1943
In May 1948, when the surrounding Arab countries invaded the newly declared State of Israel to try to abort the foetus in the womb, the residents of Kibbutz Yad Mordechai, just south of Tel Aviv, aided by twenty Haganah fighters, held off the Egyptian army for a full five days, just sufficient for the Israeli army to gather, defend, and then defeat the invaders. The name Yad Mordechai has entered modern Israeli legend much like the Hasmonean rebellion, or indeed the Warsaw Ghetto uprising (see under April 19).
I say "indeed", because Yad Mordechai was not given its name by accident; and "indeed", the giving of the name was also the imbuing of a level of heroism, greater even than that of those who fought to defend it. Had the Egyptians known the story, I wonder if they would have planned their invasion rather differently.
The eponym was Mordechai Anielewicz, who died when the command bunker for the Warsaw Ghetto uprising was destroyed, on May 8th 1943 - the reason for my posting this essay on this date. If I had not already written "The Flaming Sword", or were thinking of another novel about those who resisted the Holocaust, Anielewicz's story would be a fitting one to tell, and with it some of the most profound questions facing Mankind-with-a-conscience in a world that still deals daily in barbarity. To follow what he was before the war to what he became because of it. To understand why he chose to end up in this ghetto when he had the opportunity to evade that destiny. And why did he, not someone else, end up as the commander of the uprising? What kind of man becomes that? What kind of man puts his name forward for the inevitability of heroic death? This is where Camus should have found his Sisyphus, not cursing the imaginary gods, but throwing his rock in physical rebellion into the face of the Ubermensch (click here).
It was in Vilna that he learned Ivrit (modern Hebrew), and wrote Zionist tracts for the newspapers, and lectured. When news of the mass killings broke, he attempted to make contact with the Polish resistance fighters, but the endeavour failed. In April 1942 he co-founded the "anti-Fascist group", but this too failed, when communists among its numbers were arrested. Arguing that the Jews in Lithuania should go back to Poland, to inform the ignorant about what was happening in their country, and to build the resistance stronger, he set out for Poland, accompanied by his girlfriend Mira Fukrer, resolved to lead by example. By the time they reached the Warsaw Ghetto barely sixty thousand of the original three hundred and fifty thousand Jews were left, and most of them were dying of desperation, if not of hunger. Anielewicz took charge of "Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa", the Jewish Combat Organisation, and most of the other groups willingly came under his command.
By January 1943 sufficient arms had been smuggled in that an uprising had become a genuine possibility. But on the 18th the Germans began a new wave of deportations, which took the ZOB commanders by surprise, leaving them no time to communicate the drastically changed circumstance. Just like the insurrection at Auschwitz in the same year, lack of readiness argued with the desperate need to do something, and lack of readiness lost. Anielewicz sent a large number of his troops to join the ranks of the deportees, to provide a second front from within when he led the assault against the escorts to the deportation. The Germans called a halt to the deportations, but the street battle had left many casualties, and nothing else that could be counted as success.
On April 19th, a date deliberately chosen because it was Passover Eve, the Germans resumed the deportations. The resistance had been expecting it, and this time they were ready, albeit ill-equipped, starving, untrained, and outnumbered. They held out for three days. When the fighting in the street ended, the Germans dispatched an entire military battalion to the Ghetto to put an end to the stubbornness of the Jews. Anielewicz retreated with his senior commanders to their bunker at 18 Mila Street. The Germans burned the ghetto to the ground, block by block, indifferent to which building was occupied and which was not. On May 8th the bunker fell victim to the conflagration, and everyone inside it died. On May 16th General Jurgen Stroop, the German commander of this Aktion, was able to report to Berlin that "there is no longer a Jewish suburb in Warsaw."
In one of his last letters, on April 23rd, Anielewicz wrote:
"Be well, my friend! perhaps we will see one another again. The most important thing is that my life's dream has come true. Jewish self-defense in the ghetto has been realised. Jewish retaliation and resistance has become a fact. I have been witness to the magnificent heroic battle of the Jewish fighters."
I have no doubt that he would have said the same about the kibbutzniks of Yad Mordechai, who organised their own self-defense, and carried out their own resistance, successfully in their case, in his name.
The story of the Jewish Resistance Movement in Poland is recounted in my novel "The Flaming Sword", scheduled for publication by TheArgamanPress very soon.
The full story of the Battle of Yad Mordechai can be found here
And of course the great irony of this anniversary - two years later, on the same date: VE Day, the surrender of Germany and the proclamation of Victory in Europe.
One last thought, updating this page in March 2024. I am inclined to re-post that New York Times front page under October 7th, the date in 2023 when Hamas terrorists murdered 1400 Jews and abducted several hundred more, in precisely the proximity of Yad Mordechai (click here), and apparently the Israeli reaction, to quote the NYT, and most of the world between then and now, has been "an over-reaction", "a disproportionate response", for which the "Zionists must be held accountable for war crimes". Plus ça change!
Amber pages:
Buddha's Birthday, at least in South Korea - or so one of the many almanacs I am using tells me. But isn't Buddha's Birthday like Ramadan, an event that follows the lunar calendar, and therefore moves? Indeed it is - the first full moon of the sixth month...except that Chinese Buddhists use a different lunar calendar, so for them it's the fourth month, unless the year began on a day which means thirteen full moons in the cycle, which pushes it forward to the seventh month, or the fifth for Chinese Buddhists. Though some countries start it in the week after the full moon, to tie in with secular historical anniversaries. And Tibet a month later still. And in Japan, probably because they want it to coincide with the confetti first appearing on the trees, in Japan it is always April 8.
All of which is anyway just a variation on the birthday of Jesus, who has whatever date the local pre-Christian religion had for its resurrected Earth-god, anywhere between December 21 and January 6.
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