1930 AD to 1950 AD, Psalm 143: The foul beast.

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Summary

This generation of the 1930s and 1940s.

According to our count, this generation is the 143rd generation associated with Psalm 143. It is in this Psalm 143 that we therefore find an illustration of the facts of this generation.

The fears expressed in the previous generation are confirmed from the beginning of this generation with the coming to power of the Nazis who do not hide their intentions towards the Jews, it is “the emergence of the beast”.

The first Jewish communities to face the Nazi armies were the Ostjuden or « Jews of the East » who suffered the first phase of the Shoah, the « Holocaust by bullets ». It is « the end of a world: the Ostjuden ».

This first « artisanal » phase of the elimination of European Judaism is followed by a more « industrial » phase, the « Judeocide ».

At the end of this genocide, the Ostjuden are not the only ones to disappear. It is also « the end of a world: the Westjuden », the Jews of the West.

While this generation is the darkest in exile, it ends with an exceptionally symbolic fact: “The resurrection of a world: the Jews in Eretz Israel”.

Talk

The Beast

This period, very close to our time, is on the collective memory.

This generation is that of the Second World War.

For Jews it is one of two antagonistic events in its history. The first: the Holocaust is the attempt of complete destruction of the Jews, an attempt unfortunately almost accomplished in Europe. The second is the official birth of the State of Israel, the official rebirth of the people of Israel on their land.

This generation is thus marked for the Jews by destruction and rebirth. As for other generations, the psalmist does not fail to refer to it.

To this generation, the threat to the Jewish people is the strongest since exile. The threat of erasure of the Jewish people is real already at the end of the previous generation by Hitler’s irresistible rise to power in the most powerful country of the time. The country where racial anti-Semitism is most entrenched, where the Aryan supremacy theorists have paved the way for the elimination of inferior or « evil » races.

This generation, which begins with Hitler’s takeover, justifies David’s taking the floor and opening the psalm with a clemency prayer fearing a death sentence from his people:

  1. A song of David. O Lord, hearken to my prayer, lend ear to my supplications; with Your faith, answer me with Your righteousness.
  2. And do not come to judgment with Your servant, for no living being will be innocent before You.

As predicted by Theodor Lessing (see psalm of the previous generation: 1910 AD to 1930 AD, Psalm 142: The Deflagration.), the election of Von Hindenburg is bad news for Germany, for the world, for the Jews.

Elected in 1925 and re-elected in 1932, he bore a responsibility in the failure of the Weimar Republic. It allows the « democratic » accession of Hitler to power in January 1933 which obtains the full powers on March 23, 1933. The night of the long knives allows Hitler to remove his former most troublesome friends of SA. With the death of Hindenburg, Hitler becomes August 2, 1934 President of the Reich in addition to being Chancellor.

The Nazi dictatorship has a free hand.

To the east, the Russian revolution had put Lenin in power. Before his death in 1924, Lenin had already expelled several hundred intellectuals and set up censorship. After clever maneuvers, Stalin succeeds him. He eliminates the parties of left and right and sacrifices millions of peasants to his policy, killed by arms or famine.

ADN-ZB/Archiv Sowjetunion, August 1939, Im Moskauer Kreml wird am 23.8.1939 ein Nichtangriffsvertrag zwischen dem deutschen Reich und der UdSSR unterzeichnet. Nach der Unterzeichnung im Gespräch J.W. Stalin und der deutsche Reichsaußenminister Joachim von Ribbentrop (r.).

Stalin imposes a regime of terror with major purges in all circles. Faced with the Nazi dictatorship, the Stalinist dictatorship is built. But against all odds, the two dictators, not being ready for premature confrontation, signed a non-aggression pact on August 23, 1939.

For the confrontation it will be necessary to wait until June 1941 with the operation Barbarossa. The time that Nazi Germany is shopping in Western and Central Europe.

The hostilities to this generation of the 1930s and 1940s are initiated by Japan towards China. In the face of the effects of the crisis of 1929, which was badly felt in Japan, the solution adopted was territorial expansion.

With the annexation of Manchuria, Japan defies the democracies that are unable to react and traces the path especially to the Nazi power which in advance knows that they will not hinder his plans. The alliance between Japan and Germany is thus perfectly justified. Germany will soon test the democracies in turn especially with its policy towards the Jews.

Parallel to the tests of the nations on their passivity about its anti-Semitic policy, Hitler tests their combativeness also on its inclinations of expansion. It occupies the Rhineland demilitarized following the Treaty of Versailles in 1936, then annexations succeed one another with the passivity see the complicity of Western countries.

Despite this, the war began on 1 September 1939 with the invasion of Poland, which then included 3,300,000 Jews, Russia invading its share of the country. France and England declared war on September 3, 1939, following the invasion of Poland, which started what has been called the « strange war ».

Compiegne 1940, Generaloberst Keitel überreicht die Waffenstillstandsbedingungen

The French await the German attack, it arrives May 10, 1940, the French front is quickly depressed. The armistice is signed on June 25th.

The end of a world: The Ostjuden

Germany dominates almost all of Europe whose Jews are now at his mercy. However, if their elimination is planned: wearing of the yellow star, census and creation of ghettos, it will really start only at the outbreak of Operation Barbarossa in 1941 when Hitler breaks the treaty with the USSR and leaves for his conquest.

With it many new Jewish communities uncovered and the green light for the massacres.

Before this generation, Europe, apart from the Ashkenazi / Sephardic dichotomy, which was much more topical in the twentieth century, has mainly two types of Jews: the Westjuden and the Ostjuden.

The Westjuden, Jews of the West, who have benefited from emancipation and progress, who in the end of their success want many to assimilate as a citizen of their host country by erasing as much as possible any trace of their Jewish origins .

On the other hand, the Ostjuden, Jews of the East who throughout the nineteenth century remained in countries where progress had little influence and where emancipation was not relevant. These Jews are proud of their Judaism, which they often practice with orthodoxy and for the most part do not conceive of even a limited abandonment of the religion of their fathers.

German lands, lands of election of Westjuden are not without attracting in the pre-war generations of many Ostjuden of Poland and Russia hoping to flee the misery and the antisemitic bullying of their countries of origin. The coexistence of these two Jewish worlds is not always easy.

The Westjuden’s efforts to stand out from the Ostjuden and thus gain acceptance of the host country as a full citizen will be in vain. The venerated German culture will reject both. The two worlds, Westjuden and Ostjuden, are disappearing in the present generation.

The Ostjuden, where Jews from the east, especially the Jews of Poland and Russia, have suffered for several generations the pogroms.

Despite this, for the most part, in contrast to the Westjuden – mainly represented by the Jews of the German space -, the Ostjudn remained in the orthodoxy of Jewish law and – despite often extreme poverty – would not deny their religion for anything in the world. and their faith.

The beginning of the psalm of this generation that begs « And do not come to judgment with Your servant » is illustrated by the beginnings of the war and in particular the invasion of Poland, of which one of the first massacres took place in 1939 in Rosh Roshana day or traditionally Jews consider that they enter into judgment with their creator who then decides their fate.

It is the day of Yom Kippur, another day of Judgment of the Jews by their God that is committed another massacre of Ostjuden to Babi Yar near Kiev in September 1941.

Before this massacre following the entry into the war against the Russians, Poland, the land of Ostjuden suffered from its invasion in 1939 a special treatment, a widespread ghettoisation that will allow the planned elimination of Jews. This particular treatment is facilitated by the willingness of the Poles to get rid of their Jews.

While the Polish Jews were penned for industrial elimination when the time came, the other territory of the Ostjuden, Russia, fell partly into German rule. Thus the outbreak of the war against the Russians is also the real trigger of the war of extermination of the Jews of Europe with a succession of massacres.

This engagement of the final solution had been announced by Hitler explicitly.

The elimination of the Jews in this first phase of the war of extermination is done methodically:

  • The soldier [1] in charge of shooting down was seated at the end of the pit, his feet hanging in; smoking a cigarette, the machine gun on his knees.
    When a truck arrived, those in it – Jews, men, women and children of all ages – had to undress and put their clothes in specific places, sorted into large piles – shoes, clothes and underwear.
  • The SS of the pit shouted to his comrade, and he counted twenty, now completely naked, and told them to go down the steps carved into the clay wall of the pit: there they had to climb on the heads of the dead until where the soldier was showing.An old woman with white hair held a child about a year old in her arms, she sang for him and tickled it, and the child chirped with pleasure; and a father held his little boy’s hand – the child ready to burst into tears – he spoke to the child gently, caressed his head and showed him the sky.
    The bodies were soon piled up in the great pit, lying one on top of the other; there were still heads and blood running down his shoulders; but some were still moving, raising their arms and turning their heads.

The massacres perpetrated during the war against the Russians are only the beginning of the « final solution ». This was formalized at the Wansee conference on January 20, 1942, where Eichmann entrusted Heydrich with the task of officially announcing it to the Nazi leaders.

The triggering of the final solution and, in particular, its first phase, the elimination by bullets in pits, is evoked by the psalmist in the following of the psalm of this generation:

  1. For an enemy pursued my soul; he crushed my soul to the earth; he has made me dwell in dark places like those who are long dead.

Almost all the Jews of Poland are destroyed by the Nazis, the Jews of Russia also pay a heavy price but a large part of them not falling under the German boot escapes the massacre.

If Russian Jews are not all eliminated by Nazism, the secular action of the USSR destroys Judaism in another way contributing to an extinction of Judaism Ostjuden almost as effective in this context as the physical elimination.

The Judeocide[2].

The mass killings of the Eastern Jews during the advance of the German armies are only the beginning of the Final Solution that the Nazis want to apply to all the Jews of Europe, and if possible to all the Jews of the earth.

When the Reich allies resist the application of the final solution they are called to order. Thus Hitler lectured to Mussolini via his ambassador in Rome in 1943 concerning the Italian Jews of Tunisia for whom Mussolini wishes that they retain the protection due to the Italians.

AnneFrankSchoolPhoto

Jews in turmoil who try to escape the Nazi hunt are forced to bury themselves with all the anguish over an uncertain future as Anne Franck can express it before her hiding place is discovered just a few months before the end of the war. war:

  • Who [3] imposed this on us? Who makes us, the Jews, an exception among all other peoples? Who has made us suffer so much so far? It is God who created us in this way, but it is God who will lift us up. If we bear all this misery and if there are still Jews, then the Jews will cease to be damned to become examples. And who knows, perhaps it is our faith that will teach the world, and with it to all peoples, what is good and is it for this reason, and this reason only, that we must suffer? We will never be able to become only Dutch or only English, whatever the country, we will always remain Jews in addition, we will always have to remain Jewish, but we also want to remain it. Courage! Let’s be aware of our task and we do not complain, the end will come. God has never abandoned our people.

This reflection of Anne Frank who unfortunately will die in deportation summarizes the reflection of Jews tossed in the war years they manage to survive or not.

This apprehension in the face of Nazi madness is expressed in the following of the psalm of this generation:

  1. And my spirit enwrapped itself upon me; within me my heart is appalled.
  2. I remember the days of yore; I meditate over all Your works; I speak of the work of Your hands.
  3. I spread out my hands to You; my heart is like a weary land to You forever.

This faith in God is even expressed when death is no longer in doubt:

  • Although [4] in all camps there are weak and informers, called « kapos », the energy of most prisoners commands admiration. A superhuman will to survive animates the deportees, a hope gushes deep in hell. The symbol is this song of the Jewish tradition that, it is said, the deportees have on their lips when they go to death, « Ani maamin »: « I believe in the coming of the Messiah, and even if he delays coming, every day that passes I wait for it. « 

When death comes, the Jews proclaim the Jewish profession of faith as evidenced by a testimony of Elie Rosenberg, a survivor of the « Corpse Team » who describes the last moments of a convoy of Jews deported to Treblinka:

  • SS men [5]  with dogs, whip and bayonet in hand, stood along the Himmelsstrasse (« sky path »). The Jews walked in silence. They did not know where they were going. At the entrance of the gas chambers, there were two Ukrainians; one was called Ivan and the other Nicolai.
  • They were the ones who gave the gas. The gas came from an engine. There was something like oil or fuel oil. The last to arrive at the gas chambers were bayoneted; because they already saw what was going on inside and did not want to enter. Four hundred people could enter this gas chamber. It’s just if we managed to close the outer door of the room. When they were locked up, we were on the other side. At that moment we heard only the cries of « Chema Israel » (« Listen Israel », title of the holiest of Jewish prayers), « Papa », « Mom ». After thirty-five minutes they were dead. Two Germans stood there and listened to what was going on inside. Then they said, « All sleeps … »

If hell existed on earth, then surely it took place in Auschwitz. Yet in the midst of horror, the Jews of the camp are all celebrating the Jewish New Year, which promises to defy the predictions of annihilation of the Nazis, as evidenced by Elie Wiesel:

  • On the eve [6] of Rosh Hashana, the last day of this cursed year (5704, September 17, 1944), the whole camp (Auschwitz) was electrified by the tension that reigned in the hearts. […]
  • On the plaza, surrounded by electrified barbed wire, thousands of silent Jews gathered together, their faces decomposed […]
  • Ten thousand men had come to attend the solemn service, heads of blocs, kapos, officials of death.
  • Bless the Lord …The voice of the officiant had just been heard. I thought at first that it was the wind.
  • Blessed be the Name of the Lord!
  • Thousands of mouths repeated the blessing, prostrating themselves like trees in the storm.
  • Blessed be the Name of the Lord!
  • Why, but why would I bless Him? All my fibers were revolting. Because he burned thousands of children in his pits? Because it was running six crematoria day and night, Sabbath days and holidays? Because without His Great Power He had created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna and so many death factories? How shall I say to Him, « Blessed are You, the Lord, Master of the Universe, who has elected us among the people to be tortured day and night, to see our fathers, mothers, brothers, and others end in the crematorium? Praised be your holy name, who chose us to be slain on your altar?
  • I heard the voice of the officiant rise, powerful and broken at the same time, amid the tears, the sobs, the sighs of all the audience:
  • All the Earth and the Universe are to God!
  • He stopped at every moment, as if he did not have the strength to find their contents under the words. The melody choked in his throat […]
  • The office ended with Kaddish. Everyone said Kaddish about his parents, about his children, about his brothers and about himself.
  • A long time we remained in the place of the call. Nobody dared to tear himself away from this mirage.

This ultimate action of the Jews in the hell of Auschwitz is illustrated by the following psalm of this generation:

  1. Answer me quickly, O Lord, my spirit pines. Do not hide Your countenance from me, lest I be likened to those who descend into the pit.
    • If the Nazi power is not thwarted, the Jews will be annihilated.
Berlin 1945 annote shutterstock_249573196

The psalmist’s prayer is heard, Germany is defeated unable to achieve its goal in the elimination of Judaism and Jews in Europe and in the world. Bleeding in European Judaism can not be cured.

The end of a world: the Westjuden.

The Westjuden are the Jews of the German sphere, those of Germany and the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, which can be summed up in four great metropolises with thriving Jewish communities before the war: Berlin, Vienna, Prague and Budapest .

n contrast to the Ostjuden on which the Nazi troops fell without any real possibility of escape, many Westjuden in direct contact with the Nazi power upon accession suffered the first bullying and could seek their salvation by expatriation.

First_Youth-Aliyah_group_walking_to_Ein_Harod

Thus many German Jews found refuge in the land of Israel in the 1930s when emigration was still possible or even encouraged by the Nazi power.

The « westjuden » Zionists, before the rise of Nazism, had campaigned for a Jewish home in Palestine to direct the flow of immigration from Ostjuden to Palestine rather than overshadowing them by choosing the German territories. By an irony of history, many had to resolve to emigrate to Palestine, bringing with them significant new forces.

The advent of Nazism represents the catastrophe we know for European Judaism, it also materializes the failure of German Jews to be accepted as normal citizens. Unlike the Ostjuden, many have not hesitated to abandon the religion of their fathers to try to be accepted, but this was in vain. They were no longer Jews but did not become German, they sailed between two worlds without belonging to any of them.

In France the declaration of human rights allowed the Jews to live as full citizens without the need to deny their faith. This was not the case in Germany, where the admission ticket to Germanity required conversion to Christianity, as Heinrich Heine stated. Without this entry ticket, by the way, is really valid.

The French Revolution allowed the contagion in Europe of the emancipation of the Jews. These in German lands have lost their identity and their roots without being able to appropriate those of the host people. Little by little, the Westjuden became a Jew without God.

German Jews made the wrong choice from the outset of the Aufklärung by wanting to be « normal » Germans. They have in fact abandoned their specificity and their Jewish roots without finally being accepted as German. Like Hanna Arendt they became stateless at home and without roots.

After the French Revolution, the Napoleonic invasion awakened within the conquered German lands a strong national sentiment centered around the notion of people (volk) and especially around the notion of race, the Aryan race which slowly but surely will lead to the twentieth century disaster.

If Jews were not the only ones to suffer from the Second World War, they are the only ones whose often millennial presence has been permanently erased from Europe, whether to the East or to the West.

The resurrection of a world: the Jews in Eretz Israel.

For the survivors of the Holocaust, the question of the future is raised.

The Jewish people have been decimated, now that the Nazi power is on the ground, it is the end of the darkness and the dawn. But for what destiny for the Jewish people?

This interrogation is expressed in the following of the psalm of this generation:

  1. Let me hear Your kindness in the morning, for I hope in You; let me know the way in which I am to go, for to You I have lifted up my soul.
Der Grossmufti von Palästina vom Führer empfangen. Der Führer empfing in Gegenwart des Reichsministers des Auswärtigen von Ribbentrop den Grossmufti von Palästina, Sayid Amin al Husseini, zu einer herzlichen und für die Zukunft der arabischen Länder bedeutungsvollen Unterredung. 9.12.41 Presse Hoffmann

Palestine is also an important issue of the Nazi plan, which is unambiguously rallied by some Arab leaders. Thus the great Mufti of Jerusalem, did not hesitate to seek support to fight the Jews in the dictatorships of Europe, first with Mussolini and then with Hitler with whom he obtained an interview in November 1941, during which the Nazi position did not Could only agree to him:

  • Hitler [7] is delighted to find that they had the same enemies: « Germany was engaged in a fight to the death with two strongholds of Jewish power – Britain and the Soviet Union. « 
  • And of course there would never be a Jewish state in Palestine. The Führer even made a discreet allusion to his « Final Solution » to the Jewish problem: « Germany was determined, step by step, to ask each European country to solve its Jewish problem. As soon as « the German armies reach the southern end of the Caucasus, Germany’s only goal will be to destroy the Jewish element in the Arab sphere, » Hitler assured him.

Previously, [8] in the land of Israel, the events in Europe at the beginning of the century have led to emigration and the economic growth of the Jewish community. Between 1924 and 1926, the fourth alya consisted of 70,000 immigrants, mostly from Poland. This is the beautiful era of Jewish Palestine. Yishuv, with a population of 157,000, is enjoying unprecedented economic prosperity.

Optimism is everywhere, until the economic depression of 1929 hit hard the very fragile economy of the Zionist enterprise.

The 1930 white paper restricts Jewish immigration to Palestine. Hitler’s takeover made the issue of immigration a burning one, thanks to Ramsay Macdonald’s new orientation and the new High Commissioner’s broad-minded, General Arthur Wauchope (1931-1937), the integration of 40 000 German immigrants in 1934 and 62 000 in 1935 is done in satisfactory conditions: more than two hundred ten thousand immigrants between 1933 and 1939.

Constituting the fifth Aliyah, the newcomers again boost the economy of Yishuv.

Undoubtedly, the dynamism and the good economic health of Yishuv are among the major causes of the Arab revolt which, between 1936 and 1939, engulfs Palestine. The first serious incidents broke out in 1931, but the rebellion spread to the whole country only from November 1935, following the death, in a clash with the English, Shaykh ‘Izz al-Din al -Qassam, born in Syria and arrived in Palestine in 1926. Based in Haifa, he created an association of young Muslims that he immediately launched into guerrilla acts against the English and Zionists.

In April 1936, after an unsuccessful general strike attempt at the initiative of the Mufti of Jerusalem (which will be illustrated in its collaboration with the Nazis) a precarious peace is established in Palestine. It is littered with roadside bombings, crop fires, demonstrations and boycotts of Jewish goods, until July 1937, when the Peel commission proposed a plan to partition Palestine between an Arab state and a Jewish state. The first, extending on both sides of the Jordan, was to cover 75% of the country’s surface. The second, less than 20% of the territory.

The Peel Plan also limits immigration to 12,000 Jews a year. The partition is approved without enthusiasm by the Zionist authorities, but rejected en bloc by the Palestinians. Anti-British and anti-Zionist, the Arab revolt resumed immediately. Supported by volunteers from Syria and Iraq, the rebels managed to control vast areas around Hebron, Nablus, Be’er Sheva and Jerusalem, whose old city was largely abandoned by its Jewish inhabitants, as well as Jaffa.

The situation is considered sufficiently explosive for London to decide in 1938 to send an additional 25,000 men who will put down the revolt with many dead in the Arab ranks. Hundreds of the most enterprising cadres perish, the others are either expelled or fleeing, which will facilitate the task of the Jewish troops for the fighting to come until the first Arab-Israeli war in 1947-1948.

The situation is considered sufficiently explosive for London to decide in 1938 to send an additional 25,000 men who will put down the revolt with many dead in the Arab ranks. Hundreds of the most enterprising cadres perish, the others are either expelled or fleeing, which will facilitate the task of the Jewish troops for the fighting to come until the first Arab-Israeli war in 1947-1948.

But the proximity of the Second World War pushes England to get closer to the Arab countries, especially Egypt and Iraq. The consequence is the publication of a new white paper that practically forbids Jews from buying new land and largely calls into question the promises of the Balfour Declaration:

  • May 17, 1939 London publishes a new White Paper, limiting Jewish immigration to 75,000 people for the next five years and subordinating it, from 1944, to the consent of the Arabs. A no less threatening prospect for the Zionists: within ten years would be created an independent state in Palestine in which Jews should not exceed more than a third of the population. It was the announced death of the Jewish National Home, promised by the Balfour Declaration of 1917.

While restrictions are placed on Jewish immigration on the eve of the Second World War, with what will be for many European Jews the equivalent of a death sentence, significant Arab immigration occurs which does not occur. will not be without consequences on the future Israeli-Arab conflicts.

In fact, the Arab resistance to a coexistence between Jews and Arabs on the Land of Israel while it has enough to shelter the two communities and that Jews have been present without interruption for centuries being the majority in Jerusalem for generations activates the Jewish will to own a state, which was not the goal of the first Zionist generations:

  • The idea [9] of creating a Jewish state did not come up with the Holocaust. It was in the air in the late 1920s, after the Arab riots in Jerusalem and Hebron. It finally took shape at the beginning of the war, when no one could yet imagine the extent of the disaster that would befall the Jews. Meeting in May 1942 in an extraordinary convention at the Biltmore Hotel in New York, on the initiative of Ben Gurion and Chaim Weizmann, it was decided to create, immediately after the war, a Jewish Commonwealth state integrated into the new democratic world. The history of the Zionist movement took a capital turn, making the shock with Great Britain, which persisted in its refusal to make any changes to the 1939 White Paper, inevitable.
  • With the end of the Second World War, Ben Gurion no longer rejected the use of force not only against the Arabs but also against British soldiers. […]
  • At the end of the war, Zionist leaders put the issue of Jewish immigration back on the carpet, including the « last survivors » of the « Catastrophe ». From 1945 to 1948, more than 70,000 illegal immigrants will try in vain to approach the shores of Palestine aboard 66 boats. Intercepted by the British navy, they will be routinely returned to Cyprus or Germany, not far from the camps, where, a few months earlier, they had suffered the worst abuses.
  • Churchill’s departure from the political scene in mid-1945 precipitated […] the deterioration of relations between Britain and the Zionists. Not wanting to jeopardize their good relations with the Arab States, the Labor Party (English) is pursuing an outright anti-Zionist policy and rejecting all the humanitarian demands presented to them, from all sides, for welcoming some of the Holocaust survivors to Palestine.
Exodus_(1)

At the end of the war, the question of Palestine is put back on the agenda by the UN, a world organization that replaces the pre-war League of Nations which had shown its inefficiency.

The reaction of Arab rejection of any Jewish entity is immediate and more likely to be more religious ideology (a land that has been Moslem is Muslim forever and therefore can be under non-Muslim jurisdiction) than any national ideology (most Palestinian Arabs are of immigrant origin, like most Jews in Palestine):

  • On April 28, 1947 [10], the UN General Assembly appointed a special committee, the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), to propose a solution to the conflict. It will be done less than four months later, the UNSCOP recommending the partition of Palestine and the creation of two states, one Palestinian, the other Jewish, bound by an economic union, as well as the internationalization of Jerusalem. […]
  • In addition to the attacks on its soldiers and officials in Palestine, the UNSCOP report has caused the greatest disarray in the British Cabinet, which is seeing its policy collapse. On November 11, 1947, London, fearing to alienate the Arab States, made public its opposition to the conclusions of the international commission at the same time as its decision to end its presence in Palestine, on May 14, 1948. A few days earlier, the United States and the Soviet Union expressed support for the UNSCOP recommendations. The road to the partition of Palestine is now traced: November 29, 1947, in fact, the UN General Assembly approves the creation of a Jewish state by 33 votes (including that of the United States, France USSR and all Commonwealth countries except Great Britain), 13 against (that of the 11 Muslim countries in addition to Greece and Cuba), and 10 abstentions, including that of the United Kingdom. In retaliation, the British authorities allowed a large number of Arab volunteers from neighboring countries to enter Palestine, as well as large quantities of arms and ammunition destined for the High Arab Committee, still headed by the Mufti of Jerusalem who, since the end of the war, lives in exile in Cairo. On November 10, 1947, a bus from Natanya to Jerusalem was attacked near Petah Tikva. Six of his Jewish passengers are killed. The first Arab-Israeli war has just begun.

The first operations of Arab reaction reaction to the decision of the UNSCOP then the Jewish side are already many dead on both sides. Thanks, among other things, to the arms provided by Czechoslovakia, the Jews recorded military successes. These successes sow panic on the Arab side, the war changes aspect:

  • On May 15, 1948 [11], the very day of the proclamation of the state of Israel in Tel Aviv, the Arab states carry out their threats by invading the Jewish state. Shortly before, the Arab League secretary ‘Abd al-Rahman’ Azzam had warned that it would be a « war of extermination » and (or) an immense massacre whose history will be remembered. name like those of the Mongols and Crusaders. The liquidation of the Jewish state « is the ultimate goal of this invasion, » said Ahmed Choukeiri, belonging at the time to the immediate entourage of the Mufti of Jerusalem, al-Hajj Amin al-Husseini.
  • Insufficiently trained, poorly equipped, and without a common strategic plan or tactical coordination worthy of the name between the various expeditionary forces, the Arab armies had, in fact, no chance of defeating the Jewish forces that outperformed them tactically and even numerically. , thanks in particular to their thirty thousand veterans of the British army. But, victims of their own demagogy, the political leaders and the Arab press made believe to their people that the entry in Palestine was going to be a parade of pleasure and the conquest of Tel-Aviv a children’s game. The reality was going to be different.

The Israeli army eventually completely defeats the Arab armies, the first armistice agreements are signed between January and July 1949. At the end of this generation of the 1930s and 1940s, the Jews returned to their ancestral home. Israel is after nearly two thousand years of exile again a Jewish entity.

Thus, although this generation is the blackest of exile, it ends with the benevolence of the Lord to his people, on which the psalmist concludes the psalm of this generation:

  1. Save me from my enemies, O Lord; to You I have hidden.
    • The Nazi empire collapsed, the Jews suffered heavy losses, but Nazism was erased not Judaism.
  2. Teach me to do Your will for You are my God; may Your good spirit lead me in an even land.
    • The return to the ancestral land after the throes of two thousand years of exile clearly illustrates this passage.
  3. For the sake of Your name, O Lord, revive me; with Your righteousness, deliver my soul from distress.
  4. And with Your kindness, You shall cut off my enemies, and You shall destroy all the oppressors of my soul, for I am Your servant.

[1] (directed by) Emmanuel Haymann: « Jewish Pages ». Excerpt from the poem « Holocaust » written by Charles Reznikoff. (320).(French: « Pages juives ». Extrait du poème « Holocauste » écrit par Charles Reznikoff. (p. 320) )

[2] Expression given by the American historian Arno Mayer to designate the Holocaust. (quoted by: (Antoine Germa / Benjamin Lellouch / Evelyne Patlagean): « The Jews in History. » Chapter of Régine Azria: « Jews in the World since the Second World War ». (French: « Les Juifs dans l’histoire ». Chapitre de Régine Azria: « Les Juifs dans le monde depuis la seconde guerre mondiale». (p. 629) ).

[3] (directed by) Emmanuel Haymann: « Jewish Pages ». From Anne Frank’s letter of April 6, 1944. (French: « Pages juives ». Extrait d’une lettre d’Anne Frank du 6 avril 1944. (p. 307) )

[4] Renée Neher-Bernheim: « Jewish History of the Revolution to the State of Israel ». (French: « Histoire juive de la Révolution à l’État d’Israël ». (p. 1087) )

[5] Leon Poliakov: « History of anti-Semitism, 2 – the age of science ». (p.512). (French: « Histoire de l’antisémitisme, 2 – l’âge de la science ». (p. 512) )

[6] Renée Neher-Bernheim: « Jewish History of the Revolution to the State of Israel ». The book quotes an excerpt from « The Night » by Elie Wiesel. (French: « Histoire juive de la Révolution à l’État d’Israël ». (p. 1119,1120). Le livre cite un extrait de « La Nuit » d’Élie Wiesel).

[7] Simon Sebag Montefiore: « Jerusalem, Biography ». Chapter: « The Arab Revolt ». (French: « Jérusalem, Biographie ». Chapitre : « La révolte arabe ». (p. 541,542) )

[8] From: Michel Abitbol: « History of the Jews, from Genesis to our days ». Chapter: « A new Jewish geography ». (pp. 523-530), and Renée Neher-Bernheim: « Jewish History of the Revolution in the State of Israel ». (French: « Histoire des Juifs, de la Genèse à nos jours ». Chapitre : « Une nouvelle géographie juive ». (p. 523 à 530), et « Histoire juive de la Révolution à l’État d’Israël ». (p. 804 à 806) )

[9] Michel Abitbol: « History of the Jews, from Genesis to our days ». Chapter: « A new Jewish geography ».  (French: « Histoire des Juifs, de la Genèse à nos jours ». Chapitre : « Une nouvelle géographie juive ». (p. 615,616) )

[10] Michel Abitbol: « History of the Jews, from Genesis to our days ». Chapter: « A new Jewish geography ». (French: « Histoire des Juifs, de la Genèse à nos jours ». Chapitre : « Une nouvelle géographie juive ». (p. 618-619) )

[11] Michel Abitbol: « History of the Jews, from Genesis to our days ». Chapter: « A new Jewish geography ». (French: « Histoire des Juifs, de la Genèse à nos jours ». Chapitre : « Une nouvelle géographie juive ». (p. 621) )