Schwarz-Bart, “fired and wept.” But in August 1995 the Israeli press is filled with articles describing assassinations allegedly perpetrated by Israeli soldiers and officers at the beginning of June 1967.
Yedioth Ahronoth
, which by now has become the leading paper in the country, prints an article by Gabi Baron. He reports on what he himself saw near the airport of El ’Arīsh, which had just been won. In a hangar, 150 prisoners waited on the ground, their hands behind their necks. I read:
Next to the fence guarded by the military police, there was a table at which two men dressed in Israeli military uniforms were seated. They wore blue helmets and their faces were hidden behind antisand goggles and khaki kerchiefs. Military policemen went to fetch a prisoner and led him to the table. There ensued a brief conversation we could not overhear.Then, the prisoner was led one hundred meters from the hangar and one of the policemen handed him a shovel.
I saw the man dig a hole for fifteen minutes. Then one of the policemen ordered him to throw the shovel out of the hole. And then, one of them took his machine gun and fired three or four shots. The prisoner fell and died. A few minutes later another prisoner was taken to the same hole and shot. A third died in the same way. I myself was present at ten or so executions.
Military specialists have explained that the army had no choice: It feared the fedayeen, those terrorists who wearing the Egyptian military uniform operated behind the Israeli lines. Or then: In the desert, in the midst of a campaign, what is one to do with “useless mouths” …?
How I regret today not having known these facts, this horror, when I met with Moshe Dayan. Had he not been minister of defense during the Six-Day War?
Bad news from Canada. Bea is not doing well. My poor sister is still fighting, but she tires quickly. The treatments exhaust her. She is suffering terrible pain. She spends the High Holy Days at the hospital. I visit her often. She is coughing a lot. She bites her lips as she tells me slowly how she had been able to hear the sound of the shofar on both days of Rosh Hashana. What is she thinking? That the heavenly court’s judgment on “Who shall live and who shall die” must have been pronounced? She is pale and weak, my wounded, generous sister. She speaks in a broken, staccato voice. Her gaze is veiled. Whenever she removes her oxygen mask to speak to me, she gasps for breath. But she must confide in me how much she worries about her young children, Sarah and Stevie. I beg her: “Don’t speak; I understand you without words.” Oh yes, I do understand her. And I ache.
1973. On November 13 and 14, at Carnegie Hall,
“Ani Maamin
, a Song Lost and Found Again” is performed by an orchestra and choir under the baton of Lukas Foss. I had conceived this cantata, for which Darius Milhaud composed the score, for the centennial celebration of American Reform Jewry. It was commissioned by Al Ronald, a German Jew and former member of the Office of Strategic Services. I loved to listen to his tales of espionage, of parachuting into Germany.The victim of a fatal heart attack, he had pursued happiness with such zeal, my special friend Al.
I have never worked at such a pace. In less than a week the prose poem was completed and sent to the composer in Paris.
Ensconced in his armchair near the window in his Paris apartment, Milhaud asks why I chose this theme, this legend, over others. I tell him that since childhood I have felt a special tenderness for this twelfth article of faith proclaimed by the great Rabbi Moses Maimonides.
As children we had sung the original melody at
heder
and at the yeshiva on every holiday. For me it was a call to faith and an affirmation that even though he was late, the Redeemer would make his appearance one day.
Later I learned that Jews on their way to Treblinka and Birkenau had sung that song, as if to defy death. And I failed to understand: How could
Yedioth Ahronoth
, which by now has become the leading paper in the country, prints an article by Gabi Baron. He reports on what he himself saw near the airport of El ’Arīsh, which had just been won. In a hangar, 150 prisoners waited on the ground, their hands behind their necks. I read:
Next to the fence guarded by the military police, there was a table at which two men dressed in Israeli military uniforms were seated. They wore blue helmets and their faces were hidden behind antisand goggles and khaki kerchiefs. Military policemen went to fetch a prisoner and led him to the table. There ensued a brief conversation we could not overhear.Then, the prisoner was led one hundred meters from the hangar and one of the policemen handed him a shovel.
I saw the man dig a hole for fifteen minutes. Then one of the policemen ordered him to throw the shovel out of the hole. And then, one of them took his machine gun and fired three or four shots. The prisoner fell and died. A few minutes later another prisoner was taken to the same hole and shot. A third died in the same way. I myself was present at ten or so executions.
Military specialists have explained that the army had no choice: It feared the fedayeen, those terrorists who wearing the Egyptian military uniform operated behind the Israeli lines. Or then: In the desert, in the midst of a campaign, what is one to do with “useless mouths” …?
How I regret today not having known these facts, this horror, when I met with Moshe Dayan. Had he not been minister of defense during the Six-Day War?
Bad news from Canada. Bea is not doing well. My poor sister is still fighting, but she tires quickly. The treatments exhaust her. She is suffering terrible pain. She spends the High Holy Days at the hospital. I visit her often. She is coughing a lot. She bites her lips as she tells me slowly how she had been able to hear the sound of the shofar on both days of Rosh Hashana. What is she thinking? That the heavenly court’s judgment on “Who shall live and who shall die” must have been pronounced? She is pale and weak, my wounded, generous sister. She speaks in a broken, staccato voice. Her gaze is veiled. Whenever she removes her oxygen mask to speak to me, she gasps for breath. But she must confide in me how much she worries about her young children, Sarah and Stevie. I beg her: “Don’t speak; I understand you without words.” Oh yes, I do understand her. And I ache.
1973. On November 13 and 14, at Carnegie Hall,
“Ani Maamin
, a Song Lost and Found Again” is performed by an orchestra and choir under the baton of Lukas Foss. I had conceived this cantata, for which Darius Milhaud composed the score, for the centennial celebration of American Reform Jewry. It was commissioned by Al Ronald, a German Jew and former member of the Office of Strategic Services. I loved to listen to his tales of espionage, of parachuting into Germany.The victim of a fatal heart attack, he had pursued happiness with such zeal, my special friend Al.
I have never worked at such a pace. In less than a week the prose poem was completed and sent to the composer in Paris.
Ensconced in his armchair near the window in his Paris apartment, Milhaud asks why I chose this theme, this legend, over others. I tell him that since childhood I have felt a special tenderness for this twelfth article of faith proclaimed by the great Rabbi Moses Maimonides.
As children we had sung the original melody at
heder
and at the yeshiva on every holiday. For me it was a call to faith and an affirmation that even though he was late, the Redeemer would make his appearance one day.
Later I learned that Jews on their way to Treblinka and Birkenau had sung that song, as if to defy death. And I failed to understand: How could
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