This week's blog entry is courtesy of our Guest Blogger, Diane Besand. Diane worked with the
Italian Jewish Cultural Center of Calabria (IjCCC) to discover and embrace her
Jewish roots. Currently she is preparing for conversion and aliyah in Israel.
I marvel as I look back on these last few weeks of
spring...It is our Jewish Spring to coin a phrase. We have gone from
celebrating Pesach and our freedom from slavery in Egypt, to Yom HaShoah (Holocaust
Remembrance Day), and then Yom Hazikaron Israel's Memorial Day, with the
mourning our dead in wars and terror attacks, including our war of Independence
in 1948.
In Israel these days are marked by great solemnity and
respect. Both days at precisely 11:00 AM, a siren wails throughout the
country. People stop what it is they are doing and stand in complete
silence, including cars on the highway. The silence is deafening. Israeli's
leave their cars and stand beside them. Nothing moves. No one
speaks. In the Kanyon, In the Merkaz, in the Shuk everything stops,
everyone stands in total silence out of respect for our dead until the haunting
wail ends. Israeli's take their mourning seriously, knowing full well the cost
of freedom.
But joy cometh in the morning and we celebrate yet
another miracle with our Independence Day (Yom Ha’atzmaut). These are
times to mourn, and times to celebrate, times to remember and times to look
forward to the future....to Sukkot. I am spending these days in America, but my heart is in
Israel and it hurts not to be there.
My mind wanders back to 1944 when another American,
Colonel Mickey Marcus, a non-practicing Jew was sent to Europe and according to
both1My Jewish Learning and 2Jewish Virtual Library Marcus
“witnessed first-hand the results of the atrocities that had occurred in Nazi
death camps. In each camp there were piles of uncounted Jewish corpses,” along
with those who were so malnourished, they looked like walking dead. Following
his debriefing, “Marcus was subsequently named chief of the War Crimes Division
with responsibility for planning the procedures used at the Nuremberg trials.
Through his experiences, he came to understand the depths of European
anti-Semitism. Never previously a Zionist, he became convinced that the
only hope for European Jewry lay in a Jewish homeland in Palestine.”
“In 1947 Marcus returned to civilian life, and shortly
after the UN voted for the partition of Palestine paving the way for
the creation of a Jewish State. Almost immediately David Ben Gurion
requested Marcus to recruit an American officer to serve as military advisor to
Israel. Unable to recruit one of his friends, Marcus volunteered
himself. Not being keen on the idea of Marcus serving himself, The U.S. War
Department finally agreed, under the conditions that Marcus not use his own
name and rank and disguise his American military record.” 1, 2, 3
“By January 1948 changing his name to Michael Stone,
Marcus arrived in Tel Aviv to assume command of the Israeli forces and was
confronted with an impossible situation. The older, widely separated Jewish
settlements in Palestine were surrounded by a sea of hostile Arabs who also
surrounded the newly created Jewish settlements. Israel would have indefensible
borders. Its military had virtually no air power” with only a few crop dusters,
“a few tanks and ancient artillery pieces, very little arms or ammunition”, and
untrained conscripted recruits fresh from Europe. Many of these conscripts had
never held a rifle, let alone fired one. “The Haganah and Irgun were
effective underground organizations, but had no experience as a regular
national army. The Israelis faced well-supplied Arab armies that were
determined to drive the Jews into the sea.”1,
2 Other than Israel having one of the finest and well
equipped military in the world today, their desire to drive us into the sea has
never changed.
Immediately after the declaring of Israel's independence,
15 May 1948, we were attacked from all sides. Eventually Jerusalem
came under siege and was ready to fall. The road to Jerusalem was under
Arab control and blocked preventing food, water, guns and ammunition from
reaching it. “Marcus ordered the construction of a road to bring men and
equipment to break the Arab siege just days before the United Nations
negotiated a cease fire. Israel had withstood the Arab assault with its borders
virtually intact. In gratitude, Prime Minister Ben Gurion named Mickey Marcus
Lieutenant General, the first general in the army of Israel in nearly two
thousand years.” 2
“Tragically, Marcus did not live to see the peace. Six
hours before the cease-fire began, while headquartered in the village of Abu
Ghosh near Jerusalem, Marcus could not sleep. He walked beyond the guarded
perimeter wrapped in his bed sheet. A Jewish sentry saw a white-robed figure
approaching and not understanding Marcus's English response to his challenge,
fired a single, fatal shot. Marcus's body was flown to the United States for
burial at West Point, where his tombstone identifies him as "A Soldier for
All Humanity." Hollywood would later immortalize Marcus in a movie,
"Cast a Giant Shadow", starring Kirk Douglas as Mickey
Marcus.“Ben-Gurion put it simply: "He was the best man we had." 1, 2, 3
Tonight as darkness descends on Israel's Independence Day
for another year, another spring, I cannot help but think of Mickey
Marcus. He was a man propelled by destiny. Finding his Jewish roots,
he experienced the results of a world gone mad and the height of anti-Semitism
and evil, (Yom HaShoah). He fought and helped Israel keep her new
Independence (Yom Ha’atzmaut), and finally he gave his life for that cause, and
we honor him and all the other fallen who died that Israel might exist (Yom
Hazikaron). Colonel David Daniel (Mickey) Marcus-Israel's American
General....An American Jew forever an Israeli.
________________________________________________________________________
Background information on Colonel David Marcus was taken
from the following sources:
1. My Jewish Learning “Mickey Marcus:
Israel’s American General”
2. Jewish Virtual Library “Mickey
Marcus 1902-1948”
3. Wikipedia "Mickey Marcus"
