by Vic Shayne
And then I paused and stared at the back door to the Mosca bakery. My shirt was soaked with perspiration and my arm was fatigued and aching. I stood alone, realizing that I was now part of a great mission of worldwide proportions—historical proportions. It’s hard to explain exactly what I mean when I say this, but here I was, a Holocaust survivor who only a few years ago sat in my grandfather’s house listening to him recount ancient dreams of setting foot in the Promised Land. For thousands of years, Jews had kept this dream alive. And now these survivors would make this dream a reality. Survivors like me.
I had survived to witness hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees wandering without purpose and turned away at every door. Rejected; discarded; cast off. But things were about to change.
I became a link between my struggling people and the forging of a new nation in Palestine. My Zayde stood with me as I stood staring at the open door to Mosca’s bakery. This moment was a dream come true. Not just my dream but the dream of millions who had come and gone over the centuries. I was given, in my hands, the opportunity to build a homeland from the ashes of the concentration camps. I was filled with more pride than I can describe.
I left the busy streets of Rome, with its patrol cars, military personnel, and refugees, and stepped inside Mosca’s bakery. It took a few moments for my eyes to adjust from the bright sunlight as I made my way to Mario Mosca, who was kneading dough on a long, old wooden table against the far wall. He looked over at me and greeted me like he hadn’t seen me for years. He patted me on the back and left a big white handprint on my jacket. Then he picked up the suitcase and exclaimed, “My God! This weighs a ton! Did you count it?”
I shook my head. I can’t imagine how much money was entrusted to my care; I never looked inside to see. When I tell this story, people still ask me whether I was ever tempted to take a peek to see how much I was carrying. I tell them that money meant nothing to me. I had lost everything. I had seen whole villages of people murdered for greed, hate, and money. I had seen how money, in the end, could not save a single life from the ovens.
I was glad to hand over the suitcase—glad to be rid of it.
The wheels turned quickly and, within days, the Reparto Celere potato trucks arrived at the Mosca bakery as usual. But there were no potatoes inside. This time a fleet of six trucks came to Mario Mosca loaded to capacity with arms. Then, within minutes, another fleet of trucks arrived at Mosca’s bakery. These trucks were driven by members of the Jewish Brigade who pulled up to the loading dock. They jumped out of their vehicles then back into the Reparto Celere trucks. The police drove off to pick up potatoes, business as usual, while, in the other direction, the Brigade drivers disappeared without suspicion.
When I saw Mario the next week, I was sitting at a café having an espresso. I heard the sound of a car horn honking and looked up to see him waving from a brand-new Fiat. There were two pretty girls in the car and he was yelling to me, “Hey, Michele! You like my new car? Hop in, let’s go for a ride.” Within a week, military supplies from all over Italy—and beyond—were pouring into Anzio to be taken to Cyprus. In Cyprus, materiel was transferred to other ships headed for Palestine. This was the beginning of a long supply line coming into the Jewish homeland right beneath the noses of the British occupation forces. Thousands of trucks bearing weapons from the stockpiles of Europe formed the groundbreaking of Eretz Yisroel. And the wheels of motion were greased by a well-loved son of an Italian baker and a one-time Yeshiva bocher with plenty of time on his hands.
A War We Would Not Lose
The arms and supplies were now pouring into Palestine, thanks to an underground army of dedicated Holocaust refugees. We were committed to the idea that we would no longer allow the world to determine the fate of the Jewish people. No more stalling; no more political games. This last war had sobered us to certain realities. The Holocaust, if nothing else, taught us that we could never again allow others to define for us who we are. The Jewish people would at long last create an image built on strength, resolve, respect, and self-determination. For as long as we stayed in Europe, living in DP camps, refused entrance to nations all over the world, and living without dignity, we would remain Hitler’s victims. We were tired of being victims and survivors. We wanted to be creators and contributors, fathers and mothers.
I was now a part of the Jewish Brigade’s unprecedented Brikah program, whose mission was to move Jewish refugees into Palestine, to give them a home and allow them to build their lives. We were resolved to move out of our makeshift tents, barracks, and compounds under military guard. We were tired of knocking on the doors of countries that refused to accept us. We were tired of being told there was no room for “our kind.” We were tired of the British, who were occupying Palestine, telling us to be patient as they stalled. And we had more than just willpower on our side. There was also legal precedent.
In 1917, statesman and Zionist world leader Chaim Weizmann persuaded the British government to issue the Balfour Declaration to establish a Jewish national home in Palestine. The declaration was, in part, payment to the Jews for supporting the British against the Turks during World War I. After the war, the League of Nations ratified the declaration and in 1922 appointed Britain to rule in Palestine. They promised to create a Jewish state, but when World War II broke out, the British were afraid to upset the Arab nations that were already on the side of the Nazis and aiding Hitler’s war effort. The British needed to hold onto whatever Arab relations they had to ensure a free flow of oil for their own war machine. The politics of World War II, once again, was deciding the fate of Jewish lives.
Now that the war was over and the Arab states had lost their ties with Nazi Germany, it was time for the British to make good on their promise. Hundreds of thousands of people were living in cities and sites of former concentration camps as well as in DP camps, waiting for some resolution by some government or world court to decide where they should go. The sites of some of the worst Nazi atrocities, like Bergen-Belsen, were still serving as the living quarters for victims of the Holocaust. The concentration camps were liberated but the Jews inside were forced to stay there under a new army’s strict control. We were a people in limbo. Tortured minds and bodies were subjected to a prolonged incarceration out of nothing more than a political agenda.
With the Jewish Brigade and growing military forces inside Palestine, we were taking matters into our own hands and getting our people out of this depressing, miserable predicament. All able-bodied men and women were called into action, including me.
I escorted ships out of Italy carrying supplies and people to Cyprus, a small island nation in the Mediterranean about fifty miles south of the Turkish coast that served as a detention center for refugees trying to get into Palestine. People on Cyprus were living in squalid, decrepit conditions. The world was willing to forget the refugee plight, but we were not. This was only the first step. We would not stop at Cyprus. We would not give up until we found a place for all of our people in Palestine. The British actively turned our ships away, but we kept coming, bringing more than two hundred refugees to Palestine. More than fifty thousand Jews had been refused entry and redirected to Cyprus where Holocaust survivors spent boring, endless days in tent cities without running water, electricity, or cooking facilities under the scorching sun.
In 1948, three years after the liberation of Mauthausen concentration camp, I took a small boat from Cyprus to Palestine. Although I crossed the Mediterranean several times to Palestine, I had never disembarked. I had never actually set foot in Eretz Yisroel. Now I wanted to go ashore. I was ready—or at least I thought I was.
Along with five hundred other Jewish refugees, our boat was rocking in the waters off of Palestine when we spotted land. A gasp could be heard on the ship, a collective sigh. Then there was silence. It was as if we were all, as a group, suddenly struck for words. We were all staring at the most magnificent sight: a dream, gazing at the land once found only in our prayers. We few survivors, who had once st
ood beside frozen bodies, shivering and falling from starvation, and cruelty in the concentration camps—we few devoid of hope or help, now stood shoulder-to-shoulder, warmed by the sun, staring at a dream.
And yet, who was I to share this joy with? Zayde’s voice was in my head along with images of sharply inked letters in the Torah spelling out the words Eretz Yisroel, the land of Israel. Maybe I uttered these two words, Eretz Yisroel, trying to somehow, maybe impossibly, connect the past and the present. Was this the same Eretz Yisroel of which generations dreamed and spoke in steamy clouds on frigid days in the synagogues and shtiebls of Eastern Europe? It didn’t seem real that I could be going ashore, that I could actually embrace this vision. Who was I to deserve such a thing? I was a representative of my entire family and my people, going back generation after generation—all the way back to the exodus out of Egypt—returning home to Eretz Yisroel. I, without a home, had come home. I was about to complete a two-thousand-year-old circle. I was part of the new exodus. With my own two feet, I would touch the land of our hopes. This was the Eretz Yisroel that I thought about as a young man in Poland as I trudged through snow up to my knees to get to the kalte shul. “Zayde,” I thought, “Zayde, here I am. I have come to Eretz Yisroel. You would be so proud of me. Zayde,” I began to cry without shame, “look at me. I am here by the sands of the Promised Land.”
Our ship came closer and the land grew taller and wider, and then someone started singing Hatikvah, choked with tears and grief. And then another and another joined in until we were one big chorus. Hatikvah. The words stuck in my throat and my own tears melded with the salt of the sea and we were one again.
The singing voices rose into the heavens. Hatikvah. There is no more appropriate song for any nation on earth. Hatikvah means “the hope.” Hatikvah was to become the national anthem of Israel. Unlike any other, Hatikvah is not a song of conquest, of kings and queens, of war, or of nationalism. It is a song of hope—the longing of my people.
When our boat pulled into the harbor, I walked onto the land of Israel. It took two thousand years to cross this gangplank. I couldn’t believe what I was doing. My head went numb and my knees gave way. I fell to the ground all alone amidst hundreds of refugees and I cried. I could not stop. I could not see through the wall of my tears, and my face sunk lower and lower until, at last, my lips kissed the earth. I kissed this land and all it represented. I kissed Eretz Yisroel for Zayde and Momma and Papa and Elka and Peshia and everyone in my village of Maitchet. My fingers grabbed for grains of dirt to hold. I rubbed the sand on my face. I fulfilled my promise never to forget this land. I had returned. I was an aliyah and I was willing to die to make this place, this tiny place on earth, the land of the Jews. I had already paid with one life, and I had one more I was willing to give.
To this day, when I talk to students about my Holocaust experiences, I am always asked what the expression means, “Never again.” I didn’t invent this phrase that is now associated with the post-Holocaust experience. It means so many different things to different people, but above all, to me, as I realized kissing the ground of Palestine, it means that never again will we be separated from our roots. Never again will we lose our connection with our land. We who wandered through the centuries as outcasts, victims, and enemies in Europe realized that, by never forgetting our homeland, we would make our own future. We would turn the desert green and fill the soil with lushness. We would not look back into the fire.
Thousands of Holocaust refugees were streaming into Palestine, our only hope on earth. There was nothing we could not accomplish. Kibbutzim had already sprung up all over, with Jewish farmers making life out of desolation in the most literal and metaphorical terms.
With world opinion turning to our side, and the British getting tired of fighting a losing battle, they left Palestine in 1948. Shortly thereafter, the new state of Israel was granted admission into the United Nations. This was the first and only time in history that a nation had to get permission from the rest of the world for admission. When the Soviet Union cast their “yes” vote among the others in the United Nations, Jews were at last offered a public declaration of legitimacy. Following Israel’s statehood there was dancing and music in every corner of our new country. But it was not even to last the night.
Soon after the last British ship set sail out of Israel, I traveled to a kibbutz called Negba on the frontier bordering Egypt. Polish Jews who fled Europe founded Negba in 1939. It was a reunion of sorts, because a lot of the residents were members of the Hashomer Hatsair, a Zionist youth movement I remember well from my childhood. By the time I arrived at the kibbutz, it was May 14, 1948, on the eve of our declared statehood. The War of Independence was about to begin. People were still dancing wildly in the streets of Tel Aviv, but I knew the celebration would be short-lived. Our leaders, as well as survivors like me who had lost their families, did not need to be reminded that we were about to face a fight to the death. Celebrations would quickly give way to preparations for war. I saw the mood of Israel change in a heartbeat. By the time I found myself standing in Negba, every Arab nation surrounding us vowed to destroy us. I was about to enter into the second war of my life. But this time things would be different. Although we were still outnumbered, this time we went in with our eyes wide open. We had already been through the nightmare of having our neighbors try to kill us, but now we had a warning. Most of all, now we were armed, united, and had no fear. What more could the world or any other enemy take from us? Nothing. The Arab world said they would finish the job that Hitler started, and we, remnants of the Holocaust, said, “Never again.”
We had nothing to lose. And we would not lose. We could not. To lose meant to be defeated. In broadcasts that reached the bigger cities as well as kibbutzim on the frontier, we listened to General Moshe Dayan tell us that war would break out any minute. David Ben Gurion said that we would be attacked and be tested to our limits. The Arabs would come to massacre us. How can I explain what this meant to us, when just four years prior we faced the same predicament? Another people in another land, coming to murder all the Jews in their path? What would we do this time? What could we learn from our very recent past? Somehow we were imbued with the feeling that here, in our own land, God would be on our side. We were victims who would not be victims again. We had already faced death and were survivors—an implication that our Arab neighbors knew nothing about.
Our preparations for war began hours after sunset. Trucks and jeeps rolled up to the kibbutz and parents tearfully loaded their children into the vehicles. It was a heart-rending scene, but at least the parents of Negba were sending their children away from the impending war instead of having them torn from their arms by a ruthless enemy. So we sent the children further into the interior of the country. Then we took inventory of our ammunition and arms. Some of us knew how to use weapons, and others did not. But we were all willing and ready to fight. There was no doubt about this. Crash courses were taught on how to fire a rifle, throw a hand grenade, and use a bayonet. We knew that there would be no one to rescue us. Although the Palmach—the new army—was on its way they would not reach us in time. Like most of the other kibbutzim, we were too far to be saved by reinforcements. We would have to make our stand in the desert with whatever we had to use as weapons and resources.
Late at night our kibbutz leaders held a meeting. Their faces were serious and filled with foreboding. “We are on the frontier,” they told us. “This means that the road that passes by Negba is the road to the heart of Israel. When the Egyptian army comes, we must do everything to keep them from advancing. If we can hold them just one extra day then perhaps our army will come.”
The Egyptian army was under the leadership of their president, Abdul Nasser, a dedicated Nazi sympathizer and collaborator, who bragged about how Israel was born on one day and would be dead the next. He and the other bordering Arab states would finish Hitler’s work and drive every last Jew into the sea.
And then it began. The first thing the Eg
yptians did was cut off our water supply. I was walking through the kibbutz when one or two Egyptian-piloted, World War II British-built airplanes grew louder and louder until they were upon us. We all ran for cover, which was sparse at best, trying to disappear from view. The planes began firing, with bullets digging into the sand on the first pass. Then they came back around and we fired on them with rifles, pistols, and whatever else we had, but they hit our water towers, sending water gushing onto the ground out of the giant concrete containers. We had no anti-aircraft weapons, so our attempt at defense was futile. Somehow, though, the strafing planes failed to hit our loud speakers, so we were able to maintain communication and organization within the kibbutz. Once they hit our water towers, we didn’t see the planes again. But the Egyptian army was nevertheless on the way.
Radio broadcasts from Tel Aviv, carrying the voice of Prime Minister David Ben Gurion, told us to prepare for an Egyptian invasion of more than a thousand soldiers, and we, a hundred and fifty men and women, braced ourselves. Our kibbutz was situated on a ridge overlooking the northern Egyptian desert. Now all we could do was wait. For as much time as we had, we busied ourselves building barriers with sandbags and any metal objects we could find. Every so often we would hear a test come over the public address system. All was in working order, loud and clear.
We sat and waited for hours. Most other activity of the day came to a halt. There was no planting, harvesting, or production. All our efforts were focused on the impending battle. Our plowshares were being converted into swords.
A couple of days or so passed. Word was given that the Palmach was sending weapons, tanks, and soldiers to Negba. But nobody celebrated this fact, for we were told that they would not make it in time to meet the first wave. The Egyptians were only thirty miles away. This would be our last day of rest; the last day to get ready.