Two of the most persistent myths regarding Jewry during the Holocaust are that 1) Jews went like sheep to the slaughter and 2) the religious community, anti-zionists in particular, are to be blamed for staying behind.
Thankfully, the former has been addressed in the last decades through non-fiction and fiction retelling of the stories of those who fought the Nazis or explaining how, in many cases, Jews found out far too late what was happening and the impossibility of mounting any sort of credible defense. Even when almost all of the odds were against them, it didn't deter many from trying.
That same is not afforded to the religious community.
Learning from the Past by Looking at the Future
In South America, antisemitism is reaching a paroxysm never yet witnessed. Never yet witnessed in South America, that is. Between Ortega, Maduro, and the clashes in Brazil, Jews are being blamed left and right for all societal ills. Political and economic instability is increasing throughout the entire region.
Yet, is there a single American Jew thinking of moving out of the continent because of what's happening in, say, Brazil?
Of course not.
It's true that the distance between New York City and São Paulo is indeed roughly 4,775 miles, while the distance from Berlin to Moscow stands at 1,100 miles. There's still not a single Jew who, hearing the rumblings of what's happening on the other side of the equator, is quietly packing their suitcases out of fear that this populist antisemitism will spill over America or, worse, turn into violence and pogroms against South American Jews, G-d forbid.
No need to look this far; let's turn our eyes to America herself. Orthodox Jews are, by far, the most victimized minority in America. According to reported hate crimes statistics, an Orthodox Jew is roughly more than 45 times more likely than a black man to be the victim of a Hate Crime (source: 2021 ADL and NCAAP figures against the census). In New York City, violent assaults against Jews have reached a record high of 20 or so per month (source: NYPD 2022 hate crimes statistics). Meaning that at least two days out of three, a Jew is assaulted, and it is reported to the NYPD (many do not report crimes against them, believing it to be pointless). Only 1% of attackers since 2018 have faced any jail time whatsoever. Last week, a man who brutally assaulted a Jew (and said he would do it again if he could) was offered a plea deal by the Manhattan DA, reducing his sentence from 10 years to six months. Since September, America's highest-profile newspaper, the former paper of record the New York Times, has dedicated an unprecedented 14 articles solely attacking the Hassidic community and collaborated with the State government in order to force them to reform their school and forego their traditional education or face prison. Constantly the media are bleating about the rise of white supremacism, of nazis, and the dangers of the far-right. Kanye West, possibly the most consequential black artist of the last two decades, ran an entire failed Presidential campaign on antisemitism where he proclaimed part of his goal was enslaving Jews.
Yet, is there a single Canadian Jew, 90% of whom live a stone's throw from New York City, considering fleeing the continent because of what's happening in America?
The answer is, obviously, of course not. The idea that the antisemitism festering in America would escalate into genocide and gas chambers is simply unthinkable. After all, America is the cultural center of the world! All the eyes of the world are on America; it is still where all the world's greatest minds congregate, or at least fight for presence in public perception from their home countries. The American Dream might be ailing, it might be on the ropes, but it is still very much alive.
No way this could happen in America, right? After all, Be- New York is our Jerusalem…
Wholly Unaware of our Own Desensitization.
Of course, I'm not saying that an American Holocaust is imminent ch" vs, or will even happen. The idea that it could not, however, is ridiculous. America iz nisht andersh. The point is that we have no reason to imagine that such a thing as the Holocaust could happen, no more than even a Jew who lived in Berlin in even 1938 prior to the war could think such a thing would happen.
Sure, things were dire then back in 1930s Germany, definitely worse than they are for American Jews now. Still, within living memory, European Jews knew what it was like to live on the margin of gentile society without being afforded equal rights or protection. It was neither unknown, nor the worst conditions European Jews had suffered throughout their history. It was also only restricted to Germany.
For Jews who lived hundreds or even thousands of miles away, it was horrible to hear about… if they heard about it, that is. News still traveled slowly, and a country 500 miles from you might as well be on the other side of the world.
Nowadays, we are inundated with information. This epoch is truly the Age of (Useless) Information. With a connection to the internet, where the most extraordinary pearls of wisdom humanity has ever produced are all accessible with a swift stroke of a keyboard, most people are busy logging on to TikTok to learn new dances or Instagram to watch what other people had for lunch.
If today we are desensitized to antisemitism in our own countries, how much more so direct neighbors not to speak of those half a continent away? Why would you expect Jews prior to World War II to have any idea of what was on the horizon? Why would you expect a Jew in 1936 to hear some rumblings from (what might as well be) a world away and immediately pack their bags? To be terrified of how he might be affected by the affairs of foreign countries that have nothing to do with him? It's not like they had a Twitter equivalent to receive constant updates for consumption alongside celebrity gossip and cat pictures.
How many people reading this were even aware of the growth of antisemitism in South America? After all, it's not by watching Fox or MSNBC or reading the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal that you'll learn about it. You won't even realize what American Orthodox Jews are going through here by watching the news.
The fact is that the Jews of Europe, certainly not unaware of Hitler's rise, still had no reason to believe prior to 1941 that the antisemitism of Germany would come to extend its deadly reach over all of Europe. Even after the Anschluss, the seizure of Czechoslovakia, the taking of Poland, and the division of Eastern Europe of Molotov-Ribbentrop, many thought the German expansion would end there. At every step, people thought, 'Surely that's it?'
Even in 1944, the vast majority of Hungarian Jewry were persuaded that they had managed to ride out the war to the point where many Rabbis were preparing for the post-war rebuilding of religious Jewry. In the span of even less than three months, they went from assuming they would be spared to being cremated. In 1944.
Can we really claim that we, as modern Jews, would be in any way more prepared to face what was happening, or to flee? A quick look at our apathy to the hatred rising around us or the inaction of our communal institutions tells us the answer is a resounding no.
In fact...
A Modern War on an Old Battleground
When the current War in Ukraine began, we were flooded with images from the front. I personally witnessed the very opening of the hostilities on the live stream of a tiny Ukrainian town's border station. I looked on as the border guards deserted their posts, caught the opening shots of the war, and saw the first Russian troops setting foot on Ukrainian soil (since, you know, the last time they did a few years before that).
Yet this proximity to news also desensitized us. Instead of making us more aware of the horrors of war, the digital window into the battlefront turned it into a mix of tribal affiliation and spectacle. Everyone was really hyped up for the first two weeks or so, but when they realized it wouldn't be a Netflix binge, they slowly started to lose interest. Ukrainian flags were left lying on the ground next to discarded masks, and Ukrainian-themed profile pictures quickly joined their #wereinthistogether counterparts in the trash, replaced by whatever was the new fad.
Knowing that Russia has the highest concentration of Neo-Nazis in the world and employs PFCs such as the Wagner group, how many Jews living in countries surrounding Ukraine decided to leave their countries for North America or Israel? Knowing that Ukraine has the Azov Battalions and per capita just as many Ukrainians celebrating their own Nazi collaborators such as Bandera and their mass murderers of Jews such as Bodgan Khmelnytsky are openly celebrated, how many Russian Jews left the vicinity of Ukraine out of fear that Ukrainian troops, backed by NATO, might, in fact, take over Crimea and advance into Russia territory and put them in danger?
None, of course. Such a thing could not happen today. Right? It would be unthinkable.
Unthinkable
Life in the early 20th Century was not easy for Jews. When was it, ever? Amongst the many tragedies they had to contend with:
The Kishinev Pogrom
The Russo-Japanese War
The First World War
The Communist Revolution
The Russian Civil War
This all took place within the span of 20 years. These had caused more death in the Jewish world than in the Khmelnytsky pogroms. More than the Reinflesch Massacres, where over 100,000 Jews died, and more than 146 communities were destroyed. Worse than even the Spanish Expulsion or the Crusades, or any conflicts that had been inflicted on the Jews since either the Great War of 67-70CE against the Romans or the Bar Kochba Rebellion.
Even after Hitler's rise to power, assimilated German Jews stayed in Germany and did not immediately look to flee. Even after decree after decree was enacted against the Jews, they stayed put. Even after Kristallnacht, most German Jews stayed put. Not only the "ignorant" Jews of the Shtetl, disconnected from society at large, but the cosmopolitan worldly urbanites as well.
Rav Simcha Bunin, General Secretary of Agudas Yisrael, described how his father reacted to Krystallnacht, which is how many German Rabbis and community leaders responded at the time:" [My father] was an optimist, an unshakable believer in the triumph of human rights and justice. He believed that we were all in G-d's hands and he remained optimistic... By early 1942, the threat of deportation became really serious. Terror and fear descended upon us like a blanket of fog. But father remained hopeful. 'The Slovakian government is headed by Tiso, a Catholic priest,' he would argue. 'He could never allow deportation! No religious man would ever be party to it! The Vatican wouldn't permit it.' But by April 1942, these hopes were shattered. The mass murder of Slovakian Jewry began at the rate of three thousand per week. Father was still an optimist, but his faith was now tempered by events..."
The only German community to flee en masse were the Jews of Danzig, who sold off all the antique Judaica of their Great Synagogue to American buyers and used the money to buy passage outside of Germany. They were the only ones to do so.
Let's not forget that at the time, more than half of Europe Jewry was under the grip of the Soviets, well protected from accurate information by the Iron Curtain. Until mid-1941, only 2 million or so Jews had been living under Nazi persecution. It was not until after the start of Operation Barbarossa, when another 5 million Jews found themselves in Nazi-occupied territory, that a total of 7 million Jews fell under Nazi control.
The great Biblical commentator known as the Malbim explained that the root of the word Shoah means “a sudden darkness from which no one can prepare.”
These Jews had lived, for the most part, under a complete media blackout. Once the Soviet Union allied with the Nazis (and provided them the material resources they needed to build the concentration camps), they ordered Pravda and other Soviet outlets to censor any negative news about their ersatz ally. It was only after the Reich's betrayal that coverage turned negative, but still ignored the persecution of Jews.
So dark was the blackout that, when Nazi troops invaded Ukraine, disbelieving Wermacht soldiers wrote home saying that they were being welcomed by Jewish leaders with the traditional bread and salt greeting that they had greeted the German troops with back in the First World War, entirely unaware of the treatment that was awaiting them.
Not that they had somewhere to flee to, if they had tried to.
In the next part of the series, I will cover the world’s refusal of Jewish refugees, the Jewish Agency’s refusal of religious refugees, as well as some of the stories of Rabbis who stayed behind, and those left, with or without their flocks.
OT: I noticed the Elder of Ziyon copied and pasted part of one of your recent articles onto his FB page. You might be able to expand your reach via social media accounts like those of the Elder. Trying to grow it organically without backing by like -minded existing social media influencers will likely be a long road. Your material is too excellent not to be seen by a wider audience.
I would think your getting in touch with a couple of like minded, and widely followed Twitter influencers, would be a logical first step.