They did not die alone

Like everyone else, when I think of this unprecedented event, filling with tragedy and glory, I am overcome by melancholy and pride.
Undeniably, 60 years ago history was made within the walls of Warsaw ghetto. A few hundreds Jews, the last of a community numbering 500, 000, rose against what were then the mightiest legions in Europe. Without tangible help from anyone, without training, without any real military experience, they waged a war that will be remembered by future generation as one that, for one moment, made the enemy tremble.
All other underground movements in occupied Europe received strategically valuable assistance from London, Washington, and Moscow, where special units took care of their needs and paid attention to their concerns: vital links were established, special planes dropped sophisticated weapons and precious radio transmitters, logistical support was made available, agents smuggled through borders and brought money and information… Only de Jewish underground was neglected, isolated, and ignored. Its heroic warriors were the loneliest victims of the most inhuman of wars. A single airdrop, an occasional rescue mission would have proved to them, and to the enemy, that they were not forgotten.
When this story is told to today’s students, they respond with disbelief and frustration. After all, the Allies had spent gigantic sums and invested extraordinary efforts organizing and financing armed resistance against Germany. Why were Jewish groups, even from the purely pragmatic aspect, so totally disregarded instead of being included in their war effort? Is it that they were given up from the outset? Or that no one trusted their military capacity, their bravery, even their loyalty? Is it possible that the Allies simply did not care?
One reads Mordechai Anielewicz’s letters to his comrades on the Aryan side, or his appeals to Jewish leaders in Palestine and America, and one wonders: Where did he find the strength to overcome the despair?
It was shortly after Stalingrad, much before D-Day when the Jewish fighting Organization of the Warsaw Ghetto staged the first uprising against Germany. Hitler’s Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe, Himmler’s SS Panzer division and Gestapo agents still had enough power to prepare new battles on every front, they still terrorized Europe with their iron fist - how did they rebels in the Warsaw ghetto manage to fight them day and night and inflict serious casualties to their rank? It took the Germans longer to silence the ghetto in Warsaw than to conquer France.
I remember: I raised these issues in a conversation with the legendary Anteks Zukerman, the second in command of the uprising. Our first meeting was also the last.
For years and years we were in touch. Often we spoke on the phone, looking for dates. We promised each other each other: next time we must meet. I have many things to discuss with him. Finally, in the early eighties, at the occasion of a world gathering of Holocaust survivors,” I decide to stop postponing. I came to the “Ghetto Fighter’s Kibbutz” in the North. Antek and I spend several hours alone, sharing views on the role of the memory in the Jewish history. He spoke to me of his ghetto in flames and I told him of mine, so short-lived, emptied of Jews. We discussed the execution of the first Jewish Gestapo collaborator. And the exultation that penetrated the Jewish fighters when, for the first time, they aroused fear in the enemy. And the episode describing them dancing when they shot their first SS.
From Antek I learned a lot about dignity in times of distress and oppression. Why did all Jewish fighters insist on the importance of “saving Jewish honor” in resisting the murderers? Didn’t all heroes perish as martyrs and all martyrs as heroes? Was dying with a gun in the hand worthier than with a prayer on the lips? Most of my questions remained questions.
Our conversation was interrupt by one of his friends: a meeting was taking place and was invited to take part in it. Antek, already feeble, was carried outside in his chair. My entire address was directed at him. When I returned to Jerusalem that same evening, still in the car, I heard the news on the radio: He had died.
And now as I remembered Antek, I try to remember his friends, those who do not make to the land of Israel. They fought alone, they suffered alone, they prayed alone, they faced death alone but they did not die alone-for, on a certain level, something in all of us died with them. by Elie Weisel

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Declaration of Israel's Independence 1948

Issued at Tel Aviv on May 14, 1948 (5th of Iyar, 5708)
ERETZ-ISRAEL [(Hebrew) - The Land of Israel] was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books.
After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people remained faithful to it throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom.
Impelled by this historic and traditional attachment, Jews strove in every successive generation to re-establish themselves in their ancient homeland. In recent decades they returned in their masses. Pioneers, ma'pilim [(Hebrew) - immigrants coming to Eretz-Israel in defiance of restrictive legislation] and defenders, they made deserts bloom, revived the Hebrew language, built villages and towns, and created a thriving community controlling its own economy and culture, loving peace but knowing how to defend itself, bringing the blessings of progress to all the country's inhabitants, and aspiring towards independent nationhood.
In the year 5657 (1897), at the summons of the spiritual father of the Jewish State, Theodore Herzl, the First Zionist Congress convened and proclaimed the right of the Jewish people to national rebirth in its own country.
This right was recognized in the Balfour Declaration of the 2nd November, 1917, and re-affirmed in the Mandate of the League of Nations which, in particular, gave international sanction to the historic connection between the Jewish people and Eretz-Israel and to the right of the Jewish people to rebuild its National Home.
The catastrophe which recently befell the Jewish people - the massacre of millions of Jews in Europe - was another clear demonstration of the urgency of solving the problem of its homelessness by re-establishing in Eretz-Israel the Jewish State, which would open the gates of the homeland wide to every Jew and confer upon the Jewish people the status of a fully privileged member of the comity of nations.
Survivors of the Nazi holocaust in Europe, as well as Jews from other parts of the world, continued to migrate to Eretz-Israel, undaunted by difficulties, restrictions and dangers, and never ceased to assert their right to a life of dignity, freedom and honest toil in their national homeland.
In the Second World War, the Jewish community of this country contributed its full share to the struggle of the freedom- and peace-loving nations against the forces of Nazi wickedness and, by the blood of its soldiers and its war effort, gained the right to be reckoned among the peoples who founded the United Nations.
On the 29th November, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the establishment of a Jewish State in Eretz-Israel; the General Assembly required the inhabitants of Eretz-Israel to take such steps as were necessary on their part for the implementation of that resolution. This recognition by the United Nations of the right of the Jewish people to establish their State is irrevocable.
This right is the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign State.
ACCORDINGLY WE, MEMBERS OF THE PEOPLE'S COUNCIL, REPRESENTATIVES OF THE JEWISH COMMUNITY OF ERETZ-ISRAEL AND OF THE ZIONIST MOVEMENT, ARE HERE ASSEMBLED ON THE DAY OF THE TERMINATION OF THE BRITISH MANDATE OVER ERETZ-ISRAEL AND, BY VIRTUE OF OUR NATURAL AND HISTORIC RIGHT AND ON THE STRENGTH OF THE RESOLUTION OF THE UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY, HEREBY DECLARE THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A JEWISH STATE IN ERETZ-ISRAEL, TO BE KNOWN AS THE STATE OF ISRAEL.
WE DECLARE that, with effect from the moment of the termination of the Mandate being tonight, the eve of Sabbath, the 6th Iyar, 5708 (15th May, 1948), until the establishment of the elected, regular authorities of the State in accordance with the Constitution which shall be adopted by the Elected Constituent Assembly not later than the 1st October 1948, the People's Council shall act as a Provisional Council of State, and its executive organ, the People's Administration, shall be the Provisional Government of the Jewish State, to be called "Israel".
THE STATE OF ISRAEL will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.
THE STATE OF ISRAEL is prepared to cooperate with the agencies and representatives of the United Nations in implementing the resolution of the General Assembly of the 29th November, 1947, and will take steps to bring about the economic union of the whole of Eretz-Israel.
WE APPEAL to the United Nations to assist the Jewish people in the building-up of its State and to receive the State of Israel into the comity of nations.
WE APPEAL - in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months - to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.
WE EXTEND our hand to all neighboring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighborliness, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land. The State of Israel is prepared to do its share in a common effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East.
WE APPEAL to the Jewish people throughout the Diaspora to rally round the Jews of Eretz-Israel in the tasks of immigration and upbuilding and to stand by them in the great struggle for the realization of the age-old dream - the redemption of Israel.
PLACING OUR TRUST IN THE ALMIGHTY, WE AFFIX OUR SIGNATURES TO THIS PROCLAMATION AT THIS SESSION OF THE PROVISIONAL COUNCIL OF STATE, ON THE SOIL OF THE HOMELAND, IN THE CITY OF TEL-AVIV, ON THIS SABBATH EVE, THE 5TH DAY OF IYAR, 5708 (14TH MAY, 1948).David Ben-GurionDaniel AusterMordekhai BentovYitzchak Ben ZviEliyahu BerligneFritz BernsteinRabbi Wolf GoldMeir GrabovskyYitzchak GruenbaumDr. Abraham GranovskyEliyahu DobkinMeir Wilner-KovnerZerach WahrhaftigHerzl Vardi Rachel CohenRabbi Kalman KahanaSaadia KobashiRabbi Yitzchak Meir LevinMeir David LoewensteinZvi LuriaGolda MyersonNachum NirZvi SegalRabbi Yehuda Leib Hacohen FishmanDavid Zvi PinkasAharon ZislingMoshe KolodnyEliezer KaplanAbraham KatznelsonFelix RosenbluethDavid RemezBerl RepeturMordekhai ShattnerBen Zion SternbergBekhor ShitreetMoshe ShapiraMoshe Shertok

El corazon de un Judio creyente que proclama la solida e indestructible Fe en Su Dios

“Creo en ti, Dios de Israel, aunque has hecho todo lo possible para que niege mi fe en Ti. Creo en Tus leyes, aunque no pueda disculpar tus acciones. Te quiero decir, que ahora más que en cualquier otro tiempo, en nuestro camino eterno de agonia, nosotros los torturados, los humillados, los sepultados y quemados vivos, los insultasdos, los escarnecidos, los solitarios, los desanparados de Dios y del hombre, tenemos el derecho de saber cuales son los límites de Tu tolerancia.
Me gustaria agregar algo más: No pongas mucha presion en la soga, porque se puede romper. La prueba en que nos has puesto, es tan severa, tan insoportable severa, que Tu debes, tienes que perdonar a los miembros de Tu pueblo quienes en su miseria te han dado la espalda.
Has hecho todo lo possible para que niege mi fe en Ti, ahora aunque parece que vas a tener exitousando estas tribulaciones para desbiarme del camino recto, te nitifico, mi Dios, y Dios de mi padre; que esto no te servira absolutamente en lo minimo: me puedes insultar, me puedes castigar, puedes quitar de mi todo lo que estimo precioso en est e mundo. Puedes torturarme aun asta la muerte, pero seguire creyendo en Ti. Te voy a amar no importa que tanto hagas para probarme, Y esta son mis ultimas palabras dirigidas a Ti, mi Dios de ira: Nada te servira de provecho en lo adsoluto, has hecho todo para que renuncie a Ti, para que pierda la fe en Ti, pero yo muero exactamente como he vivido: creyendo en Ti.
Sean alabanzas eternamente al Dios de los muertos, al Dios de venganza, al Dios de verdad y de ley que pronto manifestara su rostro al mundo una vez más, y sacudira sus fundamentos con Su voz portentosa.
Oye, Israel, el Señor nuestro Dios, el Señor Uno es.
En Tus manos, ¡Oh, Señor ¡ encomiendo mi alma”.

La oracion transcrita aquí la escribio un Judio en un campo de concentracion en la alemania Nazi, unos monentos antes de morior. Uno de los soldados de los ejercitos aliados que entro a este particulas campo de consentracion despues de la derrota de Hitler, encontro el escrito con esta oracion y procuro que se hiciera conocida, y asi ha podido llegar hasta nuestras manos ahora.