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Israeli Independence
Apr. 29th, 2012 07:15 pmToday is the twenty-third day of the Omer, which is three weeks and two days into the Omer.
So, last Thursday was Israeli Independence Day, when Jews all over the place celebrate Israel. That it exists, I mean; that we Jews living in the Diaspora have a place to go the moment something like the Holocaust tries to happen again. So, this being the weekend closest to the actual day, we had small festivals at synagogues all over the place, at which there was food, dancing, raffles, silent auctions, speeches, and other such things.
In my congregation, the main speaker was Sandy F., who spoke of his service during WWII in the 42nd Infantry Division, known as the 42nd Rainbow Division. During the war, Sandy was a scout; he and three other men would range ahead of the main body, sometimes as many as ten miles, and radio back what to expect. They rode around in an "army car," which was basically a heavily armored Jeep, and over the course of the fighting he actually had three of them shot out from beneath him.
They were fighting north through Germany when they came upon a large walled compound. They did not know what it was, and thought it might be a POW camp. Sandy got out to go see, and the Nazi soldiers immediately opened fire. He got back in the car, and told the driver to, "Ram the gates!" Once inside, the four of them were able to return fire with the machine-gun mounts, and in this way drove the Nazis back into the fortified guard towers about the camp. They then did some reconnoitering about, and radioed back that they needed a huge infantry body and a lot of medical supplies.
That was Dachau, sixty-seven years ago today.
Sandy was twenty then. He's is eighty-seven now, but possesses all of his faculties. He told, with perfect clarity, of the prisoners so brainwashed that, as they carried gassed corpses to the crematorium, they saluted a "Hail!" to the uniformed men. That one of the bodies in the pile was moving an arm, just a little. That he spend two hours waiting for someone higher up the chain of command to arrive so they could accept a surrender.
Two years ago, for the sixty-fifth anniversary of the liberation, he was invited back by the curator of the museum/memorial that remains today. Three of the surviving 42nd Rainbow Division were able to be there, and several dozens of survivors. Sandy told of a man who, on the bus there, recognized his military unit and was so overcome that he was unable to speak; he had instead to write out that he was one of those survivors, and his thanks for their doing that, sixty-five years after the fact. He had the note in the scrapbook of that trip, which we were encouraged to read.
That was what happened, and some small number of deaths that did not happen, because of people like Sandy.
Am Israel chai.
So, last Thursday was Israeli Independence Day, when Jews all over the place celebrate Israel. That it exists, I mean; that we Jews living in the Diaspora have a place to go the moment something like the Holocaust tries to happen again. So, this being the weekend closest to the actual day, we had small festivals at synagogues all over the place, at which there was food, dancing, raffles, silent auctions, speeches, and other such things.
In my congregation, the main speaker was Sandy F., who spoke of his service during WWII in the 42nd Infantry Division, known as the 42nd Rainbow Division. During the war, Sandy was a scout; he and three other men would range ahead of the main body, sometimes as many as ten miles, and radio back what to expect. They rode around in an "army car," which was basically a heavily armored Jeep, and over the course of the fighting he actually had three of them shot out from beneath him.
They were fighting north through Germany when they came upon a large walled compound. They did not know what it was, and thought it might be a POW camp. Sandy got out to go see, and the Nazi soldiers immediately opened fire. He got back in the car, and told the driver to, "Ram the gates!" Once inside, the four of them were able to return fire with the machine-gun mounts, and in this way drove the Nazis back into the fortified guard towers about the camp. They then did some reconnoitering about, and radioed back that they needed a huge infantry body and a lot of medical supplies.
That was Dachau, sixty-seven years ago today.
Sandy was twenty then. He's is eighty-seven now, but possesses all of his faculties. He told, with perfect clarity, of the prisoners so brainwashed that, as they carried gassed corpses to the crematorium, they saluted a "Hail!" to the uniformed men. That one of the bodies in the pile was moving an arm, just a little. That he spend two hours waiting for someone higher up the chain of command to arrive so they could accept a surrender.
Two years ago, for the sixty-fifth anniversary of the liberation, he was invited back by the curator of the museum/memorial that remains today. Three of the surviving 42nd Rainbow Division were able to be there, and several dozens of survivors. Sandy told of a man who, on the bus there, recognized his military unit and was so overcome that he was unable to speak; he had instead to write out that he was one of those survivors, and his thanks for their doing that, sixty-five years after the fact. He had the note in the scrapbook of that trip, which we were encouraged to read.
That was what happened, and some small number of deaths that did not happen, because of people like Sandy.
Am Israel chai.
