Gallipoli, Warsaw and Jerusalem and the Arc of Jewish History
We are currently in the midst of four important days in our modern history as Jews and as Australians.
Rabbi Dr Benjamin Elton
We have just observed Yom HaShoah. It is the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which took place exactly eighty years ago. Next comes ANZAC day, when we honour the memory of all those who have fought for Australia and think particularly of the first ANZACs at Gallipoli. Yom HaZikaron, the memorial day for Israel’s soldiers and civilians, falls this year on ANZAC Day and is followed immediately by Yom Haatzmaut, Israeli Independence Day. If we take the three days of memorial: Yom HaShoah, especially as the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, ANZAC Day and Yom HaZikaron, I think we can perceive an arc in modern Jewish history.
Let us begin chronologically with the Jews who fought for Australia and its allies in the First World War. Many Jews served, indeed, it is well known that a higher proportion of Jews signed up to fight for Australia in the First World War than from any other community. Most remarkably, the First World War saw, for the first time in modern history, a small number of Jews fighting as Jews. In 1915, the British Army raised the Zion Mule Corp to serve as a transportation unit in Gallipoli. From 1917 onwards, five Jewish battalions were recruited as part of the Royal Fusiliers, and they were referred to as the Jewish Legion. They fought for the British, inspired by the promise in the Balfour Declaration that there would be a Jewish national home in Eretz Yisrael. In 1919 they became the First Judeans, with their own insignia. These were the first Jewish military units to exist in modern times. They fought bravely and successfully in the Battles of Jerusalem and Megiddo in the last two years of the War. They showed that Jews could fight and win under a Jewish flag.
Twenty-five years later, Jews fought again, this time against their own destruction and that of their families. The Warsaw Ghetto was established in late 1940 and housed approximately four hundred thousand Jews. From July until September 1942, there were mass deportations from the Ghetto to Treblinka and killings within the Ghetto. By early 1943 there were only around eighty thousand Jews left inside. Although the deportations were disguised as resettlement operations, the Jews in the Ghetto knew the truth, and in response, they formed two armed units, the Jewish Combat Organization and the Jewish Military Unit, from the right wing. After some tensions, they began to work together. They had between them seven hundred and fifty fighters, and they received a limited number of weapons from the Polish military underground.
Mass deportations from the Ghetto resumed in January 1943, but this time there was organised resistance and the deportations were suspended. Encouraged, some Jews started to prepare for an uprising. Just before Pesach 1943, the Jews became aware that the Nazis were preparing to resume deportations, this time using much greater force. Jewish fighters struck and forced the Germans to retreat outside the Ghetto walls. The Jewish resistance held out for twenty-seven days. In the end, the only way the Germans could assert total control was to demolish the entire Ghetto, building by building.
The Ghetto was destroyed, and the Warsaw Great Synagogue was blown up as a symbol of the Nazi victory. Militarily, and in the short term, it was a victory, but a hollow one. A few hundred malnourished, untrained and poorly equipped Jews had held out against the might of the Nazi military machine for almost a month. They knew they would lose and they knew they would die, but they died as heroes and they inspired others elsewhere to resist. As the leader of the Uprising, Mordechai Anielewicz wrote in his last letter from the Ghetto: ‘the dream of my life has risen to become fact. Self-defence in the ghetto will have been a reality. Jewish armed resistance and revenge are facts. I have been a witness to the magnificent, heroic fighting of Jewish men in battle.’ The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising showed that Jews could fight to defend themselves, even if they could not win.
Just a few years after the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, and the worst horrors of the Shoah, Jews were fighting again, not just for their lives but for their nation and State. The Jewish military efforts from 1947 to 1949 brought the State of Israel into existence. That had to be defended again in every decade since from one form of threat or another, with tragic loss of life, tragic but nevertheless infused with profound dignity, derived from a noble cause: ‘liyot am chofshi be’artseinu’, to be a free people in our own land.
Civilians have also laid down their lives, and they are heroes too; they died because they insisted on living, or in some cases just visiting, Israel as Jews, proud and determined to walk in their own land whatever the dangers might be. Equally heroic has been the search for peace, an endeavour that cost Yitzchak Rabin his life and still requires courage and vision, and above all hope, and remains the unfinished business of the State of Israel.
What is the Jewish trajectory over the past century? First, we fought for others in the hope of their goodwill and help, then we fought for ourselves but were doomed to defeat, but finally, in 1948 and since, we have fought for ourselves, and we have won. The State of Israel came into existence and still exists, and that is what winning means. The commemorations of ANZAC Day, of Yom HaShoah and of Yom HaZikaron are, therefore, all important but rather different. On ANZAC Day we remember Australians, among them Jews who served and died, in some cases inspired by a Jewish cause, but as units in a non-Jewish army. On Yom HaShoah we remember those who died simply because they were Jews, some fighting back, and others who did not even have the opportunity to do that.
All that changed in 1948. Everyone who died for the reality and security of the State of Israel died in a different way to those who came before them. I think that is best expressed in the story of Rabbi Yisrael Zeev Gustman and Professor Yisrael Aumann. Rav Gustman came from Vilna after the Shoah and settled in Jerusalem. He taught a public Talmud class once a week, attended by Professor Aumann of the Hebrew University. In 1982, Professor Aumann’s son Shlomo was killed in the Lebanon War. Rav Gustman went to the funeral and then to the Aumann shiva house where he asked to sit next to Professor Aumann, and told him his story:
‘I had a son named Meir. He was a beautiful child. He was taken from my arms and executed. I escaped. My Meir is a kadosh, he is holy, he and all the six million who perished are holy. I will tell you what is transpiring now in Gan Eden. My Meir is welcoming your Shlomo into the minyan and is saying to him ‘I died because I am a Jew, but I wasn’t able to save anyone else. But you Shlomo, you died defending the Jewish People and the Land of Israel.’ My Meir is a kadosh, he is holy, but your Shlomo is the chazzan in that holy, heavenly minyan’.
We read in the Haftarah for Shabbat Rosh Chodesh these lines from Isaiah:
I will set a sign among them, and send from them survivors to the nations…that have never heard My fame nor beheld My glory. They shall declare My glory among these nations. And out of all the nations, said the Lord, they shall bring all your brothers on horses, in chariots and drays, on mules and camels, to Jerusalem My holy mountain.
The words of the prophet have been fulfilled. We were scattered among the nations for two thousand years and we survived. In the twentieth century, we learned how to fight, hoping our national aspirations would be fulfilled. We fought again for ourselves when we were on the verge of annihilation and a third time to bring our efforts for a State to fruition with our own hands. We have now come to Jerusalem on horses and in chariots, and God’s glory is known amongst the nations.
After Yom HaZikaron comes Yom Haatzmaut. We will move from mourning the loss to celebrating the achievement and express the eternal Jewish hope for the day when there will be nothing to fear and no need to fight when we will enjoy the double blessing ‘the Lord will give strength to His people, the Lord will bless His people with peace’.
Rabbi Dr Benjamin Elton is the Chief Minister of Sydney’s The Great Synagogue.
Thank you for the linkage of those four important days, Rabbi Elton, which enables a synthesis of being both Jewish and Australian, and indeed Australian-Israeli in citizenship.