United Israel

A Bavarian “GroBe Kreisstadt” (Country Town) of 34,000 is located in southeastern Germany. It’s a quiet, dreamy country idyll nestled not far from Munich, the metropolis with over a million inhabitants. It’s also a town with a long and rich history. The Celts settled the land from the 5^th century on and gave the rivers the names that they still bear today: Amper,Wurm and Glonn. Then came the Romans for a period.

In 805 the community was made up of a manor, a church, a mill and 6 farms. It was located at the junction of two landscape regions: in the south, a broad area of impenetrable marshland; in the north, wooded, fertile, hilly country. If you go down to the foot of the Old Town today, you can visit the tavern which still bears the name of that ancient mill, marking the start of communal history: The Steinmuhle.

From the 12^th century on many Bavarian kings would rule the area. At the death of Count Konrad II in 1182, his possessions passed to the House of Wittelsbach. For over 700 years, the Wittelsbach dukes and electors governed the fate of the market town and its inhabitants-for better and for worse. Between 1558-1573 Duke Albrecht V ruled and built the huge four-winged Renaissance palace in place of the old Gothic fortress. Part of this palace remains today as a superb attraction. Under Maximilian I (1573-1651), the market town experienced its worst time. It was plundered by Swedish troops 4 times within a period of 15 years.

With Napoleon, the little town’s era as the summer residence of the Bavarian princes came to an end. Still, it remained what it actually was: a small town where the farmers came to the cattle market and a town with renowned breweries and comfortable taverns.Then came an unexpected period of glory of a completely different kind. The painters arrived.

Only a few painters arrived in the 40’s and 50’s, but then starting around 1870, they stormed into town. Painters had discovered the landscape; they wanted to get away from their studios and out into nature. Hundreds of them made the pilgrimage from Munich, fascinated by the nuances in color of the moor landscape, in love with the rural idyll. There were famous names among them: Carl Spitzweg, Max Liebermann, Lovis Corinth, Ludwig Dill, Adolf Holzel and Arthur Langhammer. It would become the most important German artists’ colony.

A huge powder factory would be built during World War I on what was then the eastern edge of town. Thousands of workers came during the war to manufacture ammunition for the battlefields of Europe. After the war they lost their jobs: The Treaty of Versailles prohibited the manufacture of war materials. It would become a needy community. In 1928, 1,400 of the 7,100 inhabitants were dependent on public welfare, but a strong labor movement was also developing across Germany. What was soon to happen was not destined to bring good to the little town.

The lovely little Bavarian country town has a name.

That name is Dachau.

The presence of the empty halls of the powder factory was one of the reasons why Heinrich Himmler, the Munich Chief of Police, chose to erect the first Nazi concentration camp in Dachau.

The Nazis seized power on January 30, 1933. The concentration camp became operational on March 22, 1933. This would become the first among other camps throughout Europe to isolate enemies of the National-Socialist regime: political opponents, clergymen, so-called undesirable elements and offer a “final solution to the Jewish question”.

I had the opportunity to visit Dachau in 1993 and witness firsthand the memorial site of this reign of terror. It is an experience one is not likely to forget.

In 1937, the camp originally planned for 5000 persons proved to be too small. The prisoners had to build a larger camp which was completed in 1938. Between March 22, 1933 and April 29, 1945, more than 206,000 prisoners were registered in the official records, however, many prisoners were taken to Dachau without being registered. The exact figures are unknown.

Over 32,000 died, through torture, execution, hunger or epidemics. Horrible atrocities took place here. The experimental station of Dr. Rascher was set up in Block 5 where high pressure and exposure experiments were practiced on defenseless prisoners. Professor Schilling had prisoners infected with Malaria agents. Bio-chemical experiments were also carried out. Many of these experiments resulted in death.

The mortality rate among the prisoners increased so rapidly that the crematory constructed outside the compound in 1940 proved to be too small and a larger one had to be built by the prisoners in 1942.

Upon orders of the SS Economic Administration Main Office in Berlin, a gas chamber was installed. This gas chamber, camouflaged as a shower room, was not used. The prisoners selected for gassing were transported from Dachau to the Hartheim Castle, near Linz (Austria) or to other camps. In Hartheim alone, 3166 prisoners were gassed between January 1942 and November 1944.

The name Dachau, the lovely 1200 year old town became synonymous the world over for the inhuman error of the Nazi regime. On the 29^th day of April, 1945, American troops liberated the concentration camp. The surviving prisoners in their weakness cheered their liberators and the town too could hope for a new and democratic start.

At the end of our visit, we paused for a moment of silence as my wife Rebecca placed a single red rose beneath the statue of “The Unknown Prisoner” memorial at the former crematorium. Words failed.

If you were to visit Dachau today, perhaps you would be welcomed, as we were, with a message:

“You have come to Dachau to visit the Memorial Site in the former Concentration Camp. I should like to welcome you on behalf of the Town of Dachau. Innumerable crimes were committed in the Dachau Concentration Camp. Like you, deeply moved, the citizens of the town of Dachau bow their heads before the victims of this camp.The horrors of the German concentration camps must never be repeated! After your visit, you will be horror-stricken. But we sincerely hope you will not transfer your indignation to the ancient 1200 year old Bavarian town of Dachau, which was not consulted when the concentration camp was built and whose citizens voted quite decisively against the rise of National Socialism in 1933. The Dachau Concentration Camp is a part of the overall German responsibility for that time. I extend a cordial invitation to you to visit the old town of Dachau only a few kilometers from here. We would be happy to greet you within our walls and to welcome you as friends”

Dr. Lorenz Reitmeier, Mayor

GroBe Kreisstadt Dachau

A horrible reality burned into the collective conscience. A little country town with pity.

Ralph Buntyn

October 6, 1981. Another of those days that was destined to live in infamy and one that would make a lasting impression on me. I can still recall that suddenly out of a hushed silence, there were gasps, screams and cries that erupted from the passengers. One woman, sobbing uncontrollably, cried out “there goes the peace”.

The day had progressed uneventfully as my wife Rebecca and I boarded our El Al plane in Tel Aviv for the short flight to Cairo, Egypt. After spending ten days in Israel, we planned to stay in Cairo for four days where we planned to visit the Cairo Museum and take in the sites of ancient Egypt. Just before we were scheduled to land the announcement came over the PA system, President Anwar Sadat had been shot and critically wounded while attending a military parade. The moment remains forever etched in my memory. What followed was the reality that we were witnessing one of the defining moments in modern Middle Eastern history. After finally landing, we experienced more of the display of raw emotions and anguish amid a highly tense situation as we made our way through the airport and finally to the Cairo Concorde Hotel where we would be staying.

We were confined to our hotel for twenty-four hours as a part of the security clampdown around the city. I still have pictures today, taken from the window of our hotel room, of Egyptian soldiers and security guards stationed around the hotel and the tanks and military vehicles that rumbled down the streets to wherever. We later watched as planes landed bringing world dignitaries to attend the state funeral, including Air Force One as it arrived with the U. S. delegation.

Looking back at the historical facts of that period, I am reminded of what David Horowitz had so often said; “truth is often stranger than fiction”.

Anwar Sadat was born on Christmas day, 1918 in the Nile Delta village of Mit Abul Kom, the son of an Egyptian clerk and his part Sudanese wife. It was the year the War in Europe ended and the year that Egypt demanded, in vain, total independence from Britain. A religious child, he attended both Muslim and Coptic Christian schools. Later while attending a Military Academy, one of his classmates was the late President Gamal Abdul Nasser.

All his life, Sadat flirted with danger. His courage and a kind of reckless self assurance was one of the keys to his success. He took desperate chances as a young man, plotting against King Farouk and the colonial domination of Great Britain. As President, Sadat infuriated the Soviet Union when he abruptly threw 18,000 Soviet military personnel out of Egypt. In 1971 he raised the possibility of signing an agreement with Israel provided all the occupied territories captured by the Israelis were returned. With no progress toward peace, Sadat began to say that war with Israel was inevitable. Throughout 1972 and much of 1973, he threatened war unless the United States forced Israel to accept his interpretation of Resolution 242 - total Israeli withdrawal from territories taken in 1967. In April, 1973 Sadat again warned that he would renew the war with Israel, the same threat he had made in 1971 and 1972. Most observers remained skeptical of the rhetoric.
On October 6, 1973 on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar and during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan it happened. Egypt and Syria opened a coordinated surprise attack against Israel. The equivalent of the total forces of NATO in Europe was mobilized on Israel’s borders. On the Golan Heights, approximately 180 Israeli tanks faced an onslaught of 1,400 Syrian tanks. Along the Suez Canal, fewer than 500 Israeli defenders with only three tanks were attacked by 600,000 Egyptian soldiers, backed by 2,000 tanks and 550 aircraft. Nine Arab states, including four non-Middle Eastern nations actively aided the Egyptian-Syria war effort. The Soviets gave wholehearted political support to the Arab invasion while pouring weapons into the region. This would lead to the October 12 emergency airlift order of supplies and arms by U. S. President Nixon. Between October 14 and November 14, 1973, the sons of Joseph would provide 22,000 tons of equipment transported to Israel by air and sea. The airlift alone involved 566 flights. To pay for this infusion of weapons, Nixon asked Congress for and received 2.2 billion in emergency aid for Israel.

Thrown on the defensive during the first two days of fighting, Israel mobilized its reserves and began to counterattack. What followed, history tells us, was an epic period of intense engagement. In the greatest tank battle since the Germans and Russians fought at Kursk in World War II, roughly 1,000 Israeli and Egyptian tanks massed in the western Sinai from October 12-14. On the 14th, Israeli forces destroyed 250 Egyptian tanks in the first two hours of fighting. By late afternoon the Israeli forces had routed the enemy, accomplishing a feat equal to Montgomery’s victory over Rommel in World War II. By October 18th, Israeli forces were marching with little opposition toward Cairo. About the same time Israeli troops were on the outskirts of Damascus. This reversal of fortune would bring us to the brink of nuclear war.

The Soviets began to panic and on October 24th they threatened to intervene in the fighting. Responding to the Soviet threat, Nixon put the U. S. military on alert, increasing its readiness for deployment of conventional and nuclear forces. The danger of a U. S –Soviet conflict was real. In fact, this was probably the closest the superpowers had come to a nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. What followed was an intense period of diplomatic efforts to gain a cease-fire with which Israel reluctantly complied, largely because of U. S. pressure, and because the next military moves would have been to attack the two Arab capitals, action few believed to be politically wise.

By the end of the fighting, 2,688 Israeli soldiers had been killed. Combat deaths for Egypt and Syria totaled 7,700 and 3,500, respectively.

Ironically, the United States had helped save Israel by its resupply effort and then rescued Egypt by forcing Israel to accept the ceasefire. In January 1974, Israel and Egypt negotiated a disengagement agreement thanks to Henry Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy.

The risks Anwar Sadat later took for peace overshadowed his risks in war. In 1977 defying the wrath of most of his fellow Arabs he did the unthinkable and traveled to Jerusalem, the heart of his enemy’s camp, and so began a march to a Mideast peace. His performances in Jerusalem and at Camp David shattered an insidious myth: that Arabs and Israelis could never negotiate face to face. In 1978 Sadat shared the Nobel Peace Prize with another old conspirator turned statesman: Menachem Begin.

On October 6, 1981, exactly eight years to the day he launched the Yom Kippur attack on the Jewish nation, Anwar el-Sadat, the villager who hero-worshipped Mahatma Gandhi as a young boy and would one day rise to lead Egypt, this one who would dare seek peace with the Jewish nation, would be cut down by the enemies of peace. The fanatic Islamic group called Al Taqfir wal Hijra, the largest such fundamentalist group in Egypt and whose roots were tangled in the fanatic Muslim Brotherhood, would darken the whole political landscape of the Middle East.

Providence would permit Rebecca and me to be present during this tragic unfolding of events covered and chronicled by copies of the October 7-8, 1981 issues of The Egyptian Gazette which we still retain.

We did indeed get to visit the Cairo Museum, an incredible experience. We also visited the timeless great pyramids and the Sphinx. The Sphinx, sitting as if guarding the tombs of past Pharaohs, with a weathered face and empty stare, like one who had seen too much.

Ralph Buntyn

We are very pleased to unveil this new BLOG feature on our United Israel Web site. In this Blog we plan to regularly post a variety of materials including personal, historical, and biblical reflections, current events, books and media reviews, and materials from the United Israel World Union archives, including the David Horowitz Memorial Library. This Blog is a composite production of the officers of UIWU as well as other invited authors and contributors. Views expressed are those of the writers.