JULIAN RESNICK writes from Israel
In the 1890s Theodore Herzl was the Paris correspondent for the Viennese newspaper the Neue Freie Presse. What a wonderful posting for a sophisticated Viennese gentleman, a highly assimilated Jew, a citizen of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. A place where the notion of being a citizen of the French Republic had enabled Frenchmen and women of the “Mosaic Persuasion” – a Jew in your home and a citizen of France in the public domain – had given the Jews a glimpse of a world where Jews would no longer have to look over their shoulders to make sure that the Cossacks were not a pace or two behind them, sabers drawn.
I can just imagine the exquisite pastries he ate together with one of the favourite drinks he would have enjoyed in the Centraal Café in Vienna: a Melange or an Einspanner or a Brauner (the three favourite ways of drinking coffee back then, and even today). Perhaps he had learned to enjoy Beef Bourguignon, Quiche Lorraine, Salad Nicoise.
And then Alfred Dreyfus changed all of this. Another sophisticated Jew, this time an officer in the French army, was charged with espionage on behalf of Prussia. Happens. But poor Herzl was shocked to the core when the mobs took over the streets, not shouting “Death to the Traitor” (which would have been reasonable), but “Death to the Jews!!!” This changed Herzl forever; he understood that the promise of citizenship for all, irrespective of ethnic or religious affiliation, had evaporated. Ultimately, this also changed the life of this Somerset West-born Jew, now in my 49th year in Israel, forever.
In 1938, 86 years ago almost to the day, the mobs took over the streets of Germany, to attack Jews and Jewish property, in what became known as Kristallnacht, the Night of the Broken Glass – or the November Pogrom. On this night, hundreds of Jews were murdered, some 30 000 Jewish men were taken to concentration camps, and 267 synagogues were destroyed.
I am writing this on the morning of November 8th listening to the news coming in from Amsterdam. (A newspaper headline reads: “Israel’s national security ministry urges citizens in Dutch city to stay in their hotel rooms after ‘very violent incident’”) I am in a state of shock. I am trying to make sense of this world we are living in. An Israeli woman is describing how a group of Israelis is in hiding in an Amsterdam apartment. Echoes of Anna Frank are flowing through my mind.
F – – F – – – – S – – -, this is 2024!!! We thought that the world had learned a few lessons, and that Jewish people could walk the streets of Amsterdam, London, Paris, Berlin, without any fear of being targeted. This is 2024, and the word ‘pogrom’ was supposed to be a word that young people “had heard somewhere before, but it seemed to be about something that had happened sometime, somewhere in the past.”
(The problem with writing once a month is that by the time you read this …)
Julian Resnick was born in Somerset West and grew up in Habonim Dror. He studied at UCT, and made Aliyah in 1976. He’s conducted numerous shlichuyot and educational missions on behalf of Israel, to Jewish communities in England and the USA. He works as a guide in Israel and around the world (wherever there is a Jewish story).
He’s married to Orly, and they have three children and eight grandchildren and is a member of Kibbutz Tzora.
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