a preacher-but the Rev. Mr. Schorr’s was of peculiar interest, seeing that his text was the twenty-first verse of the thirty-seventh chapter of the Prophet Ezekiel, which is engraved upon the reverse of the congress metal. [Poster’s note: A picture of both sides of the medal is drawn in the newspaper. The reverse side of the medal had this inscription “Behold, I will take the children of Israel from among the nations,….and bring them into their own land.”] How proud we were of this commemorative medal, partly because designed by a French Jewish Zionist and struck off in the mint of France (an act of rare and saving grace anno Dreyfus), furthermore because it so graphically illustrates the purpose of Zionism! The Genius of History points with hand uplifted to the sun of promise rising over the hills of Zion beyond the sea, and is evidently bent upon urging a typical Jewish family to heed the summons of destiny. The farther leans heavily upon his traveling-staff, the tragic symbol of his people’s lot; the mother holds an infant to her breast; some young children are near by; but the faces of all betoken the resolution to follow the bidding of the vision before them. Wednesday evening witnessed a splendid demonstration in honor of the arrival of Dr. Herzl. A hundred or more delegates waited at the railroad station for hours in a blinding rain-storm, the enthusiasm of the welcome being marred in slight degree by the failure of the party to have agreed in advance upon some common form of salutation. Master of a dozen tongues through he is, Dr. Herzl was for a moment bewildered by the Babel-like storm of greetings. This was perhaps the only occasion upon which the “polyglotism” of the delegates was noticeable. German, the Jewish Volapuk, was the official language, but Hebrew and French were heard on every hand, varied by the occasional accents of Russian, Polish, Roumanian, Arabic, English, Dutch, Italian, and Trukish, most or all of which tongues not a few delegates spoke with equal facility. The following days - Thursday, Friday, and Saturday - were given over to a multitude of preliminary conferences on the important questions of policy which it was known would arise. “Safety-valves” these forgatherings were called by a witty German jurist; “peace negotiations” by another, who was cognizant of the many differences to be healed prior to the assembling of the delegates. | ||
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Extreme Veteran Posts: 562 | Part Three - Second Zionist Congress Harper’s Weekly November 26, 1898 A seemingly trivial incident occurred on Friday evening, which afforded the deepest satisfaction to the lovers of Zion in Basle assembled. It was the twenty-sixth day of August, the feast of St. Jacques, in annual commemoration of the great national victory of 1444. As the holiday procession filed by the meeting place of the congress, the grotesquely attired lines paused under the blue and white flag of Zion unfurled for the first time from the balcony of the Stadt-Casino, and shouted aloud: “Hoch die Juden!” “Hoch die Zionisten!” Herzl was visibly moved by this show of good feeling, and in his presidential address rightly interpreted this friendly act as a sign of sympathy with the manly, outspoken stand taken by the Zionist in their determination to help themselves. On the Sabbath morning the stately synagogue of the town became the Mecca of the visitors. Favored, blessed shrine! Since last the pilgrims of Jerusalem offered up their prayers in the Temple of the Most High, no altar had sheltered such a body of worshippers, come together literally from the four corners of the earth. What rapt devotion! What tearful entreaty! What fervent thanksgiving! Within these walls there reigned no confusion of tongues, for the speech of the prophets and the sweet singers in Israel lived again. How these hosts thundered forth the Shemang Yisrael, Israel’s ancient declaration of faith in the unity of God! Instinctively the congregation rose in reverence as Herzl mounted the altar steps and stood with bowed head before the holy scroll of the Law; and as the “Vorbeter” chanted in a soft minor strain such passages as “Have Thou mercy on Zion, for it is the house of our life,” strong men covered their faces and silently wept. I must forbear to dwell upon the actual proceedings of the congress, and can do no more than make the briefest mention of the chief features of those eventful days. These were, though perhaps not in the order of their importance - first, the scenes of enthusiasm which were enacted at the close of the inaugural address of Herzl, and the incomparably fine review of the past year in Jewry by Dr. Nordau; second, the masterly summary of the aims of Zionism, in which Professor Mandelstamm, the eminent oculist of Kiev, proved the nearest task of Zionism to be the outbuilding of the physical and moral life of the Jewish people as the first step on the way to self-government; third, the tumultuous receptions again and again accorded Bernard Lazare, the French litterateur who paved the way for the revision of the Dreyfus case by burrowing out the proofs of the illegality of the trial and placing them in the hands of Scheurer-Kestner and Emile Zola-these scenes reaching a climax on the day following the adjournment of the congress, when the confession and suicide of Colonel Henry were announced; forth, the joyous acclaim with which the congress hailed the reading of the Czar’s proposal to call a conference of the powers, to the end that the peaceful offices of arbitration be substituted for the cruel arbitraments of war-the congress coupling with these congratulations the heartfelt prayer that the proposed conference deal in a spirit of wisdom and justice with the affairs of the afflicted Jews, and further the return to their ancestral home; fifth, the admirable paper, by Dr. Motzkin, based upon personal study and painstaking investigation, showing that the Holy Land, provided its resources were properly developed, could again be made to support a population of millions; sixth, the Fest-Commers of Monday night arranged by the young Zionists of Basle, at which, in true German-student fashion, goblets of Palestinian wine were emptied, amid the singing of tuneful Zion songs in classic Hebrew by a thousand voices and presentation of some simple plays, portraying side by side the helpless, wailing Jews of the old Zion and the sturdy, contented husbandmen of Zion the new; seventh, the high order of the post-prandial oratory at the luncheon of Tuesday, given in honor of the representatives of the press, upon which occasion Dr. Herzl, who is editor of the New Freie Presse of Vienna, proudly stated that his book calling attention to the “Judeneleud” the world over was put forth as the word of a journalist, for he conceived the office of journalism was to speak of the wrongs of to-day in order that they might be righted on the morrow; eighth, the matchless dignity and beauty of that early Wednesday morning hour when, after a practically continuous day and night sitting, Dr. Herzl brought the congress to a close with the words: “Zionism is both a mournful necessity and a glorious ideal. We are to journey henceforth along new paths; Judaism is about to set out upon a moral pilgrimage. Whither shall the way lead?…Let us hope for better and brighter days!” - cheers and sobs dying in the men’s throats as they beheld the first ray of the dawning day fall prophetically upon the noble countenance of their loved leader, and light up a large map of the land of promise hanging overhead. Last post of this report to be continued. | ||
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