A Progressive, Secular Voice
What do you recall having learned about the experience of Jewish prisoners in the concentration camps, other than horrific tales of suffering and unnatural death, along with defeated heroic efforts at revolt? What have you learned about high-risk, shared caring in the camps; about forbidden aid, based in compassion; about clandestine exchanges of mutual support? [click to continue…]
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Folke Bernadotte, a Swedish nobleman who negotiated the release of some 31,000 prisoners from German concentration camps during the struggle against Nazism, was born on this date in 1895. Those he rescued were primarily Danes and Norwegians, but included nearly 2,000 Jews. After World War II, Bernadotte was selected by the United Nations Security Council to mediate an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict, which had erupted into full-scale war with the invasion of Israel following its declaration of statehood in 1948. After proposing two armistice agreements that included the right of return for Arab refugees and Arab control of an internationalized Jerusalem, Bernadotte was assassinated in that city on September 17, 1948 by the Lehi group (the Stern Gang), a killing approved by future Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. Ralph Bunche succeeded Count Bernadotte as UN mediator and succeeded at winning an armistice in 1949, for which he received a Nobel Peace Prize.
“The exodus of Palestinian Arabs resulted from panic created by fighting in their communities, by rumors concerning real or alleged acts of terrorism, or expulsion. It would be an offense against the principles of elemental justice if these innocent victims of the conflict were denied the right to return to their homes while Jewish immigrants flow into Palestine, and, indeed, at least offer the threat of permanent replacement of the Arab refugees who have been rooted in the land for centuries.” —Count Folke Bernadotte, September 16, 1948
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Johtje Vos, a Dutch woman who with her husband Aart hid three dozen Jews in their home during World War II, was born on this date in 1909. Living on a dead-end road backed by acres of forest in Laren, Netherlands, she would shepherd the people she was protecting through a 150-foot tunnel under her backyard and into the woods whenever the Gestapo came to her door. (A sympathetic police chief would tip them off by phone whenever a raid was imminent.) As many as 14 Jews hid in their home at any one time after the German invasion of the Netherlands in May 1940. Vos lived to be 97 and resided in Saugerties, New York from 1951 until her death in 2007.
“I don’t feel righteous, and we are certainly not heroes, because we didn’t sit at the table when the misery started and say, ‘O.K., now we are going to risk our lives to save some people.’ ” —Johtje Vos
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The Naftali Botwin Company, an all-Jewish, Polish-based unit of the International Brigades in Spain, was formed on this date in 1937. The Company had about 150 members from Poland, France, Belgium, Palestine and Spain. They published a Yiddish newspaper and bore a flag with the words, “For your freedom and ours,” in Yiddish and Polish on one side and in Spanish on the other. Among its fighters was Olek Nuss, a Yiddish poet who wrote the company’s anthem. The Botwins also included the only two Arabs in the International Brigades, one of whom was from Jerusalem and spoke Yiddish. The company went into action against Franco’s fascist uprising in February and March, 1938. Only 18 of the original company survived. After Israel’s Six-Day War in 1967, all of the memorials to the Botwin Company in Poland were taken down by the government.
“Jew, worker or man of the people, wherever you might be: in France, in Poland, in Romania, in Palestine or in America, wherever you live, where you work and suffer, know this: your hope for the defeat of Hitler and Mussolini is being decided today in Spain. Worker, intellectual, or simply Jew of the people, without distinction of political tendency or social class, try to forget all that separates us and retain all that unites us.” —Yiddish broadcast on Spanish radio, 1938, translated by Mitchell Abidor
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