“I FIGHT not so much because of Pearl Harbor,
but because of what Pearl Harbor meant, because,
dually after skirmishes with the Ethiopians,
the Manchurians,
the Chinese,
the Austrians,
the Czechoslovakians,
the Danes,
the Spaniards,
and the Norwegians,
fascism was menacing us as we had never before been menaced,
because only the craven will not defend themselves.”
——————–
“I fight to remain free.”
– Corporal Jack J. Zurofsky, May, 1944
____________________
____________________
____________________
“As an American,
I am aware of the fact that in relation to the Zionist movement,
some persons, undoubtedly sincere,
have raised the question of dual allegiance.
They ask how I,
as an American,
can take a great interest in the Jewish people and in Palestine.
To that my answer is quite simple.
I as a soldier am at present fighting for the rights of the French,
the Russians,
the English,
the Poles,
the Czechs,
the Yugoslavs,
etc.,
that they too may have a chance for “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
——————–
“Shall I not fight for the rights of the Jews?”
– Corporal Ben Weiner, September, 1943
________________________________________
A central and natural facet of human behavior – of men and groups; of men in groups – is aggression: Whether in terms of the emotional frisson generated by the random (and, not-at-all-so-random) violence of mobs; as cool self-defense and its mirror image in pacifism; by the calculated choreography of military offensives and defensives. Well, given the constancy of human nature, the need to understand the origins, nature, and often the dire necessity of aggression – whether understood through accounts of history, legend, or myth; whether viewed through the contemporary lenses of religion and science – will ever remain, regardless of changes in military technology or the changing fortunes or men and nations.
But, while the nature of what motivates aggression – what prompts men to fight – can also be approached from the vantage points of psychology, sociology, and politics, on occasion we can find at least an explanation of aggression that is as profound as it is simple: The intersection between a man’s values and priorities; his beliefs and ideals, with his sense of justice.
In this context, during 1943 and 1944, two American Jewish soldiers – Ben Weiner (residence unknown), and Jack Zurofsky of Brooklyn – both Corporals who’d served in the ground forces of the United States Army in the North African Theater of War – addressed this question in essays that were strikingly different in the nature of their arguments and literary style. Their writings offer a glimpse of the self-perception of American Jews during the Second World War, in terms of their identity as Americans, Jews, and, American Jews, in a way that continues to have resonance over seventy-five years later, in this year of 2020.
____________________
The “first” essay, “We Fight For The Jew, Too”, penned by Weiner, was published in The Jewish Times (Baltimore) and Jewish Advocate (Boston) on Friday, September 24, and Thursday, December 16, 1943, respectively. I’ve not been able to find anything “about” Corporal Weiner, per se, beyond the nominal description of him as having been a veteran of the campaign in North Africa. (Well, that’s kind of vague!) Alas, his name doesn’t appear in the 1947 book American Jews in World War II, which – as mentioned in many of my prior posts – is notable for the absence of many of the names that should have appeared in its several hundred pages.
So, here’s an image of Ben’s essay, from The Jewish Times…
…and, verbatim as verbatim can be, here’s the text of Ben’s essay:
We Fight For The Jew, Too –
A Soldier in North Africa Describes His Credo
By CORPORAL BEN WEINER
Somewhere in North Africa
September 24, 1943
There are hundreds of thousands of American Jews in the armed forces. They are fighting for the preservation of their country. But they are also fighting for the Four Freedoms. Here is one Jewish soldier, a participant in the first conquest of American arms overseas, who says that the Jews, too, are among the peoples for whom the Americans are fighting. He gives his reasons why. It is said that when the war is over, soldiers will do much to mold the thinking of the country. They are likely to do the same for Jewish life. – The Editor.
As soldiers at war we have but one major task in front of us – to win the war. It is however very important that we soldiers stop some times to think of the issues and principles we are fighting for, perhaps some day to give our lives for.
Among the things that the United Nations are fighting for are the rights, the respect and self-determination of the small as well as the large nations. We are sympathetic to the needs of the Greeks, the Yugoslavs, the Czechs, The French, the Poles, Russians and heroic Chinese. The small nations particularly have suffered from the German military machine and ideology. Yet, their only desire had been to develop their own culture under their own flag and government. The United Nations are deeply concerned with the problems of these small nations and are bound to give them due consideration at the peace table.
Throughout the centuries, ever since the Jewish people were destroyed as a nation by the Romans and were scattered to the far corners of the world, their life has been one endless struggle for existence. It is a story of a people who have been continually oppressed and denied a peaceful life, not because of anything wrong they had done as a people, but because of the nations among whom they lived.
In Poland, Germany, Austria, Rumania, France, Hungary and numerous other countries the same conditions existed in varying degrees.
During the latter part of the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth, Germany was one of the most progressive nations in the world, industrially, technically and in the arts, sciences, literature and music. The Jews were given certain freedoms and their contribution to that country soon became apparent. More and more they thought that they had at last found the freedom that they had been constantly searching for. They mingled with the Germans; they intermarried. A few left their faith; many denied that they were Jews. They believed that assimilation would solve their problem.
The first World War came and went. Conditions became worse. There arose in Germany a bestiality of anti-Semitism that its predecessors had never known. History not merely repeated itself but made the blackest chapters ever recorded. At least 2,000,000 of my fellow Jews have died of the Nazi terror during the period of this war alone.
Can anyone wonder why I, as an American citizen, wish to find a constructive solution to the needs of the Jewish people?
Submit To “Fate”
For centuries the Jewish people of Europe submitted with resignation to the degrees of fate. They had to rely upon “chance,” “fate,” and “hope”. The time has come for them to rely upon themselves, upon their own resources both spiritual and physical, upon their energies, their youth and their faith in democracy. The time has come for the Jewish people to become the masters of their fate, to shape their destiny according to their needs and desires.
Many people speak of alleviating the conditions of these people. This alleviation must be carried forward aggressively and persistently. The solution is to give the Jewish people of Europe the country of Palestine as an independent state of their own, with their own flag and their own government.
In Palestine today one finds a rejuvenated people. From the far corners of the world they are coming to the land to build up a new world for themselves. They come from every nation; they speak every language; they bring with them a wealth of culture, knowledge and wisdom. They bring with them the ideals that are embodied in their heritage. Many of them have undergone cruel sufferings; yet, when they enter the land of Palestine their sufferings become a thing of the past. As they look about them and see their people creatively engaged in building a country for themselves they slowly lose the fear they have had for centuries and they join in the task of rebuilding their lives and their homes.
As an American, I am aware of the fact that in relation to the Zionist movement, some persons, undoubtedly sincere, have raised the question of dual allegiance. They ask how I, as an American, can take a great interest in the Jewish people and in Palestine. To that my answer is quite simple. I as a soldier am at present fighting for the rights of the French, the Russians, the English, the Poles, the Czechs, the Yugoslavs, etc., that they too may have a chance for “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Shall I not fight for the rights of the Jews?
I am a young American, 23 years of age, who love my country and the flag more than anything else in the world. For the privilege of being an American I am ready and willing to give my life. My country stands for Justice, Truth, and Freedom, for the right to live a peaceful and honest life. In my heart there is not a doubt as to where my loyalty lies. Yes, it is because I am an American, because America has taught me the principles of Freedom and Justice that I look at the Jewish people and see that a great injustice is being done.
When Catholics or Protestants or any other human beings are in need, do not our hearts go out to them? Do we not try in every possible way to help them? When the Chinese were bombed [sic] did we not help them in various ways? Did we not do the same for the English, the Russians and the Greeks? Does not Christianity itself teach us, “Love thy neighbor,” and does it not tell us “Help thy neighbor in distress”? My loyalty to my country and my desire to help the Jewish people do not conflict. In fact my country has taught me that the principle of Justice is a universal one and should be applied to all people. I as a soldier at war am fighting so that principle shall prevail.
Against the White Paper
At present there exists a “White Paper” which states that immigration to Palestine shall stop in March, 1944. This, at a time when most countries will not allow immigration laws to be relaxed. The carrying out of this brutal statement would be pure and simple murder of several more million of our people who could perhaps in the future escape the hellhole of Europe. It must be our first duty as fighters of democracy to expose this farce. We must definitely go ahead with our plans for the upbuilding of Palestine. Our Senators and our Congressmen must be informed of this infamous “White Paper”.
Many writers of today have written clearly about the conditions that exist. Ben Hecht wrote “Remember Us”; others have written in the same vein. They always end up in despair, in helplessness; they never have a constructive conclusion. They seem fail to recognize that if Palestine were established as a Jewish State it would help tremendously the morale and strengthen the lives of the Jews the world over. They seem to fail to recognize that if they had a State of their own, throughout the world the Jews would be recognized as equals.
Jews in America do not have to go to Palestine. The fact that there are Irish in America does not mean that they have to go to Ireland, or that the French in America have to go to France or the Italians to Italy, the Poles to Poland, etc. It is for the Jewish people of Europe that Palestine stands as a beacon of light and a symbol of freedom. After the war the desire of millions will be to go to that land. The country itself is not very large but because of its intensified agriculture and the development of its industries it will be able to absorb millions of people. Perhaps some day in the not too distant future they too will make a “Louisiana Purchase” which will enlarge the country many times its size, and forever solve the problem of Jewish homelessness. Shall we not help them in their endeavor?
Destiny has placed in the hands of the Jewish community in America a great responsibility. It does not matter whether one be a Conservative, a Reform, an Orthodox or a Zionist Jew. The only thing that matters is that the entire community should realize its responsibilities and immediately take the proper action. This demands the energies and thoughts of all our people, young and old.
(Copyright, 1943)
Commentary
I like what Ben has written.
More importantly, I respect what Ben has written.
That his prose is not quite “purple” is hardly important, for the message of his essay takes priority over subtleties of literary expression. Simply expressed, his ideas are iron-solid, and the simplicity of his writing serves to reinforce the strength of his arguments. He minimizes appeals to emotion – totally foregoing personal references, except for the enigmatic fact that he was born (well, where?) in 1920 – which in any event is secondary to the overall “design” and purpose of his essay.
In this sense, his thoughts are presented to the reader in a structured manner, in three distinct sections.
Ben first discusses the fate of “small” nations in terms of their political autonomy and national survival, in the greater context of Germany’s (then, 1943) military occupation of much of Europe, and only-recently ended control of North Africa.
This is followed by laying out the dire implications of the lack of political and geographic nationhood for the Jewish people, in light of the abrogation of their citizenship and persecution by Germany – thus, negating assumptions about the possibility of Jewish assimilation, at least in a European context.
Ben then talks about the logic, morality, and simple justice of Zionism – the revival of Jewish political and social autonomy in the ancestral home of the Jewish people – secondarily in the context of world events and as being a haven from persecution, and primarily in terms of Jewish national autonomy being a natural right and need, paralleling – no more and no less – that manifested by other peoples of the world.
Admittedly, there’s an awkwardness to the statement, “…The Jewish people were destroyed as a nation by the Romans and were scattered to the far corners of the world.” While this passage adds dramatic weight to Ben’s essay, it’s a misreading of history, and retrospectively deterministic. Even if Jewish political and national autonomy was oppressed, curtailed and eventually eliminated in the wake of the first and second Jewish uprisings against Rome (66-73 and 132-135 B.C.E., respectively), Jewish communities had by then already existed throughout the Mediterranean coast, and beyond.
More importantly, the loss of Jewish territorial nationhood and political autonomy for over eighteen hundred years – between 135 and 1948 B.C.E. – did not destroy the Jewish people’s sense of nationhood: It transformed it.
Well, then, in the “literary center” of Ben’s essay, we find the statement, so refreshing to see in American-Jewish writing from 1943, “They ask how I, as an American, can take a great interest in the Jewish people and in Palestine. To that my answer is quite simple. I as a soldier am at present fighting for the rights of the French, the Russians, the English, the Poles, the Czechs, the Yugoslavs, etc., that they too may have a chance for “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Shall I not fight for the rights of the Jews?”
In his conclusion section, Ben expresses his thoughts about Britain’s “White Paper”, and comments upon Ben Hecht’s Reader’s Digest essay of February, 1943, “Remember Us“. He closes with a prescient view of the future of the (then, only five years hence) re-established Jewish nation-state, and – a perennially true and thus perennially necessary – plea for Jewish unity.
Alas, that’s true today, as well: It often seems that the only unifying quality of the Jewish people is their utter lack of unity. Such is the way of the world.
____________________
Let’s move ahead eight months: Here’s Jack Zurofsky’s essay, as it appeared on page five of The Philadelphia Inquirer on Sunday, May 14, 1944.
First, a view of the entire page, found via Thomas M. Tryniski’s FultonHistory website. (Off topic: Those advertisements are pretty cool…)
…and now, a close-up of the essay…
…and now, from a pixeled picture to pixeled text.
[But first, a caveat: The Inquirer misspelled Jack’s middle initial: It’s actually “J.”, not “F.” Perhaps – in the era before spellcheck – someone made an error in the Inquirer’s compositing department?]
Corporal, 28, in North Africa Wins Army Essay Contest
(A “Why I Fight” essay contest, conducted in the North African Theater of Operations by the Morale Services Station, has been won by Corporal Jack F. Zurofsky [correct spelling is Jack J. Zurofsky], a 23-year-old infantryman, of Brooklyn, N. Y., who has been in the Army 16 months, the War Department announced yesterday. Corporal Zurofsky’s prize-winning essay, for which he was awarded a $100 War Bond, was selected from entries submitted by more than 300 soldiers, sailors and WACs in all service branches. It is printed herewith:)
By Corporal Jack F. Zurofsky
THIS IS why I fight.
I fight because it’s my fight.
I fight because my eyes are unafraid to look into other eyes; because they have seen happiness and because they have seen suffering; because they are curious and searching; because they are free.
I fight because my ears can listen to both sides of a question; because they can hear the groanings of a tormented people as well as the laughter of free people; because they are a channel for information, not a route for repetition; because, if I hear and do not think, I am deaf.
I fight because my mouth does not fear to utter my opinions; because, though I am only one, my voice helps forge my identity; because I can speak from a soap-box, or from a letter to the newspapers, or from a question that I may ask my representatives in Congress; because when my mouth speaks and can only say what everyone is forced to say it is gagged.
I fight because my knees kneel only to God.
I fight because my feet can go where they please, because they need no passport to go from New York to New Jersey and back again; because if I want to leave my country I can go without being forced and without bribing and without the loss of my savings; because I can plant my feet in farm soil or city concrete without anybody’s by-your-leave; because when my feet walk only the way they are forced to walk they are hobbled.
I fight because of all these and because I have a mind, a mind which has been trained in a free school to accept or to reject, to ponder and to weigh – a mind which knows the flowing stream of thought, not the stagnant swamp of blind obedience; a mind schooled to think for itself, to be curious, skeptical, to analyze, to formulate and to express its opinions; a mind capable of digesting the intellectual food it receives from a free press – because if a mind does not think it is the brain of a slave.
I fight because I think I am as good as anybody else; because of what other people have said better than ever I could, “certain inalienable rights” “right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” “government of the people, by the people, and for the people,” “give me liberty or give me death.”
I FIGHT because of my memories – the laughter and play of my childhood, the ball games I was in and the better ones I watched, my mother telling me why my father and she came to America at the turn of the century, my sisters marrying, my high school graduation, the first time I saw a cow, the first year we could afford a vacation, the crib at Camp Surprise Lake after the crowded, polluted Coney Island waters, hikes in the fall with the many-colored leaves falling, weenie and marshmallow roasts over a hot fire, the first time I voted, my first date and the slap in the face I got instead of the kiss I attempted, the way the nostrum quack would alternate with political orators on our street corner, seeing the changes for the better in my neighborhood – the El going down, streets being widened to let the sun in, new tenements replacing the old slums – the crowd applauding the time I came through with the hit that won us the borough championship: the memories, which if people like me do not fight, our children will never have.
I fight because I have something to fight for.
I FIGHT because of the life I hope to live when the fighting is finished, because that life offers opportunity and security and the freedom to read and write and listen and think and talk, because, as before, my home will be my castle with the drawbridge down only to those I invite. Because if I do not fight, life itself will be death.
I fight because I believe in progress, not reaction; because, despite our faults, there is hope in our manner of life, because if we lose there is no hope.
I fight because some day I want to get married and I want my children to be born into free world because my forefathers left me a heritage of freedom which it is my duty to pass on, because if we lost, it would be a crime to have children.
I fight because it is an obligation, because free people must fight to remain free, because when the freedom of one nation or one person is taken away the rights of all nations and all people are threatened, because through our elected representatives I had the choice: To fight or not to fight.
I FIGHT not so much because of Pearl Harbor, but because of what Pearl Harbor meant, because, dually after skirmishes with the Ethiopians, the Manchurians, the Chinese, the Austrians, the Czechoslovakians, the Danes, the Spaniards, and the Norwegians, fascism was menacing us as we had never before been menaced, because only the craven will not defend themselves.
I fight because “It is better to die than live on one’s knees.”
I fight because only by fighting today will there be peace tomorrow. I fight because I am thankful that I am not on the other side; because, but for the Grace of God or an accident of Nature, the brutalized Nazi could have been me and, but for my fighting, will be my child.
I fight in the fervent hope that those who follow me will not have to fight again but in the knowledge that if they have to, they will not be found wanting in the crisis.
I fight to remain free.
Commentary
Jack was an excellent writer.
That, I will more than readily grant.
The literary style of his essay, attributable to its organization as much as of its language, make it a fast-paced, emotionally compelling, very easy “read”.
Every paragraph, regardless of content, topic, or length, commences with the two-word phrase, “I fight…”. This phrase also appears in the piece’s title. This repetition – commencing at the very start of the essay – is particularly effective in setting up a kind of literary rhythm, by which as soon as you fish one paragraph, well… You anticipate the next. And, so, on. Until the end:
It draws you in, and keeps you going.
So, yes. Jack was an excellent writer.
And yet, behind everything is “the dog that didn’t bark”; a certain “thing” that by virtue of its absence undermines the message could otherwise have blossomed via Jack’s literary skill.
There are allusions to abstract, universal (and valid) ideals of freedom, thought, and association. There are comments about threat of totalitarianism. There’s mention of Jack’s residence in the New York metropolitan area, colorful allusions to his parent’s “immigrant” origins, and memories of his upbringing in New York City.
But, in the entirety of this essay, published in mid-1944, by which time news about the fate of European Jewry was certainly known in a general sense – and even in relative detail, assuming one followed the secular and Jewish media with even moderate attention and focus – there’s absolutely no allusion or reference – amidst mention of the “…Ethiopians, the Manchurians, the Chinese, the Austrians, the Czechoslovakians, the Danes, the Spaniards, and the Norwegians,” – to the fate of the Jews.
Why? Well, one can surmise…
Compare and Contrast
Perhaps it was a question of time and an issue of place.
The “Why I Fight” essay contest was conducted by the “Morale Services Section” in the North African Theater of War, probably (a guess here…) under the auspices of the War Department. As a skilled writer; cognizant of his primary and secondary audience and the prevailing zeitgeist, perhaps Jack rightly believed – given the tenor of the times; given the social “place” of the Jews of the United States (and beyond, even in the other Allied nations) in the 1940s – that a literary work calling attention to the Jewish people as Jews, in an explicit, singular, and specific sense, in the context of a larger war, might well have negated the work’s literary acceptability, let alone its public acceptance.
Well, as reported in The New York Times, of the 300 essays received by the Morale Services Section, the top three winners – along with Corporal Zurofsky – included Private Clarence Weinstock of 219 East 12th Street, Manhattan (second place), and Sergeant Henry C. Nelson, 1250 Brooklyn Avenue, Brooklyn (third place). According to the Times, there were twelve judges (names not given), who, “represented a cross-section of the Army and included men and women, officers and enlisted men.” Honorable mention awards went to, “Sergeant Kenneth Board, member of an Army Air Forces heavy bomber unit, whose home is at 9765 North Martindale Street, Detroit; Private Robert E. Stark, Medical Department, of 2140 Sixteenth Avenue, South Birmingham, Alabama; and Private First Class Benjamin E. Karn, member of an anti-aircraft unit, of 1997 Fillmore Avenue, Buffalo.”
On the other hand, assuming that Ben Weiner intended that his essay would appear in the Jewish press, perhaps what could superficially be perceived as a constraint gave him the ironic freedom to express himself frankly and fully.
________________________________________
But, things aren’t what they seem…
And yet, appearances, whether visual or literary, can be deceiving:
Jack Zurofsky was a deeply identified and committed Jew, in both word and action. For example, while serving in the Jewish Community Council of Essex County, New Jersey, he authored the professional article “Interpreting Jewish Social Work Today”, which appeared in the publication The Jewish Social Service Quarterly, I think some time in the 50s. Later, in the Daily News Bulletin of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency of June, 1961, his name appeared in an announcement concerning his appointment as “Director of Community Publicity Services of the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds” (whew – long title!).
This was apparent even earlier. In 1944, his short story about the Warsaw Ghetto Rebellion, “Warsaw Epitaph”, was published in The Jewish Advocate of October 19, 1944. If “the dog didn’t bark” for the “Why I Fight” literary contest, it certainly howled (and quite loudly!) here. Notably, the essay was expressly written for publication by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, which literary setting – paralleling Ben Weiner’s essay in The Jewish Times – may have granted Jack Zurofsky free reign to express his ideas and beliefs (albeit in the context of fiction, through the words of the symbolically named narrator “Israel”) in a manner not feasible for the “Why We Fight” contest.
Thus, “Warsaw Epitaph”:
WARSAW EPITAPH
“Today I Die”
By Corporal Jack J. Zurofsky, U.S.A.
(The author of the following short story based on the heroic resistance of the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto recently won first prize in a contest among U.S. servicemen overseas for the best essay on “What I Am Fighting For.” He is now stationed in this country. This story was written exclusively for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. – THE EDITOR.)
Today I am going to die.
I do not know exactly bow. Perhaps it will be by a rifle slug tearing through my heart or a machine gun bullet clipping my brain. Who knows? It may be a grenade exploding through my vitals.
The thought is not pleasant. I do not like to dwell upon it but this I know, today I must die and not only I but the rest of us, the handful that is left.
We have resisted them now for forty-two days. No longer do they despise us Jews. Our ghetto streets have become passages to Hell for them. No longer do they come here arrogant and unafraid. Now they advance behind a curtain of fire, after an artillery barrage, taking advantage of whatever cover remains. Now they keep their heads down and their proud chins tucked in. Now they fear a well-placed bullet from our pistols or one of our accurately hurled grenades.
They were surprised that first day. Symbolically, it was the first Passover Seder. They came in as they always do with the lists in their hands. And they suspected nothing. We watched them round up their victims as we had watched them round them up before. As always they took the old and the weak, the ones who could not work for them, the lame, the halt, and the blind, the decrepit, the ones who were useless to the Master Race.
The scene was an old one to us. We had seen it many times before. We betrayed no emotion when they tore a child from the arms of its mother, clubbing it to death before our eyes. This was routine. Nor did we cry out when they took Reb Shmulkevich, that harmless old sage, a lover of the classics and a student of the Talmud all his life. Half-starved, old, infirm, he did not move as fast as the gauleiter desired. They pulled his beard, and booted him in the genitals, leaving him writhing on the cobblestones. Perhaps it was mercy when a storm-trooper spitted him with a bayonet.
No, we said nothing. We watched and said nothing. But the call was already out. Our time had come.
We had made our decision. Unanimously. Like the Maccabees whose blood flowed in our veins we would fight. For so long we had submitted, tried to appease those whom nothing could appease.
What had we to lose? Our lives. Our laughter is harsh and ironic. What were our lives? We were outcasts, pariahs, beyond the pale, slaves to the Master Race. They killed us without -mercy, looted, plundered, raped our women and we adapted ourselves.
Our elders said we had to submit. It was our duty to survive. God would help us. The wrath of God would fall upon the oppressor as his hand fell upon Pharaoh.
They were our elders, our rabbis, the leaders of our people. We listened. Some of us never listened. I was for fight from the beginning. But we heeded the admonition of our elders and our resistance was only passive.
But all the time we planned. We contacted the Polish underground. Many of my friends joined the guerrillas in the forest. I stayed. My place was here. It takes courage to keep your hands at your sides, to wait, and wait, and wait.
But we could not wait if we had not planned. We smuggled in arms – pistols, hand grenades, knives, some rifles, even a few machine guns. In the depth of our misery we waited and prepared.
When they came with the deportation plan we saw through their diabolical scheme. But we were not ready, not yet ready. By now we had organization. We met in little cells. We could trust each other. Who among us would betray a fellow Jew to the enemy?
Each of us had a pistol and by now the rabbis were with us. They too knew of the crematorium at Lublin, the death camps at Trawnicki and Krakow.
Adam Czymansky, the president of the Warsaw synagogue, committed suicide. He hoped his action would bring our plight to the rest of the world. He was wrong. Suicide is not the way. If you die you must take an enemy with you. Do not do his work for him.
While the Nazi brutes gathered their pitiful victims we gathered our forces. Long ago we had picked out our password for that day.
“Kill”
The gestapo rats suspected nothing. They did not notice us creeping out of the cellars. None of them saw me creep up to the sentinel at the ghetto gate. None of them heard when I slit his throat, like a schochet would a chicken. How could they hear: His sound went no further than his throat where the knife met and stilled it.
They laughed and chuckled at their work. The pigs enjoyed it. For these it was their last laugh, their last chuckle.
It is beautiful to kill a Nazi. It is honest work, a satisfying duty, like pulling weeds, or exterminating rats.
Sometimes I wonder at myself. How could I feel that way? I, a Talmud student, a believer in the Commandments. “Thou Shalt Not Kill.”
I used to blanche at the sight of blood. My mother wanted me to become a doctor, a healer. But I was against it. I thought that I could not stand the sight I or stench of blood.
Since then I had seen much blood spilled, always Jewish blood, and always let by the Nazis. I had seen the corpses of my people in the streets of the ghetto and fat the factories. I had seen the Nazis stride into our synagogue and desecrate our altars with their killing. How often they violated the Sabbath eve with their murder.
The sight of blood became as familiar as the veins in my hand, as normal as the anger which grew in my heart, as inevitable as the purpose which sharpened in my mind.
So it became a pleasure to destroy those who had destroyed pleasure. I would think as I would draw a bead with a rifle, “This will hit him in the stomach right about the belly button. He will sit down suddenly and watch his guts desert him. The bullet will make a small hole in the front and a large hole in the back and it will rip his intestines as it passes. He will not like the feeling. Maybe then he will remember the little boy he clubbed to death, or the Jewish girl he raped. He will suffer a long time and his moans will disturb his comrades. It will remind them of the fate which awaits them. Even then he will die too soon though he lived too long.”
In that first fight we learned we were better men than the Nazis. We saw then that they were afraid of us, that they were only little men wearing large and heavy armor. When it came to the showdown we had more courage. But they had the tanks and the incendiaries. We had purpose and determination but they had all the food and all the drink that they wanted.
On that day we left none of them alive. Not one storm-trooper who came into the ghetto left it. They hardly put up a fight. Terrorized completely they died like rabbits. We did not lose a man and we gained many rifles and lugers.
Most important we gained several uniforms. Once- we removed the damned yellow badge and put one of them on who of the super race could tell us from them.
Thus the battle began.
We knew the Hitlerites would strike to quell our revolt. We knew that already gestapo headquarters had sent out a call for reinforcements, that they were routing the seine out of the beer halls and the brothels.
We prepared. The ghetto wall was a natural barricade. The women heated hot water for us to hurl from the roofs. We dispatched messages to the guerrillas. Our arms came out of hiding. Messengers hurried to the slave factories and our young men left their benches and hurried to the defense of the ghetto.
Nor did we wait. We attacked. Bands of us tore off our yellow badges and invaded Warsaw proper. We learned how easy it was to kill, a simple thrust of the knife, a twist, and you can wipe it on his uniform.
They came at us that night. They hoped to overawe us with six tanks. We let them come in for, by now we knew how to wait. When they reached the main street we let loose. They tried to flee but they were too late. They were cremated in their tanks.
The uprising became general. Each house became a fortress, each cellar an arsenal. We grouped our main strength in the larger houses and all that night we dug trenches in the streets. Even the children were put to work. They became our messengers. They brought us food which the women and the old people prepared in the communal kitchens.
Next morning we hung up our flags. Beside the Polish colors and the red flag we flew the pennant of Zion, the Star of David flying for the first time in this war.
By noon a cordon had been established around the ghetto by the Germans. Many Poles, suspected of complicity, were killed. Ten tanks, besides numerous machine guns and small arms, headed the Nazi array. They opened fire almost immediately. Our answering fusillade was telling.
Still they underestimated us. They refused to admit to themselves the fierceness of our resolve. But they had to stop us. The news of this battle must be contained. The outside world must never learn of this breach of the Nazi festung’s inner defenses. But that was just why we were fighting, why I am writing. The world must know what we have done here.
A council of leaders were organized. In it were the leaders of every schism and sect in ghetto life. Atheists and orthodox Jews united in a common bond. Communists fought shoulder to shoulder with Revisionist Zionists.
I was wounded that first day. Just a scratch. Not worth mentioning. I participated in a sortie just about twilight. The enemy tanks had been destroyed and we were determined to capture the survivors. In a mad charge we swept them before us but I didn’t see the surrender – the clubbed end of a rifle slugged me unconscious, lacerating and tearing open my scalp.
For one week I was out unable to fight not even knowing what was going on. During my convalescence I fell in love. Romantic, isn’t it. In the midst of all this terror, both of us certain we would never live through the battle, Deborah and I fell in love.
I didn’t find this out until several days later but it was Deborah who saved my life. When she saw me fall in the melee she dashed out of the shelter of the building and dragged me back. How she was not hit by a flying bullet, or a stray shell fragment none could explain.
Anyway, for the record, we fell in love. I write this because it is important not because it was me or even because of Deborah. It is important because it proves that life went on even in the shadow of death. We were married during the siege and we both spent our wedding night on the barricades.
Realization had finally come to the gestapo that they were dealing with an organized revolt Orders came from Berlin that the ghetto was to be destroyed. Somehow we knew this. How, I cannot tell, but we have our own intelligence which maintained liaison with the Polish underground throughout the siege.
Once, I know, we asked them to rise with us and they sorrowfully answered. “For us, the time is not yet ripe.”
And we fought on, each apartment a fort, each building a citadel. Slowly under the weight of superior force we gave up for each advance they made but we paid too. We fought with everything we had, boiling water, bricks, cobblestones, but still our ammunition could not last. Each day our ranks were thinned, more and more.
On the eighth day of the siege our spirits were greatly raised by the news that the prisoners in the Pawiak jail had heard of our uprising and had sent a message to us saying. “Save us and we will fight for you.” Now was the time for the captured German uniforms. That night 400 of us donned the swastika, slipped through the German cordon, and attacked the prison stockade. We were successful. All the prisoners, including Nazi deserters joined our ranks.
The fiercest attack came on the ninth day. Tanks poured through the breaches in the ghetto wall, cannon lumbering behind them. Volley after volley was leveled against us. Our suicide squads met this attack by disguising themselves in German uniforms and crawling under the tanks to blow themselves and the tanks up. For the Nazis their loss of life was terrific. They withdrew and gave up the attack.
From then on the horror began in the ghetto. Each night we would be bombed with incendiaries. We organized fire brigades and fought the flames as best as we could but we could not save all the buildings. Night after night other houses were consumed in the flames. The ghetto became a funeral pyre for our warriors, and our women and children.
We hoped and prayed that our example would fire the rest of enslaved Poland to revolt. But the days passed and the battle did not spread beyond the confines of the ghetto.
Meanwhile we fought on and on and on, retreating from building to building, killing as long as we could, dying as best we could.
Now this is the morning of the forty-second day. This is the last day. We know it Deborah knows it. I know it
Today all of us will die.
Already, as I write this on that roof of the last building left standing in the area, the sun is beginning to rise in the east. With the dawn will come the last and final attack.
It is a miracle that we have lasted this long. Forty-two days. Six weeks. Seven, days to each week. Twenty-four hours to each day. Sixty minutes to each hour. Sixty seconds to each minute – and each second filled with fighting, the rumble of tanks through the narrow ghetto streets, the clipped staccato of machine gun bullets, the bark of rifles, the crackle of flames burning the ghetto, the sound St buildings collapsing, bombs bursting, the sound and the smell of death.
From my eyrie up here I can see all of the ghetto. Remnants, of buildings thrust upward from the ground like jagged teeth. There is debris everywhere. Bodies lie unburied, rotting. In the distance, out of rifle shot, I can see the Germans regrouping, getting ready for the final lunge.
I have little time for they will come soon. I do not know whether or not this will ever be read. But this story must be told. The world must listen. They must know of the Jews of Warsaw. They must hear of the descendants of the Maccabees, the sons of Joshua and of Gideon, the warriors whom, unafraid as David, faced the nazi Goliath.
***
Again I am on the roof. Fate has reserved me for the last. This building has six floors. Fourteen stairs separate each floor. On each of these steps we have left a life, taking two for each one we gave.
Deborah, my wife, was the first to die this morning. She expired in my arms. I ask no more. Soon I will join her.
We fought for every room, every stick of furniture. We covered ourselves with glory.
Now only I am left but they will not have me alive.
With me on the roof I have the flag of the Jews, the flag of the nation that is no nation.
I am going to wrap myself in it and I am going to jump off the roof. I will die as Anna and her sons did in ancient times.
I die but in my dying I know the Jews will live, forever. We are tough. We will bounce back. The Jews will never die.
I will die as a Jew should, shrouded with the flag of my people, with the Shema on my lips, for my name is Israel.
Some comments…
Obviously a work of fiction, perhaps “Warsaw Epitaph” was inspired by contemporary news accounts and fiction in The Forward (Forverts), The Jewish Morning Journal, and Der Tog, as well as the “general” press.
In any event, regardless of his sources, some facets of his story are intriguing. Such as…
…The comment about, “…Reb Shmulkevich, that harmless old sage, a lover of the classics and a student of the Talmud all his life,” evokes the question: Would an elderly Talmudic Scholar in the Warsaw of 1943 even be a devotee of “the classics” (implying secular literature…?), in the first place? Perhaps this characterization of a rabbi as a scholar who bridged the worlds of Talmud and contemporary culture, was intended to facilitate a largely secular audience’s identification with the story.
…The narrator, symbolically named “Israel”, describes himself as, “…a Talmud student, a believer in the Commandments. “Thou Shalt Not Kill.” Really? If “Israel” was a “Talmud student”, then he certainly needed to brush up on his Tanach, for that statement is a disconcertingly common mistranslation of the sixth commandment, probably inspired by secular or non-Jewish sources. The correct text actually reads, “You shall not murder.”
…The sentence, “We knew the Hitlerites would strike to quell our revolt,” would – yes – actually be correct in the setting of this story. Though I’ve never encountered this word – “Hitlerites” – in American or British news reports, military documents, or popular articles in reference to German military forces or German WW II war crimes, the appellation was commonly used as a noun and / or epithet in Soviet WW II news items and military documents (along with the terms “Fascist”, “German-Fascists”, and “Occupiers”) as opposed to the simple and more valid term “Germans”.
…“Beside the Polish colors and the red flag we flew the pennant of Zion, the Star of David flying for the first time in this war.” I don’t know enough about the history of the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt to know if the Polish national flag, some variant of a communist or Soviet “red” flag, and Zionist flag, were simultaneously flown during the revolt. Perhaps there’s something about this in Marek Edelman’s The Ghetto Fights (listed below).
Withall, the essay, like “Why I Fight,” is a fine example of Jack’s literary skill. What it lacks in historical veracity it makes up for – at least, by the standards of the day – in being an attempt at sincerely expressing anguish, solidarity, and inspiration.
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Jack Zurofsky’s portrait, which accompanied the article in The Philadelphia Inquirer…
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A photo of Jack and New York Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, in a photo published in the Brooklyn Eagle on June 3, 1944. Originally from Manhattan, Jack resided lived in Brooklyn with his sister, prior to entering the Army.
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Jack Zurofsky passed away in mid-September of 1999.
Alas, I know nothing more about Ben Weiner. I assume that he, too, has since left this life.
But, Ben’s words remain as valid now, as they did seventy-seven years ago.
And, given ideological, political, and sociological trends in the world of 2020, even more.
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References
Communication from Jack J. Zurofsky’s daughter, Rena. (Thank you, Rena!)
News Articles (Chronologically Listed)
Corporal Ben Weiner
Jewish Times (Baltimore), Sept. 24, 1943, “We Fight For The Jew, Too” – A Soldier in North Africa Describes His Credo (Essay by Ben Weiner)
Jewish Advocate (Boston), Dec. 16, 1943 – “We Fight for the Jew, Too”, by Corporal Ben Weiner
Corporal Jack J. Zurofsky
New York Times, Dec. 25, 1943, “Yule Cheer Buoys Troops in Algiers”
New York Times, Feb. 27, 1944, “G.I. Cast In Algiers Ready For Its Show”
New York Times, May 14, 1944, “Brooklyn Soldier Wins Essay Prize”
New York Times, Sept. 14, 1999, Death notice for Jack J. Zurofsky
Philadelphia Inquirer, May 14, 1944, “‘Why I Fight’ – Corporal, 28, in North Africa Wins Army Essay Contest”
New York Daily News, May 22, 1944, “Listening In, with Ben Gross” (Eddie Cantor’s upcoming radio narration of Jack Zurofsky’s essay, scheduled for June 11, 1944)
Jewish Advocate, June 8, 1944, “In Our Country’s Service” (Biographical profile of Corporal Jack Zurofsky)
Jewish Advocate, Oct. 19, 1944, “Warsaw Epitaph – ‘Today I Die'”, by Corporal Jack J. Zurofsky (Essay about Warsaw Ghetto Revolt)
Jewish Telegraphic Agency News Bulletin, No. 124, June 29, 1961, “Jack J. Zurofsky to Head CJFWF Community Relations Programs”
– and –
Dublin, Louis I., and Kohs, Samuel C., American Jews in World War II – The Story of 550,000 Fighters for Freedom, The Dial Press, New York, N.Y., 1947
Edelman, Marek, The Ghetto Fights – Translation of a pamphlet published in Warsaw, Poland, in 1945 by the Central Committee of the “Bund”, American Representation of the General Jewish Workers’ Union of Poland, New York, N.Y., 1946
Gilbert, Martin, Atlas of Jewish History, Dorset Press, 1976
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