December 21, 2024

1. Salgado

The Salt of the Earth is a 2014 documentary about the Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado. I recommend it highly. It follows Salgado as he journeys to Rwanda, Bosnia, and other places of war and suffering. Finally, Salgado despairs of the human race, and gives up photography.

He goes home to the family farm in Brazil, which has become a wasteland, seared by drought, trampled by cattle. He and his wife bring the farm to life by planting trees, and they develop techniques for re-foresting barren places; the family farm becomes a verdant national park.

Salgado’s faith in the world is restored, and he takes up his camera again. He travels the world, and publishes Genesis, a collection of photos of unspoiled places.

Here are three of Salgado’s photos:

 


Gold miners in Brazil

 


Brooks Range, Alaska

In an earlier issue, I said that Werner Herzog attained the sublime in his films. Salgado attains the sublime in his photos.

2. Churchill

Churchill At War is a new, 4-hour Netflix series that reviews Churchill’s life, and reviews World War II. It’s an excellent documentary, a good mix of human drama and historical detail.

Churchill’s mother had an active social life, and paid little attention to her son. Churchill probably felt that he had an unhappy childhood, like his famous ancestor, Marlborough. In his book on Marlborough, Churchill said that an unhappy childhood can give one “that ruthless fixity of purpose... without which great actions are seldom accomplished.”1

Churchill felt from a young age that he was destined for greatness, destined to save Britain. Hitler had a similar sense of destiny, and for both Churchill and Hitler, this vague feeling was borne out by events.

Churchill often took chances, courted danger. As a young man, he served in the British cavalry in India and Sudan. He liked to ride a white horse, hoping to attract attention, even if it meant attracting enemy fire. During The Blitz (the German bombing of London), Churchill often watched from a rooftop, instead of taking cover underground.

He sought glory, especially battlefield glory. “I was eager for trouble,” Churchill wrote, “there was not an instant to lose.” He was confident that his destiny would protect him. He wrote, “If my destiny has not already been accomplished, I shall be guarded surely.” Considering how many dangers he survived, it seems that he was indeed “guarded” by Fate.

Churchill didn’t calculate his next move, he felt that survival and success depended, not on calculation, but on destiny. He said, “It is all chance or destiny, and our wayward footsteps are best planted without too much calculation.” Notice that he doesn’t believe entirely in destiny, he speaks of “chance or destiny.” The human mind can’t completely grasp the idea of destiny. Churchill believed that destiny existed, that destiny was an important force in the world, but he couldn’t completely grasp it, so he hedges his bets, he speaks of “chance or destiny.” If destiny rules everything, we shouldn’t waste time calculating, but if chance has an important role, we should calculate the various chances.

One of the historians featured in the documentary is Andrew Roberts, author of Churchill: Walking with Destiny, which is often called the best Churchill biography.

* * * * *

Like so many historical concepts, the concept of the Iron Curtain is ambiguous, and lacks clear boundaries. In 1946, Churchill said,

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an Iron Curtain has descended across the continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe — Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest, Sofia — all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere.

But Vienna, and the rest of Austria, were never firmly in the Soviet sphere, and Austria became a neutral nation during the Cold War. Stettin (now known as Szczecin) is in northwest Poland, but the Iron Curtain was along the western border of East Germany, far to the west of Stettin. Churchill’s “Stettin to Trieste” puts Yugoslavia behind the Iron Curtain, but Yugoslavia’s position in the Cold War was ambiguous, it wasn’t in the Warsaw Pact, it was non-aligned.

3. Films

A. Mon Oncle Antoine is about small-town Quebec around 1940. It’s considered a classic Canadian film, and it earned high praise from Roger Ebert. It’s a tasteful and true movie, I recommend it. It has little plot, so it’s not a favorite with the public.

B. The Conversation is a 1974 film, written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. It’s considered a classic, and receives high marks from both critics and the public. It’s about spying, eavesdropping. Roger Ebert said that The Conversation “comes from another time and place than today’s thrillers, which are so often simple-minded.”

I thought The Conversation had an ugly, sordid atmosphere; it lacks any hint of nature or culture; this sordid quality seems to be characteristic of American movies. But it could be argued that the spy-protagonist, played by Gene Hackman, is a sympathetic character who becomes emotionally involved in the people he’s taping, wants to do the right thing, and regrets an earlier episode in which his tape led to multiple murders; he even confesses his misdeeds to a priest. One might compare the “Hackman character” to the spy-protagonist of The Lives of Others, who becomes emotionally involved in the people he’s taping, and tries to help them.

4. Caratunk

I walked recently at Caratunk, an Audubon refuge in Seekonk MA. When you spend time outdoors, you often see something unexpected. I saw two raccoons about 60 feet up in a tree, perhaps 250 feet away from me. The smaller raccoon had apparently retreated into the tree, and gone far out on a limb, to avoid the larger one. The larger one pursued and attacked.

After fighting fiercely for some time, the smaller one fell 60 feet to the ground, landing hard. I expected that he would never rise again, but he walked away rather casually, as if he took such falls every day. He made his way to a nearby stream. Was he wounded, and did he feel that the water would help his wounds?

After a few minutes, the larger raccoon approached the smaller one, who was still in the icy water of the stream. The smaller one made no effort to run away. Another fight ensued. Again I thought the smaller one wouldn’t survive, again he walked away rather casually.

What was the cause of this brutal clash? Was the larger raccoon a parent, trying to drive a teenager out of the den? Would that explain why the smaller one didn’t run away from his attacker?

Dozens of raccoons in my area have recently been euthanized, they were sick with distemper. Distemper produces effects similar to rabies, but unlike rabies, it can’t be transmitted to people. Could an illness have triggered the fight that I saw?

5. Angela Duckworth on Grit

Angela Duckworth is a psychology professor at Penn. She’s popularized the concept of grit, she views grit as an important ingredient of success. Grit is perseverance, determination. I recommend Duckworth’s 6-minute TED Talk about grit.

Duckworth says, “Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term goals. Grit is living life like it’s a marathon, not a sprint.” She says we’ve made many studies of intelligence and talent, but we’ve neglected character-traits like industry and tenacity. Duckworth wrote a bestseller called Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance.

Duckworth says that she doesn’t know how to develop grit in young people. She says we need to find the secret for developing grit, we need to persevere, we need to be gritty at studying grit.

In addition to her 6-minute talk, she also gave an 18-minute talk, which reviews the literature on the subject. She discusses an essay by William James called “The Energies of Men.” While Freud focused on the unconscious, William James was more apt to study ego, personality, character, habit.

James says we have a considerable amount of energy that generally goes un-used: “Men habitually use only a small part of the powers which they actually possess and which they might use under appropriate conditions.... The human individual thus lives usually far within his limits; he possesses powers of various sorts which he habitually fails to use.”

Perhaps we can define the gritty person as one who taps his reserves of energy, one who tries harder for longer. James says that we call on our energy-reserves when “some unusual stimulus fills [us] with emotional excitement, or some unusual idea of necessity induces [us] to make an extra effort of will.”

After discussing William James, Duckworth turns to Francis Galton, a relative of Darwin who wrote a book called Hereditary Genius. Galton said that genius is one-third talent, one-third passion, and one-third diligence. Darwin responded, I thought genius was all about passion and diligence but maybe there’s a small role for talent. Darwin thought that his own genius had little to do with talent; he thought that his mind was ordinary.

Then Duckworth turns to Catharine Cox Miles, author of Genetic Studies of Genius: The Early Mental Traits of Three Hundred Geniuses (1926). Miles emphasized the will-power and perseverance of genius; she said that geniuses don’t like change for the sake of change, they don’t go in a new direction for the sake of newness, and they don’t abandon tasks because of obstacles.

In my writings on genius, I’ve often mentioned energy, and I’ve rarely mentioned intelligence. Here’s a paragraph from my Dickens essay:

In my chapter on genius, I noted that genius has “exceptional passion and energy.” In David Copperfield, Dickens speaks of his “patient and continuous energy.” He describes how he developed the habit of hard work, and how “my success had steadily increased with my steady application.”

Dickens had grit, he treated life like a marathon, not a sprint.

In an earlier issue, I discussed the perseverance of Ulysses Grant:

One of Grant’s most salient traits was his willpower, his determination. A Union officer said, “He habitually wears an expression as if he had determined to drive his head through a brick wall, and was about to do it.... His face had three expressions: deep thought; extreme determination; and great simplicity and calmness.”

Grant seemed to take pride in his willpower, and to enjoy exercising it. “One of my superstitions [Grant wrote] had always been when I started to go anywhere, or to do anything, not to turn back, or stop until the thing intended was accomplished. I have frequently started to go to places where I had never been and to which I did not know the way, depending upon making inquiries on the road, and if I got past the place without knowing it, instead of turning back, I would go on until a road was found turning in the right direction, take that, and come in by the other side.”

Kipling shows us grit in his famous poem “If”:

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

I find Duckworth’s “grit theory” congenial. I even think of life in the same phrases that she uses, such as “a marathon not a sprint.”

6. Jewish History

A. Jews in the Soviet Union

After World War I, Jewish emancipation (legal and political equality) seemed to be the order of the day. In post-war Germany, Austria, and Britain, Jews attained high positions.

The Soviet Union established Jewish agricultural colonies in Ukraine, Crimea, and elsewhere; a Jewish province, Birobidzhan, was established in Siberia. (Today the Jewish population of Birobidzhan is almost zero.) Were these agricultural colonies an attempt to compete with Palestine?

In general, Jews didn’t flourish in the Soviet Union. They had long been traders, middle-men — the very people that Communism set its face against. It was difficult for Jews to adjust to a nation of factory-workers and farm-workers. “The Soviet system was in some ways even more disastrous to Jewish life than its Czarist precursor had been. The intensely individualistic Jewish nature was alien to the new scheme of things.... A very large proportion [of Soviet Jews] remained for a long while absolutely destitute.”

Roth says that Soviet Jews couldn’t maintain their traditions, their sense of identity. Hebrew was discouraged, synagogues were converted into clubs, circumcision was discouraged, inter-marriage “went on at an alarming pace... assimilation in the completest sense became rampant.” I met a Jewish-Russian woman who said that her Jewishness was nothing but a word on her passport.

Roth says that Soviet Jews were “lacking every spiritual bond, and deprived of that sense of communion with the past which forms the justification and the inspiration of nationhood.” Does Roth over-emphasize the past? Is life actually more about the future than the past? Is a nation a plan for the future, more than a memory of the past? Do conservative Jews, like Roth, focus too much on preserving tradition for the sake of preserving?

In recent issues, I discussed Belloc’s view of Jews, and Churchill’s view of Jews. Both Belloc and Churchill felt that Jews were blamed for Marxism and the Russian Revolution. Hitler blamed Jews for the spread of the Communist menace. In other words, anti-Semitism and anti-Communism went hand-in-hand during the 1920s.

Roth makes a similar point. He says that, though Jews didn’t flourish under Bolshevism, they were blamed for Bolshevism, partly because many Soviet leaders and bureaucrats were Jewish, partly because the father of Communism, Karl Marx, was Jewish. Roth points out that Marx was “baptized in childhood, brought up as a Christian, and attacked both Jews and Judaism fiercely in his writings.”

B. Anti-Semitism After World War I

Roth says that, in the wake of World War I, anti-Semitism grew. “Everywhere, Jew and Bolshevik were taken to be synonymous terms.... Largely in consequence of this, or at least using it as pretext, a wave of anti-Semitism swept throughout the western world.” Anti-Semitism was fed by “nationalist passions” and “war-time hysteria.” Countries on the losing side of the war blamed Jews for their defeat; countries on the winning side blamed Jews for denying them the fruits of victory. Jews were accused of having caused the war in order to profit from it. Anti-Semitic texts, like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, circulated widely (Protocols was first published in Russia in 1903, and first translated into English after World War I).

Roth says there was some anti-Semitism in England and the U.S. In the U.S., the Ku Klux Klan opposed Blacks, Catholics, and Jews. Henry Ford “believed every charge made against the Jew, and even went so far as to subsidize anti-Semitic publications.”

Far more severe was EasternEuropean anti-Semitism. There were 35 Jews in the first Polish Assembly or “Sjem,” but that number was gradually reduced to 4. Throughout Eastern Europe, the percentage of Jews in universities was restricted, usually to the percentage of Jews in the general population. Jewish shops were often forced to close on Sunday, though they had already closed for the Jewish Sabbath on Saturday.

The EasternEuropean nations had pledged, during the post-war peace talks, to respect Minority Rights, but these pledges were often ignored. “The Romanian Government remained profoundly anti-Jewish.” In 1930, the Depression began, and “disproportionately affected the Jewish middle-man; and in eastern Europe pauperization set in on an alarming scale.”

In post-war Germany, Jews were resented for their success and influence. “Even Albert Einstein... drew upon himself a continual stream of obloquy by reason of his race. The anti-Semitic outcry against Walter Rathenau, the Minister for Reconstruction, who more than any other person was responsible for the rehabilitation of the country after the war, culminated in 1922 in his assassination.”

The Nazis blamed Jews for Germany’s ills, and forecast happier times if Jewish influence was reduced. But the Nazis might not have gained power if the Depression hadn’t reduced many Germans to desperate straits. Once Hitler reached power in 1933, Jews were persecuted throughout Germany. Roth writes,

Physicians and lawyers were permitted to practice only in proportion to the numbers of the Jewish population, and later, only among Jews. [Jewish] businesses were boycotted, with official sanction and encouragement.... Buying from, and selling to, Jews was stigmatized as an act of treachery to the Fatherland.... For the first time in history, the persecution extended not merely to those who professed the Jewish religion, but to all, however devout in their Christianity, in whose veins any Jewish blood was to be traced, for three or four generations.

At first, people thought that the wave of anti-Semitism would eventually die down, and things would return to normal. But instead of dying down, it intensified. The Nazis enriched themselves by confiscating Jewish property. Positions that had once been filled by Jews were given to Nazi followers. Roth summarizes the plight of German Jews in 1935: “A community of over half a million souls, comprising one of the most vital sections of civilized humanity, suddenly found the ground cut from under their feet, with no prospect of security and diminishing hopes of earning a livelihood in the land where their ancestors had been settled for centuries.”

In the first year after Hitler reached power, 70,000 Jews emigrated from Germany. Many of these emigrants were highly-educated professionals. Emigration wasn’t easy since the Depression had increased unemployment, and many countries were reluctant to take in job-seekers.

C. Palestine After World War I

But there was one country that was experiencing a “wave of prosperity”: Palestine. Many German Jews had dismissed the Zionist dream of a Jewish state, but once Hitler came to power, Palestine looked increasingly attractive. By 1940, there were 500,000 Jews in Palestine, of whom 150,000 lived in Tel Aviv, and another 150,000 lived in rural communities and tilled the soil. “No longer was it possible to talk of the Zionist experiment: it had become a reality.”

In 1936, however, there was an Arab insurrection, accompanied by a General Strike, a policy of “non-cooperation with the Government,” and a “boycott of the Jews.” The government of Palestine, at this time, was British, and the British were finding it impossible to satisfy both Arabs and Jews.

The Jewish response to the 1936 Arab insurrection was “a policy of non-reprisal.” The Arabs were attacking Jews in the cities and in the countryside; the Arabs were also attacking moderate Arabs. Roth says that the Arab insurrection was fomented by Fascist Italy, which wanted to cause trouble for the British in the Middle East, and wanted to ingratiate themselves with Muslims.

The British were at their wits’ end; they could see that “Mandatory Palestine” was a mess. So they proposed a partition of Palestine into two separate countries — one for Arabs, one for Jews. The British would continue to govern Jerusalem and some other places. Roth complains that the Jewish state “was to extend to only some 2,000 square miles (less than one-fifth of the total area of the country, already truncated by the loss of the wide expanses of Transjordan in 1923).”

Furthermore, the shape of the Jewish state was strange: “it was to be confined to Galilee and sprawling tentacles in the already highly-colonized plains.” If Mandatory Palestine was a mess, the proposed two-state Palestine was messy, too. Roth calls the proposed Jewish state “Zionism without Zion.”

But for Jews, two-state Palestine had one big attraction: as the leaders of their own sovereign state, they could make their own immigration policy, they could admit Jewish refugees without limit. And as a result of the Holocaust, there was a desperate need for a refuge for Jewish refugees.

So in 1937, after heated discussion at a Zionist Congress, Jewish leaders decided to accept the concept of partition, while hoping to enlarge their state at the negotiating table. Arab leaders, however, flatly rejected the partition proposal.

So the British abandoned the idea of partition, and in 1939, the British drew up a “White Paper,” which called for strict limits on Jewish immigration, limits on Jewish land-purchases, British withdrawal in 1949, and an independent Palestine, “with its Jews a perpetual minority.” Roth calls this plan “a far, far cry from the golden promise of the Balfour Declaration.”

Perhaps the White Paper of 1939 was inspired by a British desire to improve relations with Arab states; Arab states might play a significant role if a big war broke out, as seemed increasingly likely. Jewish leaders were unhappy with the White Paper, and Jewish paramilitary organizations (like Irgun and Haganah) redoubled their efforts to bring Jews into Palestine (this illicit immigration is called “Aliyah Bet”).

D. Jews in Nazi Germany

After Hitler came to power in 1933, pro-German, anti-Semitic parties arose in many countries. There was the British Union of Fascists, the Silver Shirts in the U.S., the Action Française in France, etc. In Eastern Europe, Nazi ideas were popular, partly because Germany was viewed as an enlightened country in the vanguard of civilization, partly because Hitler seemed to be going from success to success. Anti-Semitic policies made headway in Romania, Hungary, and Poland.

In Italy, anti-Semitic policies made no headway until the late 1930s. After 1870, Italy had been “the classical land of Jewish Emancipation... where Jewish equality had been more of a political and social reality than anywhere else in the world.” Even after the Fascists came to power in 1922, Jews weren’t persecuted; indeed, Jews “played an important part in the [Fascist] movement from the beginning, and Benito Mussolini had condemned Jew-baiting and racialism in biting terms.” In 1938, however, Italy formed an alliance with Germany, and began pursuing anti-Semitic policies, leading to the emigration of many Italian Jews (there were about 50,000 Jews in Italy prior to this emigration; Jews made up .1% of the Italian population).

In Austria, there were some 200,000 Jews, “mostly concentrated in the highly-cultured community of Vienna.” In 1938, Nazi Germany took over Austria. “Prominent Jews, beginning with the head of the House of Rothschild, were arrested wholesale for no reason other than that they were Jews, brutally maltreated and thrust into concentration camps from which many never returned.... Suicides rose to an appalling level.”

In Germany itself, about 12,000 Jews of Polish origin were pushed over the Polish border in October 1938. Poland didn’t accept these Jews, so they were stuck along the border in difficult conditions. A Jewish couple named Grynszpan was in the group. “Their seventeen-year-old son Herschel, who was in Paris, was half demented by what he heard, and as a reprisal shot and fatally wounded one of the Secretaries of the German Embassy, Ernst vom Rath.”

This shooting occurred on November 9, 1938. It touched off a wave of anti-Semitic rioting in Germany, rioting that was dubbed Kristallnacht, after the broken glass that littered the streets. Some 30,000 German Jews were sent to concentration camps, and the German-Jewish community was fined 1 billion marks for the killing of vom Rath. “German Jewry was wantonly, deliberately, and irrevocably smashed. A shudder of horror went through the civilized world. The pogrom was condemned by the British Prime Minister in the House of Commons, and the American Ambassador was recalled from Berlin.”

After Kristallnacht, it was clear that Jews couldn’t remain in Germany. When German Jews emigrated, they were taxed heavily; Roth says that emigrants left Germany with only 5% of their property. They struggled to find a country that would accept them. “Refugee-laden vessels, seeking a port where they might discharge their cargo of misery, became familiar on the maritime highways of the world; and tens of thousands went to places (such as Shanghai) where for the moment a visa was unnecessary or there was no immigration control.”

By 1939, half of Germany’s Jews had emigrated, while the other half was still in Germany (when Hitler came to power in 1933, there were about 500,000 Jews in Germany, or .75% of the German population). But while Jews were leaving Germany, German expansion into Czechoslovakia etc. was bringing more Jews under Nazi control. Roth concludes this chapter (and concludes the 1943 edition of his book) by saying, “Never could there have been more comfort in the prophetic teaching, which is the essential teaching of Judaism — that, however dark the future may seem and however long tribulation may endure, in the end unrighteousness cannot prevail.”

On September 1 1939, the Germans invaded Poland; two weeks later, the Russians invaded Poland from the east; and two weeks after that, Polish resistance was overcome. Germany and Russia divided Poland between them. Roth says that the German sector of Poland had “upwards of 2,000,000 Jews.” Polish Jews were subject to various forms of persecution, and many were killed outright; “life became a perpetual nightmare.” The food ration for Polish Jews was only half of the ration for Polish Christians, which in turn was half of the ration for “Teutons.”2

In the fall of 1940, ghettoes were built at Warsaw and Lodz. The Warsaw ghetto had more than 350,000 Jews at its inception; this number soon rose to 500,000, and the ghetto became “unbelievably overcrowded.” Typhus and other diseases were rampant. You needed special permission to leave the ghetto; it was a kind of prison. One of the few businesses that ghetto-residents engaged in was tailoring for the Germany Army.

The Russians took over Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, prompting the German populations of those countries to emigrate. Some were settled in the German sector of Poland. Jews were expelled from many Polish cities, partly to make room for the new German arrivals. “A Jewish reservation was now established in the region of Lublin to accommodate those who had been uprooted. To this restricted area, Jews began to be transported from all parts.”

As the Germans conquered more countries, more of Europe’s Jews were subjected to persecution — “the wearing of the Jewish Badge of Shame,” the destruction of synagogues, etc. In the fall of 1941, the Nazis began sending Jews from all over Europe to camps in Eastern Europe, and in 1942, Jews began to be killed en masse in the camps. “Non-Jewish Poles, too, were annihilated in vast numbers.”

In Italy, “it was impossible for the essentially kindly population to imitate Nazi bestialities,” so Italy was “an oasis of relative humanity.” This changed, however, after Mussolini was overthrown in July 1943, and the Germans occupied Italy from Rome northwards.

Jews were even persecuted and killed in North Africa, wherever the Vichy government was in control, or where Italians/Germans were in control. In the Far East, the Japanese imitated Nazi policies toward the Jews in cities like Shanghai and Singapore. “On December 17 1942, the British House of Commons rose to its feet in homage to Jewish suffering. It was an unprecedented but barren gesture.”

Only Denmark managed to resist the anti-Semitic policies of the Nazis. Roth writes,

When in the spring of 1940 Denmark was occupied, the people resolutely refused to enforce any discriminatory regulations; and it is said that the king threatened to wear the Badge of Shame himself if it were imposed on his Jewish subjects. Three years later, when the Germans took over the administration of the country, an anti-Jewish campaign was immediately opened. The Danish patriots were already prepared; and almost the whole of the inconsiderable [Jewish] community were ferried in all manner of flimsy craft over to Sweden, where they were hospitably received. For once, the Nazi beast had the prey snatched from his jaws.

Since Sweden was neutral in the war, Jews were safe there. Switzerland and Portugal were also neutral.

In all Nazi-occupied countries, some non-Jews helped Jews to escape. “Frequently, the lead was taken by priests and nuns, following the example set by the Vatican itself.”

As mentioned above, when the Germans conquered western Poland, they came to control its large Jewish community. Likewise, when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, they came to control the large Jewish communities in eastern Poland, Odessa, Kyiv, the Baltic States, etc. These areas contained some 4,500,000 Jews. Perhaps the best way for these Jews to survive the Holocaust was to flee eastward, beyond German control; some 250,000 Polish Jews survived by fleeing eastward.3

In the summer of 1942, some 250,000 Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto were sent to concentration camps. The remaining Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto decided they would not go peacefully, they began to organize a revolt. The revolt broke out in April 1943, and resulted in the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, and the deaths of some 13,000 Jews, and 17 Germans. “The uprising was the largest single revolt by Jews during World War II.” This uprising should not be confused with the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, which was led by the Polish resistance, not by Polish Jews.

In May 1943, when the Germans closed in on the Jewish insurgents in the Warsaw Ghetto, some committed suicide, while others managed to escape through the sewers, or through a tunnel that led outside the Ghetto. The revolt had lasted almost six weeks. “The three thousand years of Jewish history know of no episode more heroic.” The Jewish insurgents knew that they wouldn’t defeat the Germans, and they wouldn’t survive, but they said they wanted to pick the time of their death, rather than be at the mercy of the Germans.

One Polish Jew, Szmul Zygielbojm, was able to reach England from Poland. In early June 1942, he spoke on BBC Radio, and described the death-camps in Poland. In late June, a British newspaper “reported the existence of Nazi gas chambers and the mass killing of Jews, based on Szmul Zygielbojm’s information.” In May 1943, Zygielbojm committed suicide in London, to protest the inaction of the Allies in the face of the killings.

Some of Zygielbojm’s information came from Jan Karski, a non-Jewish Pole who was collecting information in Poland, then talking to people in England, the U.S., etc. In the summer of 1943, Karski met with President Roosevelt in the White House. Twice Karski was smuggled into the Warsaw Ghetto to learn what was happening. In 1944, Karski published a memoir called Courier From Poland. After the war, Karski taught at Georgetown for forty years, and wrote The Great Powers and Poland; he died in 2000. He was interviewed in a 9-hour Holocaust documentary called Shoah.

E. The Creation of Israel

Many European Jews tried to reach Palestine, but the British maintained the immigration quotas. Some ship-captains tried to profit from the eagerness of Jews to leave Europe; they crammed Jews onto leaky ships that often sank. The S.S. Struma had 800 Romanian Jews, and it hovered off Constantinople for three months, while Turkey and Romania refused to let it land, and the British refused to accept the refugees into Palestine. Finally it put to sea on February 23 1942 and sank the next night, hit by a Soviet torpedo; there was only one survivor.

Roth says that more than 1,000,000 Jews fought in World War II, some in Syria, some in North Africa, some in Europe, and some among underground resistance groups.

When the war ended in the spring of 1945, it became clear that the Holocaust had claimed a high percentage of European Jews. Roth writes,

Since 1939, something like 5,700,000 Jews had perished out of the 9,600,000 who once lived in the lands through which the Nazi fury had swept.... Happy were the lands such as Hungary, or France, where as much as one-half of the former Jewish population was left.... The future lay preponderantly with the newest and the oldest havens of Jewish life — with the five million Jews of America, and the half-million Jews of Palestine. The Providence that guides the process of history had ensured that the Jewish future was safe.

After World War II, European Jews continued to look to Palestine for refuge, and the British continued enforcing “stringent immigration laws.”4 Roth says that the British army and navy were engaged in the “despicable task” of catching illegal immigrants. “Those aboard one intercepted vessel, the ‘Exodus,’ were actually shipped back to blood-soaked Germany.... Concentration camps [were] set up in Cyprus for housing would-be immigrants whom the might of the glorious British navy had intercepted at sea.”

Jews became more convinced than ever that they needed an independent state in Palestine, so they could make their own immigration policy. Diplomatic support from American Jews helped to bring about an independent state. Jews also pursued independence by force of arms, fighting the British in Palestine, and setting off bombs in London. In 1946, a Jewish group called Irgun bombed the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, killing 91 people. Roth compares this terrorist campaign to the campaign of the Irish group Sinn Fein. In the wake of the Holocaust, Jews were abandoning their non-violent approach, their “traditional quietism,” and resolving to fight.

In May 1948, the British Mandate in Palestine expired, and Palestine was divided into two independent states, one Jewish and one Arab, along boundaries drawn by a UN resolution. The Prime Minister of the new state of Israel was David Ben-Gurion, the President was Chaim Weizmann (President is a largely ceremonial position in Israel). Arabs were steadfastly opposed to any Jewish state in Palestine, and threatened immediate attack; “the armies of five Arab states were already poised menacingly on the borders.”

The fighting between Jewish and Arab forces actually began in April 1948, a month or so before the expiration of the British Mandate. The Jewish forces won several battles, leaving them “in complete control of much of the area allotted to them.” Fighting continued during the next year, and the Jewish state acquired “certain conquered areas originally assigned to the projected Arab state.”

According to Roth, Arabs evacuated Jewish territory partly from panic, and partly because it was Arab policy to evacuate “in preparation for a triumphant return.” Some Arabs believed (Roth says) that to remain on Jewish territory would suggest acquiescence in the Jewish state, but the Arabs had no intention of acquiescing. Roth doesn’t consider the possibility that some Jewish soldiers may have intentionally driven Arabs from their land.

At any rate, Arabs left Jewish territory, so the new Jewish state was “almost homogenous in population,” i.e., almost entirely Jewish. The population increased as Jews in Iraq, Yemen, and elsewhere came to Israel. Jews came to Israel partly from hope, partly from fear — they no longer felt safe in Arab countries. The population of Israel swelled from about 650,000 in 1948 to over 2,000,000 in 1961 (Roth is probably writing in 1961).

The Arab states whom Israel had defeated in 1948-49 didn’t give up the struggle. On the contrary, they accumulated weapons, launched raids on Israeli settlements, and vowed to destroy Israel. In late 1956, Israel launched a preemptive attack, overrunning the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip, both of which had been controlled by Egypt. Britain and France took the opportunity to reclaim the Suez Canal, which Egypt had seized in the summer of 1956.

These actions were resisted by the U.S., the Soviet Union, and the UN (the Soviets were on friendly terms with Egypt, and the U.S. was opposed to colonialism). In response to diplomatic and military pressure, Israel, Britain, and France retreated. There were, however, at least two benefits for Israel from this war:

The retreat of Israel, Britain, and France boosted the prestige of the Egyptian leader, Nasser. He continued threatening Israel with destruction, prohibited Israeli ships from using the Suez Canal, and formed a union with Syria, which lasted from 1958 to 1961 (this union was called the United Arab Republic).

* * * * *

Roth says that, after the opening of the Gulf of Aqaba, Israeli ships were able to extend Israel’s reach, and make Israel a bridge between Africa, Asia, and Europe.

Israel also helped the Jewish people “to retain its sense of cohesion,” though religious faith was dwindling. And if particular Jews, anywhere in the world, experienced a revival of religious faith, “it was bound up with a strong sense of identification with the great Jewish enterprise in the ancient Land of Israel.”

Roth says that, after World War II, the Jewish communities of Central and Eastern Europe were “cut off” from Jews elsewhere by Communism, by the Cold War. Communism also divorced these Jewish communities from their religious traditions, leading to “spiritual suicide.”

Meanwhile, in the Muslim countries of the Middle East, Jews were in a “precarious” position because these countries had a mixture of nationalism and religious-fundamentalism, and these countries were angry about the Israeli-Arab conflict. The Jewish communities of Central Africa, which had “formerly prospered,” didn’t feel at home in the newly-independent states. Likewise, the newly-independent states of the Far East weren’t hospitable to their Jewish communities; China’s “once-prosperous Jewish communities were now eliminated.” So Jews were pushed off the continents of Asia and Africa almost entirely.

Cuba’s Communist regime, which came to power in 1959, made life difficult for Cuba’s Jewish community; Roth calls this “a grim warning of what might happen elsewhere in the region in similar circumstances.” In general, 20th-century nationalism/communism was inhospitable to Jews, while 19th-century liberalism/colonialism was hospitable to Jews.

F. Recent Wars

After the Suez Crisis of 1956, Egypt continued threatening Israel from the west, and in the north, Syria served as a base from which “terrorist raids” were launched into Israel. In early 1967, Nasser (Egypt’s leader) managed to remove UN troops from Gaza, and from the mouth of the Gulf of Aqaba (Sharm El Sheikh). Nasser then prohibited Israeli ships from the Gulf of Aqaba (he had already prohibited them from the Suez Canal). Arab troops began concentrating on Israel’s borders, and Arab states formed military pacts with each other.

On June 5 1967, war began. The Israelis struck first, surprising the Arabs. The Israelis bombed Arab airfields, destroying Arab planes while they were on the ground, so Israel controlled the skies. Israel defeated Egypt in a tank battle in the Sinai. Israeli troops “established themselves all along the Suez Canal,” and they occupied the Gaza Strip, which had been controlled by Egypt.

Jordanian forces shelled Israeli-controlled sections of Jerusalem, then Israeli forces drove the Jordanians back, seized the Old City of Jerusalem, and seized the West Bank. For the Israelis, there was hard fighting in Jerusalem, against entrenched Jordanian forces; often the fighting was hand-to-hand with knives; many Israeli officers were killed, and the Israeli officer in charge, Asher Dreizin, was wounded three times.5

So the Israelis captured Sinai, Gaza, Jerusalem, and the West Bank. Israeli forces also seized the Golan Heights from Syria. The war ended six days after it began. “The Six-Day War resulted in more than 15,000 Arab fatalities, while Israel suffered fewer than 1,000.” Roth calls it, “perhaps the most brilliant campaign in military history.”

In August 1967, Arab leaders met and discussed the recent war. They agreed to have no negotiations with Israel, no peace, and no recognition; these were called The Three No’s. The Arab states began rebuilding their armies, and in October 1973, they launched a surprise attack on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar; this became known as the Yom Kippur War. Perhaps the Arabs were determined to have the “element of surprise” on their side, since Israel had struck first in 1967, and surprised the Arabs.

The Yom Kippur War lasted about 19 days. Arab casualties were similar to those in the Six-Day War (about 15,000 dead), while Israeli casualties were higher (about 2,700 dead). The Arabs felt better about the outcome of this war, they felt it was a kind of moral victory, though they didn’t achieve their main goals, the re-taking of the Sinai and the Golan Heights.

After the Yom Kippur War, Israel’s Arab neighbors seemed to abandon the ambition of defeating Israel militarily. In 1979, Egypt and Israel signed a peace treaty, and Israel returned the Sinai to Egypt (the treaty was signed by Egypt’s Anwar Sadat and Israel’s Menachem Begin; negotiations were organized by the U.S. President, Jimmy Carter). In 1994, Israel signed a peace treaty with Jordan (the treaty was signed by Jordan’s King Hussein and Israel’s Yitzhak Rabin; negotiations were organized by the U.S. President, Bill Clinton).

Though Egypt and Jordan made peace with Israel, the Palestinians were discontent, and launched uprisings (intifadas) against Israel; these uprisings consisted of riots, suicide attacks, etc. Meanwhile, Iran helped Palestinians and other Muslims to attack Israel; Iran also hoped to threaten Israel with nuclear weapons. A peace treaty between Israel and Saudi Arabia seemed possible, but a treaty between Israel and Iran seemed out of reach.

The Hamas incursion on October 7 2023 was another in a long series of cross-border raids, another in a long series of surprise attacks. But it was on a larger scale than earlier raids, so it seemed like an invasion rather than a raid. Israel struck back hard, proving once again its military prowess.

Now Israel is taking advantage of turmoil in Syria to seize land along the Syrian border, as Putin once took advantage of turmoil in Ukraine to seize Crimea. Arabs will say to Israel, “We attack you because you keep taking our land,” and Israel will respond, “We take land because you’d use the land as a base for attacks against us.”

This concludes my summary of Jewish history. I hope it provides readers with a concise and readable survey of an important subject. I hope it can serve as an introduction to Jewish history, and I hope it throws light on world history, or at least, Western history. Perhaps it will inspire some readers to carry their own studies further.

© L. James Hammond 2024
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Footnotes
1. Churchill wrote, “It is said that famous men are usually the product of unhappy childhood. The stern compression of circumstances, the twinges of adversity, the spur of slights and taunts in early years, are needed to evoke that ruthless fixity of purpose and tenacious mother-wit without which great actions are seldom accomplished. Certainly little in the environment of the young John Churchill [i.e., Marlborough] should have deprived him of this stimulus.”

Hemingway said that an unhappy childhood is the best starting-point for a writer; doubtless he felt that his own childhood was unhappy. I’ve written about how American Presidents often come from broken homes. Perhaps a happy childhood, with two loving parents, makes one overly comfortable, slow to mature, disinclined to draw on one’s reserves of energy.

I’ve never been a fan of Churchill’s prose. Kenneth Clark, an art critic who was a friend of Churchill, agreed with me that Churchill’s prose is second-rate. Yet Churchill was capable of using language well, and some of his war-speeches are immortal. So how can we explain his rough, awkward prose? Perhaps he was very ambitious, so he wasn’t willing to take time to polish his language. Perhaps his ambition was to be a man of action, a historical figure, not a man-of-letters, retired from the world. Perhaps he came from a very literate, book-filled society, so he didn’t have great respect for words, for books — there were so many of them that their value declined. back

2. When Roth says “Teutons,” perhaps he means Poles of German ancestry. back
3. See Roth, 1948, p. 443 back
4. Roth, A History of the Jews (revised edition of A Short History of the Jewish People, 1948), 1970, Ch. 32, p. 410 back
5. Wikipedia back