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World War II: The Seventieth Anniversary: Frederick Krantz, CIJR Daily Briefing, May 8, 2015 — We are remembering today the end of the Second World War in Europe (May 7, 1945 in the West, at Reims, and May 9 in the East, at Berlin). Followed by its Pacific termination several months later, World War II was the most destructive conflagration in the history of the world, then and since.
Israelis to Pay Homage to Red Army Victory Over Nazi Germany: Sam Sokol, Jerusalem Post, May 6, 2015— According to Yad Vashem, some 1.5 million Jews served in the various allied armies during the war.
To Survive, Netanyahu Must Broaden his New Government: Isi Leibler, Jerusalem Post, May 7, 2015 — Netanyahu has cobbled together a coalition with only a single-seat majority – to survive, it must be broadened.
To the Galilee: S. Y. Agnon, Tablet, May 6, 2015—A new English translation of fiction by Nobel laureate S.Y. Agnon, for Lag BaOmer.
On Topic Links
Almost Half of Israelis Support Making Victory Day a National Holiday: Sam Sokol, Jerusalem Post, May 4 2015
For the Love of Israel: Fred Maroun, Times of Israel, Apr. 30, 2015
The Iran Deal: Oppose, Obstruct, Delay . . . Defeat: William Kristol, Weekly Standard, Apr. 27, 2015
The Bomb Continues Ticking: Yossi Melman, Jerusalem Report, Apr. 26, 2015
WORLD WAR II: THE SEVENTIETH ANNIVERSARY
Frederick Krantz
CIJR Daily Briefing, May 8, 2015
And some there be which have no
memorial, who are perished as though
they had never been.
Ecclesiasticus 44:9
We are remembering today the end of the Second World War in Europe (May 7, 1945 in the West, at Reims, and May 9 in the East, at Berlin). Followed by its Pacific termination several months later, World War II was the most destructive conflagration in the history of the world, then and since. While many people think it began in September, 1939, with Hitler’s invasion of Poland, it in fact began many years before, with Japan’s aggression in China in 1931 and 1937. The fighting and bloodshed finally ended in 1945 (in Europe with the Allies on the Elbe and the fall of Berlin to the Red Army, and in the Pacific in August, after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with Tokyo’s final, formal surrender on the battleship Missouri in Tokyo harbor, in September). But the war’s consequences, with and after the Cold War, are with us still.
The titanic struggle between the Allies, led by Great Britain and the US after the defeat of France and (as is often forgotten) by China in Asia, and the Axis dictatorships, led by Nazi Germany and militarist Japan (with Mussolini’s fascist Italy a subordinate player), would cost humanity well over 60,000,000 military and civilian deaths. These included over 6 million Jews, exterminated by the German Nazis as an integral part of their racial plan to impose an “Aryan” 1,000-Year Reich on first Europe and then the world).
While all the figures given here are approximate, and some vary according to the source, across WWII civilian casualties far exceeded military. Of some 70 million combatants on all sides, about 17 million were killed. The Soviet Union suffered the most civilian deaths, more than 20 million; China ca. 15 million; Germany 4 million, Japan 2 million; Poland, with the highest per capita death rate, over 6 million dead (50% Jews), equal to 15% of the population.
France lost 600,000, the United Kingdom 65,000, Italy 800,000. Belgium, Holland Greece, the Czechs, and Yugoslavia; the Scandinavian countries; Finland, Romania, Slovakia, and Hungary (German allies); Bulgaria and Albania and others—all suffered grievous civilian (and in some cases military) casualties.
Ca. 8 million Soviets (including partisans) and 3 million Germans (four of every five Germans who died in combat in WWII) died on the Eastern front).
British armed forces lost 380,000 men, Commonwealth and Imperial allies over 100,000 [Canada, 37,000], the USA 300,000 servicemen. Over 1 ½ million Jews fought, and 250,000 died heroically in combat, in all the Allied armies.
And millions more people suffered as refugees, forced laborers, oppressed and exploited or sacrificing, populations, in population transfers, and so on. The cost of the massive destruction of cities, roads, rail-lines, buildings, churches, industrial plants, harbors, bridges, dams, and of the millions of tons of shipping destroyed (true of China, Philippines and other Pacific theater countries as well) is estimated at over $1.5 trillion, probably a very low figure.
The numbers of dead, military and civilian, are staggering and unimaginable (and are far outweighed, it should be noted, by those wounded, physically and emotionally). World War II, counting only from1939, lasted 2,174 days; deaths averaged 23,000 lives a day, 15 people were killed [many brutally and senselessly murdered] a minute, for six long years. * Each death was in its own way a tragedy—multiply each by 60 million to begin to get a sense of the unimaginable human cost of this catastrophe. Europe still has not recovered from the demographic ravages of 1939-1945.
Why did Hitler lose? There are of course many intersecting reasons—Churchill’s leadership and the resilience of Great Britain’s then Empire, with its Commonwealth reinforcements (including Canada); Roosevelt’s pre-December 7, 1941 Lend-Lease aid; Germany’s two-front war after June, 1941, radicalized after the Allied landings in No. Africa and then Italy after November, 1942 and in Normandy in June, 1944 The lack of cooperation between Germany and Japan was a key factor; Allied victory by late 1943 in the Battle of the Atlantic (aided by the breaking of the Germans’ Enigma code), the key role of America’s immense industrial power and production (including large-scale transfers of war materiel to the Soviet Union), and the massive Allied strategic bombing campaign against Germany, were other elements.
The flight of Jewish and German émigré nuclear physicists to Britain and the U.S. precluded rapid German development of an atomic bomb, and the obstinate endurance, courage and sacrifice of millions of ordinary Russian soldiers and civilians (see Vasily Grossman’s great Stalingrad novel, Life and Fate), reinforced by superb (and plentiful) equipment like the T34 tank, Stormovik attack-fighter, and Katyusha rocket artillery (as well as tens of thousands of American Dodge transport trucks) also played key roles.
But as Andrew Roberts concludes in his magisterial The Storm of War. A New History of the Second World War, while stressing Hitler’s misplaced confidence in his own will and military genius and the German racialists’ antipathy to “inferior” conquered peoples, which ensured their opposition, “The real reason why Hitler lost the Second World War was exactly the same one that caused him to unleash it in the first place: he was a Nazi.”*
*Andrew Roberts, Storm of War (New York, Harper Collins, 2011), pp.579; 608.
(Prof. Krantz is Director & President of the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research, Editor of the Daily Isranet Briefing and the Israfax quarterly, and a Professor of History at Liberal Arts College, Concordia University.)
ISRAELIS TO PAY HOMAGE TO RED ARMY
VICTORY OVER NAZI GERMANY
Sam Sokol
Jerusalem Post, May 6, 2015
Israelis are gearing up to mark the Russia’s victory over Nazi Germany, which is celebrated every year on May 9 in the countries of the former Soviet Union as well as by many former residents of Warsaw Pact nations living in the Jewish state.
According to Yad Vashem, some 1.5 million Jews served in the various allied armies during the war. Many of those surviving live here. Half a million of them were part of the Red Army.
Former Soviet soldiers hold parades around the country, often wearing their old uniforms, while Yad Vashem hosts a ceremony honoring the former military men.
According to a recent poll almost half of Israelis have expressed support for making it an official Israeli holiday.
This year the Museum of the Jewish Soldier in World War II and Yad Vashem will hold a state ceremony at the Armored Corps Memorial at Latrun that will be attended by President Reuven Rivlin, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon.
Tensions with Russia have affected how the day is being celebrated, with Israel declining to send a representative to Moscow this year due to tensions over the sale of antiaircraft missile systems to Iran.
The Ukrainian and Russian embassies will hold separate events here, each of which will likely be at least somewhat politicized given the current tensions between Moscow and Kiev.
TO SURVIVE, NETANYAHU MUST BROADEN HIS NEW GOVERNMENT
Isi Leibler
Jerusalem Post, May 7, 2015
Following weeks of unedifying horse trading, threats and extortions, compounded by personal malice, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has finally cobbled together an untenable coalition with only a single-seat majority — which any single Knesset member in the coalition could bring down. To survive, it must be broadened.
Most Israelis are disappointed that a national unity government could not be formed at a time when we are faced with daunting political and diplomatic challenges, in particular further major tensions with the Obama administration.
Yet, there is still considerable speculation that, despite public protestations to the contrary, both Netanyahu and Isaac Herzog would prefer to create a unity government and that at a later stage, the coalition will be expanded to incorporate the Zionist Union or as a last resort, even Yesh Atid.
Excoriating Netanyahu for capitulating to unreasonable demands from minority parties that run counter to the will of the people is fine for populist armchair critics. But the responsibility rests with our dysfunctional political system and those voters who supported the small parties. Were Herzog in Netanyahu’s shoes, he would have behaved in exactly the same manner.
To form a government, Netanyahu was forced to forfeit the best available candidates for ministerial positions and even appoint utterly unsuitable ministers. In addition, he was obliged to submit to demands of small one-dimensional parties — adopting policies that Likud and the vast majority of Israelis strongly oppose.
Ironically, despite restricting Netanyahu to a hairline majority, the calculated decision of Avigdor Lieberman to undermine Netanyahu and join the opposition will delight most Israelis. Lieberman was the antithesis of what Israel required for the role of foreign minister. Cynically claiming to be motivated by ideological principles was pathetic for Lieberman, who is notorious for his political zigzagging. Besides, aside from having a penchant for coarse statements that may appeal to his constituency but alienate the rest of world — such as his call for disloyal Arab Israelis to be “beheaded” and the public condemnation of his government during the Gaza war — Lieberman was probably Israel’s least successful foreign minister.
Naftali Bennett and Habayit Hayehudi were treated shabbily by Netanyahu, who capitulated to Shas at their expense. Nevertheless, had he agreed to Bennett’s demand to become foreign minister, this also would have been disastrous. Bennett is articulate and charismatic but he is repeatedly on record vowing that he would never contemplate a Palestinian state and favoring annexation of the territories, which would have provided Obama with all the ammunition required to orchestrate a massive global anti-Israel campaign.
That he initially spurned the offer of the Education Ministry was regrettable. Education should be the paramount concern of Habayit Hayehudi. Bennett has a vision of Israel and Jewish values beyond the religious arena and understands how to reintroduce Jewish values into the secular education stream without religious coercion. The courage he displayed in his previous political forays suggests that that he could be an outstanding education minister and achieve major reforms in the system.
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
On Lag BaOmer
TO THE GALILEE
S. Y. Agnon
Tablet, May 6, 2015
After a few years in Jaffa and her settlements and in Jerusalem and her study halls I decided to go and see the Land—the Kinneret and Deganya kibbutzim and their inhabitants, who have added two settlements to the existing thirty-seven. I had too little money to hire a donkey to ride on or a wagon to travel in, but I had plenty of time, so I decided to make my way by foot.
I timed the trip to celebrate Lag BaOmer in Meron, because I still remembered something of what I had heard in my childhood about the spectacles and wonders witnessed on Lag BaOmer night at the tomb of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai.
I placed a loaf of bread and some olives in my pack, took my walking stick, and locked my door. I placed the key on the windowsill behind the blinds, so if a friend came to visit and found me away he could still find the key, open my room, and find himself a place to rest. It was the custom in the Land in those days that a person could always find lodging with a friend—if not a proper bed, then at least a floor to sleep on and a roof above his head.
I departed Jaffa and walked nine hours to Hadera. Arriving at night, I found a place to sleep at a roadside inn leased by an Arab. I bathed my feet in hot water, rubbed them with olive oil, ate some of my bread and olives, spread myself out on the straw up in the loft, and slept soundly until morning when I was woken by the shouts of the Arabs and the screeching of their camels.
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I wanted to climb down from the loft but I could not find the ladder, which the innkeeper, fearing I would skip out on the bill, had removed. I called out for him with seventy different names used by Arabs, until I hit upon his name. He brought the ladder and I climbed down.
I went out to the courtyard and washed my hands and face, drank two or three mugs of black coffee, and paid the lodging bill, hot water bill, and coffee bill, then headed off to synagogue. As they say in the Land of Israel: If you wish to meet the founders of any settlement go to its synagogue.
I took my staff and pack and I walked to Zichron Yaakov, arriving toward the end of the day. While looking for a boarding house I found my hand grasped by that of Reb Chaim Dov, who said, “I just mentioned you and here you are!” I asked him how this came about and what he was referring to. He said, “I saw a man walking, and I said: There’s a Jew afoot. Come on home with me and we’ll have a hot drink, and if you don’t object to praying in Sephardic Hebrew, we can go to synagogue for the afternoon prayers.”
I went home with him. He set the table and served me a few cups of tea, fig jam, and a slice of cake left over from the Sabbath. To arouse my affection he reminded me of things I had told him when he had visited the Hovevei Zion office in Jaffa, where I served as secretary. He also told me of the things he had seen in Jerusalem, during the time when all of Jerusalem was still contained within the Old City walls.
On the way to synagogue I had wanted to find a place to lodge. Reb Chaim Dov asked, “Is the lodging you’ve found so disagreeable?”—Which lodging is that?, I asked him.—“The one where we drank tea.” I told him I feared that the geese would poke me with their feathers in the pillows, for surely they were cross at having been slaughtered, and their feathers plucked to fill pillows and quilts. Reb Chaim Dov, aside from being the town’s rabbi, was also its kosher slaughterer. He replied, “My friend, if had I a feather pillow it would already have been hocked at the pawn shop.”—“Do we have pawn shops here in the Land of Israel?”—“Neither pawn shops nor geese to make pillows of their feathers. But as for the mitzvah of welcoming guests, don’t fear that I’ll place rocks under your head. In any case, it’s already time for the evening meal. Come and we’ll eat.”
We sat and ate the food brought by the mistress of the house, and we spoke of all the things that occupied Jewish life in those days. Those things that are known are known, and those that are unknown are best left secret so as not to arouse Satan’s interest.
After breakfast I took my staff and pack and rose to set off on my way. Reb Chaim Dov, who had thought he had arranged to host his guest for the Sabbath, discovered that the guest was abandoning him and he would have to spend the Sabbath without hosting guests. He also regretted being unable to escort me on my way, as he had to remain at home to answer the many questions of Jewish law that present themselves on the Sabbath eve.
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
CIJR Wishes All Our Friends & Supporters: Shabbat Shalom!
On Topic
Almost Half of Israelis Support Making Victory Day a National Holiday: Sam Sokol, Jerusalem Post, May 4 2015—Almost of half of Israelis polled have expressed support for making, May 9, Victory Day, the Soviet commemoration marking the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, an Israeli holiday.
For the Love of Israel: Fred Maroun, Times of Israel, Apr. 30, 2015—We Arabs claim that Israel is a western imperialist enterprise, the small Satan to the U.S.’s big Satan. The reality however is that Israel is a love story, the affectionate project of the Jewish people that results from thousands of years of Jewish history.
The Iran Deal: Oppose, Obstruct, Delay . . . Defeat: William Kristol, Weekly Standard, Apr. 27, 2015—Hillary Rodham Clinton, quondam secretary of state and presumptive heir to the presidency of the United States, spent Monday, April 13, in her Secret Service van heading out to Iowa.
The Bomb Continues Ticking: Yossi Melman, Jerusalem Report, Apr. 26, 2015—It is not certain that the Lausanne understandings on Iran’s nuclear program will turn into a final and comprehensive agreement.