A Call for Help

Someone has just sent me this 74 year-old letter to Rabbi Dr Solomon Schonfeld, of blessed memory, appealing for his help to bring my father to England after the war.

My late father was one of 3 brothers born in Pressburg (Bratislava) in what used to be Czechoslovakia. Two of his brothers Julius and Shmuel had escaped to England before the war. My father Simcha was the youngest, and was rounded up with his parents by the Nazis and sent to Auschwitz. His mother and father were murdered on arrival. 

My father survived and returned to his home town of Pressburg with nothing and no-one.

In this letter Shmuel appeals to Rabbi Schonfeld for help in bringing his 21 year-old sibling to safety in England.

I wanted to record this online as a testament to Dr Schonfeld's outstanding work in rescuing many thousands of our people from Nazi tyranny and to the kindness of the British people and government at that time in providing sanctuary and a new life to so many like my father.

He took Torah into war

Tomorrow is Judgement Day.

It is also the 45^th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, when our enemies attacked us in the style of the Amalekites 3,000 years before; striking when we were ‘weak and weary’ through fasting and at prayer.

Though 1973 was an age before mobile phones, which can now mobilise the IDF reserves in seconds, our enemies forgot one thing. The fact that most Israelis were in or around their synagogues on Yom Kippur enabled the alert to spread instantly and mobilisation took a fraction of the time that it would have on a normal working day in the generation before iPhones.

That was only the first showing of the Almighty’s hand in this war, which over the following days produced stories of deliverance that defied all logic and reason. Legends like Zvika Greengold who singlehandedly held off and destroyed columns of Syrian tanks for 20 hours while reserves were being mustered to the Golan Heights frontline.

One of the iconic photos of the war was of my cousin Hillel Unsdorfer carrying a Sefer Torah in the Sinai desert. He was the young rabbi of Kibbutz Beit Rimon doing his reserve duty on Yom Kippur in a bunker along the Suez Canal. Wherever he went, he took the Torah and this bunker was no exception. After Egyptian forces sprang over the canal, his unit was soon surrounded on all sides and after brave resistance in the opening 48 hours of the war, he was ordered by Moshe Dayan to surrender to the Egyptian army. He did so very reluctantly.

He and his comrades languished in an Egyptian dungeon for a long time until prisoners were finally exchanged. He never spoke of the interrogations and harsh treatment suffered during that time.

Hillel survived the war and Egyptian captivity, but not Israeli roads. He tragically died some years later in a road accident.

His legacy is an iconic image of taking the Torah into war, as it must be with us in every other aspect of Jewish life.

As I write these lines, there is only one airport on the entire planet that is now closed for the next 24 hours. It is the airport of the Jewish state. Our one and only nation state. May G-d always protect it as He did 25 years ago, always and forever.

Pearl Harbour & Vayeshev

This week was the anniversary of Japan’s dastardly attack on Pearl Harbour which brought America into the Second World War. Germany was quick to blame American Jews and used it to heap ever more cruelty on their brothers and sisters in Nazi-occupied Europe. One such place was the Slovakian town of Pressburg where my grandfather Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Unsdorfer zt’l would prepare his weekly sermon in longhand, often with a diary note of current events. Rabbi Shlomo Zalman was murdered in Auschwitz but some of his manuscripts were salvaged by his son Simcha, my father, after his liberation from the extermination camp. 

Here is the extract for this week's sermon וישב  in 1941 …

תש"ב, פה פרעסבורג,  אור ליום עש"ק לפ 'וישב,

 בעת צרה ר"ל

שנתהוו מלחמה במדינת הים

 בין יאפן  לאמריקה

Here, Pressburg 1941 , Erev Shabbat Vayeshev
A time of trouble, G-d help us
When there has been war between Japan and America

Rashi’s opening statement on the parsha is:

"ביקש יעקב לישב בשלוה, קפץ עליו רוגזו של יוסף.."

Literally: Jacob wanted to dwell in peace, but the rage of Joseph jumped on him.

Why the strange term ‘jump’ – why did Rashi not just say the anger of Joseph came over him.

The Midrash says of Vayeshev - לא שלותי ולא שקטתי – Jacob is saying: I had no peace from Esau, no quiet from Laban and no rest from Dinah. But then came the rage of Joseph.

Perhaps the events we are now going through here in Pressburg will explain Rashi’s strange wording.

In ordinary times the only thing that changes in our daily lives is the Torah story we read on shabbat. But these days we are truly living our very lives with a different story  every week. We went through Lech Lecha, having to leave our homes, Sarah being taken to the house of Pharaoh as with our young daughters, the sacrifice of Isaac- so very real for us now, the fire and brimstone of Sodom being rained down in air wars, Esau's hatred of Jacob being played out in our streets, and then Laban and the lies and scheming which seek to undermine us in every way.

And so we arrive this week at Vayeshev – the Jew looks for a little peace and quiet - and suddeny rage literally jumps on his head.

We all take precautions in our daily lives to keep us and our families safe. But sometimes something happens which we never anticipated. Jacob always knew Esau was trouble – all the way back to their struggles in his mother’s womb. So he always gave him a wide berth and avoided confrontations. And so when Esau threatened to kill him, it came as no surprise. Similarly with Laban – Jacob knew he was not to be trusted and made sure he would not swindle him a second time with Rachel. So, again, it came as no surprise when he pursued Jacob even after leaving. And so with Dinah – every parent knows the importance of guarding a young daughter from bad company and influence. But bad things do happen and even the rape of Dinah became a sad fact of life for Jacob.

And so, as the Midrash tells it: Jacob knew no peace from Esau, no quiet from Laban and no rest from Dinah.

But, when it came to Joseph, who could possibly have imagined that hatred among brothers – the leaders of G-d's tribes – could bring them to gang up on their own flesh and blood, to kill him, to throw him into a pit of scorpions or to sell him into slavery? There was nothing that could prepare a father for such a thing, no precaution that Yaakov could possibly have anticipated – it simply jumped upon him out of a clear blue sky.

And so it is in these terrible times with the Nazis. We know to stay out of their way, we try not to provoke them, we wear our yellow stars and live within their curfews – always trying to anticipate and avoid their next move against us. And yet, despite all of these precautions who could have dreamt that an attack that takes place on the other side of the globe between two far-off nations, America and Japan, could possibly affect us here? Moreover that we would be blamed for it and lose the relative quietude we’ve experienced in recent weeks  .... 
 בשלוהביקש יעקב לישב

The Midrash on Vayigash says: כל מה שאירה ליוסף אירה לציון   that what happened to Joseph will happen to Zion.  That our destiny will follow the story of Yosef. The world mocks us saying: “Look who comes here – it’s the dreamer! You claim to be the chosen people? We will see what becomes of your dreams.”  

And, just as Joseph was thrown into a pit, they shut us into ghettos. And if that’s not enough, "let’s sell him" – they send us to labour camps [or so my grandfather then thought]. They try to break us and our spirit. 

And all of this because they know that G-d has chosen us from among all nations and lifted us above all languages. And in the end, like the dreams of Joseph the righteous, a heavenly voice will proclaim: ונראה מה יהיו חלומותיו …
we shall see what becomes of those dreams. We shall indeed see that the Nazis will be utterly destroyed and the nation of Israel will survive and thrive for eternity. And we shall also realise that the pain and suffering we are now enduring will all end up for the betterment of our people.

Our parsha begins and ends with dreams. Whatever laws may have been passed against us, they have not yet ruled that we cannot dream.

And in our dreams we see the future …. נצבה וגם אלומתי והנה קמה 

That we will ultimately prevail, and this should be our true consolation in these terrible times.

'Bashert' is Yiddish for: it was meant to be.

In 1960 my father wrote a book about his time in Auschwitz and Buchenwald and of the murder of his parents and most members of his family during the Holocaust.

‘The Yellow Star’ was recently republished after 50 years.

This is the story of how it got to be republished.

It appears as the afterword to the new book.

It’s sad to see how so much of the world seems to have descended into a new epoch of Jew hatred. However much they try to disguise themselves as anti-Israel or anti-Zionist, these are anti-Semites just like the duck analogy walks and talks and looks.

And just as in Germany the Nazis emerged from a highly cultured and educated society, the main sources of this resurgent Jew-hatred are in academia, the arts and cultured classes where anti-Semitic parlour chatter is rife and almost trendy.  Israeli scientists with ground-breaking medical cures are boycotted whilst artists who immortalise Palestinian suicide bombers are lauded and awarded. Most people agree that being supportive of Israel is ‘the kiss of death’ in media and academia; no advancement, no promotion, no prospects.

I am therefore always amazed when any non-Jewish personality actually stands up for Israel. ‘Why do they do it?’ I wonder. ‘What bad dream did this person have that compelled them to risk ridicule and eternal peer-abuse by standing up for the Jewish state?’

Such a question came to me on October 16^th 2009 when a British army officer and commander of forces in Ireland, Bosnia and Afghanistan stood up at the UN in Geneva and delivered this speech:

“I am the former commander of the British forces in Afghanistan. I served with NATO and the United Nations; commanded troops in Northern Ireland, Bosnia and Macedonia; and participated in the Gulf War. I spent considerable time in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, and worked on international terrorism for the UK Government’s Joint Intelligence Committee.

Mr. President, based on my knowledge and experience, I can say this: During Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli Defence Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.

Israel did so while facing an enemy that deliberately positioned its military capability behind the human shield of the civilian population.

Hamas, like Hizballah, are expert at driving the media agenda. Both will always have people ready to give interviews condemning Israeli forces for war crimes. They are adept at staging and distorting incidents.

The IDF faces a challenge that we British do not have to face to the same extent. It is the automatic, Pavlovian presumption by many in the international media, and international human rights groups, that the IDF are in the wrong, that they are abusing human rights.

The truth is that the IDF took extraordinary measures to give Gaza civilians notice of targeted areas, dropping over 2 million leaflets, and making over 100,000 phone calls. Many missions that could have taken out Hamas military capability were aborted to prevent civilian casualties. During the conflict, the IDF allowed huge amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza. To deliver aid virtually into your enemy's hands is, to the military tactician, normally quite unthinkable. But the IDF took on those risks.

Despite all of this, of course innocent civilians were killed. War is chaos and full of mistakes. There have been mistakes by the British, American and other forces in Afghanistan and in Iraq, many of which can be put down to human error. But mistakes are not war crimes.

More than anything, the civilian casualties were a consequence of Hamas’ way of fighting. Hamas deliberately tried to sacrifice its own own civilians.

Mr. President, Israel had no choice apart from defending its people, to stop Hamas from attacking them with rockets.

And I say this again: the IDF did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.

Thank you, Mr. President.”

I was brimming with admiration, but yet still wondering: why?

I got the answer two years later on a plane out of Tel Aviv where I spotted the officer, Colonel Richard Kemp, in the opposite aisle seat. 

I said I wanted to shake his hand and thank him for his courageous defence of my people. We exchanged cards and deplaned in London.

Later that evening I got the following email from him : 

“Many years ago I read a book called The Yellow Star by somebody who was I believe called S B Unsdorfer. Any relation?”  

I replied: “Wow .. what a coincidence. That was my father's book. Long out of print.”

He replied: “A remarkable coincidence. I never expected to have the honour to meet the author of The Yellow Star, or indeed his son. I read the book when I was about 14 or 15. A phenomenal work. Without question, of the many books I have read in my life, your father's made by far the greatest impression on me. I read a battered paperback copy that belonged to my aunt, and I still have it.”

Well – this time I got my answer to my eternal question about what makes such a person speak out for Israel.

I decided there and then to republish and digitize The Yellow Star with thanks to Richard for his inspiration and for agreeing to write a personal foreword.

We are now good friends and I continue to follow Richard's outstanding advocacy for Israel and her armed forces in forums all over the world, and his support of all those brave souls, in and out of uniform, who are fighting the just war against radical Islamist terrorism and the forces of jihad.

The Yellow Star is available at Amazon and other online vendors.

See Richard Kemp's blog here.
Watch his UN speech here.