Pro-Hamas Jewish Protestors and Who Will Win This War

In the anti-Israel campus protests, I am most distressed by the participation of Jewish students and professors who are calling for the elimination of Israel. What is the future for these deeply misguided Jews who are taking such a proactive stance against Israel and the Jewish People?

In Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust¹, Yaffa Eliach tells a story that turned my mind inside out. Eliach was a scholar and a Professor of History and Literature in the Department of Judaic Studies at Brooklyn College. She was committed to verifying the historical accuracy of the tales she relates. They are not inspiring historical fiction; they carry the potency of actual events in the hell of the Holocaust.

“Who Will Win This War?” is an account based on Dr. Eliach’s 1979 interview with Rabbi Yitzhak Mann. When Yitzhak was 16 years old, he and his father Kalman were picked up by the Nazis during an Aktion in Budapest in the summer of 1944, and sent to a labor battalion.

Jews in such labor battalions were living mine detectors. Kalman Mann had been one of 250 Jews sent into a Russian minefield left by the Red Army. Kalman was one of only 50 Jews who emerged alive. By Rosh Hashana, 1944, the German army was in retreat. The labor battalion worked long days on starvation rations uprooting railroad tracks, blowing up bridges, and other arduous physical chores.

The Jews in the labor battalion consisted of two groups. The Jews wore yellow armbands. Jewish converts to Christianity wore white armbands. (In the decades before the Holocaust, Jews in Germany, Austria and Hungary converting to Christianity for the sake of social advancement was a common phenomenon.)

By the eve of Yom Kippur, they had reached the Polish mountain of Bornemissza, on the Slovakian border. The German commander announced that he knew that the next day was an important Jewish fast day. He told them that it was strictly forbidden for them to fast, and anyone who fasts would be executed by a firing squad.

On Yom Kippur, it rained heavily, turning the terrain into a swamp. As Yaffa Eliach recounts: “When food was distributed, all the men, as if by prior agreement, spilled the coffee into the running muddy gullies and tucked the stale bread into their soaked jackets.”² Kalman Mann, who was from a Hasidic family, recited the Yom Kippur prayers by heart, and the others repeated after him, their voices drowned out by the noise of machines and the downpour of rain.

The group of Jews who had converted to Christianity decided to fast this Yom Kippur.

Then something extraordinary happened. The group of Jews who had converted to Christianity approached the other Jews. Their spokesman, whose name was Sarwashi, was a former Reform rabbi. He told them that his group was also fasting on this Yom Kippur. He asked if they could join them in prayer, reminding them that the Yom Kippur liturgy starts by permitting “those who transgressed” to join the congregation.

At the conclusion of Yom Kippur, just as the exhausted, hungry Jews—all of them—were ready to break their fast, the German commander appeared and ordered them to line up for roll call. He told them that he knew they had fasted, but instead of invoking the death penalty as they deserved, their punishment would be to climb the mountain and slide down on their stomachs. But he offered a reprieve: Anyone who chose to “repent” for violating the rules and admit they were wrong, had only to raise his hand.

Not a single hand went up.

And so, tired, soaked, starved, the emaciated Jews climbed the wet, slippery mountain. When they reached the top, they were ordered to slide down on their stomachs. When they reached the bottom, they were ordered to line up again. They were asked if there were individuals who wanted to repent and be spared the ordeal. Mud-covered figures with feverish eyes looked at the clean-shaven German officer in silent defiance. And so ten times they repeated the humiliating performance, each time with more determination, each time with more strength.³

This story seems to answer my question about Jews who are taking a stand against Israel and the Jewish People today. And the end of the story answers another question that some despairing fellow Israelis have started to ask: Who will win the present war? Here is the final paragraph of this Holocaust tale:

A young German officer of low rank walked over to the group where Kalman and his son Yitzhak were sitting and said, “I don’t know who will win this war, but one thing I am sure of—people like you, a nation like yours, will never be defeated, never!”⁴

1. New York, Oxford University Press, 1982
2. P. 103
3. Pp. 104-105
4. P. 105