Total Eclipse

Tuesday this week we mark the Israeli Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day. This is the only official day marked by Israeli law dedicated to Holocaust memorial.
Of course, Yad Vashem operate all year round, but anyway, this is the official day.

Those of you who don’t live here might already be suspicious about the name given to our memorial day. Why not just Holocaust Memorial day, like everywhere else?
Come to think of it, why not on the 27th of January (the day Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp was liberated by the Soviets), like most of the rest of the world?

Today at dinner we spoke a bit about how the holocaust was handled by the people of the “yishuv” – the zionist pioneers living in palestine.

I mean think about it. You’re living in some god-forsaken (pun definately intended) no-man’s land, while everybody and everything you know from back home; you’re whole family, friends, neighbours, classmates, everybody – everything is being exterminated. Deleted. Liquidated.
Now this wasn’t some cataclysmic disaster. It didn’t take a day, or a week, or a month. Years. This was something people had to live with for years. Some probably didn’t leave Europe on the best of terms. The path of the Jewish people was a hot topic around the turn of the previous century, something that literally split families apart. How does one live with that? So maybe you were right, but at what cost?

Survivor’s guilt is one of the keys to understanding the Zionist perspective of the holocaust. Another is cognitive dissonance, on a grand scale. The ethos of the “New Hebrew”, the working, fighting, socialist-zionist Jew is not the kind of person to be led like sheep to the slaughter.
It just doesn’t fit the profile. How could we be so impotent? Nevermind the millions of other people who were massacred during the war, how could we be so helpless?

The Israeli Holocaust memorial day is marked on the (hebrew) date of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, one of the few “vocal” acts of Jewish resistance. But that is not entirely true, what it is is a vocal act of Jewish Zionist resistance. The main insurgents were from the Zionist Youth Movements. So, in a way, while they were in Europe, they were an extension of the people in the Yishuv in palestine.

About the same time, the ethos of Masada was being re-written in the Yishuv. Youth movements would go up to the Masada fortress (though it was illegal under British mandate rule) to hear the bravery of the Jewish radicals who withstood a Roman siege during the 1st century’s Judean Uprising, and when it seemed all was lost, preferred mass suicide over being captured by the Romans.

Thus was born the ethos of “shenit Metsada lo tipol” – Masada shall not fall again, the concept of a heroes death in Zionist ethos. And thus, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising’s ultimate failure, and possible suicide of some or all of the organizers, were marked as heroes deaths. It is the bravery that should be commemorated, not those weak “old Europe” Jews who were slaughtered like cattle. Worth noting that Masada to this day is Israel’s most popular tourist site.
There’s also another story, and that is of the non-Zionists Jews fighting the war. This is also something that never quite fit the Zionist narrative. The fact is, that literally millions of Jews fought the Germans from within the allied forces. From The Red Orchestra to Sterling’s SAS, to the first armoured division to enter Berlin, there were Jews fighting everywhere, but they are not the hereos we commemorate.

It’s not all so self-centered though; By the time the war in Europe was coming to an end, it was becoming pretty clear to the people in the yishuv that a war was coming upon them – and indeed, not 2 years later, as the Brits plowed their asses out of Palestine, licking the wounds of a once great empire, The War of Independance broke out. There needed to be some sort of symbol to cling onto. The Zionist Hero was that symbol. We will not passively stand aside as Jews are killed, we will act to defend our people, no matter where, no matter the costs, and if in so acting we die, then it is a worthy death. I believe this is a quintessential principle of Israeli international politics, from independance till today.

Tagged as ethos, holocaust, israel, Israeli-Arab Conflict, Masada, myths, palestine, sociology, WWII, Yad VaShem, zionism + Categorized as Current Events, Social Politics