A Post-Holiday Wrap-Up

This small country on the sunny shores of the Eastern Mediterranean is a land of many contrasts. That contrast is most evident in the back-to-back observance of Memorial Day and Independence Day. First we observe 24 hours of greiving, followed by 24 hours of elation. Now that's a contrast!

Speaking of contrasts, I had some time to catch up on reading and saw two interesting items in the paper last Thursday, April 19th.

The first is entitled "The Good Jailer". Two weeks ago, a ceremony was held in which the Feinstein family of Jerusalem was reunited with a Bible that had been held by the Goodwin family of London for some 60 years. Thomas Henry Goodwin, a guard in the British prison in Jerusalem received the Bible from two condemned Jewish prisoners, Meir Feinstein, 19 and Moshe Barazani, 21. The pair were sentened to death by hanging by the British in 1947, Feinstein for his role in the bombing of the Jerusalem train station and Barazani for carrying a grenade for the purpose of assasinating the British military commander.

The second is titled "The Friendly Fires of Hell" by Robert J. White-Harvey. He tells the sad tale of 10,000 Jewish prisoners, survivors of the Holocaust, who were marched out of the camps as the war in Germany came to a close in May, 1945. Why did the Germans march at least 10,000 poor, wretched survivors to Lubeck Harbor on the German Baltic coast? One imagines that the Germans just didn't know what to do with them as the war was coming to a close, and they wanted to hide their crimes from the eyes of the approaching Allies. The motive becomes more clear when we see what the Germans did when the surviving survivors arrived at the port. They were put onto ships as follows: 4,500 were put aboard the Cap Arcona, a once elegant passenger liner, 2,800 were crammed onto on the Thielbeck, a small rusty old freighter flying a white flag, and the balance on the Athen.

It doesn't take much imagination to figure out that the Germans planned to set sail and then sink the ships at sea. I guess that's one way to get rid of Jews when the gas chambers are closed for repairs !

The plot thickens... At the very same moment that the Jews were boarding these ships, the British were arming four squadrons of RAF Hawker Typhoon fighter-bombers to carry out Operational Order 73: To detroy the concentration of enemy shipping in Lubek Bay.

When the British bombers arrived, they found the Cap Arcona teeming with 4,500 wretched passengers, not to mention two old rusty freighters flying white flags and obviously carrying 1000's of passengers, as well as the hospital ship Deutschland.

The British pilots completed their mission successfully. In just 20 minutes, four ships in the harbor were sinking in flames and 7,000 Jews were dead. The British called it a "friendly-fire" incident and slapped a 100 year top-secret classification on the files. The great-grandchildren of the 7,000 victims will have to wait until the year 2045 in order to learn any more about this "horrible accident". It's apparent that the British wanted to keep it quiet in order not to cast a sour note on an otherwise victorious conclusion to the war. Either that, or they were really emabarassed that the RAF hires pilots with really bad eyesight.

Until those files are opened in another 38 years, you can visit a small memorial erected by residents who lived near the beach where a great many of the Jewish bodies washed ashore and were buried. The Germans also opened a small two-room exhibit in nearby Neustadt-in-Holstein to document the tragedy in 1990.

Back to April 21, 1947. Anti-British "terrorists" Feinstein and Barazani await execution in their cell. The British acquiesce to Arab demands, and impose a blockade on Jewish immigration to Palestine. When ships laden with hundreds of thousands of Jewish survivors approach the beaches of Palestine, the British impound them and send the Jews to concentration camps in Cyprus and other locations. The British sit and wonder how they will solve their Jewish problem... Hmmm... where have we heard that before?

Feinstein and Barazani had been born in Palestine, and knew first hand what the British were up to. They joined underground Jewish organizations that were committed to driving the British out of the land... Hmmm... where have we heard that before?

They probably considered talking things over with the British military officers over tea at the King David first, but that wouldn't have made it to the front page of the New York Times. In the end, they decided to blow up the military officers. The Jew-haters of the world point to this as evidence that the Jews are the real terrorists in the world, and that the state that they created was created through terrorism. They still use this perverted calculus to justify destroying that state through terrorism, such as boarding school buses and putting bullets through the brains of young Jewish school children.

The end of the story: While in prision awaiting their execution by the British, Feinstein and Barazani decided to commit suicide so as not to give the British the satisfaction of seeing them hang. Feinstein had a Bible in which he and Barazani inscribed some last words, one inscription in Hebrew, the other in English, expressing their desire to die as proud men.

They presented the inscribed Bible to the aforementioned guard on duty, Thomas Henry Goodwin, and committed suicide shortly thereafter. Goodwin ultimately returned to England, taking the Bible with him. Before his death more than a half-century later, he asked his family to locate Feinsteins family in order to return the Bible to them. Goodwins son Dennis contacted the Prime Ministers office who in turn located Feinsteins nephew Elazar Feinstein. In a ceremony in Jerusalem a few weeks ago, Goodwin arrived from London and presented the inscribed Bible to Feinstein, who turned it over to be displayed at the Underground Prisoners Museum.

Post-script: We've heard this suicide thing before, just look at the story of Masada. So nu??? What would you do? Is suicide more noble than being put to death at the hands of an unjust authority.

In short, I don't think so. You never know from where your salvation will come. How did Feinstein and Barazani know for sure that the minute they were put on the gallows, some Zorro-like figure on a horse with a sword wouldn't come and slash the hangman's ropes? How do we know for sure that the British Governor wouldn't at the last moment issue a stay of execution? We will never know what could have been.

When you see the universe as G-d's handiwork, and trust that He runs the world in ways that we cannot see or understand, that there is no such thing as "coincidence" and everything happens for a reason, then to take your own life is arrogance, because it says that you think you know what is going to happen in the future better than the Big Guy upstairs who created you.

Well, hope you all had a meaningful Holocaust Memorial Day and a meaningful Memorial Day and a meaningful Independence Day. They come and go every year at this time, but believe me, they have an influence that lasts far longer.