--e89a8fb1f32a086c7e051d0f3a42
Excellent response. I read and absorbed every word of it.
Some points I agree on. Others not do much.
I am very pleased that the Israelis learned from the mistakes made by the
Jews of 1930's Europe
We can't rely on anyone to prevent our persecution. We must take matters
into our own hands and be strong both militarily and financially. We must
not stand idly by again while our people are led away to the gas chambers.
At least Israel is prepared to prevent that from happening again.
Regarding Chernowitz...Your stories and those of others here are
totally nightmarish.
If I was there at the time, I could never recount anything good and
marvelous about life in Czernowitz in those pre-War years. The horrors of
1940-45 are WAY too real and terrible to minimize because a few thousand
Chernowitzers survived. Nothing pleasant can block out the ultimate fate of
the majority of Jews in Czernowitz and in Bukovina. They did not ever have
it as good as I have read it here. They knew all about Nazism in Germany
and Communism in the Soviet Union, but I don't think those threats were
taken seriously. Many Jews even became Communist supporters. And where did
that get them?
All that Jewish culture in Czernowitz, what good did that do them? I also
read here that the Jewish poets and musicians got deported to Siberia and
Transnistria.
Maybe these same Jews should have been stockpiling arms and ammunition
instead of books and musical instruments.
Call me names and criticize my opinion, but the outcome my way could not
have been worse than their way.
Lloyf
On Aug 11, 2015 2:07 PM, <lapidotm_at_inter.net.il> wrote:
> Dear Loyd
>
>
> As in Israeli since 1/1/1948 I believe I am in a position to respond to
> your argument.
>
>
>
> I was in Czernowitz from 1933 to 1945. Just - as Hardy has pointed out -
> until 1939 we Czernowitzer Jews were a peaceful people involved in
making=
a
> living - a poor one, or a rich one, or a middle class one, combined with
> enjoying as much culture as we could, and trying to have a good
> neighbourship with our non-Jewish Czernowitzers .
>
>
>
> Those of us, and there were not too many, who had the foresight and the
> understanding that our safety lies not there, but in a country of our
own=
,
> and had the opportunity (fiscal means and a good profession, as required
=
by
> the British Mandate Authorities) left for Palestine .
>
>
> Those who would not leave the imaginary "paradise", or could not, or
> missed the opprtunity (the White Book in 1939) found that hell broke
loos=
e
> on us in three stages - in 1940 when the Soviets occupied Cz, in 1941
whe=
n
> the Romanians and Germans came in, and again in 1944, when the Soviets
> liberated us.
>
>
> Just consider the marching in of armed troops on all 3 occasions. I do
no=
t
> know if you have ever lived in an occupied country. It takes years until
> you are resourceful enough to have gathered sufficient cooperation with
> some underground movement, in order to collect arms and offer resistance.
> And, in each case we know of today, it took a lot of time under Nazi rule
> to have reliable contacts with the local underground (Warsaw and other
> Ghettoes) if there was such.
>
>
>
> There was no such movement in Czernowitz in neither of the 3 periods
> mentioned (in the last period there was an underground of gangs of
> "banderovtsi" who were fascists and attacked not only Russians but
> preferrably Jews), so there was no possibility to obtain any arms. And,
a=
s
> for the Soviet periods there was no opportunity to have understandings
wi=
th
> the local neighbours, because nobody could be trusted not to be an
> informer. Are you aware that we children and youngsters were taught at
> kindergarten or school to inform on our parents? And at the least
innocen=
t
> information passed on to the interrogating teachers or tutors, within a
d=
ay
> or two, the family or the father were arrested at night and exiled to
> Siberia?
> Yes , in that last period surviving Czernowitz Jews of ages 18-40 "had
th=
e
> opportunity" (were drafted at peril of being shot as potential deserters)
> to take up arms as soldiers of the Red Army ,and take revenge on the
> Germans.. Some did, like my uncle, who fought in the 3rd BeloRussian
Shoc=
k
> Army and fell at the foot of the Reichstag on the 30th April 1945), and
i=
t
> took us nearly 70 yeras to locate his grave in Berlin.
>
>
> Can you grasp the notion that every night, during the two periods of
> 1940-1 and 1944-5 our parents and sometimes we too, were sleeping
> half-awake, listening to the noises of the night in the gangway of the
> house, and were not once awakened at 2 or 3 or 4 o'clock by a knocking at
> one of the doors, terrified - but happy that it was not ours, and finding
> out the next morning that somebody had disappeared. Bear in mind that it
> was usually the father of a family who was arrested by a number of armed
> policemen, and he would do everything demanded of him, in order to
preven=
t
> any harm to his loved ones - wife, or parents, or children. Yes, there
wa=
s
> alot to loose, and every father wished to protect his beloved, and hoped
=
he
> would come back some day (and some did).
>
>
>
> And that was "paradise" indeed, compared to the midperiod of the
> nazi-fascist rule, when our "dear" neighbours stood laughing and gloating
> as Jews were gathered by armed personnel and evicted from their flats to
> the Gheto or the trains - waiting just the necessary minutes until they
> could bust into the flats and either occupy them, or just rob everything
> movable (have you ever seen the film Zorba the Greek? and the villagers
w=
ho
> robbed the flat of his Bouiboulina were not antisemites?). Do no forget
> also that the authorities during that horrible period used deception,
> advising that we are going to be just relocated to areas were we would be
> working for food and lodging and clothing...
>
>
> Yes, today we here are "heroes" and "matchos" here, because we are in our
> own country, and have an army composed of ourselves and of our sons and
> daugthers, and our granchildren, and can rely on each other - back to
bac=
k
> - even if we have quite bitterly opposing views as to how to run the
> country tp paradies or to hell. Yes, we have learned how to defend
> ourselves, at great costs, whether defensively or offensively, but that
i=
s
> only thanks to our being here, together.
>
>
>
> And even today, notwithstanding what they see here, how do our brethren
i=
n
> Europe act? How many of our brethren, in France, just for instance, are
> walking armed in the streets, and how many are just hiding the Yarmoulke,
> so as not to be harmed?... And mind you, they are not attacked by armed
> policemen or soldiers (those protect them) - just by antisemitic
> hooligans...
>
>
> No, we should not and dare not accuse our brethren in occupied Europe in
> general or Czernowits in particular, in the dark age of Soviet or Nazi
> domination for not fighting against the nearly absolute powers of the
> dictatorships. We can only pity those who perished as a result, and just
> dream pf how different their fate could have been had they left or been
> able to leave for Palestine before 1939.
>
>
>
> Kind regards
>
> Mordecai.
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Received on 2015-08-11 13:48:38