THE HOLOCAUST IS OVER WE MUST RISE FROM ITS ASHES

the end of March 1942, gas chambers were operated here in full force. And we, thesoldiers of the Israeli Defense Forces, arrived here fifty years later, perhaps fiftyyears too late.” 1 These words must be read again and again in order to understandthe depth of ignorance that created this text. Barak seemed to suggest that only adelay prevented us from liberating the camps. It was a glitch, no more than tardiness.The fallacy is that at the time, Israel did not have an army or military capability; wewere not even a minor player in the world stage. The chief of staff had his timesmixed up, and the same happened to all of us. Many of us believe that the state ofIsrael could have, and should have, saved more of the slaughtered Jews of Europe.Except for one simple fact: the state did not exist then. Furthermore, it is unlikely thestate would have been established if not for the heaps of human ash that enabledmodern Jewish nationhood. The Shoah’s timing was paradoxically advantageous fromthe Zionist point of view. It propelled Israel into statehood even though the Zionistscould not save the Shoah victims. Had full salvation materialized, maybe the statewould have not been founded; Israel did rise from the ashes. Barak’s beautiful words,later in the speech, are true and accurate:Like a flash of lightning, the Shoah illuminated the essence of theReturn to Zion as a struggle for our very existence as a people, on theedge of the abyss . . . the insight that the struggle for the Land is notmerely about the space that is between our back and the sea, butabout our very right to stand as a people on the “end of line” uponwhich lies the entire Jewish fate. 2Barak’s words sounded exciting to me at the time. I liked his message and did notpay attention to the details. Only now, when I look for the distinction between themeaningful and the frivolous, do I discover the Israeli DNA’s defects as Barakrepresented so well. His words that day did not evaporate in the frosty Polish winterlike the breaths of the prisoners and the dead; they moved with the speed of soundand a decade later, they were re-expressed in an extravagant way when the IsraeliAir Force jets buzzed over the cursed place, the ashen planet of Auschwitz-Birkenau.An impressive ceremony by the former Allied powers took place on the sixtiethanniversary of the liberation of the death camps. On the ground, Israel’s Air ChiefBrigadier General Ido Nehushtan placed a wreath on the ovens in memory of more