Thoughts
MONTHLY MIX uF
A
George Cantor's Reality Check column will return next week
Defiance Now
E
veryone likes a good underdog
story. We can envision David with
his slingshot, striking Goliath with
a stone at his head.
When Tuvia Bielski and his brothers
fought to survive in the movie Defiance, I felt
an exhilarating sense of emotional release.
How often do we feel the justice of revenge in
books and movies about the Holocaust?
Revenge as depicted in the movie and
books, Defiance: The Bielski Partisans by
Neshama Tec and The Bielski Brothers by
Peter Duffy, is simply the act of survival. The
oldest brother, Tuvia, wrote that he would
rather "save one old Jewish woman than kill
10 German soldiers',' and it was this belief
that helped spare more than 1,200 Jews
from certain extermination.
The Bielski brothers were certainly
not the only Jewish heroes to fight Nazi
persecution. I learned of another tale
of defiance when Michael Bart came to
the Jewish Community Center for the
November Jewish Book Fair to discuss
Until Our Last Breath: A Holocaust Story
of Love and Partisan Resistance (Michael
Bart and Laurel Corona, St. Martin's
Press.)
This incredible real-life biography (rath-
er than the semi-fictional saga of Herman
and Roma Rosenblat) should have been
featured by Oprah as the "greatest love
beaten-down underdogs, deserving
story" from the Holocaust.
justice and land.
Michael Bart discovered
What so many around the world
after his father's death that his
fail to realize is that Hamas and
parents, Leizer and Zenia Bart,
its benefactor, Iran, are simply the
had been married during the
latest persecutors of Jews. They
last remaining days before the
have a grand vision which is very
liquidation of the Vilna ghetto
simple: the complete extermination
and had fought together in the
of Israel.
underground resistance. He
Israel is the natural extension
spent 10 years researching the
Arnold Go Idman
of the Bielski partisans and the
history of his parents' partici-
Avengers as they continue to face
pation in the Jewish partisan
the struggle to survive. All the
fighting group, the Avengers
criticisms from the world press fail
(the Freedom Fighters of
to
stop
Israel
from its primary mission: to
Nekamah,) led by Abba Kovner.
survive,
to
live.
The Avengers lived in the Rudnicki
We in the United States who support
forest and carried out sabotage missions
Israel
must defiantly defend them in
against the Nazi army. They destroyed
their
quest
to survive. We may pray that
train tracks, supply and communication
good
will
triumph,
but we can't afford
lines used by the Nazis and fought along-
to
be
naive.
Intense
pressures on every
side Russian soldiers in the battle for Vilna
nation
are
mounting
as the world's banks
of July 1944. The liberation of Vilna took
implode,
companies
and
states face
over a week and left 8,000 Germans dead
impending
bankruptcies,
more people lose
while the rest fled Vilna and Lithuania.
their
jobs,
and
the
United
States govern-
Why are these Holocaust stories of fight-
ment
tries
to
rescue
the
sinking
economy
ing for freedom and life so important now?
with
even
more
massive
deficit
spending.
Look to Israel and its struggle to survive.
If the world falls into further economic
Hamas celebrates its semi-delusional"victo-
disarray, will political chaos follow as it
ry" by continuing to send rockets into Israel.
Yet the United Nations and most of the world did in Germany in the 1930s? Imagine the
consequences today if Iran, North Korea,
look at Israel as the evil Goliath and empa-
thize with Hamas and the Palestinians as the Pakistan or Russia strikes out with nuclear
weapons or we have another terrorist attack.
Could this lead to another world war?
We can learn a lot from those who
fought to survive the Holocaust, those
who had to face the most devastating
conditions imaginable and somehow per-
severed. We must be ready for hard times
but we must defy our anxiety. What good
is it to be paralyzed by worry?
We who have lost our jobs or fear los-
ing them should think about the Barts
and Bielskis in the darkness of the forest,
facing hunger and terror. They didn't lose
faith in themselves or stop believing that
what they were doing was right. They
fought through despair and misery and
kept going, defying all those who wanted
to destroy them.
We need defiance now. We need to
defy apathy and the power of fear. If the
paralysis of despair arrives, we need to be
productive and stay optimistic that we can
defiantly overcome any obstacle.
Imagine what the Bielski partisans and
Leizer and Zenia Bart faced in the for-
est in their days of defiance. Think about
these words of inspiration from the battle
regulations of the freedom fighters: "We
shall continue until the last breath! And
perhaps — until light." ❑
Arnold Goldman is a Farmington Hills resident.
Israeli Election Memories
F
ollowing closely and with great
trepidation the results of Israel's
elections to the 18th Knesset,
with the paper ballots carrying the different
Hebrew alphabet letter signifying the vari-
ous parties, I couldn't but remember the first
elections in the history of the state.
The first elections took place in Jan. 25,
1949, with the active participation of half
a million citizens who voted for 12 parties.
Then, on Feb. 14, the forerunner of the cur-
rent Knesset, which was called the Steering
Assembly, convened; after the singing of
"Hatikvah," the 120 members were sworn in.
Two days hence, the name Knesset became
official.The following day, the first president,
the famous Zionist leader and scientist Dr.
Chaim Weizmann, was sworn in as the first
president of the Jewish state.
Later, on March 18, Prime Minister David
Ben-Gurion presented his cabinet to the
Knesset, composed of 12 ministers. Moshe
Sharet was the country's first foreign min-
ister and Ben-Gurion retained the defense
portfolio for himself. Golda Meir, later to
become foreign minister and prime minister,
was the first diplomatic envoy
of the country to the then Soviet
Union.
What I remember mostly
were the elections themselves.
No, I wasn't eligible to vote; I was
only 10 then, but my mother
and father were eligible. How
proud and emotional they were
to be participating in the first
elections of the state they helped
create.
It was a holiday from school
and work, so my parents, chalut-
zim (pioneers) who came in the Third Aliyah
(wave of immigration) of the early 1920s,
wanted my sister Shula and me to take part
in the momentous event. We all walked to
the school, which became a polling place
for the day; we stood in the long line of very
noisy and excited people waiting for their
turn to vote. We were not the only children
in line; some other parents wanted to take
the children in order for them to witness this
historic once-in-a-lifetime event. When their
turn came, they went in and disappeared
behind the curtain and voted.
We went back home as my father
explained to us as best as he could
what it was all about and how
significant.
However, the first time that I
voted was in November 1959, a
mere month after my wedding.
It was an unscheduled elec-
tion, as most Israeli elections
are — brought on by a crisis in
the government. We lived in the
doctors' residences of the Assaf
HaRofeh government hospital
Tzrifin (Sarafend), where my husband, Shelly,
did his internship. Being that I was still reg-
istered in my hometown of Bat Yam, I went
there to vote. I was proud and excited to vote
in my former elementary school alongside
my parents, but it hardly measured up to the
emotionality marking their own first vot-
ing 10 years before. In two years, there was
another election; I performed this act of civic
duty in Jerusalem where we lived at the time.
Now, there are more than seven times the
number of Israeli citizens, and just as many
pieces of paper to signify the parties, yet
the parties are very different. But one thing
didn't change: Voting is the most important
manifestation of a democratic country.
Although for Israeli-born citizens, voting
may be taken for granted, it isn't for the
many who emigrated from the former Soviet
Union, where they were unable to do so.
Since coming to the U.S. years back, I
had the chance to vote in the Israeli elec-
tions when they happened to be during the
summer when I visited the country, as I did
almost every year with the children when my
dear parents were alive. I still had my iden-
tity card and made sure I was still registered.
I was so proud to go to the polling place,
then in Bat Yam, together with my mother.
My father, Yosef, the greatest patriot I knew,
wasn't with us anymore, so I remember my
mother saying she has to vote for him, too,
something he was always so proud doing.
Whether in the United States or Israel,
two great democracies, voting should not
be taken for granted. LI
Rachel Kapen is a West Bloomfield resident.
February 26 • 2009
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