Parsha Netzavim
It appears to me that
the heads of the tribes commanded everybody to be present as this speech was
going to be on the last day of Moshe’s Life.
29:9 Ye are standing this day all of you before the LORD
your God: your heads, your tribes, your elders, and your officers, even all the
men of Israel, 10 your little ones, your wives, and thy stranger that
is in the midst of thy camp, from the hewer of thy wood unto the drawer of thy
water;
Everybody even the lowest grade
profession of wood choppers and those who carried water from place to place to
eek out a living. The work was hard, unappreciated and repetitive.
11 that thou shouldest enter into
the covenant of the LORD thy God--and into His oath--which the LORD thy God
makes with thee this day; 12 that He may establish thee this day unto
Himself for a people, and that He may be unto thee a God, as He spoke unto
thee, and as He swore unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to
Jacob.
You are to understand
that your G-D is your King and no job is too big or too little.
13 Neither with you only do I
make this covenant and this oath; 14 but with him that stands here
with us this day before the LORD our God, and also with him that is not here
with us this day--
Everybody standing here
today has an equal portion in following the oath of the Mitzvos.
15 for ye know how we dwelt in the
land of Egypt; and how we came through the midst of the nations through which
ye passed; 16 and ye have seen their detestable things, and their
idols, wood and stone, silver and gold, which were with them--
Remember what you have
seen in the past of the detestation of Egypt.
17 lest there should be among you
man, or woman, or family, or tribe, whose heart turns away this day from the
LORD our God, to go to serve the gods of those nations; lest there should be
among you a root that bears gall and wormwood; 18 and it come to
pass, when he heareth the words of this curse, that he bless himself in his
heart, saying: 'I shall have peace, though I walk in the stubbornness of my
heart--that the watered be swept away with the dry';
You have a Living G-D to
worship not these fruitless idols.
19 the LORD will not be willing
to pardon him, but then the anger of the LORD and His jealousy shall be kindled
against that man, and all the curse that is written in this book shall lie upon
him, and the LORD shall blot out his name from under heaven;
Having seen in museums
some of these Canaanite gods or various non-sensical items, I don’t understand
how these people worshipped them or why a most powerful CREATOR of a Universe
could be jealous. Rather I believe that since jealousy is a human quality it
was used as a metaphor for the simple people in the audience.
20 and the LORD shall separate
him unto evil out of all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of
the covenant that is written in this book of the law. 21 And the
generation to come, your children that shall rise up after you, and the
foreigner that shall come from a far land, shall say, when they see the plagues
of that land, and the sicknesses wherewith the LORD hath made it sick;
This happened to Samuel
Clemens when he visited Israel and saw the desolation that I can see in the
Arab Occupied Areas vs. Jewish Settlements that are rich and fertile.
22 and that the whole land
thereof is brimstone, and salt, and a burning, that it is not sown, nor bears,
nor any grass grows therein, like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah
and Zeboiim, which the LORD overthrew in His anger, and in His wrath;
The destruction of the
Romans raping the land with taxes and the Arabs neglecting the land led to this
from a physical standpoint but it was overthrown by the L-RD in HIS anger.
23 even all the nations shall say
'Wherefore hath the LORD done thus unto this land? what means the heat of this
great anger?' 24 then men shall say: 'Because they forsook the
covenant of the LORD, the God of their fathers, which He made with them when He
brought them forth out of the land of Egypt;
They forsook the
covenant and the land turned into Sodom and Amorah and threw them out.
25 and went and served other
gods, and worshipped them, gods that they knew not, and that He had not
allotted unto them; 26 therefore the anger of the LORD was kindled
against this land, to bring upon it all the curse that is written in this
book; 27 and the LORD rooted them out of their land in anger, and in
wrath, and in great indignation, and cast them into another land, as it is this
day'.--
Yacov had no problem
fighting a cunning Lavan but foolishness and stupidity of Bnei Yisrael worshipping
gods that have legs and cannot walk, hands that cannot feel, a mouth with no
breath, etc. makes G-D angry for not obeying the covenant.
28 The secret things belong unto
the LORD our God; but the things that are revealed belong unto us and to our
children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.
30:1 1 And it shall come to pass, when all these things are
come upon thee, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before thee, and
thou shalt bethink thyself among all the nations, whither the LORD thy God hath
driven thee, 2 and shalt return unto the LORD thy God, and hearken to
His voice according to all that I command thee this day, thou and thy children,
with all thy heart, and with all thy soul;
Do you want the blessing
and life or the curse and death? I am teaching you but you have the free will
to be foolish.
3 that then the LORD thy God will
turn thy captivity, and have compassion upon thee, and will return and gather
thee from all the peoples, whither the LORD thy God hath scattered
thee. 4 If any of thine that are dispersed be in the uttermost parts
of heaven, from thence will the LORD thy God gather thee, and from thence will
He fetch thee.
After a long time, even
if it takes eons until you learn, the L-RD is ETERNAL Patience, has great mercies
and truth until you return from diaspora.
5 And the LORD thy God will bring
thee into the land which thy fathers possessed, and thou shalt possess it; and
He will do thee good, and multiply thee above thy fathers. 6 And the
LORD thy God will circumcise thy heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the
LORD thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live. 7 And
the LORD thy God will put all these curses upon thine enemies, and on them that
hate thee, that persecuted thee.
Just as a man’s
circumcised organ can lead him astray so can one with a foolish heart. By circumcising
one’s heart, he will come back to Torah and Mitzvos.
8 And thou shalt return and
hearken to the voice of the LORD, and do all His commandments which I command
thee this day. 9 And the LORD thy God will make thee over-abundant in
all the work of thy hand, in the fruit of thy body, and in the fruit of thy
cattle, and in the fruit of thy land, for good; for the LORD will again rejoice
over thee for good, as He rejoiced over thy fathers; 10 if thou shalt
hearken to the voice of the LORD thy God, to keep His commandments and His
statutes which are written in this book of the law; if thou turn unto the LORD
thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul.
Then by following the
Mitzvos in all their details, you will become wealthy.
11 For this commandment which I
command thee this day, it is not too hard for thee, neither is it far
off. 12 It is not in heaven, that thou shouldest say: 'Who shall go
up for us to heaven, and bring it unto us, and make us to hear it, that we may
do it?'
I brought the Torah from
Heaven on Har Sinai to you so it is here.
13 Neither is it beyond the sea,
that thou shouldest say: 'Who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it unto
us, and make us to hear it, that we may do it?' 14 But the word is
very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do
it.
If you put the Torah on
your lips and observe it with positive actions it is right before you.
15 See, I have set before thee
this day life and good, and death and evil,
So now you can choose a
good life instead of death and evil.
16 in that I command thee this
day to love the LORD thy God, to walk in His ways, and to keep His commandments
and His statutes and His ordinances; then thou shalt live and multiply, and the
LORD thy God shall bless thee in the land whither thou go in to possess
it.
To love G-D and walk in
his ways is not new to them, but they need to be reminded. Moshe is not the only
leader to remind people of their goal. In the early 5720’s in America there was
a black leader named M. L. King who told his people “I have a dream that
someday we shall be free and an equal.” He did not live long enough to see a
black man elected president but it eventually happened. Moshe wants the people
to blessed and the land blessed so he repeats himself.
17 But if thy heart turn away,
and thou wilt not hear, but shalt be drawn away, and worship other gods, and
serve them; 18 I declare unto you this day, that ye shall surely
perish; ye shall not prolong your days upon the land, whither thou pass over
the Jordan to go in to possess it.
Oy voy-voy if you do not
listen and observe for you will perish.
19 I call heaven and earth to
witness against you this day, that I have set before thee life and death, the
blessing and the curse; therefore, choose life, that thou mayest live, thou and
thy seed;
A Kabbalist will tell
you that heaven and earth although inanimate objects have some physical vibration
or essence of G-D. The inanimate in Kabbalah can become a witness or witnesses
in the heavenly court.
20 to love the LORD thy God, to
hearken to His voice, and to cleave unto Him; for that is thy life, and the
length of thy days; that thou mayest dwell in the land which the LORD swore
unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.
Therefore love begets
love and love to do the Mitzvos and follow Torah.
Parsha Vayelech
31:1 And
Moses went and spoke these words unto all Israel. 2 And he said unto
them: 'I am a hundred and twenty years old this day; I can no more go out and
come in; and the LORD hath said unto me: Thou shalt not go over this
Jordan.
I cannot go anymore
before you, but a new generation of leadership will. The leaders will be
Yehoshua and Eleazar.
3 The LORD thy God, He will go over before thee;
He will destroy these nations from before thee, and thou shalt dispossess them;
and Joshua, he shall go over before thee, as the LORD hath spoken.
HASHEM will fight your
battles and save you.
4 And the LORD will do unto them as He did to
Sihon and to Og, the kings of the Amorites, and unto their land; whom He
destroyed. 5 And the LORD will deliver them up before you, and ye
shall do unto them according unto all the commandment which I have commanded
you.
In case you do not
believe me, I will bring you a proof what happened very recently with Sihon and
Og which you defeated soundly.
6 Be strong and of good courage, fear not, nor be
affrighted at them; for the LORD thy God, He it is that doth go with thee; He
will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.'
Be strong and of good
courage will be repeated and mentioned in Chapter One of Sefer Yehoshua.
7 And Moses called unto Joshua, and said unto him
in the sight of all Israel: 'Be strong and of good courage; for thou shalt go
with this people into the land which the LORD hath sworn unto their fathers to
give them; and thou shalt cause them to inherit it.
All these years, he was
the beetle of Moshe (Shamash) now he is to be the leader instead of the
assistant and follower.
8 And the LORD, He it is that doth go before thee;
He will be with thee, He will not fail thee, neither forsake thee; fear not,
neither be dismayed.' 9 And Moses wrote this law, and delivered it
unto the priests the sons of Levi, that bore the ark of the covenant of the
LORD, and unto all the elders of Israel.
Sefer Devarim until
close to the end as the last 8 Pasukim appear to be written by Yehoshua but it
is also possible that Moshe wrote them and immediately forgot them by the grace
of HASHEM.
10 And Moses commanded them, saying: 'At the end
of every seven years, in the set time of the year of release, in the feast of
tabernacles, 11 when all Israel is come to appear before the LORD thy
God in the place which He shall choose, thou shalt read this law before all
Israel in their hearing. 12 Assemble the people, the men and the
women and the little ones, and thy stranger that is within thy gates, that they
may hear, and that they may learn, and fear the LORD your God, and observe to
do all the words of this law;
This will occur this
year but since all the people do not go up to Yerushalayim only some will
gather and hear Devarim.
13 and that their children, who have not known,
may hear, and learn to fear the LORD your God, as long as ye live in the land
whither ye go over the Jordan to possess it.'
The whole purpose was to
reteach the Torah to the Nation. I do not know if this Mitzvah is superius in
our day as each year we read the full Torah in 54 Parshiyos.
14 And
the LORD said unto Moses: 'Behold, thy days approach that thou must die; call
Joshua, and present yourselves in the tent of meeting, that I may give him a
charge.' And Moses and Joshua went, and presented themselves in the tent of
meeting. 15 And the LORD appeared in the Tent in a pillar of cloud;
and the pillar of cloud stood over the door of the Tent. 16 And the
LORD said unto Moses: 'Behold, thou art about to sleep with thy fathers; and
this people will rise up, and go astray after the foreign gods of the land,
whither they go to be among them, and will forsake Me, and break My covenant
which I have made with them.
This is what Moshe was
told and he brought this forward as a warning.
17 Then
My anger shall be kindled against them in that day, and I will forsake them,
and I will hide My face from them, and they shall be devoured, and many evils
and troubles shall come upon them; so that they will say in that day: Are not
these evils come upon us because our God is not among us?
G-D hiding his face is a
terrible punishment. I can imagine the IDF going into Schem or Jenin without help
from heaven and what the results might be. (Heaven forbid.)
18 And
I will surely hide My face in that day for all the evil which they shall have
wrought, in that they are turned unto other gods.
You are going to turn
away so G-D will turn away and you will be in deep trouble over your heads.
19 Now
therefore write ye this song for you, and teach thou it the children of Israel;
put it in their mouths, that this song may be a witness for Me against the
children of Israel. 20 For when I shall have brought them into the
land which I swore unto their fathers, flowing with milk and honey; and they
shall have eaten their fill, and waxen fat; and turned unto other gods, and
served them, and despised Me, and broken My covenant;
Therefore, learn by
heart the Hazinu Song (next Parsha) by heart and sing and re-sing it until it
enters your heads and heart.
21 then
it shall come to pass, when many evils and troubles are come upon them, that
this song shall testify before them as a witness; for it shall not be forgotten
out of the mouths of their seed; for I know their imagination how they do even
now, before I have brought them into the land which I swore.'
You have been forewarned.
22 So
Moses wrote this song the same day, and taught it the children of
Israel. 23 And he gave Joshua the son of Nun a charge, and said: 'Be
strong and of good courage; for thou shalt bring the children of Israel into
the land which I swore unto them; and I will be with thee.'
In case you have a poor
memory, the song is written down. Again be strong and of good courage to Joshua
who will now be the leader going into Eretz Yisrael.
24 And
it came to pass, when Moses had made an end of writing the words of this law in
a book, until they were finished, 25 that Moses commanded the
Levites, that bore the ark of the covenant of the LORD, saying: 26 'Take
this book of the law, and put it by the side of the ark of the covenant of the
LORD your God, that it may be there for a witness against
thee. 27 For I know thy rebellion, and thy stiff neck; behold, while
I am yet alive with you this day, ye have been rebellious against the LORD; and
how much more after my death?
This
book Devarim has the Mussar that the nation needs to whip them back into shape.
28 Assemble
unto me all the elders of your tribes, and your officers, that I may speak
these words in their ears, and call heaven and earth to witness against
them. 29 For I know that after my death ye will in any wise deal
corruptly, and turn aside from the way which I have commanded you; and evil
will befall you in the end of days; because ye will do that which is evil in
the sight of the LORD, to provoke Him through the work of your hands.'
Now both the young and
especially the elders would be taught Hazinu so that they could emphasize and
comment in their own words on the meaning.
30 And Moses spoke in the ears
of all the assembly of Israel the words of this song, until they were finished:
From Helene W.: Life Asteroid tracking. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=malQcSehJ0I
Tishrei Judgement and Atonement
When I came to Israel
52years ago I was praying Rosh Hashanah bent over humbly and beating my chest
on Yom Kippur humbling. Concentrating on word by word prayers with the English
Translation 45 to 50 minutes at Mussaf. This week on the first day of Rosh
Hashanah I found myself crying in prayer as I skipped the first additional
words in the Amidah Prayer and having to repeat myself over poor concentration.
For me personally it was like Tisha B’Av Oy what we once had prayer. I was not
crying for Am Yisrael but pleading with G-D that my mumbling of words in Hebrew
will be as if I had all the great Kavana of the meanings of the prayers.
I was humble all right
my hands shook from the traffic accident I once was in and with age. I could
barely stand on my legs for the prays. My neighbors in the ‘fast’ Minyan Schul
3.5 or more hours of prayers vs. whole day prayers brought me a stander for
placing my Machzor. All this above and beyond my grave danger from heart
problems.
Those of you who can do
better than mumbling words like the young Rachamim Pauli please do so not only
for your sake but that of Am Yisrael. For according to the Rambam on Hilchas
Teshuva that if the heavenly scales are 50-50 with the sins and merits of Am
Yisrael and one Baal Teshuva on one Mitzvah does something it will tip the
scales in the favor of the whole nation and unfortunately the reverse has been
true in the past when the two Temples were destroyed.
Our
goal now is to have a good finish of our Din Torah from G-D or Gmar Chatima
Tova.
(A
good stamp of approval in the Book of Life.)
To
win our stamp of approval in the book of life, we must atone. Over the years,
we have discussed adding to the Ashamnu Prayers with what is written in Sefer
Chomas Adam. (We have sinned, we have been treasonous, we have stolen, and this
goes across the whole Hebrew Aleph Bet) – it does not matter if you Like one
ate without a blessing before and after. One ate forbidden food like a mixture
of meat and milk. Going through the Hebrew Aleph-Bet, and then Al Chet to try
to cover all sins. What is interesting with the Al Chet that a large number of
sins come from speaking badly, gossip, cursing, etc. Sins that we would have to
offer up a Korban aka accidently turning on or off a light on Shabbos or sins
of anger management or embarrassing our friends.
Make
the best of Yom Kippur try to atone and repent your sins and resolve to sin no
more. Then you can truly have a Gmar Chatima Tova!
P.S.
not brought down in Inyanay Diyoma is Yeted Neeman that headlines the need to
observe Family Purity, Shmita, Learn Torah, Milestones of Roshei Yeshivas and
Mussar from leading Torah Scholars. Other articles on guarding the Shabbos and
sanctity of marriage vs. secular intrusions into Torah. Then you wonder why
they are against secular learning!
The following two
stories of escape from Auschwitz took me too much time to copy and paste and
often copied the same paragraphs so as important as they are I have to think
twice before copying and pasting from Times of Israel or Aish.
Breaking
into Auschwitz by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
https://aish.com/breaking-into-auschwitz/
For decades one of the most
incredible tales from the Holocaust has been virtually unknown outside of
Poland. The writings of Witold Pilecki, a Polish patriot who volunteered to be
imprisoned in Auschwitz, were published in English only a few years ago. His
incredible bravery and heroic actions deserve to be better known.
In 1939, Poland was invaded by Nazi
Germany and was divided into two: the eastern half was annexed by the Soviet
Union and the western half was absorbed into the Nazi Reich. In the east, the
USSR managed to quash almost all attempts at Polish resistance, but in the
western half a top-secret resistance dubbed the Underground State and Home Army
managed to function, resisting Nazi rule. Witold Pilecki was a 38-year-old
former Captain in the Polish Army who’d retired, married his wife Maria, and
was working as a farmer and raising his two children, Andrzej and Zofia, in an
area of Poland that is now in Belarus.
With his homeland in tatters,
Pilecki left his family and travelled to Warsaw to help organize a resistance.
Facing these Polish fighters, the Nazis decided to set up a concentration camp
to house political prisoners of the new regime. They chose the Polish town of
Oswiecim, or Auschwitz.
Two of Pilecki’s fellow resistance
fighters were among the first prisoners transported from Warsaw to Auschwitz,
in August 1940. Telegrams arrived for their families a few days later informing
them their loved ones had been killed. The Polish underground desperately
wanted to know what had befallen these men. Pilecki volunteered to go to
Auschwitz and report back on conditions there. If possible, his mandate
included also raising a resistance movement inside the camp and ordering a
breakout.
On
September 19, 1940, Pilecki deliberately joined a group of men being arrested
by Nazis in Warsaw. He was sent to the camp with nearly 2,000 other fighters, and
given the number 4859. He would remain a prisoner there for nearly three years.
While
many prisoners in Auschwitz reported losing all hope, Pilecki never stopped
thinking of himself as a man on a mission. As a political prisoner, he never
endured the especially brutal and deadly conditions that were reserved for
Jewish prisoners, but he did survive horrible privations too.
On his first day in Auschwitz,
Pilecki watched as all the men on a train were shot as soon as they arrived at
the camp. He saw one former judge beaten to death before his eyes. Pilecki
himself was hit so hard that two of his teeth fell out. Pilecki and his fellow
prisoners were shaved, given prison clothes with a red triangle (signifying
political prisoners), and told that none of them would ever leave Auschwitz
alive. When Pilecki told a fellow prisoner he was there to form a resistance,
the prisoner told him, “You’re either the greatest hero or the biggest fool.”
Instead of succumbing to despair,
Pilecki got to work. He told the prisoners news of the outside world and wrote
a report on the conditions inside Auschwitz, which he managed to smuggle out of
the camp and send to the resistance movement in Warsaw. His anguished first
report was sent to Poland’s Government in Exile in London in March 1941. They
passed it onto the Allies. In his report, Pilecki appealed to the Allies to
bomb Auschwitz and end the “monstrous torture” that was taking place there.
The report was forwarded to the
highest levels of the British military and might have resulted in action had
not Sir Charles Portal, Chief of the British Air Staff, intervened. Sir Charles
warned that any raids on Auschwitz “avowedly conducted on account
of the Jews would be an asset to enemy propaganda” and declined to act.
Pilecki’s torture, and that of this thousands of fellow prisoners in Auschwitz,
continued.
Pilecki continued to work,
organizing his fellow Polish political prisoners to smuggle in food, plan the
occasional escape, and bribe guards to reduce punishments. He organized about
500 prisoners to be part of a top-secret resistance organization inside of
Auschwitz, which Pilecki called the Union of Military Organization, known by
its Polish initials ZOW.
For
a while, ZOW members managed to construct a radio from parts that were smuggled
into the camp and reported on conditions to the outside world. They abandoned
this attempt when the risk of being caught grew too great. Pilecki survived
bouts of typhus and pneumonia, and managed to live on starvation rations. Yet
these monstrous cruelties of Auschwitz were set to increase.
When
the Nazis broke their non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union in June of
1941, the eventual fighting exposed millions of eastern European Jews to the
Nazis’ murderous killing machine. For a few months in 1941, Soviet prisoners of
war were the main target of mass killings at Auschwitz; the notorious gas
Zyklon B was first used on Soviet prisoners. Ever the conscientious resistance
professional, Pilecki meticulously documented the carnage, writing that “The
men (Soviet POWs) had been so tightly packed (in gas chambers) that even in
death they could not fall over.”
In
1942, the main aim of Auschwitz shifted to the mass killing of Jews. Over one
million Jews were systematically murdered in Auschwitz; most were gassed and
then their bodies were burned in the camp’s giant crematoria. Pilecki was
determined to document the death of these Jews. “Over a thousand a day from the
new transports were gassed,” he wrote.
Pilecki
also noted the callous indifference to this death and suffering on the part of
Polish civilians in the town and countryside nearby. “When marching along the
gray roads (on a work detail outside of the camp)...we would encounter young
couples out walking, breathing in the beauty of springtime, or women peacefully
pushing their children in prams - then the thought uncomfortably bouncing
around one’s brain would arise...swirling around, stubbornly seeking some
solution to the insoluble question: We are all...people?”
Pilecki managed to write and smuggle
out three comprehensive reports detailing life in Auschwitz as it evolved from
a camp primarily housing political prisoners into the center of the Nazis’
monstrous killing machine targeting Europe’s Jews. Each time he managed to
smuggle out a report at enormous risk, Pilecki hoped that his words might
galvanize the Allies to take action and bomb Auschwitz. Each time he waited in
vain.
As the years went by, many of
Pileckis’ fellow ZOW resistance members were killed. He realized that he could
do much more to fight the Nazis outside of Auschwitz and began to plot an
escape. His main goal was to speak with Polish resistance fighters and Allied
forces in person and persuade them to launch an assault on Auschwitz and stop
the killings there. On one occasion, Pilecki gave up his spot as part of an
escape plan to another political prisoner who was in greater danger of being
killed.
Eventually, in April 1943, Pilecki
and two fellow ZOW members managed to escape, prying the bolts off a door and
fleeing the camp. Pilecki was shot but managed to travel 100 km on foot until
he could reach the home of a fellow resistance member and rest. Pilecki still
hoped that the Allies would attack Auschwitz, but as the months went by nothing
happened.
Still seeking ways to fight the
Nazis, Pilecki travelled to Warsaw to fight in a major uprising against Nazi
rule there. Pilecki, an older former officer who’d endured years of brutal
imprisonment and torture, became known as “Daddy” among the young resistance
fighters who were determined to make a last desperate stand against the Nazi
murderers.
In August 1944, Pilecki fought to
defend a key street that had been a major thoroughfare inside the now-empty
Jewish Ghetto known as Jerusalem Avenue. Today, the street is the site of the
Warsaw Uprising Museum. Historian Norman Davies documented Pilecki’s crucial
input to the battle at this strategically crucial site: “Almost every day... he
captured, lost, and recaptured (an important holdout). Repeatedly driven out,
he returned and with deadly cunning repeatedly expelled the German defenders.
He lived to fight elsewhere. But so long as he threatened this one vital
pressure point, the German command was constantly made to feel insecure.” The
spot he defended became known during the fighting as Pilecki’s Redoubt.
After the Warsaw Uprising was
brutally put down in September 1944, Pilecki was sent to a POW camp in Germany.
Liberated by American troops in April 1945, he travelled to Italy where he
fought with Polish troops in the final days of the war. In Italy, he also wrote
his final report on what he’d witnessed at Auschwitz. He suspected that he
might not have long to live and it was crucially important to him to record all
he’d seen for future generations.
After the war, Pilecki returned to
Warsaw and continued his activities for the Polish underground, this time
gathering intelligence on the new Communist government of Poland which he
opposed. On May 5, 1947, he was arrested and brutally tortured by the
government of Poland. He was given a show trial and condemned to death. He was
executed May 25, 1948.
Pilecki’s son Andrzej later recalled
his father’s final letters to him and his sister. “He didn’t know he was
leaving us forever,” Andrzej explained. “But in letters he would write that we
should live worthwhile lives, to respect others and nature. He wrote to my
sister to watch out for every little ladybug, to not step on it for a reason.
‘Love nature.’ He instructed us like this in his letters.”
Pilecki’s final report on Auschwitz
was translated into English in 2012 and released as The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery. Now a new book The Volunteer: One Man, an Underground Army, and the Secret
Mission to Destroy Auschwitz by Jack Fairweather tells Pilecki’s
story for a new generation.
Witold Pilecki’s legacy of courage
and moral strength deserves to be remembered.
Rudolf Vbra escaped Auschwitz saved 200,000 Jews. By Robert
Philpot.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/the-first-jew-to-escape-auschwitz-helped-save-200000-lives-but-few-know-his-name/ author Jonathan Freedland
LONDON — They didn’t
know it, but it was the eve of the Passover seder. At 2:00 p.m. on April 7,
1944, 19-year-old Rudolf Vrba and 25-year-old Fred Wetzler began their epic and
daring bid to bring the news of the horrors of Auschwitz to their fellow Jews
and the wider world.
That bid began in a
dark, cramped hole under a woodpile in the death camp. It ended with a report
describing the Nazi machinery of slaughter which landed on desks in Allied
capitals and, through a series of diplomatic maneuvers, helped to save the
lives of up to 200,000 Jews in Budapest.
But, for more than
seven decades, the story of Vrba and Wetzler’s astonishing escape — the first
successful effort by Jewish prisoners to break out of Auschwitz — and their
mission to sound the alarm and strip away the layers of deception under which
the Final Solution was perpetrated has itself remained somewhat hidden. The
recognition they rightly deserve has consequently been denied.
And, says Freedland, this is not simply a story
about the past. Vrba’s belief about the potential power of shining a light onto
Auschwitz’s dark secrets holds salutary lessons for our “post-truth age.”
Walter Rosenberg — the
name Vrba was given to him as a cover after his escape from Auschwitz — was
born in western Slovakia in 1924. A precocious child with a gift for languages
and mathematics, he was forced out of school at 14 when Slovakia’s puppet
regime, established following Hitler’s 1939 dismemberment of Czechoslovakia,
introduced a series of antisemitic regulations.
When, in February
1942, Vrba was ordered to report for “resettlement,” his immediate thought was
to escape to England to join the Czechoslovak army in exile. While he didn’t
succeed, the teenager managed to make it to Budapest where he made contact with
the underground. Eventually, after being roughed up by Hungarian troops, he
ended up back in the hands of the Slovaks who sent him to the Nováky detention
camp.
Nonetheless,
Vrba’s determination to escape had in no way diminished. Indeed, he managed to
slip out of Nováky with Josef Knapp, a young man from his birthplace. His
subsequent betrayal by Knapp, which led to Vrba being returned to the camp,
taught the 17-year-old an important lesson that helped him to survive what lay
ahead: trust nobody.
When
he was transported to Auschwitz in June 1942, Vrba soon realized that thoughts
of escape had to be subordinated to the demands of simply staying alive. If
distrust was one factor in Vrba’s survival, luck was another. Sent to IG
Farben’s brutal Buna factory, he was recruited by a French civilian to do less
onerous work. He was later transferred from the notorious gravel pits to a job
painting skis for troops on the Eastern Front. And, after being selected for
execution during an August 1942 typhus outbreak in which 746 men were murdered,
he was saved by a kapo.
Perhaps
Vrba’s greatest stroke of luck, however, was being sent to work in “Kanada,” a
unit that sorted through the belongings of new arrivals at Auschwitz. The work
included ferrying bags and rummaging through valuables, including squeezing
tubes of toothpaste potentially containing diamonds or cash that had been
stashed away. Crucially, however, the prisoners were also able to
surreptitiously steal food that newly arrived prisoners had brought with them
to the camp. The newcomers were, by this point, likely already dead.
Vrba’s
time in Kanada slowly led him to a shocking realization: that Auschwitz was, as
Freedland puts it, not simply a slave labor or concentration camp, but “a
factory of death.” He also came to the sickening understanding that anything of
value found in Kanada was shipped on trains back to Germany: The Nazis were
attempting to turn a profit on their policy of mass murder.
Vrba’s transfer to work on the “ramp” — where
he spent 10 months helping to remove the luggage of new arrivals and clear out
the cattle trucks — led him to grasp a final truth about the mechanics of this
factory of death: that deception was crucial to its smooth functioning. Unaware
of their fate, the deportees largely obeyed the Nazis’ instructions —
inadvertently ensuring the order the SS required to commit industrial-scale
murder. If the wheels of the killing machine were to be slowed, Vrba believed,
this veil of secrecy had to be lifted and Jews needed to be forewarned of their
imminent fate.
His close-up knowledge about the experience of
the “family camp” — where, in another act of Nazi deceit, groups of Czech Jews
were kept in relatively good conditions should the Red Cross choose to visit —
led Vrba to revise his belief about the importance of information. The Czech
Jews had been warned by the underground that they were to be murdered after six
months. But, still, they did nothing to resist.
Knowledge, Vrba came
to realize, had to be accompanied by the possibility of being able to escape
the Nazi butchers. This may have been a near-impossibility in Auschwitz itself,
but the door was still ajar for those Jews who had not yet boarded the trains.
They had to be alerted.
For Vrba, escape thus
became a mission that was about much more than his own survival. He sought
nothing less than to shatter the wall of lies that the Nazis had constructed —
a wall that surrounded their victims at every stage of their journey to the gas
chambers.
Despite
his youth, Vrba was well equipped to carry out this mission. Alongside his
resilience, he was gifted with strong numerical and scientific abilities and an
uncanny ability to retain data. He also had what Freedland terms an “almost
uniquely panoramic view” of Auschwitz. Aside from the factory, gravel pits,
Kanada and the ramp (where he counted and memorized details of the arrival
selections), he also volunteered to work in Birkenau and, through his links to
the underground resistance, became a registrar in a quarantine sub-section of
the camp. As a clerk, he now had the opportunity not only to wander more freely
around Auschwitz — committing to memory its layout and workings — he also had
access to the chief registrar’s records which contained highly detailed
information about the transports.
Statistically, though, Vrba’s chances of escape
weren’t good. No Jew had ever achieved this perilous feat. However, he was, as
Freedland notes, young and, thanks to the nature of the clerical work he had
been doing, much fitter and healthier than most inmates. In Kanada, he had also
found a child’s atlas and memorized the route from Auschwitz to the Slovak
border. He also had invaluable mentoring from a Russian prisoner, Dmitri
Volkov, who had once escaped from Sachsenhausen. Among the advice Volkov
imparted was a crucial piece of intelligence: machorka, a Soviet tobacco, soaked
in petrol and dried, was the only available substance that could throw the
camp’s tracker dogs off of a human scent.
For Vrba, the clock
was also ticking. In January 1944, he discovered that a new railway line, which
ran straight to the camp crematoria, was being constructed in preparation for
the arrival of Hungary’s roughly million-strong Jewish population. Hungarian
Jews had hitherto been partially protected from the worst of the Final
Solution. But that all changed when Hitler occupied the country in early 1944,
snuffing out the last vestiges of Hungarian independence and forcing the
country’s opportunistic leader, Admiral Miklós Horthy, to appoint a Nazi
sympathizer as prime minister.
Less
than three weeks later, Vrba launched his bid for freedom. Accompanying him was
Wetzler, a young man from his hometown with whom he had become friendly in the
camp. The pair were well acquainted with the drill when a prisoner was found to
have escaped: For 72 hours, the camp went onto high alert and a thorough search
was conducted. But, after that point, the Nazis returned the outer camp — where
prisoners labored by day before being herded back into the main came overnight
— to its less stringent nighttime security arrangements. The plan was thus to
hide in a makeshift bunker under the woodpile in the outer camp, then slip out
under cover of darkness once the search was called off.
For
three days and three nights, Vrba and Wetzler lay side-by-side in the dugout.
Luck was once again on Vrba’s side. While the machorka had stopped the search
dogs from giving them away, two guards had spotted the woodpile and begun to
pull away the planks. But, when Vrba and his companion were just seconds away
from discovery, the SS men were distracted by a commotion elsewhere and
disappeared, never to return. In a further stroke of luck, as the three days
came to an end, Vrba and Wetzler realized that the wooden planks concealing
them were much heavier and more difficult to move than they had anticipated. If
the SS guards hadn’t removed the first few layers of planks, the two men would
have been trapped in the pit.
Vrba’s luck continued
as the men began the 50-mile (80-kilometer) trek south, following the course of
the Sola river, towards Slovakia. Despite taking the precaution of walking only
after dark, they had plenty of narrow escapes: they accidentally stumbled upon
a Hitler Youth camp; got lost perilously close to a subcamp at Jawiszowice; and
awoke to find themselves, not as they’d believed, in a secluded wooded grove
but a public park where SS men and their families were enjoying the Easter
holiday weekend. They were even pursued and shot at by a patrol of German
soldiers.
The gambles they took
— necessary, though reckless — also paid off. A Polish peasant woman, believing
them to be escaped Russian POWs, provided them with shelter when they struggled
to find somewhere to hide out one day. Luckier still, 10 days into their trek,
another Polish woman allowed them to stay in her goat hut, provided them with
food, and introduced them to a man who guided the pair through the mountains to
the border with Slovakia.
But getting to the
relative safety of his homeland had never been Vrba’s sole goal. As soon as
they crossed the border, Wetzler made contact with Slovakia’s Jewish council,
the only communal organization the regime still allowed to function. The men
were then subjected to a grueling 48-hour interview and cross-examination, both
to establish their credibility and to record their story.
From their interviews,
Oskar Krasnansky, one of the council’s most senior members, compiled a 32-page,
single-spaced report, complete with professional drawings based on Vrba and
Wetzler’s testimonies. The document was, Freedland writes, “bald and spare,
free of rhetorical fire. It gave the floor to facts rather than passion.”
Still, the report
methodically detailed the horrors of Auschwitz and, crucially, the fictions
deployed by the Nazis from the moment the cattle truck doors were slammed on
departure to that at which the gas chamber doors were locked.
Thanks
to Vrba’s extraordinary memory, the report provided details of individual
transports and a country-by-country breakdown of the estimated death toll
during his time in the camp.
But,
over Vrba’s strong objections, the report contained no warning to Hungary’s
Jews that the camp was being readied for their destruction. Krasnansky was
insistent: the document was to record only what had happened, not provide
forecasts about the future.
Nevertheless, when two
more Jews successfully escaped seven weeks later, Krasnansky added a seven-page
addendum to the report which contained their account of the murder of Hungarian
Jews when transports began to arrive from the now German-occupied country in
May 1944.
Vrba was
understandably frustrated that the warning he had been so desperate to sound
had clearly not reached the latest victims of the Final Solution in time. But
this wasn’t the full story. Within hours of the report’s completion, Krasnansky
had personally handed the document to Rezso Kasztner, the de facto leader of
Hungarian Jewry.
Meanwhile, having got
their hands on a copy of the report, the anti-Nazi resistance in the country
lobbied the most senior Protestant and Catholic bishops in Budapest to
intercede with the government on the Jews’ behalf; the former acted
immediately, the latter stalled and said it was a matter for the Pope.
Thanks to the
energetic efforts of a Swiss-based British journalist who turned the report’s
somewhat dry language into attention-grabbing press releases, Vrba’s revelations
began to filter out in the press, including the New York Times, and on the
BBC’s foreign services. Vrba himself was invited to brief a papal envoy who was
visiting Slovakia.
Horthy’s regime had a
long history of antisemitism, but the Jews had a sympathizer close to the
center of power: the regent’s daughter-in-law. Furnished with a copy of the
report by the Hungarian opposition, Countess Ilona Edelsheim Gyulai passed it
to Horthy himself. The regent declared himself appalled by what he read. He also
soon came under external pressure — from the Pope, the United States and the
Swedish monarch — to stop the deportations.
While the Vatican
spoke in code and attempted to appeal to Horthy’s better angels, the Roosevelt
administration bluntly warned that “all those responsible for carrying out
[these] kind of injustices will be dealt with.” Painfully slowly, Horthy — who,
as Freedland notes, was primarily motivated by personal self-interest — began
to assert his tattered authority, ordering the deportations to stop and
frustrating Adolf Eichmann’s impending plan to ship Budapest’s 200,000 Jews to
Auschwitz.
For over 400,000 Jews
who lived in rural Hungary it was, of course, too late. And, when the Nazis
finally ousted Horthy in the autumn, the Arrow Cross launched a reign of terror
in which thousands of the capital’s Jews were murdered. But Vrba had won enough
time to ensure that, when the war ended, over 200,000 Hungarian Jews are
believed to have survived.
But the feeling that
more could — and should — have been done would haunt Vrba for the rest of his
life. He would, for instance, never forgive the fact that, as part of
Kasztner’s controversial deal with the Germans which secured exit permits for
around 1,700 Hungarian Jews, Kasztner agreed to keep silent about what he and
the small leadership group surrounding him had learned from Vrba’s report.
Kasztner thus gave Eichmann and the SS, writes Freedland, “the only thing they
deemed indispensable for their work… order and quiet.”
Then there is the
question of how the Allies responded to the report. The report reached London
speedily and was read by Churchill, who immediately agreed to a request, passed
on by Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, that the railway line between Budapest
and Auschwitz should be bombed. But, once passed down the chain of command,
military objections were raised as to the feasibility of such a raid.
The US, too, opted for
inaction. “Bureaucratic buck-passing and paper shuffling,” as Freedland
describes it, characterized the response of US diplomats in Switzerland when
they received the report. Urgent appeals for bombing, passed through Jewish
community contacts in the US, met a wall of resistance. Roosevelt himself
decided that the US could end up “accused of participating in this horrible
business” were its bombs to end up killing Jews.
Reactions to the
report in London and Washington also revealed that, despite the horrors it
contained, old prejudices remained unshaken. The US Army magazine, Yank, for
instance, declined to use material from it in a feature on Nazi war crimes,
requesting instead “a less Jewish account.” Meanwhile, in the UK Foreign
Office, civil servants bemoaned the “usual Jewish exaggeration” and the amount
of time expended on “these wailing Jews.”
But, alongside these
responses, there was also a swirl of disbelief surrounding the report’s
revelations: one which affected not only the Allies but even some Jews
themselves. It was perhaps best captured by the words of the French-Jewish
philosopher Raymond Aron: “I knew, but I didn’t believe it. And because I
didn’t believe it, I didn’t know.”
“I think this goes to
something very profound about human nature and our limited ability to hear
terrible news,” says Freedland. “We can have the information without it ever
becoming something we fully, truly believe.”
Facts, he says, have
to be combined with belief before they become knowledge, which is itself the
spur to action. For all his insights into how the Nazis were using deception to
perpetrate their terrible crimes, the teenage Vrba hadn’t reckoned on such
sentiments.
After the war, Vrba
returned to his native Czechoslovakia, later living in Israel and Britain
before finally settling in Canada. He married twice — the author interviewed
first and second wives Gerta and Robin for this book — and had two daughters,
Helena and Zuza. Vrba also had a successful academic career as a biochemist.
He also became what
Freedland terms an “ultra-witness”: writing his own memoirs; giving expert
testimony in multiple cases involving war criminals and Holocaust deniers; and
sharing his perhaps unparalleled insights into the working of Auschwitz with
the foremost chroniclers of the Shoah, including the historian Martin Gilbert
and documentary-maker Claude Lanzmann.
Vrba’s story, however,
never obtained the wider recognition or status afforded to other rescuers, like
Oskar Schindler, or fellow survivors such as Elie Wiesel or Primo Levi.
“I think it’s because
he was an awkward, uncomfortable witness who spoke awkward, uncomfortable
truths,” says Freedland. “He pointed an accusing finger, partly at Whitehall
and Washington… [but], much more sensitively, at a limited number of
individuals in the Jewish leadership, specifically in Budapest. That was not a
story many people wanted to hear in Rudolf Vrba’s lifetime.”
But, as Freedland
says, reactions to Vrba’s story reflect a wider issue with how Holocaust
survivors have often been treated.
“I think we — the
media, educators, and others — have put, and continue to put, a very unfair
pressure on Holocaust survivors to serve up a sort of comforting, healing
wisdom and to make us feel better for having spoken to them,” he says.
This pressure, he
continues, denies survivors the opportunity to express “a range of responses to
the gravest possible trauma, including anger.” Vrba’s response, of course, was
anger — an anger which few readers of the book will conclude was unjustified.
But, as Freedland
says, reactions to Vrba’s story reflect a wider issue with how Holocaust
survivors have often been treated.
“I think we — the
media, educators, and others — have put, and continue to put, a very unfair
pressure on Holocaust survivors to serve up a sort of comforting, healing
wisdom and to make us feel better for having spoken to them,” he says.
This pressure, he
continues, denies survivors the opportunity to express “a range of responses to
the gravest possible trauma, including anger.” Vrba’s response, of course, was
anger — an anger which few readers of the book will conclude was unjustified.
Milestone: Yehuda Samet, 84, survived Bergen
Belsen, Tree of Life Attack. https://www.timesofisrael.com/holocaust-survivor-who-escaped-tree-of-life-synagogue-massacre-dies-at-84/
Inyanay Diyoma
Iceland arrests 5 terrorists. https://www.timesofisrael.com/iceland-police-arrest-four-in-first-ever-suspected-terror-plot/
2 die in tourist bus crash in
Republic of Georgia. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/360311
Ramming attack. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/360330
Golani stops another drive-by attack
on Har Bracha. https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-says-troops-opened-fire-at-group-of-armed-palestinians-near-nablus-killing-one/
34 guns seized in smuggling attempt.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/360364
N. Korea launches missiles. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/360347
Pakistan has a delegation to Israel.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/visiting-israel-pakistani-delegation-promotes-vision-of-peace-one-step-at-a-time/
Danger from stray Bedouin Bullets. https://www.timesofisrael.com/stray-bullet-fired-at-bedouin-wedding-hits-car-in-southern-kibbutz/
77Dead in sinking of Lebanese
Migrant Boat. https://www.timesofisrael.com/at-least-77-dead-as-lebanese-migrant-boat-sinks-off-syrian-coast/
Moon launch postponed due to storm. https://www.timesofisrael.com/nasa-scraps-third-attempt-at-moon-launch-due-to-tropical-storm/
Mob hit in Acre as car explodes. https://www.timesofisrael.com/man-seriously-injured-by-acre-car-explosion-in-apparent-mob-hit/
Protests in Iran continue. https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-718064
Gun toting Antisemite threatens
Yeshiva Boys. https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-718002
Underwater eruption spreads water
into upper atmosphere. https://www.jpost.com/science/article-718031
Netanyahu meets head Litvak Rabbi. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/360306
Antisemitic cartoon on train to
Uman. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/360365
Man asking for quiet stabbed to
death by Synagogue. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/360339
Total 4 Shachidim battled IDF. https://www.timesofisrael.com/clashes-as-israeli-troops-surround-jenin-home-of-tel-aviv-terrorists-family/
A bullet to the head stopped him. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/360427
DeSantis deploys National Guard for
Hurricane. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/360417
Hurricane 2 mph shy of Cat. 5 https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/hurricane-ian-tracker-2022-news-path-weather-09-28-2022
Hurricane could effect US food
supply. https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/hurricane-ian-may-spike-food-prices
Remote Control Riot Control in
Chevron. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/360374
Terrorist was killed on Shabbos. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/360353
Multi-shooting near Pittsburgh. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/360366
Terrorist explosive device in gas
station. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/360367
Terrorist try to sabotage train. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/360386
Sen. Manchin caves in. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/manchins-energy-permitting-proposal-stripped-funding-bill-gop-progressive-opposition
Fetterman tops Oz, the cardiac surgeon and
celebrity doctor, 51%-44% among those likely to vote in the general election,
according to a Marist College Poll in Pennsylvania. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/pennsylvania-showdowns-fetterman-topping-oz-shapiro-leading-mastriano-new-poll
Tens of thousands flee Putin’s
Draft. https://www.foxnews.com/world/russias-neighbors-see-surge-migrants-men-flee-putins-draft
Fetal Heart Beat at 6weeks. https://www.foxnews.com/media/pediatrician-rips-planned-parenthood-redefining-fetal-heartbeat-back-stacey-abrams-claim
N. Korea 3rd ballistic
missile. https://www.foxnews.com/world/north-korea-fires-third-ballistic-missile-ahead-vp-harris-arrival-seoul
17 Lev Tahor Members arrested in
Mexico. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/360385
Yeshiva Fellows learn with
Prisoners. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/360428
Shas looking to pick up Arab Votes. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/360432
Lawyer named one of the top
influential Jews. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/360419
Crown Prince becomes Saudi PM. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/360414
Autumn or not warm temperatures in
Israel. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/360420
Temple Mt. Violence. https://www.ynetnews.com/article/hkrwysgzi#autoplay
Jihadi Spiritual Leader dies at 96. https://www.ynetnews.com/article/ry4zvn1fi
Islamic Jihad claims attacks. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/360403
Allenby Crossing to be 24/7. https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog-september-28-2022/
Woman kills male partner. https://www.timesofisrael.com/woman-arrested-after-partner-found-dead-in-netanya-apartment/
Underwater heat killing Coral and
more. https://www.timesofisrael.com/underwater-heat-inferno-ravages-mediterranean-corals-turning-them-to-skeletons/
Nefertiti buried in King Tut Tomb. https://www.timesofisrael.com/tutankhamuns-tomb-may-conceal-fabled-beauty-nefertiti-says-archaeologist/
Road Rage suspect left in cop car in
train tracks. https://www.timesofisrael.com/video-shows-train-smashing-into-colorado-cop-car-in-which-suspect-was-held/
Terrorists throw explosive devices. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/360380
US will respond to Russian use of
Nukes. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/360383
20 Ukrainian Soldiers treated in
Israel. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/360376
Iran on Sunday filed indictments against 14 individuals over
killing of scientist. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/360382
Israel rejects Russian annexation. https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-rejects-annexation-votes-in-occupied-ukraine-as-russian-proxies-claim-victory/
Italian Leader once lauded Hezballah
and Syria. https://www.timesofisrael.com/italy-far-right-leader-once-hailed-hezbollah-iran-as-defenders-of-syrian-christians/
Gas Leaks a terror attack according
to Russia. https://www.timesofisrael.com/kyiv-says-nord-stream-gas-leaks-are-a-terrorist-attack-by-moscow/
Death toll rises to 76 in Iran. https://www.timesofisrael.com/rights-group-says-at-least-76-dead-as-iran-protests-rage-despite-violent-crackdown/
Asteroid crash on purpose. https://www.timesofisrael.com/nasa-to-crash-craft-into-asteroid-in-first-ever-test-of-planetary-defense/
Man murdered his wife and then burnt
the body. https://www.timesofisrael.com/man-arrested-after-wife-found-dead-in-burning-home/
Iran dissident growing. https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-iran-the-sparks-of-dissent-are-multiplying/
COS to allow some targeted
terrorists. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/360483
Hamas threatens Israel. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/360488
Brave terrorist flee into school to
avoid IDF video. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/360453
Are the Americans meddling in Israeli elections? https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/360492
Orthodox and Christian Groups go to
SCOTUS over religious discrimination. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/360490
Is Biden and his climate change
behind the sabotage of the Russian Pipe Line? https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2022/09/27/nato-says-sabotage-behind-destruction-of-natural-gas-pipelines/
Fire breaks out in children’s
hospital. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/360487
Woman hit by train in locked police
car on train tracks has injuries. https://www.autoblog.com/2022/09/27/woman-hit-by-train-police-car/
Hope for Alzheimer. https://www.aol.com/news/experimental-alzheimers-drug-slowed-cognitive-233112923.html
Harry and Meagan demoted behind
Princess Anne and cousins. https://www.aol.com/lifestyle/prince-harry-meghan-markle-demoted-170100889.html
Aaron Judge ties Roger Maris record.
https://www.aol.com/sports/aaron-judge-hits-61st-home-011133327.html
Israel must take Iran’s threat
against Dimona seriously. https://www.algemeiner.com/2022/09/28/irans-threats-against-israels-nuclear-facilities-must-be-taken-seriously-israels-atomic-energy-head-warns/
Rutgers NJ egging of Jewish Frat. https://www.algemeiner.com/2022/09/28/egging-of-jewish-fraternity-house-on-rosh-hashanah-being-investigated-by-rutgers-university-police/
S. Korea first Asian trade deal with
Israel. https://www.algemeiner.com/2022/09/28/south-korea-becomes-first-asian-country-to-ratify-free-trade-deal-with-israel/
Why don’t these congresswomen defend
Iranian Hijab Protests? https://www.algemeiner.com/2022/09/28/why-havent-linda-sarsour-ilhan-omar-and-rashida-tlaib-even-mentioned-irans-hijab-protests/
E. Oakland CA school shooting of 6
Adults. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/360481
Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) falls on Oct. 5 — which is also
the state’s “student count day,” the one day a year when the number of students
who attend school determines how much that district will receive in state funds
the following year. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/360486
Film from drone of explosive devices
in yesterday’s battle in Jenin. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/360459
You come a pick a ripe Banana
Republic: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/360492
Arab criminal gangs. https://www.timesofisrael.com/suspect-killed-another-seriously-hurt-in-shootout-with-police-in-nazareth/
Two residents of the Arab town of Maale Iron
arrested on extortion. https://www.timesofisrael.com/two-men-suspected-of-extorting-and-kidnapping-man-suspending-him-from-a-tree/
Shooting in Chevron hills. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/360472
Russia to annex parts of Ukraine. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/360522
Lev Tahor Cult breaks free (probably
bribed) from captivity. https://www.timesofisrael.com/lev-tahor-members-break-out-of-mexican-shelter-escape-in-waiting-vehicle/
Iraq vs. Iranian Drone Bombing. https://www.timesofisrael.com/iraq-summons-iranian-ambassador-following-deadly-drone-bombing-campaign/
Joke Marriage w/far-left Judge. https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-step-toward-civil-marriage-jerusalem-court-accepts-zoom-weddings-from-utah/
UTJ leader angry at Deri and Saar. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/360520
Fungi in Tumors may help detection. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/360498
Don’t push secular education on
Charedim. https://www.ynetnews.com/article/hkcpqwkbi
US w/thousands killed of collateral
damage in Iraq & Afghanistan suddenly worries about dead 7year old (may be
a blood libel). https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/360543
Ian death toll at least 17. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/360553 SC next.
Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah have decided in recent
days to change the location of sensitive weapons and missiles. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/360542
Argentina man falls on tracks before
train. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/360572
Charedi Draft Protest. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/360528
Biden Moment where is Jackie? https://www.timesofisrael.com/wheres-jackie-biden-asks-for-recently-deceased-congresswoman-at-event/
Terminating Hatred Arnold delivers
msg. https://www.timesofisrael.com/arnold-schwarzenegger-delivers-message-against-hatred-in-first-visit-to-auschwitz/
Rebel MK barred from Knesset. https://www.timesofisrael.com/rebel-ex-mk-chikli-barred-from-running-with-likud-which-vows-high-court-appeal/
Shaked deports family of terrorist. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/360460
Down again to 59 seats. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/360467
Have a wonderful,
healthy, peaceful Shabbos and Gmar Chatima Tova,
Rachamim Pauli
