Jewish Community of Lemmygrad

The government of the occupation considers them as traitors. Men, women and children alike are regularly victims of the utmost violence.

‘The Zionists break into our houses using batons and iron rods. They won’t leave us be. The [so‐called] Jewish state is an ethnic disaster. There is no bigger disaster.’

‘They have destroyed our cemeteries. Some of them attacked us with iron rods. It makes no difference to them if they hit an old woman or a youth. They attack us, they beat us up while screaming abuse.’

The anniversary of the [so‐called] State of Israel is a day that this community of Jews mourns. They go out protesting in the streets of the holy city. They raise the Palestinian flag and make anti‐Zionist declarations. And they burg the flag of [so‐called] Israel.

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2182286

A Soviet Yiddish resistance song from the Great Patriotic War.

Translation note: A "Jewish bulgar" is a type of dance.

Performer: Psoy Korolenko (Псой Короленко), Alexander Sevastian (Александр Севастьян), Loyko (Лойко)

Year recorded: 2018

Lyricist: Kh. Urintsov (Х. Уринцов)

Year Written: 1945

Composer: Sergei Erdenko (Сергей Эрденко)

Year composed: 1947

Source: Album "Yiddish Glory: Lost Songs of WWII"

Picture: The Bielski Partisans, a Jewish partisan group who fought against the Nazis and worked together with the Soviets in liberating Belarus.

I ran into some real antisemitism one time. I was with an interpreter, and we’re walking through the city, and all of a sudden, this sxteen‐year‐old girl comes running up to me and is hitting me. I’m carrying a rifle. I’m fully armed. “Juden! Juden! Juden!” Which means, “Jew[s]! Jew[s]! Jew[s]!” I said to myself, “What do I do with a kid — especially a woman?” I shoved her away and walked on.

[…]

There was a small town [that] we had to take. Sergeant Reams and me were behind this one house that overlooked all the critical streets in the city. He said, “Sabetay, throw a grenade in that basement window.” It’s an incendiary grenade — it’s a horrible thing. I tried to pull the pin. I’m pulling on the pin, I’m [still] pulling on the pin, I pulled with all my might — I can’t pull the pin out. So I can’t throw it through the basement window. And he says, “Ah, hell! Let’s get out of here.” So we went on.

And now I’m operating a radio in another house, and Reams comes in. He says, “Sabetay, remember when I told you to throw that grenade in the basement?” And I said, “Yes.” He says, “I just found out, all the women and children in the whole city were in that basement.” God, I didn’t have that on my conscience.

On an unrelated note, this week is when Judaists hold the Festival of Sukkot. I should have mentioned it when it started two days ago, but I was feeling so unwell that day that I forgot about it.

Interplay between Jewish subcultures has long been of interest to me; contact between related yet separate subcultures can be a source of both joy and frustration. This contact is especially visible in intermarriages, of which Marc D. Angel provides some fascinating examples:

I am Sephardic and my wife is Ashkenazic. […] Gilda told me that she did not realize that I was really Sephardic until I chanted kiddush the first Friday night after our marriage. She was not used to the Sephardic melody. And I wasn’t sure that she was really Ashkenazic until she served gefilte fish, which she enjoys so much— and which was new for me.

All marriages require accommodation, compromise, openness, and a good sense of humor. Having these ingredients, all in a spirit of love, intramarriage turns out to be a wonderful experience. Gilda has become a marvelous Sephardic cook, and I sing Ashkenazic Shabbat zemirot (hymns) with pleasure. In our Passover seder last year, we sang parts in Judeo‐Spanish and some in Yiddish.

[…]

There are, of course, issues which have strong emotional overtones which lead to conflict in a Sephardic–Ashkenazic marriage. For example, many Sephardim have the custom of naming children after living grandparents. Many Ashkenazim are troubled by the idea of naming children after living people, preferring to name them after deceased relatives.

I made a study of American Sephardim of Judeo‐Spanish origin (published in the American Jewish Year Book of 1973) in which I learned that almost 80% of respondents who were married to Ashkenazim succeeded in convincing their Ashkenazic spouses to go along with the Sephardic custom of naming children after the living. This is sometimes accomplished by means of a compromise: the child is given the Hebrew name of the living grandparent, while the English name will differ.

Sephardim and Ashkenazim have differences in customs, foods, holiday observances etc. Yet all of these factors can be handled by incorporating aspects of both the Sephardic and Ashkenazic traditions into married life. Often, the most serious problems in these marriages stem from in‐laws, rather than from the marriage partners themselves.

Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement, is the holiest day of the year for Judaists. Its central themes are atonement and repentance (to G‐d), and Jews traditionally observe this holiday with a 25‐hour period of fasting and intensive prayer, often spending most of the day in synagogue services. Yom Kippur completes the annual period known in Judaism as the High Holy Days (or sometimes “the Days of Awe”).

"We want the world to know. We are together with the Palestinian people in their suffering"

Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weis sends a message in solidarity with the Palestinian people for the 75th anniversary of the Nakba

This marks the New Year according to the Hebrew calendar. It’s a time of rest and relaxation for Jews until nightfall two days later. At that point, the year shall be 5784.

Click here for a brief article on the subject in Ladino.

On a side note, the pro‐immigrant movement Never Again Action is currently holding a fundraiser that they hope to meet before 5784. Click here if you would like to make a donation.

L’shanah tovah.

Here is a simple example: imagine that you knew of a gentile who periodically makes donations to Jewish movements (Never Again Action) or non‐profit organizations (Jews for Racial & Economic Justice), who repeatedly educates others on Jewish history, who makes an effort to learn and respect Jewish customs, who volunteers to clean up or repair Jewish properties such as cemeteries, who even makes an effort to learn Jewish languages such as Yiddish or Ladino, and who would, if the opportunity arose, defend Jews with her life, be they friends or strangers. In short, she does not merely say ‘I respect Jewish people’ or ‘I love Jewish people’, she demonstrates it.

Nobody with an ounce of common sense would conclude that this person is antisemitic, but Zionists would. Why? Because she also recommends the deoccupation of Palestine.

Yes, you can be the perfect Samaritan for the Jewish people, but according to Zionists: recommending the discontinuation of the so‐called State of ‘Israel’ is more than enough proof that you are an antisemite, even if you insist that it must be done peacefully. If Zionists will go so far as to brand Shoah survivors who support Palestinians ‘antisemitic’, you better believe that they’d stamp without hesitation the gentile described above with the ‘antisemitic’ label too.

Her existence is not entirely hypothetical. Although so far I myself have not had the opportunity to maintain any Jewish properties, and I only donate irregularly, most of that description still applies to me, and whatever doesn’t could easily apply to others. Calling somebody antisemitic should ideally be a very serious accusation, especially if the accused is a Jew, but Zionists make it feel so mundane. This is only one of many reasons why I can’t be a Zionist: because they trivialize antisemitism. That concludes my rant.

“Zionism has no space for an Arab Jew [Mizrahi] like me The State of Israel conditioned us to see the intersection of ‘Jewish’ and ‘Arab’ as impossible — even though my family held that identity for generations. Whenever I find myself at a leftist protest against the occupation, there is always someone holding a sign that says “Jews and Arabs refuse to be enemies.”

This phrase has become, in some ways, the bedrock of leftist ideology promoting coexistence in Israel/Palestine. But when I encounter this phrase, I immediately feel disoriented. Which side am I on? If I am on the “Jewish” side, do I lose the Arab identity within me? Can I identify as an Arab, even as I enjoy privileges as a Jewish citizen of Israel? Who decided to position a race against a religion?

Colonization works with our minds to distort our understanding of identity and perpetuate its own agenda. Because of this, my identity has been a great source of internal confusion that has taken me years to unpack and untangle. Recently, I began to understand how this internal self-dialogue represents a political dilemma born through the colonization of Palestine.

I identify as an Arab Jew. My family has lived in Jerusalem for over 10 generations, and my other ancestral cities include Aleppo in Syria, Baghdad in Iraq, and Shiraz in Iran, along with a small village in Kurdistan. I grew up with primarily Syrian-Palestinian traditions and cultures. My grandmother was a feminist painter and cultural lover of film and literature.

My grandfather was a prayer leader skilled in the art of maqamat, a unique Arab melodic framework, who recited prayers in the Syrian-Jerusalemite tradition. My family prayed in Hebrew and Arabic, with a thick accent rolling off our tongues as we pronounced Jewish blessings. I grew up with Mohamed Abdel Wahab [an Egyptian pan-Arab and revolutionary singer] and Shabbat piyyutim, Jewish liturgical poems, sung together. Until my parents’ generation, Arabic was the predominant language in my family.”

Jews are 3,760 years ahead of us!

The Jewish scholar explains why Zionism and Judaism are not necessarily the same thing and why he believes that Israel as a state is not legitimate.

(Français.)

[M]any Jewish Canadian volunteers would encounter official and unofficial anti-Semitism after showing up at their local recruiting offices. It sometimes took considerable perseverance just to get into uniform, with some branches of the military presenting more barriers than others.

Sadly, the experiences of young Monte Halparin of Winnipeg (who would go on to fame as a game show host with the stage name Monty Hall) were not unique. When he tried to enlist in the armoured corps at the University of Manitoba campus, he was told, "I don't think they're taking Jews."

The Royal Canadian Air Force initially had a policy that expressly limited enlistment to recruits who were "of pure European decent and British subjects." These guidelines were sometimes used to reject Jewish and other racialized volunteers outright (especially those who had not obtained their naturalization documents) before those discriminatory regulations were lifted in 1942.

This was compounded by a strong British tradition and class consciousness in the air force that generally made it difficult for those of non-British origin to join or rise in the ranks. Despite these conditions, nearly 6,000 Canadian Jews served in the Royal Canadian Air Force.

The evidence suggests that the Royal Canadian Navy was the most difficult branch for Jewish volunteers to join. Fewer than 600 Canadian Jews were accepted into this branch of the military. Initially, it had restrictive recruiting policies similar to those of the air force.

This was compounded by enduring ties to Britain's Royal Navy and outmoded attitudes towards different social classes that made entry into the officer ranks particularly challenging for Jewish Canadians who wanted to take on leadership roles. Young Jewish men, like Edwin Goodman and Ben Dunkelman of Toronto, were turned away by the navy, despite being excellent potential candidates.

Indeed Dunkelman, an alumnus of the prestigious Upper Canada College and heir to the wealthy family that owned Tip Top Tailors, was a recreational sailor with his own yacht on Georgian Bay, but even that prior experience did not overcome the discrimination of the navy recruiting office.

The Canadian Army presented the fewest official barriers to young Jewish men and women who volunteered or were called up to serve their country in uniform. That being said, even after having navigated the potential pitfalls to successfully enlist in any branch of the military, Jews often encountered anti-Semitic attitudes in some of their fellow service members. At times, insults and arguments and even physical fights ensued as hateful beliefs bubbled to the surface and some Jews defended themselves.

It must be noted, however, that Jewish Veterans remarked that despite encountering prejudice during their time in uniform, it seldom came from those with whom they directly served alongside. The stresses of the battlefield or being in a bomber thousands of metres above enemy territory had a way of bringing together even the most diverse group of men and making perceived differences melt away.

(Emphasis added.)

Although I chose to focus on the negative for this excerpt, that is only because I want to confirm that I have no intention of heroizing the Western Allies; the Jewish experience in serving the Western Allies was not entirely negative.

Even if in the end all that they really accomplished was serve the lesser evil, that does not mean that learning their experiences has to be unexciting or uninteresting. Au contraire! For example:

Being sunk by [an Axis] U-boat could also result in other hazardous outcomes. Harry Hurwitz survived the sinking of HMCS Athabaskan when the Canadian destroyer was torpedoed off the coast of France on April 29, 1944. He was taken prisoner by the [Axis], but not before he threw away his Star of David necklace and his wallet containing Jewish prayers.

He would spend the rest of the conflict in captivity as a prisoner of war but managed to conceal his religious identity from guards. He participated in a variety of resistance activities by the Allied prisoners in his camp, including surreptitiously putting dirt into the [Axis] officers' coffee.

(Mirror.)

Quoting Derek J. Penslar’s Jews and the Military: A History, page 208:

Of all the armies in which Jews took part, the Red Army had the greatest level of Jewish involvement and sacrifice. In keeping with the general patterns of mortality among combatants in the Soviet Union and the United States, over one‐third of Soviet Jewish soldiers perished during the war as opposed to only 1.5 percent of American‐Jewish soldiers. There were almost twice as many Jews in the United States as the Soviet Union, yet Jewish generals and admirals in the USSR outnumbered their American counterparts ten to one.^49^

In other ways, however, certain patterns of specialization and placement united Soviet and North American Jewish soldiers. As in earlier conflicts, so in World War II Jews were concentrated disproportionately in branches of service that required education and technical expertise. In the Red Army of the 1930s, the professor and major general G. Eierson had developed new theories of mobile warfare, and other Jewish officers had been prominent as inventors and developers of tanks and other armored vehicles.

Twelve of thirty Red Army armor specialists sent to Spain had been Jews. In 1939, the Spanish war hero Yakov Smushkevich was appointed commander of the Red Army’s air force, only to be liquidated by [Moscow] in 1941. During World War II, Jewish engineers developed the Red Army's most successful tank and fighter aircraft. Three of the Red Army’s twenty most highly decorated submarine commanders during World War II were Jews.^50^

While these data are impressive in and of theirselves, Penslar did not specify the number of Jews in the Red Army. This is why I put Gabriel Mayer’s research in the URL. Quote:

It has been documented that 500,000^3^ Jews fought in the Red Army during WWII, and that the total numbers of Jews fighting in WWII amounted to approximately 1.7 million^4^ out of a worldwide population of less than 16 million, in other words, more than 10% of the worldwide Jewish population. Nevertheless, the earliest (and for a long time the only) recognition of Jewish participation in military operations was of Jewish GIs discussed in the American press.^5^

(Somebody might point out that there were approximately 600,000 Jews in the U.S. armed services, but keep in mind that ‘U.S. armed services’ is a broader category than ‘Red Army’.)

With the outbreak of WWII, the disproportionate representation of Jews in the Red Army increased even further, as did the ratio of promotions and decorations awarded to Jewish combatants. The following numbers illustrate the recruitment of Jews, as volunteers and conscripts, in large population centers:^12^ Moscow — 140,000 (population of 5 million); Leningrad — 130,000 (population of 3.2 million); Odessa — 55,000 (population of 604,000); Kiev — 35,000 (population of 846,000).

In certain military units, such as the Latvian Division, where Jewish soldiers constituted 30%, the numbers are even more disproportionate.^13^ The motivation of the Jews to fight was clearly fueled also by the news of the destruction of Jewry at the hands of the [Axis]. This circumstance did not escape the attention of the political leadership of the Red Army (GPUKA), which stated, “the most loyal elements in the Red Army during this difficult phase of the war were mostly Russians defending the homeland (“Mother Russia”) and Jewish soldiers.”^14^

The special motivation of the Jews prompted a suggestion to form Jewish fighting units. Thus, on February 12, 1943, Abram Margolis, the Commissar of the 32nd Infantry Division, called for the formation of a Jewish division, in light of the singularly horrific suffering that Jews were experiencing at the hands of the [Axis].^15^

Numbers alone do not tell the full story, however. During WWII, Jewish soldiers attained high ranks and received prestigious decorations. In Lithuania, the following Jewish generals participated in and commanded units during some of the most arduous phases of the war: General and Commander Izrail Borskin of the 65th Army, General Grigori Plaskov of the 2nd Armored Corps, and General Moise Kharkovsy of the 12th Artillery.

These generals and scores of other Jewish soldiers received “Order of Lenin” decorations.^16^ Altogether, during the 1940–1945 period, a total of 229 Jews were promoted to the rank of General or Admiral.^17^ The ranks of the decorated soldiers and officers were entirely out of proportion with the percentage of Jews in the population at large or even in the armed forces: in absolute terms, Jews accounted for the fourth largest number of highly decorated soldiers by nationality, following Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians, but naturally, out of a far smaller population.^18^

The highest military honor, “Hero of the Soviet Union,” was accorded to 154 Jews.^19^ A telling detail of this remarkable saga is that on January 31, 1943, at Stalingrad, General von Paulus, Commander of the German 6th Army, surrendered to Lt. Colonel Leonid Vinoukur, a Jew.^20^

As to be expected, the author could not resist mischaracterizing Moscow’s (admittedly rather harsh) anti‐Zionism as antisemitism, but most of this paper is still worth reading.

While the Jewish motive for joining the Allied forces is obvious, it may be less clear (unless they were pacifists) why other Jews would be reluctant to join them. We can derive a very plausible explanation for that by looking at how the Axis handled Jewish POWs. Quoting from Tom Bird’s American POWs of World War II: Forgotten Men Tell Their Stories, page 131:

Jewish POWs [whom] I interviewed were frightened throughout their imprisonment and were constantly aware of the possibility that they could be sent to a concentration camp.

These fears were a result of knowledge not only of what was happening to Jewish civilians, but also of what had happened to other POWs, notably Soviet Jewish prisoners. In 1941, Hitler issued the Commissar Order, which called for the elimination of political representatives and commissars, whom he considered the “driving forces of Bolshevism.” Included in the extermination order were all Soviet Jews. In July 1941, all Jewish POWs from the eastern front were ordered to be killed. No similar order was ever made concerning Jewish POWs from Britain, France, or the United States.

The reason may be that despite [Axis] propaganda that the Allies did not care about Jews, the [Axis] thought those nations would care very much if Jews from their armies became victims. A more likely explanation was that the [Axis was] concerned that [its] POWs would be mistreated if the Western nations learned that Jewish prisoners were being abused. But the apparent failure of the United States to investigate mistreatments of Jewish POWs implies that [Axis] propaganda was correct: The United States did not even care about its own Jews.

(Emphasis added in all cases.)

As a gentile, I, personally, can think of no choice for an Allied soldier more behooving than a Jew; their cause for joining is arguably the easiest of them all to understand. Nevertheless, when I think about it, they also had a good reason to be reluctant, because if the Axis had confirmation of their heritage then they could expect some especially harsh mistreatment during capture. With this in mind, I think that the Jews who fought in or alongside the Allies were especially brave.

For a biography related to this subject, see My War against the Nazis: A Jewish Soldier with the Red Army.

ETA: Soviet Jews in World War II: Fighting, Witnessing, Remembering.

During WWII, tens of thousands of European Jews, mainly Austrian and German, fled to Shanghai to escape the Nazis and seek refuge. They were welcomed and helped by the Chinese people who were themselves suffering from Japanese aggression.

Decades on, some of the descendants of Jewish refugees returned to Shanghai, the city that once warmed their hearts, to reminisce about the good old days in Shanghai and cherish the memories with their Chinese friends, who helped them during those difficult times.

(Alternative link.)

Excerpt:

After a careful study of gentile behavior toward the Jewish population in these two regions, our research indicates that there was a remarkable difference between actions taken in Bessarabia and Transnistria.

On the basis of more than two hundred Jewish survivor testimonies, a mail‐in survey with Jewish Holocaust survivors, interviews with over one hundred non‐Jewish Holocaust witnesses located on the territories of Bessarabia and Transnistria, and archival material from the Romanian, German, and Soviet governments, we found the following: the Bessarabian population was more likely to commit abusive actions against Jews (for example, beatings, theft, murder, rape), whereas the Transnistrian population was both (1) less likely to commit abuse and (2) more likely to behave in a cooperative manner (for example, providing food and hiding Jews from persecution).

We believe that the prewar state policies encouraging either animosity or affinity between ethnic groups greatly contribute to our understanding of this outcome.

[…]

Above all, we believe that there was a clear and overwhelming political commitment by the governing communists to achieve interethnic cooperation and societal integration during this interwar period, and government policies flowed from this commitment.

These changes in policies, we argue, led to the construction of interethnic cooperation that came to be internalized by the gentile population and then led to continued cooperative behavior even after the Soviet Union was replaced by the anti‐Semitic Romanian forces during World War II.

[…]

One of the most remarkable findings from all our research in Transnistria was actually a nonevent: we did not find evidence of a single anti‐Jewish pogrom anywhere in Transnistria.

Pogroms in Bessarabia were reported by survivors and are referenced in archival material and secondary sources, but the same cannot be said for Transnistria, as we found no evidence of such activities in survivors’ testimonies, government records, or the secondary sources we consulted.

More generally, survivors made very different remarks when commenting on the people from Transnistria, which had been located in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Some survivors stated it explicitly: “In Ukraine the attitude was better than in Bessarabia.” Many of the survivors stated that “the Ukrainians did help,” that “the Ukrainians were not bad,” that they had “a compassionate attitude,” or that “the majority of them gave us bread.”

One survivor, a native of the town of Orhei (Bessarabia), stated that of his experience in Transnistria, “one [a Jew] could not feel too much hatred, with the exception of the collaborators,” and his impression was that “the majority [of the local population] did not perceive the Jews with alienation … but rather … the majority perceived the occupying power as alien, but the Jews as theirs.”

Another survivor, this time a native of Transnistria, concluded that the population of his city (Moghilev‐Podolsk) had a sympathetic attitude toward the Jews and that only a small minority was comfortable with the fact that the Jews were forced from the city to the ghetto.

Several survivors recalled that, during the long marches toward the ghettos, many locals in Transnistria threw food from a distance and some peasant women even left packages with food on the road in front of the columns of Jews approaching.

[…]

There were also cases of Jewish children being sheltered by Transnistrian locals in their houses. The Romanian counterintelligence reports confirm the occurrence of cases of Jewish children being adopted by the Ukrainian population in order to save them from deportation.

Hilda Schwartz, a survivor of Kopaygorod, described her escape to a neighboring village, where a woman housed her first and later her mother and sister as well. After the liberation of the camp, Hilda’s family continued to live with the woman for another two months.

While we did find individual cases of theft, beatings, and murder committed by the local population in Transnistria, the incidence was substantially lower than in Bessarabia.

More importantly, the level of cooperation was overwhelmingly apparent in all sources we consulted, which was in stark contrast to what we found for Bessarabia. This becomes clearer with a quantified picture of events, which we present in the next section.

(Emphasis added.)

There is more that I wanted to include, but the excerpt is pretty lengthy as it is. If you have the time, I encourage you to read the rest of the article (which is forty‐two pages long, excluding the preface), but I should warn you that it does quote some slurs and describe some violent incidents.

For a book on this subject, see Diana Dumitru’s The State, Antisemitism, and Collaboration in the Holocaust: The Borderlands of Romania and the Soviet Union.

September 1 marks the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of World War II. In this episode of the “Come Together” series, CGTN looks at the little-known Jewish history of Shanghai where some 20,000 European Jews fled from the Nazi regime to the last place in the world that would welcome them as refugees.

Modern Shanghai, an international-trade mecca, is known as the Paris of Asia, as it has been strongly influenced by foreign cultures. Jews were one group that left an indelible mark on the city, according to Marwyn S. Samuels, who is a Jew himself. He has been studying the history of the Jewish community in China for decades and doesn't want its impact to be buried in the past.

A coffee house run by members of Shanghai's Jewish community during World War II has been rebuilt and reopened in Shanghai, where over 30,000 Jewish people took refuge between 1933 and 1941.

English : Hello and welcome to our first Jewish Community on Lemmygrad. This is a community for our Jewish Comrades (including myself) to learn and have fun with eachother and share culture and traditions of our people .

Everyone is welcomed here .

Español : Hola y Bienvenido/as a la primera Comunidad Judía de Lemmygrad. Ésta es una comunidad para nuestro/as camaradas judíos (incluyendo me a mi mismo) para aprender y divertirnos entre nosotro/as y compartir la cultura y las tradiciones de nuestra gente.

Todo el mundo está bienvenido/a aquí.

Ladino (Djudeo-Espanyol) : Shalom i Venido/as Buenos a la priméra Komunitá Djudia de Lemmygrad.
Ésta es una komunita para muestro/as haverim djudios (yo inkluido) para aprender i tener diversion entre mozotro/as i kompartir la kultura i las tradisiones de muestra djente.

Todo/as akí están bienvenido/as .