Unbowed: Israel – A Nation That Dwells Alone

Images, like words, are messages.

This is exemplified by the cover illustration of The Economist for March 23, 2024, which shows the flag of Israeli, somewhere in Gaza, illustrating the theme of the magazine’s lead editorial, “At a moment of military might, Israel looks deeply vulnerable”.  Here it is:

The flag – the flag of the Jewish nation – is tied to a wavering flagpole that is hesitantly supported by a random, leafless limb.  The flag stands within the center of a barren field.  A row of demolished buildings – were they once shops? – had they been peoples’ homes? – were they apartments? – were they once prisons for Jews taken captive by “palestinians” on October 7, 2023? – form a random, apocalyptic horizon in the background.  And, wind: wind everywhere.  The photo shows wind; it speaks of wind; it screams “wind”.  Clouds of dust rest upon the earth even as they billow and rise from it, to obscure both sky and the works of man.  And withal, signs of life are absent from the photo.

The image (aesthetically and symbolically, it’s very evocative) conveys barrenness and desolation, and its central message is that of Israel’s isolation, while – by virtue of the flag being bedraggled, besmeared by dust; unkempt and forlorn – the Jewish state is not at its best; its future uncertain.  This is consistent with the message of The Economist’s editorial, which with astonishing stupidity (or mendacity disguised as altruism?) advocates for a “two-state solution”, and warns of Israel being, “…locked in the bleakest trajectory of its 75-year existence, featuring endless occupation, hard-right politics and isolation.”

So superficially, the photo succeeds.  But on a deeper level, it inadvertently succeeds – Balaam-like – in a way that the editors of The Economist neither anticipated or intended, for it is an image not of ambivalence, but the possibility of victory. 

And so I quote, from chapter 23 of the Book of Numbers (English from Chabad.org, Hebrew from Sefaria.org):

7
וַיִּשָּׂ֥א מְשָׁל֖וֹ וַיֹּאמַ֑ר מִן־אֲ֠רָ֠ם יַנְחֵ֨נִי בָלָ֤ק מֶֽלֶךְ־מוֹאָב֙ מֵֽהַרְרֵי־קֶ֔דֶם לְכָה֙ אָֽרָה־לִּ֣י יַעֲקֹ֔ב וּלְכָ֖ה זֹעֲמָ֥ה יִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃
He took up his parable and said,
“Balak the king of Moab has brought me from Aram,
from the mountains of the east [saying],
‘Come, curse Jacob for me and come invoke wrath against Israel.’

8
מָ֣ה אֶקֹּ֔ב לֹ֥א קַבֹּ֖ה אֵ֑ל וּמָ֣ה אֶזְעֹ֔ם לֹ֥א זָעַ֖ם יְהֹוָֽה׃
How can I curse whom God has not cursed,
and how can I invoke wrath if the Lord has not been angered?

9
כִּֽי־מֵרֹ֤אשׁ צֻרִים֙ אֶרְאֶ֔נּוּ וּמִגְּבָע֖וֹת אֲשׁוּרֶ֑נּוּ הֶן־עָם֙ לְבָדָ֣ד יִשְׁכֹּ֔ן וּבַגּוֹיִ֖ם לֹ֥א יִתְחַשָּֽׁב׃
For from their beginning,
I see them as mountain peaks,
and I behold them as hills;
it is a nation that will dwell alone,
and will not be reckoned among the nations.

10
מִ֤י מָנָה֙ עֲפַ֣ר יַעֲקֹ֔ב וּמִסְפָּ֖ר אֶת־רֹ֣בַע יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל תָּמֹ֤ת נַפְשִׁי֙ מ֣וֹת יְשָׁרִ֔ים וּתְהִ֥י אַחֲרִיתִ֖י כָּמֹֽהוּ׃
Who counted the dust of Jacob or the number of a fourth of [or, of the seed of] Israel?
May my soul die the death of the upright and let my end be like his.”

11
וַיֹּ֤אמֶר בָּלָק֙ אֶל־בִּלְעָ֔ם מֶ֥ה עָשִׂ֖יתָ לִ֑י לָקֹ֤ב אֹיְבַי֙ לְקַחְתִּ֔יךָ וְהִנֵּ֖ה בֵּרַ֥כְתָּ בָרֵֽךְ׃
Balak said to Balaam, “What have you done to me?
I took you to curse my enemies,
but you have blessed them!”

12
וַיַּ֖עַן וַיֹּאמַ֑ר הֲלֹ֗א אֵת֩ אֲשֶׁ֨ר יָשִׂ֤ים יְהֹוָה֙ בְּפִ֔י אֹת֥וֹ אֶשְׁמֹ֖ר לְדַבֵּֽר׃
He answered, saying,
“What the Lord puts into my mouth that I must take care to say.”

For while the Jewish flag struggles to reman attached; struggles against the wind; struggles to remain aloft, more than merely Sisyphus-like, it actually succeeds.  The photo actually conveys Israel’s ability – if it will only allow itself – to stand tall, live, and continue, apart from the nations of the world, whether they be enemies or frenemies.  (And especially frenemies.)

“War is Not the Worst Thing” – Thoughts by Eric L. Rozenman, 2003

Here are a three aphorisms for our age, and all ages:

You may not be interested in folly, but folly may be interested in you.
You may not be interested in mendacity, but mendacity may be interested in you.
You may not be interested in duplicity, but duplicity may be interested in you.

These thoughts came to mind upon my rediscovery of the 2003 free verse poem “The Worst Thing”, by author Eric L. Rozenman, in light of opinion prevailing among the interchangeable bien-pensant of the “West” – the overlapping elites in the spheres of academia, diplomacy, foreign policy, the “news media”, and “popular” culture – concerning Israel and the Jewish people, subsequent to the events of October 7, 2023. 

Mr. Rozenman’s verse appeared in the February/March 2003 issue of Midstream, having originally been published in a Yiddish translation by Herman Taube in the 2000 issue of Der Onheib, and is as pertinent now as when first penned twenty-four years ago.     

Here it is, for your consideration.  

THE WORST THING
ERIC L. ROZENMAN

War is not the worst thing.
War is every horror —
Mind-numbing desolation.
Mangled limbs, burning flesh.
And a million blasted dreams. 
But war is not the worst thing. 
The worst thing is
When they come in jack boots and steel helmets.
With bayonets and barbed wire.
To enslave you …
When they come in kaffiyehs, carrying Kalashnikovs and axes
To cleanse the earth of such as you
And your children …
When they come with banners flying.
With terror and tanks,
Even wearing diplomats’ pinstripes
And clerical robes
And always with the words,
The words of self-justification,
Of racial purity or sacred righteousness
And legal moral historical
Hypocrisies authorizing them to murder you
And smash your children’s heads against the wall…
But because you convinced yourself that war is the worst thing
You won’t be able to fight back.
That will be the worst thing.

The Times Have Never Changed: The New York Times and the Jews, 1942 and 2023

“…the Times is not, in fact, a newspaper, but a status symbol.” – Benjamin Kerstein

____________________ 

Same as it ever was, same as it ever was
(Same as it ever was, same as it ever was)
Same as it ever was, same as it ever was
(Same as it ever was, same as it ever was)
Same as it ever was, same as it ever was
(Same as it ever was, same as it ever was)
Same as it ever was, same as it ever was
(Same as it ever was, same as it ever was)

 “Once in a lifetime“, Talking Heads, 1980

____________________

The year 2023 has ended, and the year 2024, arrived.

Who knows what it portends?  Perhaps best not to know. 

The future will arrive of its own accord, regardless of the hopes and fears; the wishes and dreams; the wonders and imaginings, of men.  

Thus far, here at TheyWereSoldiers, I’ve completed nearly 300 posts – more to come, I hope! – many of which pertain to the military service of Jews during the Second World War.  For posts covering this topic, a significant source of information has been The New York Times, which – like virtually all other American newspapers during the war – routinely published War Department Casualty Lists, and, news items about specific soldiers.  In terms of information specifically about soldiers in the American armed forces, without the Times this blog would be neither timely nor topical.  But (!) a major qualifier: The centrality of The New York Times to my blog is neither advocacy of nor an endorsement for that newspaper in terms of its editorial policy – it certainly has one! – concerning the Jews, Juda-ism as a religion, Jewish nationalism, Jewish self-defense, or Zionism. 

And especially, the re-established nation state known as Israel.

Quite the contrary.

As shown in the works of David S. Wyman (The Abandonment of the Jews), Laurel Leff (Buried by The Times), Jerold S. Auerbach (Print to Fit: “The New York Times, Zionism and Israel, 1896–2016) and other scholars, the ideology of the Times for over a century has neither accepted nor admitted that the rights tacitly accepted – if not celebrated! – for other peoples and nations should be accorded to the Jews.  Even now, in the early twenty-first century, the Times remains by default – nay calculatedly; nay, eagerly! – mired in a mindset that is unable reconcile itself to the Jews as a thriving, autonomous nation, in preference to existing in a scattered, subservient, conditionally accepted, passive condition.   

That this attitude continues today was stunningly evident in the newspaper’s lead article of October 18, 2023, published eleven days after Hamas’ mass murder of well over one thousand Israeli Jews.  Titled “Blast Kills Hundreds at Gaza Hospital“, the above-the-fold “article” (I use the term generously) was written by Patrick Kingsley, Aaron Boxerman, and Hiba Yazbek, and accompanied by a large-format photo taken by Associated Press photographer Abed Khaled.  (An observation: From the standpoint of pictorial composition and emotional power, is it a coincidence that the image – so powerful, one must admit! – imparts a “Madonna and Child“-like symbolism to the civilians of Gaza, and thus villainy to Jewish soldiers; to Israel; to the Jews?)

Here it is:

For the full, actual story surrounding the origin of this manufactured “event”, the veracity of which was so immediately accepted and then boldly propagated by the Times, go to Tablet, and check out…

Anatomy of a Blood Libel – With the initial claims of the hospital story debunked, all that is left is the eternal guilt and villainy of the Jewish people, by Clayton Fox (October 30, 2023)

…and…

Pallywood’s Latest Blockbuster – How the media’s lockstep coverage of the Al-Ahli Hospital explosion promoted Hamas propaganda, by Richard Landes (November 29, 2023).

Given the Times’ willingness to distort news about Israel (and hardly just Israel…) if not flat-out lie in accordance with its predetermined beliefs concerning the Jewish people, the question remains as to why in this year of 2024 its prominence and centrality in the world of information, news, and social influence seems undiminished.  The explanations for this are several.  Perhaps it’s the transition in the nature of the news media – in light of the advent of the Internet – from the advertising model, to the subscription model, whereby rather than objectively convey information, a periodical’s raison d’être is to reflect, validate, and promote the beliefs and assumptions of its readers.  Perhaps it’s the rise of massive, multifaceted media and information conglomerates and the simultaneous loss of regional and local newspapers.  Perhaps it’s explained by the Times – and not just the Times – relying on news (or more properly news) generated by, from, and for the pixelated oxymoron otherwise known as social media.   And, segueing from that (!), perhaps it’s the metamorphosis of journalism from a vocation which once the cultural overtones of a blue-collar literary “trade”, to a credentialed profession reflecting the “moral inversion” of belief and values (to use Michael Polanyi’s phrase, adapted by the late Sir Roger Scruton) that has occurred throughout the atrophying “West” at least since the 1960s.  (In truth, this metamorphosis began far, far earlier than the 60s, and I think has arisen from values and beliefs inherent to West itself.  But, that is the subject of another discussion…)

But, there’s a factor explaining the paper’s continuing centrality in Western culture that is unrelated to the interpretation and presentation of “information”.  That is, class … as in social class.  Or more precisely, a function of the Times is to establish and validate the social status of its readers – the credentialed, meritocratic, technocratic (and largely secular) “elite” – y’know, the “professional managerial class” – in the eyes of their peers.  And most importantly, themselves. 

This is very clearly explained by Benjamin Kerstein (No Delusions, No Despair) in his Substack post of November 3, The war from over here, part3:  “…the remarkable halo effect the paper enjoys persists and has, if anything, grown stronger.  By rights, the Times should have been forced by scandal and cancelled subscriptions to close up shop years ago.  But it has remained popular, universally read among the American aristocracy, and decisively influential over the entire media landscape in the US.  It is, in effect, the world’s most prestigious and omnipotent gutter rag.

My friend had a fairly decent explanation for this, which is that the Times is not, in fact, a newspaper, but a status symbol.  It signals one’s membership in or aspiration to join the American aristocracy, and thus carries with it a whole host of connotations that make it irresistible to the members of that class and its admirers.

Those connotations include an elite education, high intelligence, considerable or at least comfortable wealth, and a general disdain for one’s class inferiors.  It also signals adherence to a series of ideals like compassion, equality, tolerance, and general love for mankind.

Thus, it displays one’s membership in a caste of saints who are not only materially successful, but consider themselves the finest and most moral people who have ever existed in the entire history of the universe.  One can then feel comfortable sitting in judgment of anyone who doesn’t belong to that caste and even enjoy doing so.

All of this would be fine, and frankly amusing, if weren’t for the fact that people are getting hurt.  The Times’ prestige isn’t just risible, it causes real world violence.  The paper was forced to admit that it lied about the Gaza hospital explosion, but it doesn’t matter.  Large sections of its readership will continue to believe it, and blame the Times’ capitulation on a Jewish conspiracy.  They will do so because the Times told them to.”

So, it’s with these thoughts in mind that I reflect on an article about the Times by William Cohen (about whom I have no further information!) which appeared in the Jewish Frontier over eight decades ago: in February of 1942.  At first briefly complimentary in its description of the paper, Cohen’s wide-ranging yet forceful essay then shifts to focus on the newspaper’s coverage of news about Jews in terms of American society and politics; the creation of an autonomous Jewish military force alongside the Allies to combat the Axis; Jewish nationalism; Zionism. 

Given his words, it’s apparent that the true nature of the Times has been evident for many decades, to those who deign to look. 

Or, in the words of Charles Peguy, “We must always tell what we see.  Above all, and this is more difficult, we must always see what we see.”

As you can see, below.

____________________

But first…!  Here are some thoughts about the Times by Ruth R. Wisse, from her essay, “The Allure of Powerlessness”, in the Summer, 2021 issue of Sapir:

“But once the propaganda war against Israel
began making serious inroads in the rest of the world
,

parts of the Diaspora fell back into the patterns of valorizing statelessness.
Jewish sovereignty came under attack,
not just from terrorist rockets,
but from the New York Times,
which had been purchased by a German-Jewish owner
at the very same time that Theodor Herzl was founding the Zionist movement.

As Jerold Auerbach traces in his indispensable study,
Print to Fit: The New York Times, Zionism and Israel 1896–2016,
the anti-Zionism of the Ochs-Sulzberger family
has defined its coverage of the Jews ever since
,

including during the Second World War,
and still today the paper remains antagonistic to the idea of a self-governing Jewish people.

Yet the majority of New York Jews continue to read and trust a paper
that covers Israel from the perspective of those determined to destroy it.
Similarly, almost 70 percent of American Jews remain loyal to the Democratic Party,
even as it hands the reins to anti-Israel propagandists in its ranks.”

____________________

The Strange Case of The New York Times

William Cohen
Jewish Frontier
February, 1942
(Volume 9, Number 2)

FOOLISH CONSISTENCY is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen, and philosophers, and divines,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson, and he might have added, “ – and newspaper publishers and their sons-in-law.”

The late Adolph S. Ochs made the New York  Times the leading, most complete, most respected and  reliable daily newspaper in the world.  He gave the  paper the stamp of his personality, rendered its columns scholarly, literary, and kindly.  He packed its pages full of interesting news, pioneered in establishing the range and quality of its foreign correspondence, strove to mirror the cosmopolitan point of view in its editorial opinions.  It became the journal of educators and statesmen.  Any item in The Times was news that was “fit to print.”  Mr. Ochs sincerely believed his dictum that to make a good newspaper, its creators must be fair, accurate and complete; that they must “give the news impartially, without fear or favor, regardless of any party, sect, or interest involved.”

Guided by their able mentor, The Times correspondents girdled the world; their cabled dispatches became a symbol of interest and dependability.

Successor to Ochs as publisher, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, who shares the management of the paper with General Julius Ochs Adler, has closely followed his  predecessor’s maxims.

The Times has kept attuned to the changing trends of fast moving, kaleidoscopic, metropolitan journalism.  In recent years it has acknowledged the influence of the newsmagazine and its earthy, personal type of reporting.  It has followed the style of Time Magazine in the establishment of its “News of the Week in Review” in the Sunday edition.  The writing in the weekly section has become livelier, its comment more imaginative and crisp.  The editors show more concern over circumstances originating behind the news; they have started to broadcast news bulletins hourly on the air; recently The Times announced that on February 15 it will amalgamate its magazine and rotogravure section in the interests of freshness and readability.  Experiments in the use of color and eye-appealing type have been constantly maintained.  Times’ writers have received accolades as experts in many fields; last year the newspaper was again presented with a Pulitzer prize.

This reporter believes The Times is a superior newspaper.  In analyzing its editorial lapses he does not merely aim a malicious and unremitting fire at its journalistic vagaries and aberrations but presents the study of the paper in an attempt to be both fair and plain spoken.

Great journalistic model it is.  Yet, in one respect – the presentation of news of general Jewish interest and of Zionism – it has been proven to possess feet of clay.

The talented men and women who assemble its news, write the copy, and compose its editorials are not to be blamed.  The fault lies with the executives behind the scenes, that handful of individuals who have made The Times unqualifiedly complete as a newspaper, but woefully deficient in willingness to depart from a hide-bound reactionary attitude to the contemporary scene on the one hand, and adamant in refusal to face facts as regards the Jewish people on the other.

____________________

The Times would not find it paradoxical to propose
that the historic destiny of the Jewish people
is to be nice.

As Maurice Samuel has indicated,
for a people to be nice alone is not to be a people at all.

____________________

Times’ reporters and editors, like journalists who write for other papers, notably PM and the New York  Post, operate on assignment.  If the publisher suffers from the Jewish maladies of self-hate and self-effacement and has not the desire to inform his readers about barbaric atrocities committed on Jews in Rumania or Poland, or about discriminations practiced against Negro draftees in the South, nothing is written.  The publisher of The Times prints items he considers “fit” and in exercising his discriminating choice indicates a squeamish sensitivity for niceness and against disturbance of the status quo.  Many items are suppressed and others subjected to the scissors of the  copy reader.  On the Jewish angle The Times always assumes the defensive; the word Jew is kept out of  headlines, Jewish names rarely make the social columns, Jewish meetings usually “terminate too late” to break into a final edition.  Many Jewish items are banished to inner pages after undergoing a decontaminating, dry-cleaning process to the point of sterility.

The paper likes nice Jews, clean-cut individuals who have negligible political opinions, Jews who do not flaunt their nationalism or who ignore the taunts of demagogues.

The Times would not find it paradoxical to propose that the historic destiny of the Jewish people is to be nice.  As Maurice Samuel has indicated, for a people to be nice alone is not to be a people at all.  If The Times were consulted, for the sake of orderliness and euphony it would prefer the Jews as a religious minority.

Its Jewish publishers have uniformly adopted a head-in-the-sand assimilationist attitude about Jews and about Zionism.  Let us go back briefly to a period in American life very much like our own today, the days of November, 1917, during the first World War.  The United States had joined the Allies and the country was rapidly gearing itself to a war psychology.  In New York the Metropolitan was already halting “German Opera” so as to give “least offense to most patriotic Americans.”  Alfred E. Smith was running for president of the Board of Aldermen, John F. Hylan was successfully aspiring to the mayoralty as the candidate of Tammany Hall and of Hearst, who was being accused of sedition.  The Fusion candidate and incumbent mayor, Mitchell, was swept out of office.  Woman suffrage was an issue, the women receiving the vote in the state for the first time.  President Wilson was giving his Thanksgiving Proclamation.

News of the Balfour Declaration reached the general press November 9.  The Times placed the item inconspicuously on page three.  It said, “Britain Favors Zionism, Balfour Gives Cabinet View in Letter to Rothschild.”  The brief story included a favorable comment from the London Jewish Chronicle.

By November 19, 1917 the Turks had lost Jaffa and were fleeing northward with the British in pursuit.  In London announcement was made that Charles Rothschild and his brother, Baron Edmond of Paris had joined the Zionist movement.

Saturday, November 24, The Times under the Ochs aegis appeared with an unfriendly editorial, “The Zionists.”  It expressed fear that the “Zionist project” might involve the possibility of a recurrence of anti-Semitism.  It pointed out apologetically that the idea of colonies under a protectorate “has met with a good deal of favor among Jews who have given consideration to the practical side of the Zionist movement.”  It was the start of a hostility that was to continue.  In the ensuing years The Times has been  rabidly anti-Zionist.  One has but to go to the record, flip back the files and quote chapter and verse.  In 1917 editorials on Zionism were still tinged with the religious tone that bespoke Mr. Ochs’s milder influence.

With The Times the bold, anti-Zionist champion is always produced as a man of the hour.  The very next  day the Sunday paper reprinted an article from The American Hebrew by Rabbi Samuel Shulman which seconded The Times’ original motion of censure on Zionism in big, bold headlines which proclaimed: “Jewish Nation not Wanted in Palestine, the Views of those Who Are Opposed to Zionism Expressed by a Leading American Rabbi.”  Dr. Shulman said that he would not oppose settling some Jews in Palestine.  What they do there, he stressed, would be a matter that would concern themselves only.  Said the rabbi, “… I therefore hold that the destiny of the Jew is to remain scattered all over the world … and I interpret the great visions of our prophets in a purely universalistic spirit … we rejoice in the good will that is evidenced by the statement of that noble statesman Balfour.  But the phrasing is such an exact reproduction of the platform of Zionism that we cannot entirely endorse it.”  No Zionist rejoinder was printed.

On January 7 of this year, that perennial apologist to the Jewish people, motor magnate Henry Ford, whose declining years are troubled by the anguish and distress he has caused Jews, addressed a letter of “clarification” to the chairman of the B’nai B’rith Anti- Defamation League, Mr. Sigmund Livingstone of Chicago.

It is seldom that as notorious an eccentric as the Sage of Dearborn breaks into print unsolicitedly.  Usually his laconic gems of homespun philosophy are reserved for the Sunday Magazine section.  The Times nearly split a galley-rack in its effort to hide the story on an inner page.  As if to testify that the epistle was none of their doing the editors included a photostat clearly showing the Ford Company letterhead.

The Times editorials for that day did not capitalize on the opportunity for comment.  No effort was made to meet an issue squarely which would have committed The Times on a Jewish problem, or which would have demonstrated the validity of the newspaper’s oft repeated boast that it is an independent, Democratic paper capable of editorially spanking those statesmen or captains of industry whose conduct  is erratic.  No editorials have appeared on the Ford letter in subsequent issues.

Like all assimilationists the publishers of The New York Times prefer to evade and ignore the lessons of  history as regards the Jewish people.  They shut their eyes to the fate of the Jewish-refugee editors and publishers who have arrived in numbers from Germany and Austria, and have flooded the slick paper magazines with their breast-beating confessions and testimonials which have reached a crescendo of mea culpa.  While the now penitent German tycoons dawdled and looked for Communists under their editorial beds, the Nazis were methodically infiltrating their sanctums and composing rooms.  The Jews and the Zionist movement had always been rejected as personae non gratae by the Jewish-owned German dailies.  Thanks to Herman Ullstein, of the famous Ullstein Publishing Company which was taken over by Hitler, we have been treated to constant repetition of the vivid scenes describing the fall of that gigantic enterprise.  How Wittkopf the doorman led a demonstration of 150 employees marching in goosestep, chanting, “Down with the Jews!”; or how Kleinmichel, the head messenger, attired in Storm Trooper uniform, stationed himself in the composing room to see that nothing inimical to Nazism was printed.  The UIlsteins were finally stripped of every possession.  Today the record stands as a warning to other smug and complacent publishers who hide ostrich-like behind their editorial facades, pretending that their fear is courage; their shame, spirit.

As if to warn friendly legislators and to prejudice rapprochements between Zionists and non-Zionists on united demands at post-war peace conferences, The Times burst forth, on the morning of January 22, with a startling, column-long lead editorial insolently entitled, “A Zionist Army?”  With characteristic presumption The Times chose to refer to the proposal for a Jewish Army to fight with the British forces as a “Zionist” Army, and to label the Yishuv in Palestine as a possible Zionist state.  This selection of terminology stems back to May 18, 1939, the day of the  British White paper, when a front page dispatch from a Times’ London correspondent coined the phrase “Zionist National Home” in contradiction to the historical record on Jewish Palestine which since 1917 has been officially known as the Jewish National Home.  The Times fearfully trotted out the usual bogies.  It became apprehensive over incurring Arab resentment and hostility and the British government’s opposition to the creation of separate military units.

With callous disregard for the fallacious logic of its argument, The Times carefully retrained from referring to the established fact of an active, thriving community of close to 600,000 Jews in Palestine, chose as their second reason for opposing a Jewish Army the “theoretical” argument that a “Zionist” Army would presuppose the establishment of a “Zionist” State as one of the aims of the United Nations after the war.  It inferred that the collapse of Nazism would automatically set right all the upheavals and distress in Europe with the nonchalant reference to the possibility that “some from Axis territories” will prefer to migrate to Palestine or other lands rather than face “the unhappy memories associated with the past.”  In postulating the editorial The Times’ management disclosed the extent to which it is still guided by the appeasement complexes of the Munich pact; despite constant decimations of Jewish populations in the areas overrun by the Nazis, despite the existence of the cruel, monstrous concentration camps in which Jews are tortured, starved and dumped unceremoniously, despite the actuality of disease-ridden, crowded ghettoes in Warsaw and other occupied centers, it chose this unpropitious moment to plunge the dagger of betrayal in the back of the helpless millions of Jews who look anxiously to Palestine for a haven after the war, and to dash the hopes of thousands of young and willing Jews who are eager to defend democracy by fighting with a Jewish Army.

According to dispatches to the Yiddish press, the Times editorial was immediately seized upon by the Nazi and Italian radios which beamed broadcasts to the Arabic speaking countries, pointing out that the Arabs would always find it easier to cooperate with the conservative, assimilationist type of Jews as represented by The Times school in preference to the “greedy” Zionists.  From Royal Oak, Michigan came an echo reverberating through an editorial similarly entitled, “A Zionist Army” and published in Father Coughlin’s weekly fascist journal, Social Justice.

Though swarms of letters of protest poured into The Times’ offices, only two were printed, four days later, on Monday, January 26.  One was an official reply from Dr. Stephen S. Wise, on behalf of the Emergency Committee for Zionist Affairs, and one from a Times champion who as usual was produced with alacrity in the person of Professor Morris R. Cohen, emeritus professor of philosophy at City College, and one time head of the Conference on Jewish Relations.  Dr. Cohen aptly demonstrated the use of specious logic.  In his post-mortem comment he meekly indicated he would prefer to leave the problem of a Jewish Army to the military authorities concerned, scoffed at the idea of a Jewish State in Palestine relieving the Jewish problem.  He involved himself in a fatuous discussion of the shopworn contentions that Palestine could not absorb all the Jews, the conflict between national interests and individual rights, solicitude for the Arabs.  It poorly becomes a man of Dr. Cohen’s eminence who has indicated his interest in Jewish representation at a peace conference, to approve The Times’ watery, editorial balderdash.

Chiefly responsible for The Times shrinking stand on Jewish issues is Arthur Hays Sulzberger who has been at the helm of the paper since the death of Adolph S. Ochs in 1935.  Mr. Sulzberger consistently treats the Jewish question as if he wished it did not exist.  He has been vociferous in generalizing about  safeguarding the “democratic way.”  In an address before the Carnegie Institute at Pittsburgh nearly a year and one half ago (October 24, 1940), Mr. Sulzberger, in describing our press as a line of defense against propaganda from abroad, said: … “Yet, in the long history of man security has never been attained by a refusal to state or face the facts.”  Further he spoke of the aims of The Times in the following words: “Our consistent purpose is to treat the community as an adult and to give these adults the facts as accurately as we can secure them.”

But on numerous occasions The Times has belied the idea that the community’s interests are taken into account when it behooves the paper to suppress or minimize an item of importance to the Jewish community.  On June 5, last year Representative M. Michael Edelstein of New York fell dead of a heart attack in the speaker’s lobby of the House of Representatives after having answered on the floor of the  House a vicious attack on Jews made by ranting, demagogic Representative John E. Rankin of Mississippi.  The Times printed a bare outline of the story in the suburban section.  The other papers considered the story front page news, used complete analyses, and editorials on the subject.  A day later The Times recanted with a lukewarm editorial which employed a favorite Times phrase in referring mildly to attacks on “religious minorities.”

To cite an illustration of the strange editorial treatment of an item of concern to Jews: Last September 11, Charles A. Lindbergh made his famous anti-Semitic utterance at Des Moines.  The Herald Tribune editorialized on the subject on September 13, denouncing his views as “Against the American Spirit.”  It took The Times thirteen more days of deliberation before there finally appeared on September 26 an editorial indicating displeasure over Lindbergh’s remarks.  It prefaced its comment with the following statement: “Passing over the question whether a religious group whose members come from almost every civilized country and speak almost every Western language can be called a race let us examine what Mr. Lindbergh actually said.” The editorial concluded: “… We do not believe that the most sinister aspect of this episode lies in its appeal to anti-Semitism, however obvious the intent to make that shameful appeal may be … We do not believe that anti-Semitism will ever gain ground in this country so long as the masses of our people are true to the great  traditions on which this Republic was founded …”

Some years ago in an interview with a representative of a mid-western Anglo-Jewish paper, Mr. Sulzberger expressed fears which trouble him.  He indicated that he felt no particular kinship with Jews living in other parts of the world.  He declared that the establishment of a Jewish State in Palestine would raise strong doubts in his mind as to the advisability of continuing his Jewish affiliations.  He contended that Mussolini was within his rights in his statement that Italian Jews could not be Zionists as long as Zionism was a recognized part of British Imperial policy which was in conflict with Italian interests as defined by the Fascist dictator.

It is interesting to compare the views of Mr. Sulzberger with a statement of a great American – Louis Dembitz Brandeis, who said: “… loyalty to America demands rather that each American Jew becomes a Zionist.”

In the light of The Times policy it is not difficult to comprehend why Mr. Joseph M. Levy, who has been Palestinian correspondent of The Times for a number of years, writes as he does.  Mr. Levy after a recent visit to the United States has returned to Cairo from where he covers the Libyan campaign.  His dispatches often are hostile to the Yishuv, partial to Arab nationalism.  When events of interest are happening in Palestine, Mr. Levy usually is “absent on assignment.”  He seldom gets rapturous about achievements in Eretz Israel, occasionally breaks his silence to cable a friendly report on a non-political institution such as the Palestine Symphony Orchestra.  Mr. Levy is no novice as a war reporter; however his Zionist readers are often inclined to question his military sagacity on the basis of past performances in his reporting of events in the Near East.

The Times makes its columns accessible to Dr. Judah Leib Magnes, president of the Hebrew University.  Rabbi Magnes, a likeable personality, can be counted on to express a minority view that will delight The Times.  He has opposed the idea of a Jewish Commonwealth, preferring a bi-national state within the framework of an Arab confederation; he has differed with the call of the Jewish Agency for obligatory conscription.  The Times makes a special point of interviewing him periodically and prominently displaying his opinions.

Zionist readers of The Times know that New York possesses other daily papers which do not bend over backward in chronicling Jewish news.  Unlike The Times they often print extensive reports on events in the Jewish community, are not afraid to take a bold stand on Jewish topics.

The Times commentators find occasion to champion the endeavors of many peoples.  Sympathy has been expressed for the Polish legion, the Free French movement, the uprooted Czechs, the hapless Chinese.  Editorials have often upheld the rights of men of good will to lead free lives no matter how contrary their views to that of the conservative school which The Times represents.

But throughout articles concerning Jews runs the thread of timorousness, the jittery inability of its publisher to look forthrightly at Jewish problems.

He has failed to see the need for Jews to establish either group equality or individual security.  He has constantly befuddled discussions of Jewish issues with evasions and subterfuges.

It would seem advisable for The Times to consider two alternatives:

One, that the paper tend to its editorial knitting, cease meddling with Jewish issues, stop trying to impose the opinions of its publisher.  Or, two, that The Times practice its own credo for Democracy: stand up and face facts, identify the Jews and their struggles as equal to the aspirations of other peoples, help implement their desire for human rights.

Just One Reference!

Scruton, Roger, The West and The Rest – Globalization and The Terrorist Threat, Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Wilmington, De., 2002

What’s So Funny?…  Thoughts from the Frontier: Curse of Jewish Comedians, by Henry Montor (Jewish Frontier, November, 1935)

“…they think that self-derision is the mark of the “good sport”.

                                                                  

On October 1, 2013, the Pew Research Center released the results of a telephone poll entitled “Portrait of Jewish Americans“.  The poll explored the identity of American Jews in terms of child rearing, intermarriage, denominational affiliation, attitudes about Israel, and, the personal and communal factors that comprise the “meaning” of being a Jew in the United States of the early 21st Century.  Comprising land-line and cellphone interviews of 3,475 persons, the poll was reported by Pew to have been the, “…most comprehensive national survey of the Jewish population since the 2000-2001 National Jewish Population Survey,” the central criterion for inclusion in the survey being identification – or as it turned out the lack thereof for some 689 respondents! – with the Jewish people in terms of religious affiliation.

Several results emerged from the poll, the central take-away being – as displayed in a graph at Pew’s website – that “culture” (an ambiguous concept open to wide interpretation!) and familial or ethnic ancestry had – as opposed to religious affiliation and observance – by 2013 become the primary markers of Jewish identity, reflective of trends by then prevailing across much of American society, if not Western civilization as a whole.

In terms of, “What does being Jewish mean in America today?”, the central take-aways from the poll were:

1) Large majorities of U.S. Jews said that remembering the Holocaust (73%) and leading an ethical life (69%) are essential to their sense of Jewishness.
2) More than half (56%) said that working for justice and equality is essential to what being Jewish means to them.
3) And about four-in-ten said that caring about Israel (43%) and having a good sense of humor (42%) are essential to their Jewish identity.

I don’t know what such a survey would reveal of the opinions and American Jews now, well into the opening decades of the twenty-first century – and in the future – in the wake of Hamas’ slaughter of Jewish civilians in Israel on October 7, 2023; in the context of Israel’s war against that terrorist organization; amidst the global eruption of openly antiJewish rhetoric and calumny that’s transpired since October 7, and in a larger context, America’s post-January-20-2009 ongoing “fundamental transformation”.  (The ultimate results of the latter are not yet in, but thus far we have a solid indication of where things might be headed.  Then again, history hides its own surprises.)  But in terms of the survey itself, a specific result, that a good sense of humor had become central to the identity of American Jews – far, far (far) more than being part of a Jewish community, observing Jewish law (halacha), and keeping kosher – was, subsequent to the survey’s release, a point of particular notice and commentary.  

Well…

Sometimes in life there’s this thing called synchronicity…   

Roughly coincident with the poll’s release, during one of my many visits to the Dorot Jewish Division of the New York Public Library, while researching the Jewish Frontier (which has been the basis of many posts at this blog!) – without knowledge of its contents beforehand – I chanced across an opinion piece written 78 years before, which pertained to the topics of Jews, humor, and Jewish humor (should I put that in quotes, as per “Jew-Ish Humor?).  Written by Henry Montor and published in November of 1935, his essay, “Curse of Jewish Comedians”, discusses the nature and implications of tropes and visual stereotypes utilized by American Jewish comedians in vaudeville and popular culture during the 1930s (and by implication even earlier), and, the implications of this in terms of the collective perception of American Jews: By American society as a whole, and even more importantly (though not explicitly stated in the essay, the inference is obvious!) by the Jews of the United States themselves.  Montor specifically pointed to Lou Holtz and Harry Hershfield in this regard, to a minor degree adding to this not-so-august duo George Jessel, Milton Berle, and Al Jolson.  However, Montor does express praise for Jack Benny, (George) Burns and (Gracie) Allen, and another married comedic duo (never heard of them ’til I read the essay!), (Jessie) Block and (Eva) Sully

Given the – by the 1930s – waning of vaudeville and the simultaneous preeminence of radio, Montor closed on a note of optimism: 

“It is fortunate that vaudeville is dying.
It is also fortunate that radio is governed by rigid rules.
For otherwise,
the attempt to combat anti-Semitism in America
would be even more thoroughly hampered than it is
by Jews who think they are funny when they are merely being contemptible.”

When I read Montor’s essay in 2013 – even as I contemplate it now, in 2023 – it was impossible not to weigh its message in terms of what the Pew survey reported about the Jews of America, and, the nature and implications of the humor created by Jewish comedians – funnymen and funnywomen both – during the intervening decades and well into contemporary times.  Leaving aside the vehemence of Montor’s arguments, I solidly empathize with his underlying theme concerning the imperative of the Jewish people manifesting a sense of pride, whether in the America – the world – of the 1930s, or the world – the America – of the 2020s. 

But in a far larger sense, I can’t help wonder about the very association of Jews and humor; Jews and comedy; the assumption that a sense of humor is so central to and perhaps (perhaps…?) a part of Jewish identity.  About that, I wonder.  About that, I have long been a skeptic.

Does the association of Jews and comedy; the taken-for-granted belief about a sense of humor being an inherent and perennial part of the Jewish character, really reflect a continuing and inherent quality of the Jewish people?  Or, is the association of Jews and humor simply a passing coincidence of long duration that reflected the confluence of modern communications technology, the ascendancy of the mass media, and – at least during the past century, but not anymore – a homogenous popular culture?

I think so.  The explanation’s pretty straightforward. 

Given the perennial emphasis among the Jewish people of literacy, then in light of secularization, and, Jewish political emancipation (…more de facto than de jure? – time will tell!…) social and technical developments in the modern world enabled those exceedingly few individuals favored by talent, drive, and luck (never discount luck!) the opportunity to observe, find, and enter a “niche” in mass culture – whether in print, stage, film, or pixel – created by the incongruity between the past, the present, and even the future.  In this situation, the fact that some (not all) Jewish comedians and humorists would unhesitatingly promulgate negative stereotypes about Jews – regardless of the media, platform, or technology – is not at all surprising.      

During an age characterized by continuing social transformation and the loss of a sense of “place” and “identity” among so very many men, they were people of two (or more) worlds who I think felt at home in none; for whom ties to the Jewish people had desiccated to the point of sentimental irrelevancy; for whom the need for social acceptability had become an end in itself. 

If social acceptability and “success” internalizing and then projecting prevailing negative stereotypes, then so be it.     

To sum things up, a joke is nice.  A joke is funny.  But, more than mere irreverence, the abiding need to make “jokes” concerning oneself and one’s people is a sign of something else entirely. 

______________________________

And so, for your consideration, here’s Henry Montor’s essay, followed with an excerpt from an interview of Aharon Appelfeld by Philip Roth.

Curse of Jewish Comedians
Jewish Frontier
November, 1935

THE average American knows the average Jew as a caricature and not as a flesh-and-blood reality.  His picture of the typical Jew is of a hunch-backed, long-nosed, gesturing individual, marked by a harsh accent and a cupidinous, lecherous mind.

Due to this portrayal of the Jew there has developed in America a sympathy, more widespread than is acknowledged, for the anti-Semitic program that has its most refined executioners in the Nazis of Germany.

For decades before Hitler the German public and private presses were turning out the most grotesque cartoons of Jews.  Violent and offensive, they were nevertheless the product of consummate artists.  Hitler had invaluable allies in these accumulating ribald sketches.

The anti-Semitic movement in America has a similar background, though the caricatures are supplied from an entirely different source.  In this country they are furnished not by hostile newspapers and magazines but by Jews themselves.

For the Jews of the United States are cursed with their comedians.  With a great measure of pride Jews point to the predominance on the vaudeville and musical comedy stage of men and women who originated in New York’s East Side or in some equally Jewish section of a native metropolis.  They have insisted that these masters of the quip were making a genuine contribution to American folklore and that they represented the best in American humor. 

It is true that these Jewish comedians have made innumerable millions laugh.  They have coined phrases that have been the bulk of conversation of street-curb and drawing-room alike.  In New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia and other equally large centers of Jewish population, as well as in the smaller towns where few Jews have ever penetrated, there is a portrait of the Jew as clear and unequivocal as though some distinct personality had actually sat for it.  The average American Christian knows the Jew only as he has been presented on a thousand stages – by Jewish comedians. 

Virtually every characteristic which the Christian links with the Jew has been impressed upon him by the clowning antics of Jews.  The violent gesturing with the hands, the shrugging of the shoulders, the obscene self-humiliation, the eagerness to outwit friend or foe – these attributes are the contributions of Jewish funmakers. 

The stage portrayals of practically every actor whose name appears on the long list of comedians usually noted in books summarizing Jewish contributions, to American culture, contribute to the anti-Semitic indoctrination of America.

Lou Holtz, who achieved a miraculous fame during the year that New York’s Palace Theatre collapsed as the country’s premier vaudeville house, has since become known more widely through radio and movies.  His stage Jew, is, in many respects, the symbol of the vulgarity, offensiveness and viciousness with which the great majority of Jewish comedians have shrouded Jews and their characteristics. 

“…the prey thought that, on the whole, the hunter was right.”

 – Peter Gay, from “Hermann Levi – A Study in Service and Self-Hatred”,
(in) Freud, Jews and Other Germans – Master and Victims in Modernist Culture

With the exception of several minor skits, notably his Maharajah story, Lou Holtz specializes in interpretations of Jewish eccentrics.  Like most of his craft, Mr. Holtz has probably never given a second’s thought to the effect achieved by his stories.  But the non-Jew listening to Lou Holtz’s act sees a race of whining, wheedling people who are cunning and self-opinionated, who have no hesitancy in betraying and defaming their co-religionists. 

The possession of an accent is neither criminal nor dishonorable.  And yet Lou Holtz manages to give to his nasal accent, presumably native to all Jews, an obsequiousness and poltroonery that must turn the stomach of any self-respecting Jew.  Lou Holtz’s Jew is both a knave and a fool, a trickster and a buffoon.  The audiences who laugh uproariously at his gags are nonetheless acquiring what they believe to be a realistic understanding of the true Jew.

It will be pleaded for the Jewish comedian that the effect of their portraiture is, ultimately, to display a lovable, jovial people.  It will be said that there is no reason why the Jews, as well as the Scotch, Irish and Negroes, should not have their foibles satirized good-humoredly.  It has also been I said that it is far better that Jews should do the fun-poking than non-Jews.

Insofar as the first two contentions are concerned the Jewish comedians are not preoccupied with portraiture; their aim is exaggeration.  The more ludicrous the sketches they make, the more laughs they draw, the more salary they eventually get.  Furthermore, there is not another race which is so infamously derided on the American stage as are the Jews.  That is because the Jewish comedians feel no one can suspect their motives.  With their twisted ideas of sportsmanship, they think that self-derision is the mark of the “good sport”. 

The Jew sharpens, so to speak,
the dagger which he takes out of his enemy’s hand,
stabs himself,
then returns it gallantly to the anti-semite
with the silent reproach,
“Now see if you can do it half as well.”

– Theodor Reik

Creator and introducer of some of the most unfortunate paraphrases of Jewish thought and action is Harry Hershfield, the celebrated cartoonist.  A person of the kindliest feelings and of some sensitivity, Hershfield nevertheless seems unaware of the fact that the bon mots he creates circulate in a thousand directions, bringing to the most distant points a vision of the Jew who has no regard for his traditions, who sponges on anyone who is innocent enough to be imposed upon; who leaves no path untried if it will bring him quickly to undeserved riches.  As the creator of Abel Kabibble and other famous figures of the cartoon pages, Hershfield has revealed an unusual appreciation of the ambitions and failings of the average Jew.  But that sense of proportion is abandoned when he frames or adapts gags for the vaudeville stage.  These gags must be saltier and rawer than the next man’s offerings if they are to “wow” the customers.  The result is a ghastly race between Jewish comedians to see who can create more raucous laughter by more vindictive caricatures.

Few of the Jewish comedians are genuine masters of the comedic situation.  They are, in large part, slap-stick artists who provoke hearty guffaws by falling on banana peels or stepping in the way of lemon meringue pies.  The intelligent play on words, the creation of intrinsically humorous scenes are processes that escape the majority of these comics.  Their forte is the stimulation of belly-laughs by wisecracks that just about hit that section of the anatomy

Probably the outstanding Jewish comedian in America today is George Jessel, who is distinguished by the fact that he can speak without having a ghost writer draft his remarks in advance.  He is nimble-witted, sensitive to the possibilities of phrasing.  Possessed of a sly gift for satire, he has won no love from radio because he has always refused to take ether himself, the product or the manufacturer seriously.  But even Jessel’s anecdotes on numerous occasions have given the quaintest ideas of Jewish practices.  He has never been as offensive as his colleagues because he has always emphasized the emotional traits of Jews in such a manner as to create sympathy.  His mother-and-son conversations are epics of American humor, conducted in the main with a healthy gift for wit that doesn’t leave a nauseous taste on the tongue after completion.  But during the years a “fire” story here, a seduction story there, a sharp practice narrative elsewhere – all have added pigment to the American portrait of the Jew.

“He understood other people so well
that he adapted himself too much
to what they desired of him.”

– Sir Isaiah Berlin

No one would contend that it is the function of the comedian, any more than of the novelist or sociologist, to present Jews as a race of purely angelic creatures to whom the slightest vice is alien.  But the Jewish comedians have been making a living by doing virtually nothing else but caricature their people.  One of the most horrible experiences is to sit in a metropolitan vaudeville house and listen to the roaring of an audience as some Jewish comedian concludes a story depicting a Jew getting the best of his neighbor in an underhanded way.  It is no less gruesome that Jews form a large portion of such audiences.

A new crop of Jewish comedians is coming to the fore.  They are imitating and enlarging upon the fashion set by their predecessors, Milton Berle, youngest of the new stars, is typical.  He tells stories of perversion and “bootlegging of bottles in kosher hotels” with equal gusto.  That he is an excellent comedian is undeniable.  It is equally undeniable that his presumably innocently intended wisecracks are adding to the proportions of the amazing caricature of the Jew. 

Jack Benny is one of the few comedians who does not infringe on good taste.  But that is because he must yield to the regulations of radio.  There was a time, when working for Earl Carroll, when his suave manner was being used to exploit stories more obnoxious than those he pours on the air today. 

Sobbing-voiced Al Jolson has fortunately stuck to his mammy roles.  The musica1 comedies in which he appeared with such great success provided him with scripts that vaulted over his own stage ideas.  In radio, too, he has been more or less tied down to a routine.  And yet there are occasions when he vulgarizes with the least of his imitators.  It is his manner rather than the substance of Jolson’s stories that is offensive.  He leaves no doubt that he is posturing as a Jew.

“What if there is too much reliance on joking, and the cure proves worse than the disease?”

Ruth R. Wisse, “Philip Roth: Portnoy’s Complaint” (from the “Rediscovered Reading” series), Sapir, Winter, 2023

That it is possible to be funny without being offensive is proved by Jack Pearl, by Burns and Allen and, to a lesser degree, by Block and Sully.  For years Jack Pearl has been doing a Germanic accent.  Never once has he said or done anything that would reflect on the essential honesty and decency of tree German type he was representing.  He has always steered clear of Jewish caricatures, because he happens to be one of the few men on the vaudeville stage who has some conception of the responsibility he bears.  Burns and Allen, most popular of the radio teams, have always managed to extract their humor from situations and not from individuals.  Their phenomenal success is the greatest indictment of the other Jewish comedians, for it reveals their lack of ingenuity as well as their social irresponsibility.

Radio has been a boon to the Jews America, for it has curbed practically all the Jewish comedians who have been lucky enough to enter that kingdom.  From time to time, however, they appear briefly on the national chains.  Their menace is not so well curbed, on the individual and smaller chains. 

It is fortunate that vaudeville is dying.  It is also fortunate that radio is governed by rigid rules.  For otherwise, the attempt to combat anti-Semitism in America would be even more thoroughly hampered than it is by Jews who think they are funny when they are merely being contemptible.


                                
                                                                 

Walking the Way of the Survivor: A Talk With Aharon Appelfeld
by Philip Roth
The New York Times Book Review
February 28, 1988

“It took me years to draw close to the Jew within me.
I had to get rid of many prejudices within me
and to meet many Jews in order to find myself in them.

Anti-Semitism directed at oneself was an original Jewish creation.
I don’t know of any other nation so flooded with self-criticism.
Even after the Holocaust Jews did not seem blameless in their own eyes.

On the contrary, harsh comments were made by prominent Jews against the victims,
for not protecting themselves and fighting back.

The Jewish ability to internalize any critical and condemnatory remark
and castigate themselves is one of the marvels of human nature.

What has preoccupied me,
and continues to perturb me,
is this anti-Semitism directed at oneself,
an ancient Jewish ailment which,
in modern times,
has taken on various guises.”

                                                                 
                                

What’s so funny about it?

HENRY MONTOR IS DEAD AT 76; U.J.A. AND ISRAEL BOND LEADER, The New York Times, April 16, 1982

Henry Montor Dead at 76, April 16, 1982 (Jewish Telegraphic Agency)

Freud, Jews and Other Germans – Master and Victims in Modernist Culture, Oxford University Press, New York, N.Y., 1978

Tobin, Jonathan S., American Jews: Laughing but Shrinking, Commentary, October 1, 2013

Of Friends, Frenemies, and Enemies: The Murderous Consequences of Western Diplomacy – Melanie Phillips, interviewed by Jonathan Tobin, October 25, 2023

Video time!…

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There are times that arise in the lives of peoples, nations, and civilizations when taken-for-granted assumptions about the past and future demand examination, if not revision, if not upending.

In light of Hamas’ mass assault and terrorism against Israeli civilians – Jews – on October 7, and, Jonathan Tobin’s October 25th Jewish News Syndicate interview of journalist Melanie Phillips, perhaps (perhaps) we are now living amidst one of those times.

And so, for your consideration…

I

Why has it been this situation for a hundred years?
Why is it the only situation which is like this?
The only war that never ends in the world.
Because it’s the war that the – has been created by the West,
and continued by the West.
It relies entirely on Western support.

✡                                 ✡

“As a dog returns to his vomit, so does a fool repeat his folly.”
“כְּכֶלֶב שָׁ֣ב עַל־קֵא֑וֹ כְּ֜סִ֗יל שׁוֹנֶ֥ה בְאִוַּלְתּֽוֹ”
(Yet, what if the folly is not folly, but mendacity?)

Mishlei (Proverbs) – Chapter 26

“Now, I have a rather heretical view about this, ingrained, pessimistic view that this conflict is with us forever.  You have to ask yourself, “Why is it with us forever?  Why is this – I think I’m right in saying – the only conflict in the world, which has gone on for a hundred years, and which has no prospect, in the minds of most people, of ever being resolved.  ‘Cause every alternative is terrible.  Either we take over all their territory in which case we have however many – – “palestinians” who don’t want to be ruled by us, and we don’t want to rule them, or we do a “two-state-solution”.  Well that’s clearly impossible, so we’re – we’re completely stuck.  We – we – we can’t move.  I think it’s the wrong way of looking at it.  Why has it been this situation for a hundred years?  Why is it the only situation which is like this?  The only war that never ends in the world.  Because it’s the war that the – has been created by the West, and continued by the West.  It relies entirely on Western support.  If the West wasn’t involved; it the West hadn’t been involved, this would have been sorted.  It would have been sorted by force.  By which I mean –  I don’t mean that everyone would have been killed.  What I mean is, that, Israel would have asserted its force, and – it would have reached a settlement – with –  I don’t know that the settlement would have looked like, but basically, the “palestinian” issue would have gone away – because, the “palestinian” issue is only an issue because it’s been created as such by the West.  The West has taken this false narrative – you know, “that the “palestinians” are the indigenous people; that they were driven out of their own land; that they are now being occupied illegally in their own land, and all the rest of it.  The West has taken this up, even governments which are supposedly sympathetic to Israel; have taken this up.  Britain.  America.  The EU.  They’ve all said, “The way you settle it is to divide the land.” …  Well no; if you have a war of extermination, you don’t say, to the people who are threatened with extermination, “You’ve got to settle it by basically giving the other side, whatever you – whatever they want, because, that’s the way in which the other side will continue to say; will say to itself, ‘If we continue, what we’re doing, we’ll get all of it!’”  And that’s what’s happened for a hundred years.”

✡                                 ✡                                 ✡

II

What’s causing it, is Western support,
for the people who are bent on an agenda of extermination. 
And, Israel has never said that. 
It won’t say it.  … 
But victory – depends upon identifying who is fighting whom. 
And, currently, and until now – the fight,
is characterized as between Israel and the “palestinians”. 
It’s not! 
The fight is between Israel and the West.
So victory requires the West to have its own complicity in this, rammed down its throat.

***

Well, you know, if you pretend that your “ally” is your ally, whereas,
in fact they are your frenemy, then, you know, you –
you get the consequences that have followed. 

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“Well – would anyone else like to speak up?
Or shall we end this charade?”
(Commander William T. Riker)

“As you wish, Commander Riker.
The charade is over.”
(Commander Tomalak)

(Star Trek: The Next Generation, from “Future Imperfect”, broadcast November 12, 1990)

“What’s causing it, is Western support, for the people who are bent on an agenda of extermination.  And, Israel has never said that.  It won’t say it.  …  But victory – depends upon identifying who is fighting whom.  And, currently, and until now – the fight, is characterized as between Israel and the “palestinians”.  It’s not!  The fight is between Israel and the West.  So victory requires the West to have its own complicity in this, rammed down its throat.  And, they have to be told –  You know, “You are creating this.  You have created this.”  But, Israel won’t do it, because it says, “Are you crazy?!  I mean, America, you know, is our ally, and we rely on it.  And Britain is our ally, and we rely on it, and the European Union, heaven help us, is our ally, and we rely on that too!”  So we’ll manage all the – all the stuff that they come up with; all the rubbish they come up with.  We’ll manage it.  We – we can’t – we can’t throw them overboard.  We certainly can’t say what you’re saying we should say.  Because that would just – you know, that’s kicking our allies.”

Well, you know, if you pretend that your “ally” is your ally, whereas, in fact they are your frenemy, then, you know, you – you get the consequences that have followed.  And that’s why, this thing goes on and on and on.”

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III

…if the West is to survive itself, as a –
civilization,
which I think is deeply imperiled by what it’s done to itself over many decades,
at the heart of which is what it’s done to the Jewish people… 
But if the West is to recover itself,
as a morally functioning and therefore civilized entity,
it has to tell itself, that the cause that it has supported,
“palestinianism”,
is the cause of all this. 

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“…an illusion, no matter how convincing,
remained nothing more than an illusion.
At least objectively.
But subjectively, quite the opposite, entirely.”

(Philip K. Dick, “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale”, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April, 1966)

“…if the West is to survive itself, as a – civilization, which I think is deeply imperiled by what it’s done to itself over many decades, at the heart of which is what it’s done to the Jewish people…  But if the West is to recover itself, as a morally functioning and therefore civilized entity, it has to tell itself, that the cause that it has supported, “palestinianism”, is the cause of all this.  Not just the Hamas.  The Hamas is an excrescence of this.  And that the reason – for the continuation of this terrible war against Israel, is that the West has told itself this big lie.  That – supporting “palestinianism” is the way to resolve the conflict; through the division of land.  Now, until unless that happens, Israel is going to continue to be isolated to varying degrees by its so-called allies and friends in the West.  And the West is going to continue to shoot itself in the brain, as a civilization.”

The Calculus of Patriotism: Arnold Zweig’s “Judenzählung” – “The Census of the Jews Before Verdun” – in Die Schaubühne, February, 1917

“Great fatherland, I intended to die and rest for you!” 
But a whirlwind stirred the dead;
they stood at the table one after the other,
captains and medical officers
first and lieutenants and doctors,
sergeants and watch-masters,
non-commissioned officers, privates,
common soldiers. 
And the scribe put a dry quill in each hand;
it flowed like a scratched finger;
each one wrote his Hebrew name in small red letters that shone like square seals. 

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But a bright cross shone over the forehead of some who were baptized;
the writer asked everyone:
Jew? 
And he nodded, he said, “You know”; he said,
“Mosaic denomination”;
“Israelite” he said,
“German of Jewish faith” –
“Jew, yes” some said and stretched,
and the crosses faded from everyone. 

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“Oh Akiba,” I cried, “when will the Messiah come?”
His gaze examined my soul.
“At the gates of Rome a hunchbacked beggar,
the Messiah, sits and waits,” said he;
it frightens me like a threat.
“What is he waiting for, Master?” I cried out in fear.
“For you” said the old man and turned.
And I awoke to a sudden, glaring, heart-breaking shock.

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The lives of men, as much as peoples and nations, are affected by the winds of history in different ways.  Some men, entirely unaffected by the even most threatening physical and spiritual challenges, “after the fact” remain much the same as before.  Other men, to a greater or lesser degree, may “pause” for a time … weeks, months, years … and eventually, though the trajectory of their lives may be temporarily altered, return to the path previously charted for them by decision and happenstance.  Other men are different.  An event that for most may have been seen as trivial, or at worst an unintended and soon forgotten diversion, may be perceived in the fullness of its meaning, message, and implications, and symbolically become part of one’s identity, outlook upon life, and vision of the future.

Such seems to have been true of the German writer Arnold Zweig as a soldier in the Deutsches Heer – the Imperial German Army – in the First World War, the course of whose life was strongly influenced by the German Army’s Judenzählung – Census of the Jews – of late 1916. 

There are many, many sources of information about the Judenzählung, encompassing books and academic papers, focusing on the event in terms of the specific history of Jews in the German military, to the larger scope of German Jewish history, and in an even wider perspective (like that of David Vital), the post-Emancipation history of European Jews as a whole.  However, for the sake of brevity, I’ll simply quote the Wikipedia entry for the the Judenzählung.  (Yeah, I know it’s Wikipedia, but the information is definitely useful, while the 12 references and 8 extra readings do provide paths for further understanding of the event.)

So…

[The] Judenzählung … was a measure instituted by the German Oberste Heeresleitung (OHL) in October 1916, during the upheaval of World War I.  Designed to confirm accusations of the lack of patriotism among German Jews, the census disproved the charges, but its results were not made public.  However, its figures were published in an antisemitic brochure.  Jewish authorities, who themselves had compiled statistics that considerably exceeded the figures in the brochure, were denied access to government archives, and informed by the Republican Minister of Defense that the brochure’s contents were correct.  In the atmosphere of growing antisemitism, many German Jews saw “the Great War” as an opportunity to prove their commitment to the German homeland.

Background

The census was seen as a way to prove that Jews were betraying the Fatherland by shirking military service.  According to Amos Elon, “In October 1916, when almost three thousand Jews had already died on the battlefield and more than seven thousand had been decorated, War Minister Wild von Hohenborn saw fit to sanction the growing prejudices.  He ordered a “Jew census” in the army to determine the actual number of Jews on the front lines as opposed to those serving in the rear. Ignoring protests in the Reichstag and the press, he proceeded with his head count.  The results were not made public, ostensibly to “spare Jewish feelings.”  The truth was that the census disproved the accusations: 80 percent served on the front lines.”

Results and Reactions

The results of the census were never officially released by the army and any records of the census were most likely lost when the German military archives were destroyed during the allied bombing campaigns of Berlin and Potsdam.  The episode marked a shocking moment for the Jewish community, which had passionately backed the War effort and displayed great patriotism; many Jews saw it as an opportunity to prove their commitment to the German homeland.

That their fellow countrymen could turn on them was a source of major dismay for most German Jews, and the moment marked a point of rapid decline in what some historians (Fritz Stern) called “Jewish-German symbiosis.”

(Digressing…  Was there a German-Jewish symbiosis?  As described by Yehuda Bauer in the Yad Vashem publication ”German-Jewish Symbiosis” – Against The Background Of The 30’s”, interviewed by Amos Goldberg in 1998:

Question: From a historical perspective, was the so-called “German-Jewish symbiosis” real or an illusion?

Answer:  People talk today about a Jewish-German symbiosis that existed before Hitler.  There was a love affair between Jews and Germans, but it was one-sided: Jews loved Germany and Germans; Germans didn’t love Jews, even if they didn’t hate them.  One-sided love affairs usually don’t work very well.  In this case, the so-called symbiosis between Jews and Germans is a postfactum invention.  It never existed.  Jews participated in German life, in German cultural life, but to say that they were accepted, even if the product they produced was accepted….  They were not accepted, even if they converted.”)

You can read much more about the above topic in Alexander Gelley’s essay “On the “Myth of the German-Jewish Dialogue”: Scholem and Benjamin”, particularly noting his reference to Gershon Scholem’s essay, “Against the Myth of the German-Jewish Dialogue,” from On Jews and Judaism in Crisis.

Back to the Judenzählung…  Reproduced as the Appendix (pp. 167-168) of Werner Angress’ 1978 Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook article “‘Judenzählung’ of 1916 Genesis – Consequences – Significance”, here’s an image of the questionnaire used for the survey: ‘Nachweisung uber noch nicht zur Einstellung gelangte, auf Reklamation zuriickgestellte und als kr.u. [kriegsuntauglich] befundene Juden’. [‘Proof of items that have not yet been discontinued, are deferred following a complaint and are considered Jews found [unfit for war]’.  The document is from the Bundesarchiv Koblenz, Reichskanzlei, Film 2197, No. 161 (Sections A and B); and ibid., No. 161 a (Section C).

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Angress discusses the origin, implications, and impact of the Judenzählung are discussed in great detail, concluding that the contemporary and retrospective significance of the Judenzählung – was it portentous or not? – must understood in the context and contingencies of history:

“We may ask, in conclusion, whether the Judenzdhlung was a watershed, a milestone on the road to Auschwitz as has been occasionally maintained.  For those who reject the inevitability of human events – and most historians do – the answer must be in the negative.  Antisemitism had been a part of the German scene before the First World War and remained a potent force during the brief life of the Weimar Republic, though here, too, its intensity fluctuated.  Granted that during the First World War antisemitism had gained new strength, and that the War Ministry’s Erlass [order] of 11th October 1916 was a direct outgrowth of this trend.  But taken by itself, the Judenzdhlung — a tactless blunder committed by a handful of high-ranking and most probably antisemitic army officers – was a symptom, a warning sign that antisemitism in Germany was alive and well, especially in times of stress and national reverses.  More than this it did not signify.  If the course of German history during the post-war period had taken a different direction from that which it ultimately did take – and this possibility existed at least until 30th January 1933, if not beyond that date – the Judenzdhlung would have remained a mere episode, a humiliation like others before, remembered with distaste, but ultimately shrugged off as just another manifestation of Risches [modernism; radicalism] on the part of Wilhelminian Germany’s military elite.”

Though a subject of straightforward academic interest several decades later (but no longer in the early 21st Century, it seems!) the Judenzählung most definitely impacted German Jewish soldiers on an individual level.  Though I don’t know if – and I doubt that – any large-scale research as ever been done into any still-extant letters and diaries of German Jewish veterans of the Great War pertaining to their reactions to the census, the event did have an impact – an extremely significant, life changing impact – upon a writer whose future oeuvre focused upon themes of the First World War, the European Jewish experience in the early twentieth century, and to a lesser extent (*ugh*) socialism (oh well, two out o’ three ain’t bad!):  Arnold Zweig. 

As variously recounted by Noah William Eisenberg, Martin Grabolle, and Bernd-Rüdiger Hüppauf, Zweig, then a private in the German Army, a, “loyal Vaterlandsverteidiger (defender of the Fatherland),” so patriotic as to have been married in uniform in 1916, was very deeply affected by the implications of the Judenzählung.  As he described in a letter of February 15, 1917 to Martin Buber written from the Maas Front (quoted by Martin Grabolle), “Judenzählung war eine Reflexbewegung unerhörter Trauer über Deutschlands Schande und unsere Qual; kein Essay sondern ein Bild…  Wenn es keinen Antisemitismus im Heere gabe: die unerträgliche „Dienstpflicht“ wäre fast leicht.  Aber: verächtlichen und elenden Kreaturen untergeben zu sein!  Ich bezeichne mich vor mir selbst als Zivilgefangen und staatenlosen Ausländer.“  [“’The Census of the Jews’ was a reflex movement of unheard-of grief over Germany’s shame and our torment; not an essay but a picture…  If there were no anti-Semitism in the army: the unbearable “duty” would be almost easy.  But: to be subordinate to contemptible and miserable creatures!  I refer to myself a civil prisoner and a stateless alien.”]

The then twenty-nine year old private’s response was to pen an extraordinarily vivid short fictional piece that was macabre, haunting, grotesque, and yet (with intended irony?) – by the tale’s end – deeply inspirational, entitled “Judenzählung vor Verdun” [The Jewish Census at Verdun]. 

Inwardly, Zweig was transformed by the census.  According to Martin Grabollle, “Where not too long ago Zweig had celebrated the new-found unity of the German people, he now felt himself to be a foreigner without a state (“staatenlose[r] Ausländer).  All that remained two years after his embrace of Germany at war was a feeling of “unerhörte Trauer über Deutschlands Schande und unsere Qual” (“enormous grief for Germany’s disgrace and our [the Jews’] pain”).” 

Outwardly, Zweig was also transformed.  Quoting Eisenberg, “…in June, 1917, he was transferred to the Eastern region of Ober-Ost (in Lithuanian Kovno) to serve in the special wartime press division.  There, as he traveled to the various shtetls in Lithuania, Zweig witnessed for the first time the problems that the Eastern Jews faced during the war – animosity and ill-treatment from both sides of the battle – and, more importantly, the unique community they maintained in the face of such contradictions.”  One result of his spiritual and intellectual metamorphosis appeared six years later, in the volume Das ostjüdische Antlitz [The Eastern Jewish Face], produced in collaboration with artist Hermann Struck.

The first commentary about the Judenzählung (that I know of!) was a leading page editorial by “M.M.” in the October 27, 1916 issue of Judische Rundschau.  M.M. correctly surmises that, “The tendency of those who introduced the resolution is clear.  An anti-Semitic suspicion should be given special weight by a parliamentary resolution.”  The author then discusses the influence on the position of Jewish citizens in the Allied countries resulting from the Allies’ alliance with Imperial Russia, but notes that such a factor was irrelevant in Germany, since anti-Jewish feeling in that country was in some ways already parallel to – but obviously independent of – Russian influence.  The editorial explains that even as early as 1916, despite the valor, sacrifice, and patriotism of German Jewish soldiers, there was, and would be, no commensurate “improvement in the political position of German Jews after the war”.  He then correctly explains that antisemitism is entirely unrelated to the actions and beliefs of Jews, instead being primarily “rooted in the consciousness of the surrounding people”.  M.M. concludes with the imperative of collectively establishing Jewish life on a common territory, albeit naively concluding (the naivete can be forgiven given the what we know in 2023, let alone what was known in 1948, let alone the 1930s) that a Jewish nation-state would actually reduce antisemitism.   

Here’s an English-language translation of “M.M.’s” editorial about the Judenzählung, from the October 27, 1916, issue of Judische Rundschau, via Goethe University.  

The Jewish Census [Alternatively, “Count of the Jews”]

On October 19, 1916, the Budget Commission of the German Reichstag resolved to compile statistics on the denomination of the people employed in the wartime societies.  The decision is justified by the fact that the survey is intended to refute “a widespread opinion” that there were a particularly large number of “Jewish slackers” in the war societies.  The Reichstag plenum has not yet approved the implementation of the resolution, but the symptomatic fact is sufficient that the representatives of all factions belonging to the commission, with the exception of the Liberals and Social Democrats, i.e. also the National Liberals and clericals, voted in favor of the resolution.  The tendency of those who introduced the resolution is clear.  An anti-Semitic suspicion should be given special weight by a parliamentary resolution.  The result of the inquiry will not be according to the applicants’ secret wishes.  Because even if, which is by no means certain, a larger number of Jews were to be employed in the German wartime societies, that would still not be proof of “Jewish shirking”.  The proportion of Jews in German economic life is proportionately greater than that of the rest of the population, and it has rightly been pointed out that the number of indispensable Jews in other occupations closed to Jews is all the smaller.

There has been much talk lately of the pernicious influence which the alliance of the western powers with Russia had on the position of the Jews of those countries.  Conservative and clerical German newspapers also stated that the French and British governments gave in to pressure from St. Petersburg and gave the anti-Semites of both countries a freer hand, not without condemning references to the bad effects of the Russian reaction.  The anti-Semites of Germany do not seem to have needed this Russian pressure in order to shame the German Jews by a measure that would do even Russian Jew-baiting credit.  The statistics passed by the budget commission of the German Reichstag are in line with some Russian army orders, about which the entire German press, including the conservative and clerical ones, broke the baton.  About the Russian secret order that the Russian soldiers should observe the attitude of their Jewish comrades-in-arms very closely and provide information about it for statistical purposes, there was only one voice in the German press of indignation.  As much as German Jews should consider it beneath their table dignity to justify themselves against the anti-Semitic insinuation that there is a specifically “Jewish shirking,” they have a duty to protest against this “census.”  It is a monstrous violation of the honor and civil equality of German Jewry.

The decision of the German Reich Budget Committee has another meaning.  It confirms the fear that German anti-Semitism did not decrease during the war and that hopes for an improvement in the political position of German Jews after the war are premature.  Since the outbreak of the war, certain Jewish circles in Germany had been full of high hopes for the post-war period, reveling in envisioning the brilliant civic position which the Jews would enjoy after the war in recognition of their patriotic and military prowess, and could not do enough in apologetic references to the patriotic attitude of German Jewry.  They will have to see that anti-Semitism is not, as they think, a reaction to “bad Jewish habits” but a power deeply rooted in the consciousness of the surrounding people, which is even sometimes – and not only in Russia – used to distract attention the masses of burning but uncomfortable domestic issues.  This deep-rooted anti-Semitic mood is neither erased by apologies and references to merits, nor even diminished by the striving for conformity.  There is only one way to effectively combat hatred of Jews.  It is the way of redeeming the Jews from their isolation by concentrating on a common territory.  And even if this goal can only be reached through the work of generations, striving for it improves our situation among the peoples.  Objectively, in that the virtues of pride and self-dignity, developed through the uncompromising emphasis on Jewish characteristics, wrested more respect for the Jews from the surrounding peoples than the unstable method of assimilation, subjectively, insofar as the defense against anti-Semitism, albeit with all the honorable means of the carried out with passion and acumen, will only make up a modest part of our Jewish life.  Only when the work for the restoration of the Jewish people in our own land has become our main Jewish focus will we be able to fight anti-Semitism effectively and at the same time reduce it to the natural degree that its importance in Jewish life is: an annoying defense against intolerance and slander coming from the outside. – M.M.

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Here’s the editorial, in the original German…

Judenzählung

Die Budget-Kommission des Deutschen Reichstags hat am 19. Oktober 1916 den Beschluss gefasst, eine Statistik über die Konfession der in den Kriegsgesellschaften beschäftigten Personen vorzunehmen.  Der Beschluss wird damit begründet, dass durch die Erhebung “eine weit im Volke verbreitete Meinung” widerlegt werden soll, wonach in den Kreigsgesellschaften besonders viel “jüdische Drückeberger“ sässen.  Noch hat das Reichstagsplenum die Durchführung des Beschlusses nicht genehmigt, aber es genügt die symptomatische Tatsache, dass die Vertreter aller Fraktionen, die der Kommission angehören, mit Ausnahme der Freisinnigen und Sozialdemokraten, also auch die Nationalliberalen und Klerikalen, für die Resolution stimmten.  Die Tendenz derer, die den Beschluss einbrachten, liegt klar zutage.  Einer antisemitischen Verdächtigung soll durch Parlamentsbeschluss besonders Gewicht gegeben werden.  Das Ergebnis der Enquete wird nicht nach den geheimen Wünschen der Antragsteller ausfallen.  Denn wenn auch, was durchaus nicht feststeht, in den deutschen Kriegsgesellschaften eine grössere Anzahl Juden angestellt sein sollte, so wäre das noch kein Beweis für die “jüdische Drückebergerei”.  Der Anteil der Juden am deutschen Wirtschaftsleben ist verhältnismässig grösser als der der übrigen Bevölkerung und mit Recht hat man darauf hingewiesen, dass die Zahl der jüdischen Unabkömmlichen in anderen, Juden verschlossenen Berufszweigen um so geringer ist.

Man hat in letzter Zeit viel von dem schädlichen Einfluss gesprochen, den das Bündnis der Westmächte mit Russland auf die Lage der Juden dieser Länder hatte.  Die französische und englische Regierung hat, so konstatierten auch konservative und klerikale deutsche Blätter nicht ohne verurteilenden Hinweis auf die schlimmen Wirkungen der russischen Reaktion, dem Drucke Petersburgs nachgegeben und den Antisemiten beider Länder freiere Hand gegeben.  Dieses russischen Druckes scheinen die Antisemiten Deutschlands nicht bedurft zu haben, um die deutschen Juden durch eine Massnahme an den Schandpfahl zu stellen, die selbst russischen Judenhetzern alle Ehre machen würde.  Die von der Budget-Kommission des deutschen Reichstags beschlossene Statistik steht mit manchen russischen Ameebefehlen in einer Reihe, über die die gesamte deutsche Presse auch die konservative und klerikale, seinerzeit den Stab brach.  Ueber den russischen Geheimbefehl, die russischen Soldaten sollten die Haltung ihrer jüdischen Mitkämpfer genauestens beobachten und darüber zu statistischen Zwecken Auskunft geben, herrschte im deutschen Blätterwald nur eine Stimme der Entrüstung.  So sehr es die deutschen Juden unter ihrer tische Wurde halten sollten, sich gegen die antisemitische Insinuation, es gäbe eine spezifisch “jüdische Drückebergerei,” zu rechtfertigen, so sehr haben sir die Pflicht, gegen diese “Zählung” zu protestieren.  Sie ist eine ungeheuerliche Verletzung der Ehre und der bürgerlichen Gleichstellung des deutschen Judentums.

Der Beschluss des deutschen Reichshaushaltausschusses hat noch eine andere Bedeutung.  Er bestätigt die Befürchtung, dass der deutsche Antisemitismus während des Krieges nicht abgenommen habe und dass die Hoffnungen auf eine Besserung der politischen Stellung der deutschen Juden nach dem Kriege verfrüht seien.  Gewisse jüdische Kreise Deutschlands waren seit Ausbruch des Krieges voll hochgespannter Hoffnungen für die Zeit nach dem Weltkrieg, schwelgten im Ausmalen der glänzenden staatsbürgerlichen Stellung, deren sich die Juden in Anerkennung ihrer patriotischen und militärischen Bewährung nach dem Kriege zu erfreuen haben werden, und konnten sich nicht genug tun in apologetischen Hinweisen auf die vaterländische Haltung des deutschen Judentums.  Sie werden einsehen müssen, dass der Antisemitismus nicht, wie sie meinen, eine Reaktion auf “schlechte jüdische Gewohnheiten” ist, sondern eine im Bewusstsein des umgebenden Volkes tiefwurzelnde Macht, deren man sich sogar manchmal – und nicht bloss in Russland – zur Ablenkung des Interesses der Massen von brennenden, aber unbequemen innerpolitischen Fragen bedient.  Diese tiefwurzelnde antisemitische Grundstimmung wird weder durch Apologie und Hinweis auf Verdienste aus der Welt geschafft, noch durch das Streben nach Anpassung auch nur vermindert.  Es gibt nur einen Weg zur wirksamen Bekämpfung des Judenhasses.  Es ist der Weg der Erlösung der Juden aus ihrer Vereinzelung durch Konzentrierung auf einem gemeinsamen Territorium.  Und wenn dieses Ziel auch erst durch die Arbeit von Generationen erreich bar sein wird: schon das Streben nach ihm bessert unsere Lage unter den Völkern.  Objektiv, indem die durch die kompromisslose Betonung der jüdischen Eigenart entwickelten Tugenden des Stolzes und der Selbstwürde den umgebenden Völkern mehr Achtung gegen den Juden abringen als die haltlose Anpassungs-methode, subjektiv, insofern die Abwehr gegen die Judenfeindschaft, wenn auch mit allen ehrenhaften Mitteln der Leidenschaft und des Scharfsinns durchgeführt, nur noch einen bescheidenen Teil unseres jüdischen Lebensinhaltes ausmachen wird.  Erst wenn die Arbeit für die Wiederherstellung des jüdischen Volkes im eigenen Lande zu unserem jüdischen Hauptinhalt geworden ist, werden wir den Antisemitismus wirksam bekämpfen und seine Bekämpfung zugleich auf das natürliche Mass zurückführen können, das seiner Bedeutung für das jüdische Leben zukommt: einer lästigen Abwehr gegen Intoleranz und Verleumdung, die von aussen kommt. – M.M.

…and, as it actually appeared in the newspaper…

…where it can be found on the newspaper’s front page, comprising two columns.

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The first appearance of “Judenzählung vor Verdun” was in the February, 1917 (Volume 13, Issue 1) issue of Die Siegfried Jacobsohn’s Die Schaubühne (The Theater).  Here (…drum roll!!…) is an English-language translation of the tale. 

The Jewish Census at Verdun

At midnight a soft hand touched me: “Get up”.  I stepped in front of the door of the silent bunkhouse and saw: “Azrael, cherub who commands the dead, fell from the night sky – vengeful anger – blew the shofar and cried: “To the count, you dead Jews in the German army!”

Before long the field swarmed with silent figures up to the rolling hills, behind which the Fortress of Verdun roared, fanned anew, and their little bastards roared loudly; flames erupted terribly, twitching and shattering the wailing night on the gun’s horizon.  The wind flew from Orion, which hung feebly over the heights in dim veils.  Murmurs trembled over the area; a gloomy glow surrounded thousands.  A table stood, a large book open, and a clerk in uniform sat behind it, pointy-nosed with yellow hair.  He called:

“Line up according to rank!  The roll of names of the people is to be recognized!”  Then a gentle voice said: “Oh, why don’t you let us sleep, since we were already lying in the restful arms of the earth!”  And the writer: “Statistics ask how many of you Jews pressed themselves to their graves from the distant war.”  Groans rose from the ground, as if the earth was wailing, and the voice cried out painfully:

“Great fatherland, I intended to die and rest for you!”  But a whirlwind stirred the dead; they stood at the table one after the other, captains and medical officers first and lieutenants and doctors, sergeants and watch-masters, non-commissioned officers, privates, common soldiers.  And the scribe put a dry quill in each hand; it flowed like a scratched finger; each one wrote his Hebrew name in small red letters that shone like square seals.  There the corpses stood patiently and waited, and whoever wrote silently placed on the table the badges he wore and stood back, as one in the crowd.  There lay the thick epaulettes of the medical officers and the silver ones of the officers, sword knots like silver eggs, the braids of the non-commissioned officers, the small batons of the Rod of Asclepius, the big buttons of privates; the Iron Crosses of the First Class and like many of the Second Class, other crosses and medals, black and white ribbons in all sorts of colors.  But the heap swelled on the table.

The quiet men approached, wrote and became a crowd.  The outline of the old body surrounded it like a light aura, phosphorescent like rotten wood; but the darker core was given by the body which was laid in the grave in due time.  The bellies were eaten away by typhus and hollowed out by dysentery.  Their heads showed holes from bullets, half of their skulls had been carried off by grenades, arms were missing, broken legs and ribs protruded from tattered uniforms; they were bandaged, clothed in rags, without boots; dead eyes looked gloomy, white light fell from lowered foreheads, the dead were silent in shame and mourning.  Youngsters stood next to boys and young men next to mature ones.  And they stated how old they were and where they were born: everywhere in Germany, and what their professions were: teachers and lawyers, rabbis and doctors, travelers, many students of all faculties, pupils, painters, young poets, merchants, craftsmen and merchants in turn and merchants again and again.  And where fallen; where did they lie in the grave?  Near Lille, they said, and Pozieres, all along the Somme, Thiaumont it was called and Azannes, Fleury and Vaux, Champagne, Argonne, Vosges, all of Flanders (they lay in the damp ground the longest); Bzuraklangs, East Prussia, the Carpathians, the Slota Lipa (which was called Sanward), Kovno and Dunaburg, Volhynian swamp, Hungarian forest, Serbian mountain, Galician valley: and Azrael, the angel, nodded at everyone, he had sown them like seeds, thrown far away here; there.  Everything was written down in the book, the pen moved, small red letters appeared on the pale sheet.  But a bright cross shone over the forehead of some who were baptized; the writer asked everyone: Jew?  And he nodded, he said, “You know”; he said, “Mosaic denomination”; “Israelite” he said, “German of Jewish faith” – “Jew, yes” some said and stretched, and the crosses faded from everyone.  And as the freshest stood at the table, almost still bleeding, blown from Romania, the Dobruja, the Somme…

The moon lost its shine, the wind blew more violently into the darkness, Azrael raised his hand, the field lay empty, overgrown with scattered light.  Night fell, all black, blazing at the edge of the forge of Verdun roaring behind the heights.

But the dead Jews could no longer stand at the bottom of their graves.  They sank; slowly and soullessly the bodies slid deeper down, deeper down.  A river, black and soundless, flowed in the veins of the earth, taking it up and rolling it eastward; each one became a round cylinder, shrunk, became as big as a brick and very soft.  And it threw them out in the early morning, flowing under palm trees into the light of a jubilant sun that rose from the sea.  But a tall man with a broad black beard, a reproachful look and a workman’s apron, the trowel lying to his right and his naked sword to his left, seized each one and pressed it; it became hard as a stone in the sun and laid it into low masonry, and the stream threw roller after roller at his feet.   The waller put stone next to stone; he didn’t look up.  An old man came up to him and greeted him, a young smile lay like dawn on old rock over the weather-beaten forehead and the aged beard. “Greetings to he who builds the tower,” he said, and: “Thanks to him who has seen the daughter of Zion,” answered the builder and set a stone.  “The daughter of Zion is on her way,” said Akiba, and the maker blushed with happiness.  But I could no longer contain myself: “Oh Akiba,” I cried, “when will the Messiah come?”  His gaze examined my soul.  “At the gates of Rome a hunchbacked beggar, the Messiah, sits and waits,” said he; it frightens me like a threat.  “What is he waiting for, Master?” I cried out in fear.  “For you,” said the old man and turned.  And I awoke to a sudden, glaring, heart-breaking shock.

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Some comments…

Note how Zweig introduces the tale with mention of “Azrael”, the angel of death. 

Wikipedia reveals that – oddly – while the figure of “Azriel” is mentioned in the Zohar, neither “Azrael” or “Azriel” appear in the Tanach or Talmud, also stating that, “… the name Azrael is suggestive of a Hebrew theophoric עזראל, meaning “the one whom God helps,” and that, “Archeological evidence uncovered in Jewish settlements in Mesopotamia confirm that it was indeed at one time used on an Aramaic incantation bowl from the 7th century.  However, as the text thereon only lists names, an association of this angelic name with death cannot be identified in Judaism.” 

Azrael is a much more significant figure in Islam, being one of the four archangels, the others being Jibrāʾīl, Mīkāʾīl, and Isrāfīl.  The only mention of the name in the context of Christianity is in the Ethiopic version of Apocalypse of Peter (dating to the 16th century), where Azrael – spelled as Ezrā’ël – appears is an angel of hell who avenges those who had been wronged during life.”  In a much different sense, Azrael appears in the works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and G. K. Chesterton’s, and in the world of the Smurfs, as the evil wizard Gargamel’s cat.

And so, the tale…

And then…  A “whirlwind” stirs the dead.  At Azrael’s command, after a momentary protest, the spirits of fallen Jewish soldiers rise from the sleep of death within in their graves, and stand before the angel. 

And then… One after another in line, without regard to rank, the spirits stand before a table upon which lies an open book, upon which they inscribe their names in small, block-like Hebrew letters, with a quill given to them by Azrael.

And then… Nearby, they deposit their insignia of rank and medals in a swelling pile.

And then…  Zweig’s tale becomes explicit; macabre, grotesque.  The fatal wounds of the fallen are described in graphic detail; then, their professions or vocations are given; then, they state where they fell.  This is are also recorded by each man’s spirit.  Every fallen soldier appears as a phosphorescent aura with a dark, inner core, the latter vaguely implied to still lie within his grave. 

And then…  Those Jews who had been baptized are also standing before Azrael, bright crosses shining above their foreheads.  As they identify themselves as members of the “Mosaic denomination”, “Israelites”, or “Germans of Jewish faith”, the crosses fade away. 

And then…  The souls and bodies of the dead are transformed.  They sink into the earth, roll eastward, and with this they shrink to the size of bricks, take on the shape of cylinders, become pliable and soft, and move eastward under the sea, until they emerge under a bright sun, in a land of sunlight and palms. 

And then…  As each brick is taken up by a black-bearded mason with a sword and trowel it hardens, and is pressed into a wall of masonry.  And the process continues, brick by brick.

And then…  Akiba (Rabbi Akiba) and the anonymous mason greet one another, the former anticipating the arrival of the Daughter of Zion.

And then…  The anonymous narrator implores of Akiba to know the date of the Messiah’s arrival.  And as Akiba turns away, he reveals that the Messiah’s arrival depends, “on you”: on the narrator himself. 

And finally…  From nightmare, from dream, from mystical vision, the narrator awakens… 

And then…?

Here’s the tale in the original German:

Judenzählung vor Verdun

Um Mitternacht rührte mich eine leise Hand an: “Steh auf”.  Ich trat vor die Tür der schweigenden Schlafbaracke und sah: “Azrael, Cherub, der über Tote gebietet, stürzte vom Nachtfirmament herab, rachegeflügelter Zorn, stiess ins Horn Schofar und schrie: “Auf zur Zählung, ihr toten Juden im deutschen Heer!”

Es verging keine Zeit, da wimmelte das Feld von leisen Gestalten bis an die gebogenen Hügel, hinter denen brüllte die Feste Verdun, neu angefacht, und ihre kleinern Essen brüllten laut; Flammen schlugen furchtbar auf, zuckend zerbrach am Horizont des Geschützes die wehklagende Nacht.  Der Wind flog vom Orion her, der schwach über den Höhen hing in trüben Schleiern.  Raunen bebte übers Gelände, düsterer Schein umwitterte Tausende.  Ein Tisch stand, aufgeschlagen ein grosses Buch, ein Schreiber sass in Montur dahinter, spitznäsig mit gelbem Schopf.  Er rief:

“Antreten dem Range nach!  Die Totenstammrolle ist anzuerkennen!”  Da sagte eine milde Stimme: “Oh warum lasst ihr uns nicht schlafen, da wir schon lagen in der Erde Arm ruhevoll!”  Und der Schreiber: “Die Statistik fragt, wieviel von euch Juden sich vom fernern Krieg gedrückt ins Grab.”  Stöhnen steig auf vom Gelände, als klagte der Boden, und die Stimme rief schmerzlich:

“Grosses Vaterland, ich gedachte für dich zu sterben und zu ruhn!”  Aber ein Wirbel bewegte die Toten, sie standen am Tische einer nach dem andern, Hauptleute und Stabsärzte zuvor und Leutnants und Aerzte, Feldwebel und Wachtmeister, Unteroffiziere, Gefreite, Gemeine.  Und eine dürre Feder gab der Schreiber in jede Hand, sie floss wie ein geritzter Finger, seinen hebräischen Namen schrieb ein jeder in kleinen roten Lettern, die leuchteten wie quadratische Siegel.  Da standen die Leichname geduldig und warteten, und wer geschrieben, der legte schweigend die Abzeichen auf den Tisch, die er trug, und trat zurück, einer in der Menge.  Da lagen die dicken Achselstücke der Stabsärzte und die silbernen der Offiziere, Portepees wie silberne Eier, die Tressen der Unteroffiziere, die kleinen Aeskulapstäbe, die grossen Knöpfe der Gefreiten; die Eisernen Kreuze der Ersten Klasse und wie viele der Zweiten, andre Kreuze und Medaillen, schwarzweisse Bänder in allerlei Farben.  Der Haufen schwoll aber auf dem Tische.

Die stillen Männer traten heran, schrieben und wurden Menge.  Wie eine leichte Aura umgab sie der Umriss des alten Leibes, phosphoreszierend wie faules Holz; aber den dunklern Kern gab der Körper, den man ins Grab gelegt zu seiner Zeit.  Die Bäuche waren zerfressen vom Flecktyphus und ausgehöhlt von Ruhr.  Ihre Köpfe wiesen Löcher auf vom Geschoss, halbe Schädel hatten Granaten entführt, Arme mangelten, Beine, Rippen zerbrochen drangen aus zerfetzten Uniformen; sie waren mit Verbänden umwickelt, mit Lumpen bekleidet, ohne Stiefel; erloschene Augen blickten düster, von gesenkten Stirnen fiel weisser Schein, die Toten schwiegen in Scham und Trauer.  Da standen Jünglinge bei Knaben und junge Männer neben reifen.  Und sie gaben an, wie alt sie seien und wo geboren: überall im deutschen Land, und was für Berufe: Lehrer und Rechtsanwälte, Rabbiner und Aerzte, Reisende, viele Studenten aller Fakultäten, Schüler, Maler, junge Dichter, Kaufleute, Handwerker und Kaufleute wiederum und immer wieder Kaufleute.  Und wo gefallen, wo lagen sie im Grabe?  Bei Lille, sagten sie, und Pozieres, die ganze Somme entlang, Thiaumont hiess es und Azannes, Fleury und Vaux, Champagne, Argonnen, Vogesen, ganz Flandern, die lagen am längsten im feuchten Grund; Bzura klangs, Ostpreussen, Karpathen, die Slota Lipa, der San ward genannt, Kowno und Dünaburg, wolhynischer Sumpf, ungarischer Wald, serbischer Berg, galizisches Tal: und Azrael nickte, der Engel, bei jedem, er hatte sie ausgesät wie Samenkörner, weit geworfen, hierhin, dorthin.  Alles stand verzeichnet im Buche, die Feder bewegte sich, kleine rote Buchstaben erschienen auf dem bleichen Blatte.  Manchen aber leuchtete ein helles Kreuz über der Stirn, die waren getauft; der Schreiber fragte jeden: Jude?  Und er nickte, er sagte: “Sie wissen doch”; er sagte: “Mosaischer Konfession”; “Israelit” sagte er, “Deutscher jüdischen Glaubens” – “Jude, ja” sprach mancher und streckte sich, und die Kreuze verblichen jedem.  Und wie die frischesten am Tische standen, fast noch blutend, aus Rumänien hergeweht, der Dobrudscha, der Somme…

Der Mond verlor der Schein, Wind wehte heftiger ins Dunkel, Azrael hob die Hand, das Feld lag leer, überbuscht von zerstiebendem Scheine.  Nacht brach herein, ganz schwarz, am Rande zerloht von der Esse Verdun brüllend hinter den Höhen.

Aber es war den toten Juden kein Halt mehr auf dem Grund ihrer Gräber.  Sie sanken, langsam glitten und seelenlos tiefer die Körper abwärts, tiefer hinab.  Ein Strom, schwarz und lautlos, floss in den Adern der Erde, er nahm sie auf und wälzte sie ostwärts; runde Walze wurde jeder, schrumpfte, ward gross wie ein Ziegel und ganz weich.  Und er warf sie aus im frühen Morgen, mündend unter Palmen ans Licht einer jubelnden Sonne, die stieg aus dem Meer.  Ein grosser Mann aber mit schwarzem, breitem Bart, dem rügenden Blick und der Schürze des Werkmannes, die Kelle rechts neben sich liegend und links das nackte Schwert, ergriff einen jeden und presste ihn, er ward in der Sonne hart zum Stein und gefüat in ein niederes Mauerwerk, und Walze neben Walze warf der Strom ihm zu Füssen.  Stein neben Stein setzte der Mauernde, er sah nicht auf.  Ein Greis trat zu ihm und grüsste ihn, ein junges Lächeln lag wie Morgenrot auf altem Fels über verwitterter Stirn und dem greisen Barte.  “Gegrüsst sei, der am Turme mauert”, sagte er, und: “Gedankt dem, der die Tochter Zions erblickt hat”, antwortete der Baumeister und setzte einen Stein.  “Die Tochter Zions ist auf dem Wege”, sprach Akiba, und der Schaffer errötete vor Glück.  Ich aber konnte nicht mehr an mich halten: “Oh Akiba”, rief ich, “wann kommt der Messias!”  Sein Blick prüfte meine Seele.  “Vor den Toren Roms sitzt ein buckliger Bettler, der Messias, und wartet”, sprach er; mich erschreckt’ es wie Drohung.  “Worauf wartet er, Meister? rief ich voll Angst.  “Auf dich” sprach der Greis und wandte sich.  Und ich erwachte vor jähem, grellem, herzerneuerndem Schreck.

This is Zweig’s text as published in Siegfried Jacobsohn’s Die Schaubühne (Band 13, Ausgabe 1 [Volume 13, Issue 1]).  You can see that it appears on three successive pages.

And…here are the cover and title pages of the same issue of Die Schaubühne, which can be found at OogleBooks.

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Zweig’s tale is as vivid, as it is haunting, as it is compelling.  Below, I’ve transformed it into a prose poem, the appearance of which, though entirely identical in content to the original text, perhaps lends it a degree of visual impact not apparent in the text in the original paragraph format. 

The Jewish Census at Verdun

At midnight a soft hand touched me:
“Get up”.
I stepped in front of the door of the silent bunkhouse and saw:
“Azrael, cherub who commands the dead, fell from the night sky –
vengeful anger –
blew the shofar and cried:
“To the count, you dead Jews in the German army!”

Before long the field swarmed with silent figures up to the rolling hills,
behind which the Fortress of Verdun roared,
fanned anew,
and their little bastards roared loudly;
flames erupted terribly, twitching and shattering the wailing night on the gun’s horizon.
The wind flew from Orion, which hung feebly over the heights in dim veils. 
Murmurs trembled over the area; a gloomy glow surrounded thousands.

A table stood, a large book open,
and a clerk in uniform sat behind it, pointy-nosed with yellow hair.
He called:

“Line up according to rank!
The roll of names of the people is to be recognized!”
Then a gentle voice said:
“Oh, why don’t you let us sleep,
since we were already lying in the restful arms of the earth!”
And the writer:
“Statistics ask how many of you Jews pressed themselves to their graves from the distant war.”  Groans rose from the ground,
as if the earth was wailing, and the voice cried out painfully:

“Great fatherland, I intended to die and rest for you!”
But a whirlwind stirred the dead;
they stood at the table one after the other,
captains and medical officers
first and lieutenants and doctors,
sergeants and watch-masters,
non-commissioned officers, privates,
common soldiers.
And the scribe put a dry quill in each hand;
it flowed like a scratched finger;
each one wrote his Hebrew name in small red letters that shone like square seals. 
There the corpses stood patiently and waited,

and whoever wrote silently placed on the table the badges he wore and stood back,
as one in the crowd.
There lay the thick epaulettes of the medical officers and the silver ones of the officers,
sword knots like silver eggs,
the braids of the non-commissioned officers,
the small batons of the Rod of Asclepius,
the big buttons of privates;
the Iron Crosses of the First Class and like many of the Second Class,
other crosses and medals, black and white ribbons in all sorts of colors.
But the heap swelled on the table.

The quiet men approached, wrote and became a crowd.
The outline of the old body surrounded it like a light aura,
phosphorescent like rotten wood;
but the darker core was given by the body which was laid in the grave in due time.
The bellies were eaten away by typhus and hollowed out by dysentery.
Their heads showed holes from bullets,
half of their skulls had been carried off by grenades,
arms were missing,
broken legs and ribs protruded from tattered uniforms;
they were bandaged, clothed in rags,
without boots;
dead eyes looked gloomy,
white light fell from lowered foreheads,
the dead were silent in shame and mourning.
Youngsters stood next to boys and young men next to mature ones.
And they stated how old they were and where they were born:
everywhere in Germany,
and what their professions were:
teachers and lawyers,
rabbis and doctors,
travelers,
many students of all faculties,
pupils,
painters,
young poets,
merchants,
craftsmen and merchants in turn and merchants again and again.
And where fallen; where did they lie in the grave?
Near Lille, they said, and Pozieres, all along the Somme,
Thiaumont it was called and Azannes,
Fleury and Vaux,
Champagne,
Argonne,
Vosges,
all of Flanders (they lay in the damp ground the longest);
Bzuraklangs,
East Prussia,
the Carpathians,
the Slota Lipa (which was called Sanward),
Kovno and Dunaburg,
Volhynian swamp,
Hungarian forest,
Serbian mountain,
Galician valley:
and Azrael, the angel, nodded at everyone,
he had sown them like seeds, thrown far away here; there.
Everything was written down in the book,
the pen moved, small red letters appeared on the pale sheet.
But a bright cross shone over the forehead of some who were baptized;
the writer asked everyone:
Jew?
And he nodded, he said, “You know”; he said,
“Mosaic denomination”;
“Israelite” he said,
“German of Jewish faith” –
“Jew, yes” some said and stretched, and the crosses faded from everyone.
And as the freshest stood at the table, almost still bleeding,
blown from Romania, the Dobruja, the Somme…

The moon lost its shine,
the wind blew more violently into the darkness,
Azrael raised his hand,
the field lay empty, overgrown with scattered light.
Night fell, all black,
blazing at the edge of the forge of Verdun roaring behind the heights.

But the dead Jews could no longer stand at the bottom of their graves.
They sank; slowly and soullessly the bodies slid deeper down, deeper down.
A river, black and soundless, flowed in the veins of the earth,
taking it up and rolling it eastward;
each one became a round cylinder, shrunk, became as big as a brick and very soft.
And it threw them out in the early morning,
flowing under palm trees into the light of a jubilant sun that rose from the sea.
But a tall man with a broad black beard,
a reproachful look and a workman’s apron,
the trowel lying to his right and his naked sword to his left,
seized each one and pressed it;
it became hard as a stone in the sun and laid it into low masonry,
and the stream threw roller after roller at his feet.
The waller put stone next to stone; he didn’t look up.
An old man came up to him and greeted him,
a young smile lay like dawn on old rock over the weather-beaten forehead and the aged beard. “Greetings to he who builds the tower,” he said, and:
“Thanks to him who has seen the daughter of Zion,” answered the builder and set a stone.
“The daughter of Zion is on her way,” said Akiba, and the maker blushed with happiness.
But I could no longer contain myself:
“Oh Akiba,” I cried, “when will the Messiah come?”
His gaze examined my soul.
“At the gates of Rome a hunchbacked beggar, the Messiah, sits and waits,” said he;
it frightens me like a threat.
“What is he waiting for, Master?” I cried out in fear.
“For you” said the old man and turned.
And I awoke to a sudden, glaring, heart-breaking shock.

An observation…

Zweig’s concluding paragraph struck a distant chord of memory within me.  I vaguely remembered that I’d encountered a legend concerning the resurrection of the dead in Messianic days, to the effect that they will literally roll across land and under sea to reach Eretz Israel.  My memory was correct, and was verified at Jack Zaientz’s blog, “Jewish Monster Hunting: A Practical Guide to Jewish Magic, Monsters, and Mayhem”, in his post “First we die.  Then we roll.  A “Rolling To Jerusalem” Subway Map.”  This references Talmud, Kettubot 111a (3) at Sefaria, in which the following debate is recorded:

וּלְרַבִּי אֶלְעָזָר, צַדִּיקִים שֶׁבְּחוּץ לָאָרֶץ אֵינָם חַיִּים?! אָמַר רַבִּי אִילְעָא: עַל יְדֵי גִּלְגּוּל. מַתְקֵיף לַהּ רַבִּי אַבָּא סַלָּא רַבָּא: גִּלְגּוּל לְצַדִּיקִים צַעַר הוּא! אָמַר אַבָּיֵי: מְחִילּוֹת נַעֲשׂוֹת לָהֶם בַּקַּרְקַע.

“The Gemara asks: And according to the opinion of Rabbi Elazar, will the righteous outside of Eretz Yisrael not come alive at the time of the resurrection of the dead?  Rabbi Ile’a said: They will be resurrected by means of rolling, i.e., they will roll until they reach Eretz Yisrael, where they will be brought back to life.  Rabbi Abba Salla Rava strongly objects to this: Rolling is an ordeal that entails suffering for the righteous.  Abaye said: Tunnels are prepared for them in the ground, through which they pass to Eretz Yisrael.”

Another observation…

There’s “something” about the concluding three sentences of Zweig’s text:

“What is he waiting for, Master?” I cried out in fear.
“For you” said the old man and turned.
And I awoke to a sudden, glaring, heart-breaking shock.

Specifically, there’s a remarkable similarity to the closing lines of Franz Kafka’s “Before the Law”:

“What do you still want to know, then?” asks the gatekeeper.
“You are insatiable.”
“Everyone strives after the law,” says the man,
“so how is that in these many years no one except me has requested entry?”
The gatekeeper sees that the man is already dying and,
in order to reach his diminishing sense of hearing, he shouts at him,
“Here no one else can gain entry, since this entrance was assigned only to you.
I’m going now to close it.”

In both cases, the anonymous narrator implores of an authority figure – Rabbi Akiva, or, “the gatekeeper” – that his future course of action, or, secret knowledge, be revealed.  The two answers lead to dramatically different outcomes:  In Zweig’s tale, the narrator lives, and, transformed, faces a perhaps revised future, which is entirely dependent on his choice of action.  In Kafka’s story, the narrator is at the point of death, the outcome of events – perhaps preordained by circumstance or providence? – having already been preordained for him.

I have no idea of the degree of Kafka and Zweig’s familiarity with one another’s works, but they were contemporaries, the former having been 29 years old in 1916, and the latter 32.  Being that “Before the Law” (“Vor dem Gesetz”) was published in the 1915 New Year’s edition of the independent Jewish weekly Selbstwehr, the possibility exists that the final lines of “Judenzählung vor Verdun” were inspired by Zweig’s reading of Kafka’s tale.

Having come this far, one can readily appreciate Zweig’s literary talents.  The piece is short – a little less than a thousand words in length – yet even with this economy of words, the imagery of the tale is stunning in its clarity, in terms of physical setting, atmosphere, mood, and the description of the fallen as both spirit and body; spirit in body. 

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Arnold Zweig, 1916 (From deutsche-kinemathek)

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Arnold Zweig, New York City, 1939 (Photo by Eric Schaal)

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Arnold Zweig, Haifa, Yishuv, 1939 (Photographer Unknown)

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I’ve not read any other works by Zweig, but given his skill and imagination; his ability to so powerfully craft scene and mood; the era in which he was active – the first half of the twentieth century – I can readily envision him – if the trajectory of his life had been different, having been a masterful and successful writer of pulp fiction, perhaps in the genres of adventure, fantasy, or horror.  Perhaps his work would have appeared in such pulps as The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction; Weird Tales; Unknown; Fantastic Novels.  It’s nice to speculate…

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December, 1950 (Absolutely wonderful cover art! – by Chesley Bonestell) (From my own collection.)

Fantastic Novels, July, 1950 (Cover art by “Lawrence” (Lawrence Sterne Stevens)), illustrating Moore and Kuttner’s “Earth’s Last Citadel”) (Also from my own collection.  (Shameless self-promotion!)  See more of such, here.)

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Zweig’s macabre story concludes by transitioning to a scene of transformative and mystical renewal – an explicitly collective renewal – with startling abruptness, revealing to the narrator; to the reader – to us, even and especially in this year of 2023 – that to the Jews is granted the ability to return. 

And so, in symbolic answer to the anonymous narrator’s awakening, let’s wordlessly conclude with an allegorical image entitled “Der Jüdische Mai” [“The Jewish May”], from Ephraim Moses Lilien’s, Sein Werk, published in 1903 in Berlin.  (Specifically, page 280 in volume 2.)

For your consideration: Some references…

Arnold Zweig, at…

Wikipedia

Britannica

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

GoodReads

Kuenste im Exil [Art in Exile]

Deutsche Kiemathek [German Cinema Library]

University of Massachusetts DEFA Film Library

Mahler Foundation

Internet Movie Database

Geni.com

FindAGrave

Die Schaubühne [“The Stage”], at …

Internet Archive

… Wikipedia (Die Weltbühne)

Weimar Berlin

University of Michigan Digital Library

Die Schaubühne (Band 13, Ausgabe 1 [Volume 13, Issue 1]), pages 115-117

…at OogleBooks

Siegfried Jacobsohn, at…

Wikipedia

FindAGrave

Franz Kafka, at…

Wikipedia

“Before the Law”, at…

Wikipedia

Azrael, at…

Wikipedia

Some books…

Eisenberg, Noah William, Between Redemption and Doom – The Strains of German-Jewish Modernism, University of Nebraska Press, 1999

Grabolle, Harro, Verdun And the Somme, Akademiai Kiado, Budapest, Hungary, 2004

Hüppauf, Bernd-Rüdiger, War, Violence, and the Modern Condition, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, Germany, 1997

Franz Kafka – The Complete Stories

Lilien, Ephraim Mose, and Zweig, Stefan, E. M. Lilien, Sein Werk, mit einer Emleitung von Stefan Zweig, band zwei, Schuster & Loeffler, Berlin, Germany, 1903, OCLC 7720842

Vital, David, A People Apart – A Political History of the Jews in Europe, 1789-1939, Oxford University Press, 2001

Vital, David, A People Apart – A Political History of the Jews in Europe, 1789-1939, at GoodReads.com

Wenzel, Georg, Arnold Zweig, 1887-1968 : Werk und Leben in Dokumenten und Bildern : mit unveröffentlichten Manuskripten und Briefen aus dem Nachlass [Arnold Zweig, 1887-1968: Work and life in documents and images: with unpublished manuscripts and letters from the estate], Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin, 1978

Zweig, Arnold, and Struck, Hermann, Das ostjüdische Antlitz [The Eastern Jewish Face], Berlin Weltverlag, Berlin, Germany, 1922

(Das ostjüdische Antlitz includes many, many thematic sketches by Hermann Struck, none of which, unfortunately, have captions.  (Oh, well!)  This drawing of a young woman appears on page 112.)

Some articles…

Angress, Werner T., The German Army’s “Judenzahlung” of 1916 Genesis – Consequences – Significance, Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook, V 23, N 1, 1978

Gelley, Alexander, On the “Myth of the German-Jewish Dialogue”: Scholem and Benjamin, University of California, Irvine, 1999

Goldberg, Amos, “German-Jewish Symbiosis” – Against the Background of the 30s – Excerpt from interview with Professor Yehuda Bauer, Director of the International Center for Holocaust Studies of Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, Israel

And, otherwise…

The World at War, The Jews in War: Jewish Military Service in World War One, in David Vital’s “A People Apart”

Thus Satan Said: Nathan Alterman’s Poem on the Survival of Israel

“The question of Jews and power
boils down to whether a God-inspired and morally constrained people
can hold out until the surrounding nations accept the principle of peaceful coexistence.
The creation of Israel was the hopeful answer to that question:
Hatikvah, literally, the hope of a people.
Neither the war against Israel in the Middle East
nor opposition to the Jews’ right to a state will likely fade in the years ahead.
Let us see if we have the power and moral stamina to keep that hope alive.”

– Ruth R. Wisse

*  *  *  *  *  *  *

There’s a saying:  “You may not be interested in politics, but politics may be interested in you.”

There’s another saying: “You may not be interested in war, but war may be interested in you.”

And so, while the great majority of my posts pertain to history; the past; that which has gone before, given ongoing “events” (ah, how inadequate a word!) in Israel, I think it’s time to touch upon contemporary issues pertaining to the Jewish people, Israel, the United States, the Western world; Europe; “the world” in general. 

So, rather than “plow” intellectual ground already so well and deeply furrowed, in a future post I’ll point to essays and opinion pieces which I think precisely (if not brilliantly) focus on “how we got here”, as of October 7, 2023.  (Or, 22 Tishrei, 5784). 

And still, now.

But until then…!

I’ve not posted anything here – at TheyWereSoldiers – or my brother blog (focusing on art and illustration in science fiction pulp magazines of the mid-twentieth century, and, other literary genres) WordsEnvisioned – for some time.  I hope to return with more posts at both blogs in the reasonable future.  For TheyWereSoldiers, these will comprise…

The story of First Lieutenant Henry Irving Wood, a fighter pilot in the 75th Fighter Squadron of the 23rd Fighter Group, who survived captivity as a POW of the Japanese after being shot down on October 1, 1943.

Arnold Zweig’s stunning 1917 piece from “Die Schaubühne”, Judenzählung vor Verdun” (“Count of the Jews before Verdun”): His literary reaction to the October, 1916 “Jew Count” in the German army in the midst of the First World War.

Essays from two German Jewish newspapers – Der Israelit, and Judische Rundschau – which in the early 1930s published opinion pieces expressing skepticism and disillusionment about the implications of Jewish military service, specifically in terms of perpetuating Jewish identity and peoplehood, and, validating Jewish patriotism and courage in the eyes of the forces arrayed against them.    

From “The Jewish Frontier”, a perspective on the New York Times’s coverage of the Shoah, Zionism, and “Jewish” issues … in the year 1942.  

A “friendly fire” incident: A Liberator bomber (B-24J 42-73429 “Shootin’ Star” of the 374th Bomb Squadron, 308th Bomb Group) shot down by F4U Corsairs of VMF-124 over the South China Sea, on January 12, 1945.    

“The One That Got Away”: The escape from German captivity of Sergeant Barney Schollnick, an A-20 Havoc crewman in the 645th Bomb Squadron, 410th Bomb Group, 9th Air Force, captured during a bombardment mission against German positions in Brest, France on September 6, 1944.

Possibly (possibly…; maybe…; perhaps…; who knows…) accounts of how Senior Lieutenant Lidiya Vladimirovna Litvyak (Лидия Владимировна Литвяк), General Lev Mikhaylovich Dovator (Лев Михайлович Доватор), and General Ivan Danilovich Chernyakhovsky (Ива́н Дани́лович Черняхо́вский), of the Soviet Union, were reported upon in the Western press – the Jewish press and the “general” news media – during WW II.

Also from “The Jewish Frontier”, a most non-military topic: a skeptical if not scathing take on Jewish comedians, and, the (taken-for-granted?) cultural association between Jews and comedy, on stage, film, and radio … from the late 1930s.  How refreshing.  How dignified.  How needed.  (Thankfully, I think that in the world of 2023, and beyond, Jewish comedians have become passé.  Perhaps – sometimes opportunistically indulging in self-abasement – they always were passé, even in their illusory, and retrospectively fleeting, twentieth century heyday.) 

Movie time again!!!  In the same vein as my posts about Louis Falstein’s novel “Face of a Hero” and Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22”, and, the 1943 movie “Destination Tokyo”, an investigation of James Jones’ focus on the experience of Jews in the United States Army of the 1940s in his novel “The Thin Red Line” through the character of Captain “Bugger” Stein, which is entirely absent in Terrence Malick’s 1998 film adaptation of the book.  Likewise for the United States Navy: Jewish Naval Officer Barney Greenwald (played by José Ferrer) in “Herman Wouk’s The Caine Mutiny”, versus the negation of this aspect of the character’s identity in Edward Dmytryk’s 1954 film of the same name.  

As part of my continuing series of accounts of Jewish military service in the Second World War (among all the Allied nations), based on accounts in The New York Times and other sources, posts about Jewish military service and Jewish military casualties pertaining to (for example)…

Squadron Leader David Goldberg (J/4242); Survived
Fighter Pilot
No. 403 Squadron
Royal Canadian Air Force
Shot Down and Evaded Capture; Returned to England May 6, 1944
March 8, 1944 – Spitfire IX MJ356

2 Lt. Jesse Herbert Lack (0-694883) .ת.נ.צ.ב.ה
Navigator
755th Bomb Squadron, 458th Bomb Group, 8th Air Force
United States Army Air Force
KIA March 8, 1944 – B-24J 41-28720

2 Lt. Theodore Herman (“Ted”) Lederer (0-2000710) .ת.נ.צ.ב.ה
Infantry

398th Infantry Regiment, 100th Infantry Division
United States Army
KIA April 4, 1945

1 Lt. James Kaplan Levy (0-793649) .ת.נ.צ.ב.ה
Fighter Pilot

347th Fighter Squadron, 350th Fighter Group, 12th Air Force
United States Army Air Force
KIA June 10, 1944 – P-39Q 44-2454

Lieutenant Commander Alfred Labori Lyons (0-307073) .ת.נ.צ.ב.ה
Surgeon

USS Pinkney
United States Navy
KIA April 28, 1945

T/Sgt. Leonard Mann (12128372) .ת.נ.צ.ב.ה
Aerial Gunner

33rd Bomb Squadron, 22nd Bomb Group, 5th Air Force
United States Army Air Force
KIA March 23, 1945 – B-24L 44-41652

Lieutenant Naum Naumovich Rabinovich (Лейтенант Наум Наумович Рабинович); Survived
Fighter Pilot – “Ace”
Six aerial victories – all FW-190s; 5 individual and 1 shared
513th Fighter Aviation Regiment, 331st Fighter Aviation Division, 2nd Air Army
Military Air Forces (VVS) – USSR (Военно-воздушные cилы России (ВВС) – СССР)
Aircraft (Yak) damaged in dogfight with FW-190s on July 13, 1944
Crash-landed; Injured; Rejoined Regiment
In 1980s, a “Refusenik”…
Applied for exit visa to emigrate in 1981; Permission Denied
Received permission to emigrate in April, 1989
(See more at Yad Vashem Archives)

______________________________

But for now, but for thought, but for warning, a poem:

Thus Satan Said

“How will I overcome
this one who is under siege?
He possesses bravery, ingenuity,
weapons of war and resourcefulness.”

And he said: “I’ll not sap his strength,
Nor fill his heart with cowardice,
nor overwhelm him with discouragement
As in days gone by.
I will only do this:
I will cast a shadow of dullness over his mind
until he forgets that justice is with him.”

✡                                 ✡                                 ✡

This is what the Satan said and it was as if
the heavens trembled in fear
as they saw him rise
to execute his plan.

____________________

 Nathan Alterman (1919-1970)

The Invisible Airmen – The Invisible Jews: Captain Seymour M. Malakoff and the Crew of C-47 “Butchski II”, 1944

“…the fact that its entire crew of five are all from New York.”

_______________

Definitions of the phrase “New Yorker”…

… at Wordnik:
“a native or resident of New York (especially of New York City)”


… at Cambridge Dictionary:
“someone from the US city of New York”

“someone from the US state of New York”

…at Collins Dictionary:
1. a.  “of the state of New York”

1. b.  “of the city of New York”
2. a.  “a person born or living in the state of New York”
2. b. ” a person born or living in the city of New York”

______________________________

My prior post, The Invisible Sailor – The Invisible Jew?, concerning Warner Brothers’ 1943 film about the United States submarine service, Destination Tokyo, focuses on a fascinating scene that arrives at the film’s halfway point.  After “Mike”, one of the sub’s crew, is murdered – quite literally stabbed in the back – by a Japanese fighter pilot ostensibly in the act of surrender, the Greek-American sailor “Tin-Can” (played by Dane Clark, actual name Bernard Elliot Zanville) is unwilling and unable to attend the former’s funeral.  Tin-Can’s absence from the ceremony sparks anger and shock from his fellow crew members, who take deep offense at his detached and seemingly passive reaction to the death of a fellow crewman.  Then, with great and increasing intensity, Tin-Can explains the reason for his absence.  He relates how the suffering of his family in German-occupied Greece – particularly the murder of his kindly philosopher uncle – has become the central motivation for his military service, which is a form of patriotism and deeply personal – if not familial and ethnic – revenge against the Axis.  In a story otherwise devoted to action, adventure, drama, and occasional moments of levity (what, with Alan Hale, Sr.!), Tin-Can’s speech grounds the film upon a plane of seriousness and depth.

But, I believe there was a story behind Tin-Can’s story.  As I explain fully in the post, given the ownership of the studio that produced the film, as well as identity of some of the writers, producers, and actors involved in the movie’s creation – let alone the time-frame of the film’s release – I believe that the writers and producers of Destination Tokyo used Tin-Can’s speech as a disguised soliloquy about the fate of of the Jews of Europe.  The proviso being of course, that unapologetically and explicitly drawing attention to the fate of the Jews of Europe in the context of fighting the Axis powers, in a form of popular entertainment created for a nationwide audience, was – in the Hollywood of 1943 – perceived as being anathema, in terms of cultural, social, and professional acceptability.

Anyway, Destination Tokyo was a movie; a story; fiction, in which reality lay behind a cloak of invisibility.  

In the world of life; of fact; of literature and journalism, there are other forms of invisibility; even if unintentional; even if benign.  But, just as in Destination Tokyo, the absence of a fact can “speak” far more loudly and leave a far deeper impression, than if it is mentioned … even if briefly, even if fleetingly, even if in passing.  This will reveal more about the writer, publisher, and tenor of the times, than the story itself.  Such was the case of a news item published in The New York Times in early 1944…  

But first, by way of explanation:

Many of my posts on this blog – an ongoing series as it were?! – focus on the military service of Jewish soldiers during the Second World War.  These are centered around news items about Jewish military casualties from the New York metropolitan area, which were published in The New York Times, in the final two years – 1944 and 1945 – of that global conflict. 

Appearing under the heading “Jewish Soldiers in The New York Times in WW II”, I’ve created about forty such posts as of the completion of “this” post in mid-July of 2023.  As explained more fully at Soldiers from New York: Jewish Soldiers in The New York Times, in World War Two, the now-distant impetus for this effort was my review of every issue (seriously!) of the Times published between late 1940 and 1946 for any news item related to the military service of Jewish soldiers during that time.  (I did this in the 1990s by reviewing the Times on 35mm microfilm.  Lots and lots of microfilm.  Did I say lots?  Lots!The goal of this endeavor was to learn about the experience and thoughts of Jewish soldiers in the Armed forces of the Allies in the context of the Shoah, and, the historical experience of the Jewish people during that awful, complex, and transformative time.

I thought – when I began this research three now-seemingly-distant decades ago – given the Times being a newspaper headquartered in Manhattan, with the New York metro area then being the demographic “center” of Jewish life in the United States, that the newspaper would occasionally feature news items about the implications or aspects of Jewish military service during the war, even if in passing: even if tangentially; even only hesitantly.  Well, was I wrong about that.  Very wrong.  Completely wrong; completely-upending-your-assumptions and jaw-droppingly kind of wrong. 

Certainly news about American Jewish servicemen (and on vanishingly rare occasions, Jewish soldiers in the armies of other Allied nations) appeared in the Times, but this facet … or central aspect? … of their identity was never a focus of the paper’s reporting, assuming it fell into the awareness of the paper’s journalists and editors to begin with.  Well…  Given the history of the Times, the prevailing self-perception of the Jews of America at that time, and, the nature of the times (pun entirely intended), perhaps this was inevitable.  An example of this, from early 1944, follows…

On February 4 of that year, this article, by an anonymous Times correspondent, appear in the first section of the newspaper:

FIVE NEW YORKERS ON INVASION PLANE

Crew of Butchski Plan to Run ‘Overseas Branch of the Bronx Express’

By Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES.

AT A UNITED STATES TROOP CARRIER COMMAND STATION in Britain, Feb. 3 – All the twin-engined transport planes on this station look alike in their grubby green-brown war paint, but one is really different.  Its two chief points of difference are the white lettered name Butchski on the nose and the fact that its entire crew of five are all from New York.

When the invasion starts and the troop-carrier command begins shuttling combat soldiers from bases to actual fighting fronts Butchski will become an “overseas branch of the Bronx Express,” according to its crew.  Every member of the crew agrees the service will be strictly “express.”

The skipper of Butchski is quiet, youthful-looking Capt. E.M. Malakoff of 60 East Ninety-fourth Street, Manhattan.  A graduate of Penn State and New York University Law School, he passed the New York bar examination in 1941.

He is only 27 years old now, but handles the transport plane as if he had been flying it all his life.  The plane is named for his 9-year-old brother James, whose nickname is Butchski.

Co-Pilot “Typical New Yorker”

Lieut. James P. Wilt of 538 East Sixteenth Street is co-pilot.  He maintains he is the most typical New Yorker because he was born in Dayton, Ohio, twenty-five years ago and moved to New York to attend New York University after having gone to the University of Cincinnati.  After finishing school he worked in radio before joining the Army.  His father and mother, Mr. and Mrs. Noble Wilt, now live in Troy, Ohio, with his younger brother and sister.

Flight Officer Saul Bush, who is 25 years old and lives at 1749 Grand Concourse, the Bronx, is the navigator of Butchski.  He insists his chef distinction is that he is the only married man in the crew and he feels sorry because the other members will never be able to marry a girl as incomparable as his wife, Beatrice, who lives in the Bronx.  He attended De Witt Clinton High School and City College in New York.

Staff Sgt. David Lifschutz, who says he “was born, reared and hopes to die” in New York, is the fourth member of the crew.  He is only 21.  His home is 32-17 Seventy-seventh Street, Jackson Heights, and for years before he joined the Army he used to hang around La Guardia Field hoping to be a flier one day.  He attended Long Island City High School and his parents still live at the Seventy-seventh Street address.

Youngest Member Is 20

Staff Sgt. Lester Leftkowitz [sic], who attended Morris High School and lived at 586 Southern Boulevard, the Bronx, with his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Samuel H. Lefkowitz, is the fifth and youngest member of the crew.  He is just 20 years old.

The job of Butchski is to haul paratroops and tow gliders loaded with airborne fighting men to fighting areas when the invasion starts.  They all realize it is a tough job, but one that has to be done, and they are just waiting until the time comes to do it.

Here’s how the article appeared in the paper:

______________________________

Biographical information about each of these men follows below.  (A minor caveat:  “Letfkowitz” is actually “Lefkowitz”.)  As will soon be evident as you scroll through this lengthy post, Captain Malakoff was killed in action, but every member of his crew survived the war.  With the significant caveat, that Staff Sergeant Lifschutz was shot down and taken prisoner of war in late December of 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge.

And so, Butchski’s crew:  

Pilot: Capt. Seymour M. Malakoff, 0-660774, Air Medal, Purple Heart
Mr. and Mrs. Jacob John (3/6/91-6/14/55) and Vera (Ida) (Partman) (7/12/90-11/18/43) Malakoff, 60 East 94th St., New York, N.Y.
James Leonard “Butchski” Malakoff (brother) (6/20/33-7/24/07)
Born New Haven, Ct., 10/24/16
The New York Times 2/4/44, 6/27/44
Casualty List 7/25/44
Forvarts 6/29/44

Co-Pilot: Lieutenant James Philip Wilt
Mr. and Mrs. Walter Noble (5/21/93-1984) and Katherine (Harper) (Folckemer) (1/4/93-12/29/61) Wilt (parents)
Robert N. Wilt (brother) (1/6/30-7/2/60), 234 South Plum St., Troy, Oh.
Wartime residence: 538 East 16th St., New York, N.Y.
Born Dayton, Oh., 4/2/18; Died 12/13/78
Riverside Cemetery, Troy, Oh. – Section 1, North West Corner

Navigator: Flight Officer Saul Bush
Mrs. Beatrice (Rosen) Bush (wife), 1749 Grand Concourse, Bronx, N.Y.
Mr. and Mrs. Alfred and Dora (Stein) Bush (parents), 2101 Morris St., New York, N.Y.
Born New York, N.Y., 6/29/19; Died 10/20/04
American Jews in World War II – Not Listed

Radio Operator: S/Sgt. David Lifschutz, 12147259, Air Medal Three Oak Leaf Clusters, Purple Heart
Mr. and Mrs. Ephraim (“Frank”?) and Claire Lifschutz (parents), 32-17 77th St., Jackson Heights, N.Y.
Born New York, N.Y., 6/3/22
Casualty List 6/13/45
Long Island Star Journal 4/14/45, 6/14/45
American Jews in World War II – 381

Crew Chief: S/Sgt. Lester Lefkowitz (Hersch G’dali bar Shmuel), 12182071
Born Bronx, N.Y., 5/25/23; Died 10/3/00
Mr. and Mrs. Samuel H. and Etta Leftkowitz (parents), 586 Southern Boulevard, Bronx, N.Y.
Mount Ararat Cemetery, East Farmingdale, N.Y.
American Jews in World War II – Not Listed

What about Seymour Malakoff? …  He received his pilot wings and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant on May 20 1942.  His portrait appears below.  Taken when he was aviation cadet, it’s from the United States National Archives, where it’s one image among thousands of similar photos within 105 archival storage boxes encompassing the collection “RECORDS OF THE ARMY AIR FORCES – Photographic Prints of Air Cadets and Officers, Air Crew, and Notables in the History of Aviation”. 

Lt. Malakoff’s portrait, “P-14933”, is in box 57.

(Digression one: The overwhelming majority of these images were taken during the very late 1930s, and early 1940s; with a very small number from WW I and the twenties.  A few civilian flyers (like Amelia Earhart and Anthony Fokker) are also present, along with a few images of famous German WW I aviators.  Most of the portraits are of Flying Cadets, or, men who had just graduated as Second Lieutenants and received their “wings” from Army Air Force pilot, bombardier, and navigator schools.  The majority of the images seem to have been taken from 1941 through 1943, with some from 1944, and a very few thereafter.

Some pictures were taken outdoors, along an airfield flight-line, apparent from background scenery.  Some, with photographic back-drops of aircraft, clouds, or other aviation-related images, were obviously taken in studios.  Other were taken in simple, unadorned, indoor settings.  Some images are printed upon 8 ½” x 11” black & white glossy finish photographic paper, while others, of smaller dimensions, are mounted upon (glued to) heavy 8 ½” x 11” stock.  Typically, information such the date of the photograph, name and rank of subject, and the aviation school where the image was taken is recorded with the image; sometimes on the image itself.

Inevitably, given the coincidence between the timing of their graduation and the time-frame of the Second World War, many of these men were killed in action, while others lost their lives in training or operational accidents.  Similarly, it is notable that there are no photographs of aircrews; only individuals.  Notably, this collection of photographs comprises a limited number of the tens of thousands Army Air Force pilots, bombardiers, navigators who were Aviation Cadets, or were commissioned, during World War Two.)

______________________________

The Times article obviously attracted attention well beyond the confines of Manhattan, for it was referenced in Walter Winchell’s column three days later, in which S/Sgt. Lifschutz was mentioned in reply to comments by Mississippi Senator John E. Rankin concerning the latter’s remarks about the ethnic backgrounds of American servicemen.  Here are the first two paragraph’s from Winchell’s column:

By Walter Winchell

The Man on Broadway

NEW YORK, Feb. 7. – Man About Town:

     U.S. Senator Styles Bridges is helping his State Department heart trousseau shop …  Al Jolson is Jinx Falkenberg’s most constant visitor at her St. Luke’s Hospital bedside…  Dorothy Fox, the dance director, got a quiet melting down (from her Naval Intelligence bridegroom in Florida last week)…  Barbara Booth, who understudied Hepburn in “Without Love,” was secretly married last week in San Francisco to an Army lieutenant…  New Yorkers suspect that Wayne (wife-killer) Lonergan’s sudden coin (to hire a lawyer) came from men named in her diary…  Betty Hutton is Capt. C. Gable’s morale builder this week…  “Under Cover” author Carlson is 1-A and rarin’ to go.

     HERR RANKIN’S disparagement of certain war heroes is the consequent result of a defense mechanism.  He is Chairman of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee.  Rankin is a World War I war vet – by virtue of 17 days’ service…  The AP reports that the first American ashore on the Anzio beaches (south of Rome) was Pvt. Walter P. Krysztofiak, a father, of Illinois.  Wonder what Rankin would say about this American whose name can hardly be pronounced? …  And then there’s the New York Times report of Feb. 4 (about New Yorkers making up the crew of a bomber) – one crew man being Staff Sgt. David Lifschutz…  You can tell Rep. Hoffman from the others in Congress.  While he talked about a march on Washington – his constituents were more interested in a March of Dimes…  Ralph Pearl says Hoffman is so unimpressive (haw!) he goes in one eye – and out the other.

Here’s how Winchell’s column actually appeared … as published in the Syracuse Herald-Journal:

______________________________

If the Times article of February 4 was (in its own way) enlightening, the following very small news item, published on June 27, three weeks after D-Day, was much sadder:  It reports that Captain Malakoff was missing in action. 

New York Flier Missing

On June 5, Capt. Seymour M. Malakoff of 60 East Ninety-fourth Street, skipper of “Butchski,” a twin-engined transport plane, wrote to his father, J.M. Malakoff, that “everything was fine”.  The next day air-borne troops invaded the coast of France, and Mr. Malakoff said yesterday he had received a War Department telegram saying his son had been reported “missing in action since June 6 over France.”

______________________________

What happened?

Missing Air Crew Report 8409 reveals that Captain Malakoff was the pilot of C-47A 43-30735 (otherwise known as “CK * P” / chalk # 37 / “Butchski II“), of the 75th Troop Carrier Squadron, 435th Troop Carrier Group, 9th Air Force.  His aircraft was one of nineteen 9th Air Force C-47s lost during D-Day (this number based on MACRs covering C-47 losses on June 6), with the 435th losing two other aircraft, both from the 77th Troop Carrier Squadron.  These planes were 42-24077, “IB * J”, piloted by 1 Lt. James J. Hamblin (MACR 7801), and 43-30734, piloted by Captain John H. Schaefers (MACR 8414).  Identical to Captain Malakoff’s “Butchski II” (as will be evident a few paragraphs down…), there were no survivors from the crew of either transport; four men in Lt. Hamblin’s crew, and 5 in Captain Schaefers’. 

(Digression two: Here’s the insignia of the 75th Troop Carrier Squadron.  (It’s from Ebay seller abqmetal.))

The fate of Butchski II is described in this excerpt from Ian Gardner’s Tonight We Die As Men, the story of the 3rd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, encompassing the history of the Battalion’s from its creation through D-Day.  The excerpt describes the loss of the C-47 as seen from the ground.

The two men moved cautiously off along the line of the wall toward a hedge.  A few minutes later they discovered George Rosie hiding under a tree.  He was overjoyed to see them.  They remained hidden in the hedge for a while wondering what they should do.  Suddenly Rosie pointed in the direction of the farmhouse and muttered something through his broken teeth that sounded like, “Jesus Christ.  Look!”

A C-47 had been hit, its port engine was on fire and it was banking sharply to the right.  The men watched as the aircraft leveled out and its paratroopers started to jump.  As the last man left the aircraft it became totally engulfed in flames.  It was then that Gibson, Lee, and Rosie realized that it was heading directly toward them.  They flattened themselves against the ground and the stricken plane tore through power lines and swept 20 ft above their heads before exploding in a ball of flame at Clos des Brohiers.  Just moments later they were surprised to see four men, silhouetted by the inferno, sprinting toward them.  A water-filled ditch briefly interrupted their run, but they waded in and quickly scrambled out.  Watching in amazement, Gibson’s small group could not believe their eyes.  Before them, covered in mud and dripping wet, were Cyrus Swinson, Leo Krebs, Phil Abbey, and Francis Ronzani.  All four had jumped from the same plane as Gibson.  They had been hiding in a field and the burning plane forced them out.

Dr. Barney Ryan had landed in the flooded area close to L’Amont and could see something burning furiously on higher ground nearby.  He had met up with three other men and led them toward the fire.  Ryan recollects, “I couldn’t be sure what was burning at the time but thought it was an aircraft.  We were shot at by figures running around the flames.  As we weren’t supposed to open fire until daybreak we guessed they must be Germans.”  The figures were probably Mongolian soldiers who could see Ryan’s group illuminated in the flames.  Their firing forced Ryan and his men to dive under the water and swim away.

The burning plane had been carrying 18 men from H Co, 501st Bn.  They had been scheduled to jump on Drop Zone C, which was about 3 miles north of the crash site.  All the paratroopers got out safely but unfortunately the plane’s five-man crew perished in the inferno.  The aircraft was piloted by Capt. Malakoff from the 435th Troop Carrier Group’s 75th Troop Carrier Squadron, based at Welford in Berkshire.  It was probably hit shortly after crossing the French coast and fell back in the formation.  Losing altitude and unable to reach the drop zone, the pilot switched on the green light allowing the paratroopers to jump to safety before the plane crashed.

______________________________

Missing Air Crew Report 8409 includes thirteen (!) eyewitness accounts pertaining to the loss of Captain Malakoff’s C-47.  These comprise a total of ten statements from the eighteen paratroopers aboard the plane (all eighteen jumped successfully) and, statements from Captain Paul W. Dahl (C-47 42-92093), and First Lieutenants Charles P. Kearns, Jr. (C-47 42-100675) and Edgar H. Albers, Jr. (C-47 42-92099), fellow pilots in the 75th Troop Carrier Squadron.  Here’s Captain Dahl’s statement:  

I last saw Captain Malakoff as we entered the West Coast of the Cherbourg Peninsula. I was leading the second element of the 4th Squadron.  Captain Malakoff was leading the last squadron directly behind me.  Immediately after crossing the coast we went into an overcast laying over the coast directly on our course.  I turned out to the right a short distance to avoid collision with other ships in the overcast and then resumed course letting down until I broke out beneath the overcast.  If Captain Malakoff had continued straight on course he undoubtedly would have caught up with us out on our left.  A short time after breaking out of the overcast I was fired upon from the ground, guns firing all over the sky.  I saw two ships explode and go down in flames off to our left front about 300 to 500 feet above.  Approximately one-half a minute later I made a left turn into the D.Z. (my navigator recognizing it) and it was about this time I saw a violent explosion directly to our left and then saw the flames engulfing the remnants of the plane as it went down.  I would say this occurred about approximately one mile Northwest of the DZ according to my navigator’s calculations.  The exploding plane was at about the same altitude as we were which was 1000 ft indicated letting down.  I definitely saw tracers going into the explosion.  I had to make a left turn into the DZ because of the previous right turn I made in the overcast which is another fact that might indicate Captain Malakoff’s being off to my left.

I would estimate Captain Malakoff’s speed at 140 to 150 mph the last time I definitely saw him before we entered the overcast.

I was in the overcast approximately few and one half minutes.  We were under fire most of the time after breaking out of the overcast.

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This statement is by Pvt. Joe L. Cardenas, of (at the time) H Company:

I was the last man in my stick, the last to jump from the plane.  Because of my position near the radio compartment I couldn’t see out but 1 did notice the plane lurch a little possibly from wing hits.  Lt. Hoffmann [1 Lt. John W. Huffman] gave the order to “stand up”, “hook-up”.  The crew chief came out and said that he thought they were coning in south of the DZ.  He told us to hold it up and I passed this word down the line.  He then went back to the pilot.  He came out again and wanted to know why we were in the plane and went back into the pilot’s cabin.  He came out again, rather excited and said “we are coming over the DZ when you get the light.  “Go!  Go!  Go!”  The plane seemed to be OK.  I had no trouble getting out.  I never saw the plane again after I jumped.

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Missing Air Crew Report 8409 lists C-47 43-30735 as having last been seen west of Etienville, France.  In reality, the plane crashed on the ground of the Frigot Farm, about two miles north-northwest of Carentan.  Several images of Butchski II’s crash site can be seen at TAPA Talk (“Meehan Crash Site“), while Mark Bando has this account at The Carrington News:  

C-47 #43-30735 (pilot Seymour M. Malakoff) belonged to the 75th TCS and was shot down during mission Albany on D-day.  Butchski II came down near Frigot Farm on D-Night, just north of the road that runs straight east toward Basse Addeville [La Basse Addeville] from Dead Man’s Corner.  The plane was carrying the stick of 3rd platoon H/501.  Capt. Seymour Malakoff, pilot, 2nd Lt. Thomas Tucker, co-pilot, 1st Lt. Eugene Gaul, navigator, Sgt. Paul Jacoway flight engineer, S/Sgt. Robert Walsh, radio … were all killed in the crash.  

All the troopers on board including Harry Plisevich, Len Morris, Robert Niles, Paul Solea, and Clarence Felt jumped before the ship went in.  Solea’s reserve chute opened accidentally in the plane, causing a four minute delay in jumping.  Due to the cloud banks and ground fire which brought down two other planes of the same serial carrying G/501st personnel [42-24077 and 43-30734], the plane had strayed off-course.  Butchski II was actually hit somewhere south of Carentan and then began a route bringing her NE, on an angle that took her above Addeville.  She then turned back west bound and the occupants of the Frigot farm on the north side of the road just west of the A13 overpass heard it go over their house before she crashed a few fields over.  There was a AA battery on the high ground just north of Chateau Bel Enault [Château Bellenau], which was pumping rounds at the plane as it turned west, losing altitude all the while, one of the troopers [Pvt. Fred J. DiPietro, 15354752?] that jumped was KIA shortly after landing between Baupte and Raffoville, when he knocked on the door of a French farmhouse and a German answered, probably with a pistol in his hand.  From Mark Bando…

These two air photos show the Frigot Farm, which lies at the intersection of D913 and Rue du Bel Esnault, bounded by rows of trees adjacent to each road.  Based on photos at TAPA Talk, the aircraft crashed adjacent to one of the two northwest-southeast oriented rows of trees subdividing the property: the long row in the very center of the image, or, the diminutive row in the farm’s southwest corner. 

This photo, at a smaller scale, shows the setting of the Frigot Farm relative to Château Bellenau, which is just southwest of La Basse Addeville.  

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Words and maps can only convey so much.  The photo below, also from Gardner’s book (as is the caption), shows the burnt-out wreckage of Captain Malakoff’s C-47 a few days after D-Day.  Little is left of the aircraft except for the fin, an outer portion of one wing, and fragments of bent and burned aluminum.  

“Pvt. Walter Hendrix from E Company 506th stands beside the burnt-out remains of 75th Troop Carrier Squadron C-47 “Butchski II”, which crashed near Frigot Farm on D-Day.  The plane was carrying men from H Company 501st, who all jumped to safety before it crashed.  Unfortunately its crew were not so fortunate and Capt. Seymour Malakoff (pilot), 2 Lt. Thomas Tucker (co-pilot), 1st Lt. Eugene Gaul (navigator), Sgt. Paul Jacoway (flight engineer) and S/Sgt. Robert Walsh (radio operator) all perished in the inferno.  (Forrest Guth picture, Carnetan Historical Center)”

I do find it notable that whereas the Times gives the nickname of Captain Malakoff’s C-47 as “Butchski“, Missing Air Crew Report 8409 and other sources list the aircraft’s name as “Butchski II“.  Whether this reflects an error in the Times’ article, or, the fact that there was an original “Butchski (one)” replaced by a C-47 dubbed “Butchski II” … in the tradition of so many USAAF WW II aircraft … I’ve no idea.   

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Captain Malakoff’s crew on this mission – their first, last, and only mission – comprised:

Co-Pilot: 2 Lt. Thomas A. Tucker, 0-686291, Buffalo, N.Y. (Born 1918)
Forest Lawn Cemetery, Buffalo, N.Y.

Navigator: 1 Lt. Eugene Edward Gaul, 0-807185, Newark, N.J. (Born 7/4/20)
Long Island National Cemetery, East Farmingdale, N.Y. – Plot H, Grave 7930

Flight Engineer: Sgt. Paul B. Jacoway, 39097783, Fort Smith, Ak. (Born 5/22/18)
Fort Smith National Cemetery, Fort Smith, Ar. – Section 4, Grave 2163

Radio Operator: S/Sgt. Robert Donald “Donny” Walsh, 37397005, Saint Louis, Mo. (Born 4/6/21)
Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery, Lemay, Mo. – Section OPS3, Grave 2307E

I’d suppose that his original crew, as listed in the Times, was broken up as a unit prior to D-Day, and distributed among other crews in the 75th Troop Carrier Squadron.  In any event, as mentioned above, all of Captain Malakoff’s original crewmen survived the war.  

Captain Malakoff is buried at Normandy American Cemetery, St. Laurent-sur-Mer, France, Plot F, Row 18, Grave 18.  Like Flight Officer Bush and Sergeant Lefkowitz, his name is absent from American Jews in World War II.  

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Perhaps inspired by the Times, on June 29 the Forvarts published the following news item about Lieutenant Malakoff.  Given the formal nature of the portrait, what with the fluffy white scarf and jauntily placed cap and headphones, this picture was probably taken during his pilot training in the United States – possibly upon his graduation from pilot training and commissioning as an officer – and before his assignment to the 435th Troop Carrier Group.  I suppose the picture was sent to his parents, who then provided the image to the Forvarts

Though I don’t know Yiddish, I think the approximate translation of the title is rather straightforward: Something to the effect of “Jewish Pilot Flies Airplane with Parachutists”.  The word “Butchski“, phoneticized in Yiddish, definitely appears in the article.  It’s in quotes in the third line from the bottom.   

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And now, submitted for your consideration:

The elephant in the living room.

…or…

The rhinoceros in the foyer.

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Getting back to the Times’ article.

Well, yeah. 

Captain Malakoff’s crew were most definitely “New Yorkers” by either residence or birth.  That’s explicitly stated in the Time’s article’s first paragraph.  That all but one of the airmen in the crew were Jews was, however, entirely left unmentioned.  Perhaps this “silence” about the coincidence of four Jewish airmen assigned to the same aircrew, in the European Theater of War, arose because it wasn’t even noticed to begin with.  (That, I seriously doubt.)  Perhaps it was deemed irrelevant.  (That is surely possible.)  Perhaps it was left unmentioned because the story’s anonymous author and editor adhered to and tacitly accepted the Times’ deeply animating ideology which has continued to negate an acceptance of Jewish peoplehood.  (Surely that’s possible too.) 

But still, in the cultural context of the forties and the next few decades (not so much any more),the phrase “New Yorker” was a verbal shorthand that not always, but not uncommonly had a certain Jewish connotation or “ring” to it – on occasion positive; sometimes ambivalent; perhaps neutral; sometimes negative – whether in politics, popular culture, or comedy.

Walter Winchell’s column, published three days after the Times’ story, made mention of David Lifschutz as a way of refuting Congressman John E. Rankin’s statements about American Jews.  But, even accounting for the fact that Winchell was a gossip columnist, something’s clearly “off” with with his article just as much as there is in the Times’ original story.  On a minor point, Butchski was a transport, not a bomber.  On a major point, obviously having combed the article for details, why did Winchell not deign to mention Seymour Malakoff, Saul Bush, and Lester Lefkowitz?  Given the length of his very long column – of which the above image is only a beginning snippet – why the silence about these three men?  Though my knowledge of Winchell’s life only comes from Wikipedia, what stands out from his biography is that despite – or perhaps as a consequence; perhaps as a cause – of his all-too-fleeting fame and social prominence (in a personal life characterized by turbulence and tragedy); despite his father having been a part-time cantor – his only real connection to Judaism and the Jewish people was in his ancestry. 

Plus, the Magen David on his Matzeva.  

Yet, there could be another explanation for the nature of the Times’ article: Perhaps there were aspects of the Times’ reporter’s conversation with the crew of Butchski – then unrecorded and now unknown – that never reached the printed page.  In this, I’m reminded of comments made to me by a Jewish WW II veteran who flew B-17s in the 8th Air Force, several of whose crew members were Jews, and whose brother (a ball turret gunner) and cousin (1st Lieutenant Morris Levesee also…) were killed in action while serving in the 15th and 8th Air Forces, respectively.

As he related in a late 1993 interview:

Me: Can you recall any other Jewish guys who were in your squadron, besides the guys in your crew?
Veteran: Oh yeah. Yeah. We had a…we had a guy; he was a navigator. A fellow by the name of Bill L.  And Bill L.…  Bill L.…  He had worked for the…he worked for the Daily… He had some kind of a job with the Daily News. …  The fact that he had worked for the newspaper, I guess, you know… He was… Let me see, how can I say it? You know, he wanted…he wanted in the worst way, to publicize…the fact… He hung onto my crew…because we had so many Jews.  And he wanted…he wanted to…you know, to throw out a lot of publicity about it and I turned him down, while we were overseas. And I said, “No, no, no. I don’t want to do that.”
The one thing that he did, and it was printed in the Brooklyn Daily Times, or Times Union…I forget what the hell the name of the paper was… He had a picture taken of Irving S. and myself…at the airplane, glancing at a…at a map, and he had written a small article. He and some other guy… I forget what the hell his name was. He was our…he was our PR man. He was also Jewish. And he was the squadron PR man.
And…and they…they had this little article, and they titled it as, “Brooklyn Flak Dodgers”, you know, and he was showing me how we could dodge the flak and all this other bullshit!, but… But it was never printed that way, in the paper. It was just printed…and I have a copy of it…it was printed just as, “Two… You know, as “Two Brooklynites on the Same Crew”. That’s all. Just some little article in the… And I have it someplace. I don’t know where.
And I have that picture, too. I have a copy of the picture.
Me: But he tended to want to socialize with your crew?
Veteran: No, no no no no. No, he didn’t… No, there was…there was no socializing at all. He…the only thing that he wanted to do… He wanted to, you know… I guess, he wanted…he wanted to write, about “this Jewish crew, that were doing ‘this’ and were doing ‘this’ and were doing, you know. And he wanted to…he wanted some sort of notoriety about it, and I didn’t want…I didn’t want it. I said, “No, I don’t care for it.”
I came in…I…I had…I had my brakes shot out on one mission. I had the hydraulic system that was just… My whole hydraulic system went bad, you know, just the…the fluid leaked out. It was shot up? And, I made, what they called…referred to as a…”Stars and Stripes Landing”, using a parachute to…you know, to…to slow me down so that I could…
Me: Out the waist windows or something like that?
Veteran: No no, out the tail. And we used that parachute out the tail, and he wanted to make a big tzimmis [Yiddish for fuss] about it, and I said, “No, I don’t want it Bill.” I said, “I’ll tell you what you do. Write a nice article about my tail gunner, who’s”…what the hell is his name?…P., Henry P.… I said, “Write an article about Henry P.; that P. threw his parachute out the tail, to slow us down so that we didn’t run off the runway.” And that was…that was it.
I didn’t want… I was kind of… You know, I was…superstitious about it, you know.
Me: About the Jewish angle being played up.
Veteran: Well, about any angle… I was superstitious about any kind of, really, publicity. You know, trying to make a…trying to make a hero out of us, you know?
Me: That it would be tempting fate?
Veteran: I think so, yes. That was my feeling.         

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As mentioned above, the only casualty among Captain Malakoff’s original crewmen would eventually be his radio operator, S/Sgt. David Lifschutz.  Here’s his photo, from the Long Island Star Journal of June 14, 1945.

Remaining in the 75th Troop Carrier Squadron, S/Sgt. Lifschutz was a crew member aboard C-47A 43-48718 (the un-nicknamed CK * A) when, during the re-supply mission to American troops in Bastogne, Belgium on mid-afternoon of December 26, 1944, his plane was shot down by anti-aircraft fire.  Coincidentally; ironically, S/Sgt. Lifschutz’s pilot this day was Captain Paul Warren Dahl, whose eyewitness account (see above) of the loss of Butchski II on D-Day figures so prominently in the Missing Air Crew Report for Captain Malakoff.  

This photo of the Dahl crew, dated June 17, 1944, is from Captain Paul Dahl, 75th TCS, 435th TCG, at Honouring IX Troop Carrier Command

Unfortunately, the only person actually identified in the photo is the Captain himself, at center rear.  This photo of Captain Dahl, from his biography at FindAGrave, was taken while he was a flying cadet.

Even if names can’t be correlated to faces, I think it’s possible to attach names to faces based on information in the relevant Missing Air Crew Report, number 11322. 

Along with Captain Dahl and S/Sgt. Lifschutz on the December mission were the following men:

Co-Pilot: 2 Lt. William L. Murtaugh, 0-809998
Navigator: 1 Lt. Zeno Hardy Rose, Jr., 0-807314
Flight Engineer: T/Sgt. George T. Gazarian, 31125533
Passenger: Sgt. John J. Walsh, 36321092, member of 3rd Air Cargo Resupply Squadron

Missing Air Crew Report 11322, covering the loss of this aircraft, includes accounts by three crewmen of a nearby C-47, as well as detailed reports by Captain Dahl and Lt. Murtaugh.  The latter two men, along with Lt. Rose and Sgt. Walsh, landed by parachute in no-man’s-land between German and American forces, but were immediately saved from death or capture by soldiers from the 318th Infantry Regiment of the 80th Infantry Division.  It turned out that Captain Dahl, Lt. Murtaugh, and Sergeant Walsh were wounded either when their plane was struck by anti-aircraft fire, or, injured when they landed by parachute, all having bailing out from an extremely low altitude.  Murtaugh was most seriously hurt, but Navigator Zeno Rose was much more fortunate, emerging from the ordeal unwounded.  

This report about the men’s rescue was filed by the Adjutant of the 435th Troop Carrier Group on January 2, 1945, when the status of the plane’s two other crewmen – S/Sgt. Lifschitz and T/Sgt. Gazarian – was still “Missing in Action”:

2 January 1945.

1st Lt Zeno H Rose, 0807314, 75th Troop Carrier Squadron, this organization, reported “Missing in Action” on “Missing Air Crew Report”, this headquarters, dared 28 December 1944, has returned to this organization.

The following is extracted from interrogation of Lt Rose and is submitted as supplemental to “Missing Air Crew Report”.

“We took off from Station 474 about 1211 BST, 26 December 1944, and flew as the lead ship of the right element of the 75th TC Squadron in the 435th formation.  About two end one half minutes before we reached the DZ at Bastogne, Belgium, we were subjected to enemy fire from both light machine gun and light flak.  Both types of fire were effectively hitting our airplane knocking out the instrument panel on the right side, and at that time, the co-pilot, Lt Murtaugh, was hit by both MG and AA fire that broke his right shoulder or collar bone.  This caused profuse bleeding and severe pain, however, Lt Murtaugh remained at his position and carried on his duties.  At this scene time, the flak burst hit me, although the injury was slight.

Our bundles both in the pararacks and the cabin were ejected over the DZ about 1525 BST.  We made a sharp right turn and were in formation on the ran out when about 2-1/2 minutes from the DZ light flak burst in the cockpit, most probably severing the fuel lines, knocking out the instruments, wounding Captain Dahl and starting fires in the forward part of the airplane.  Captain Dahl rolled the trim tab back checked the power which was already on full, and gave the order and signal for balling out.

I quickly proceeded to the cabin door and saw that the enlisted men had net yet jumped; they seemed to be hesitant possibly because of our altitude.  There was no hesitancy on my part so without further thought, I jumped and was followed by the enlisted men.  (I later learned that the enlisted men were followed by Lt Murtaugh and then Captain Dahl.)  It seemed that we were about three hundred and fifty feet above the ground at that time and my parachute opened instantly.  During my descent to the ground I could hear enemy bullets whizzing past.  I landed near some woods southwest of Bastogne and north of Assenois at approximately P325545, which at that time was between our lines and these of the enemy.  There was a great deal of fire coming toward me so I feinted dead until I could become oriented.

Captain Dahl, Lt Murtaugh and Sgt Walsh landed at a position about 100 yards southeast of my landing near or in the woods and they were picked up by the same organization that joined me.  Captain Dahl had a broken arm, some wounds and lacerations from flak and burns about the nape of his neck; Lt Murtaugh had the broken shoulder, several flak wounds about the face and a sprained ankle, and Sgt Walsh had a broken leg.  All three as well as myself were given medical aid at the Aid Station, then sent to a clearance station, then to a field hospital and then to the 103rd Hospital about forty miles south of Bastogne.

Before departing from the area in which we landed, we were told that the parachute of one of the men had not opened and that in the case of the sixth man, that he had landed closer to the enemy lines and that he had been taken prisoner or had been killed by the enemy.”

Lt Rose interrogated by Captain Clement A. Erb, Intelligence Officer, 75th Troop Carrier squadron, this organization.

The members of this air crew were flying in aircraft C-47A, No. 43-48713, organizations and present status indicated; crew position indicated:

Dahl, Paul W., Captain, 0 401 356, Pilot, 75th TC Sq “SWA”
Murtaugh, William L., 2d Lt., 0 809 998, Co-Pilot, 75th 7C Sq “SWA”
Rose, Zeno H., 1st Lt., 0 807 314, Navigat., 75th TC Sq “RTD”
Gazarian, George T., S/Sgt., 31 125 533, Aer Eng, 75th TC Sq “MIA”
Lifschutz, David., T/Sgt., 12 147 259, Rad Opr., 75th TC Sq “MIA“

Sgt John J. Walsh, 3rd Air Cargo Re-Supply Squadron, was flying on subject aircraft, and was reported as battle casualty by his organization.

MACR 11322 includes the following map, indicating that the C-47 crashed just west of what is today highway N4, north of Remonfosse and east of Assenois.  

This Apple air photo shows Assenois at lower left center, Remonfosse to the east, and Bastogne to the north.  The blue circle indicates the approximate area where the crew landed by parachute – as suggested by the MACR – while the black circle indicates the (again) approximate crash location of C-47A 43-48718.  

The status of Sergeants Lifschutz and Gazarian, like Captain Dahl on their 9th mission, was uncertain at least through March of 1945.  However, the fate of both Sergeants was established by the war’s end, as revealed in the Individual Casualty Questionnaires as completed by Lt. Rose and incorporated into MACR 11322.  (Rose’s are the only such Questionnaires in the MACR.)  

Sergeant Gazarian (31125533) was killed, either in an unsuccessful parachute jump, or due to ground fire from German troops.  Given that witnesses reported seeing five, and not six, parachutes, the cause was most likely the former.  Born on January 3, 1907, the thirty-seven year old sergeant from Waterbury Ct., is buried at Old Pine Grove Cemetery, Waterbury, Ct.

S/Sgt. Lifschutz was immediately captured on landing, as revealed in Lt. Rose’s Questionnaire.  Given that he and Lt. Rose met one another on May 12, 1945, perhaps he returned to the 75th Troop Carrier Squadron after his liberation, while en route back to the United States. 

The very fact that Lt. Rose was able to record a full list of S/Sgt. Lifschutz’s missions, which were completely identical in date and number to those flown by T/Sgt. Gazarian and Captain Dahl, suggests that Lifschutz, Gazarian, Rose, and Dahl had been members of the same crew commencing with the Normandy invasion.  Thus – following that logic – with the exception of Lt. Murtaugh, for whom the flight of December 26 was his first (and only?) mission – these are the men who appear in the photo of the Dahl crew: Gazarian and Lifschutz in front.      

The POW camp in which S/Sgt. Lifschutz was interned is unknown, but that he was a POW is solidly verified by the standard Luftgaukommando Report form “Meldung über den Abschuss eines US-amerikanischen Flugzueges“(“Report About the Shooting Down of a US Airplane”), in report KU 1214A.  The Report also includes a crew list for C-47 43-48718, which includes Captain Dahl’s serial number.  Oddly, an English-language transcription of this document can be found in MACR 11322, but the original sheet is missing from the actual Luftgaukommando Report.    

(Digressing…  The “A” suffix seems to have been used in Luftgaukommando Reports covering aircraft which had multiple crewmen – as opposed to single-seat fighters – in situations for which some crewmen were known to have evaded capture, or were otherwise unaccounted for, at the time the report was initially filed.)

Here’s S/Sgt. Lifschutz’s dog-tag. 

Yes, it bears the letter “H”.

The Long Island Star Journal reported upon the Sergeant’s liberation and impending return in its issue of June 14, 1945, in a brief article which featured his portrait.

Bastogne Captive Awaits Return

Staff Sergeant David Lifchutz of Jackson Heights, who was captured Dec. 24 after he bailed out from his burning plane over Bastogne, was liberated April 29 and is in England awaiting shipment home.

A radio operator on a C-47 transport plane, the 23-yeard-old airman had flown over Holland, France and Germany in the year and a half he had been overseas.  He wears the Air Medal with one cluster.

A graduate of Public School 126, Jackson Heights, Long Island City High School and the Hebrew Technical Institute, which is now a part of New York University, Sergeant Lifchutz worked in the Brooklyn Navy Yard as a shipfitter before entering the Army in 1943.

He is the only son of Mr. and Mrs. Ephraim Lifchutz of 32-17 77th Street.

OOOOOOOO

I don’t know anything at all about the subsequent course of David Lifschutz’s life, but I suppose that given the passage of time, following the way of all men, he has passed into history. 

But, it’s nice to remember a little bit longer.

Two Books.

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

Gardner, Ian, and Day, Roger, Tonight We Die as Men: The Untold Story of Third Battalion 506 Parachute Infantry Regiment from Toccoa to D-Day, Osprey, Oxford, England, 2010 (see pages 153-155)

Digression Three…

In light of my post about Destination Tokyo, I’m contemplating a post about James Jones’ 1962 novel, The Thin Red Line, which was the basis of the 1964 film by Andrew Marton, and, the 1998 film by Terrence Malik.  I’ve not seen either film (!), but I’m particularly curious about the 1998 version in light of Malick – as touched upon in weirdly brief passing by Peter Biskind at Vanity Fair – having “…changed Stein [Captain Bugger Stein], a Jewish captain, to Staros, an officer of Greek extraction, thereby gutting Jones’s indictment of anti-Semitism in the military, which the novelist had observed close-up in his own company.”  This is in light of the many, many (did I say “many”?!) passages in the novel centered upon Captain Stein, by which Jones, a fantastic writer, with clear and obvious intent explored the officer’s experiences with tremendous perception, depth, and empathy.

So, in 1998, why was Captain Bugger Stein missing in action from The Thin Red Line?