4.19 JUF News.Indd

ISRAEL the next room of the museum is diers-in-training. the brick-lined, reconstructed Along with agriculture, the Mila 18 bunker, realistic down kibbutz runs a catering busi- to the washtub secured to a ness and a factory producing trapdoor that reveals stored electronics parts. The descen- pistols and Molotov cocktails. dants of approximately 100 Simcha “Kazik” Rotem, a War- original residents continue saw Ghetto fighter, advised the to live there. (The last living museum on the bunker’s look. founder, Frumka Zeif Helf- (He passed away in January man, died in 2016 at age 101.) at age 94; only one fighter is As to Yad Mordechai’s name: known to be alive now.) When a kibbutz-movement Two deceased Polish-Cath- representative suggested that olic heroes of the Holocaust the settlement—the first one 39 are honored with modest exhi- established following the War- bitions. One, Jan Karski, clan- saw uprising—be named for destinely entered the Warsaw Anielewicz, who fell at age 23, Ghetto and later alerted Presi- the members declined, consid- dent Franklin D. Roosevelt to ering themselves unworthy. the killings he witnessed there. But following the 1948 bat- The other, Wladyslaw Kowal- tle, they relented, feeling “that ski, smuggled Jews out of the they’d proven their valor and Warsaw and Izbica ghettoes. had been worthy of the name,” Both men received Yad Vash- Herzberg said. They commis- em’s Righteous Among the sioned the statue, sculpted by Nations award; Kowalski mar- Nathan Rapoport. ried a woman he saved, moved Each year’s nationally About 200 yards from its statue honoring Mordechai Anielewicz stands to Israel, and is buried in Yad broadcast Yom Hashoah clos- Kibbutz Yad Mordechai’s museum on the Warsaw Ghetto revolt of 1943. Mordechai’s cemetery. ing ceremony is held by the The kibbutz has statue. On May 2, President great excitement— thrived over the Reuven Rivlin will attend. On that Jews will fight years. A source a plaque near the statue’s base In Mordechai’s memory back,” said the of income going is chiseled Anielewicz’s state- museum’s peda- back to its Netanya ment on April 23, 1943, 15 days By HILLEL KUTTLER nearby museum, named From gogical director, days, beekeeping, before his death: “My life’s Holocaust to Revival. It’s ap- Tamar Herzberg. has become a major final aspiration has been ful- propriate to recall those con- Seven months later, industry, with Yad filled. Jewish self-defense be- texts now, with the revolt in December 1943, the Mordechai honey sold came a reality. … I am blessed A CONCRETE WATER TOW- having begun on Passover, kibbutz moved permanently in nearly every supermarket to have been among the first ER angles perilously at a hill’s and with Yom Hashoah to be to its current site near the in the country. The museum Jewish fighters in the ghetto.” edge on Kibbutz Yad Morde- marked this year starting the Gaza Strip. and a recreated battlefield An army base, also named chai, testament to a legendary evening of May 1. Herzberg walked over to a from the 1948 confrontation Yad Mordechai, sits adjacent War of Independence battle; Usually omitted in transla- first-floor display of several draw school groups and sol- to the kibbutz. n then-premier David Ben-Guri- tion, though, is the complete reproduced documents. One, on credited the battle with sav- name of Israel’s annual com- Yad Mordechai’s founding ing Tel Aviv by stalling Egypt’s memoration: Holocaust and declaration, states, “In con- advance along Israel’s south- Heroism Remembrance Day. A trast with the ghetto walls, ern Mediterranean coast. recent visit to Yad Mordechai we’ll erect a symbolic wall of Enemy missile strikes punc- (meaning: Mordechai’s Monu- work and creativity, and we’ll tured the tower, and a kib- ment) revealed its founders’ defend ourselves.” butznik would call the gush- embrace of the bravery of An- Upstairs, a stunning scale ing water symbolic of the spilt ielewicz and his fellow rebels, model of the Warsaw Ghetto blood of the 26 residents and despite the Nazis ultimately is arrayed across the floor. Israeli soldiers killed in the quashing the uprising. Herzberg and another muse- battle. Six months later, Israel Unlike Kibbutz Lohamei um educator, Nofar Shimshi, recaptured the kibbutz. Hagettaot (Ghetto Fighters pointed to the Jewish pedi- Alongside the tower stands Kibbutz), established north of atric hospital, a small syna- a statue of Mordechai Aniele- Akko in 1949 by other Jewish gogue, the Jewish cemetery, wicz, a leader of the Warsaw heroes of the Holocaust, Yad and a handful of houses as Ghetto uprising five years Mordechai was founded be- being the only structures rep- earlier, grasping a grenade to fore World War II, by young resented that remain stand- hurl at the Nazis. The statue Polish Jews. ing today. The Nazis flattened was situated there in 1951, to A Hashomer Hatzair youth nearly the entire ghetto dur- project a powerful statement movement kibbutz, it was lo- ing and after the uprising. together with the tower: Jews cated temporarily near Ne- Among the destroyed build- will defend themselves. tanya when word came of the ings was 18 Mila Street, under The theme’s dual contexts month-long Warsaw Ghetto which some of the Jewish fight- also overlay Yad Mordechai’s revolt. The news “created ers arranged living quarters. In JUF News, April 2019 39.

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