An Essay for Rosh Hashana

A time to revisit a column by my late dear friend Barry Farber

[Note to Readers: I don’t usually publish a post directly on the heels of another, but I was reminded of this column, published near Christmas of 2009, making reference to an occurrence on Rosh Hashana of 1943. And now, on Rosh Hashanah 2024, with Israel at war and America’s steadfast commitment to defend its ally perhaps not all that steadfast, it seems a good time to re-publish it.

We are living under — and are perhaps poised to perpetuate — a Democrat regime that has financially enabled Iran to fund proxy attacks on Israel, a regime that, despite paying lip service to support for Israel, seems to tolerate, countenance and even encourage a new wave of anti-Semitism even within its own ranks, a wave that threatens not only Israel but Jews everywhere.

My dear friend Barry Farber (Z”L) was not only an icon of Talk Radio and Conservatism (you can view the Talkers Magazine tribute to him here, on which I appear at about 45:02), he was a great storyteller, and an historian; that’s especially important in an age when so much history is subject to revisionism or is simply no longer taught.

Shana Tovah to everyone! You don’t have to be Jewish for me to wish you (and the world!) a sweet and peaceful 5785!

ST]

Jews’ Best Friend by Barry Farber World Net Daily, Dec. 15, 2009

In this business there are phrasemakers and word-choosers.  And most of us flit back and forth and do a little of each.  A few paragraphs down from here a sentence will appear that sounds like a phrase made by a Jewish politician courting American Christian voters.  It is nothing of the kind.  Every word is carefully chosen.  You don't have to be Jewish to write this, but it does help take the edge off.

In our more than five thousand years of Jewish history we have had many enemies.  We know who they are, from Haman in ancient Persia (Iran!) through Hitler to Amadinejad in modern Persia, the Islamists and the new anti-Semites of the new American Left.  For some reason, it's true, we tend to spend more time teaching our young about our enemies than about our friends.

We Jews have had some great friends over those many centuries.  Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel once helped educate a young Jewish girl who was raving about those marvelous Danes during World War II who risked their lives to get the Danish Jews safely over to neutral Sweden after a "friendly" German in the Nazi German consulate in Copenhagen tipped off the Danish anti-Nazi underground that there would be a roundup on Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, 1943.  The score:  Gestapo 600, Freedom 6.000!  Wiesel gently complained that Jewish knowledge of their saviors seemed to stop at the Danes.  "Don't you know about the Bulgarians?" chided Wiesel.

And, indeed, the story of how Bulgarian King Boris -- a German ally, mind you! -- schemed and lied to protect the Jews of Bulgaria from deportation to Nazi death camps is Hollywood thrilling.  I'm not chiding Elie Wiesel.  I'm sure if he'd had more time he would have added praise and thanksgiving to the Finns, whose leader, Baron Mannerheim, threatened to abandon the northern sector of the Russian front unless Nazi boss von Ribbentrop ordered his German transport ship in Helsinki harbor to get out immediately, and empty, rather than deport the Jews of Finland to their final destination. 

Elie could have told her about other heroic friends of the Jews.  Albania, also a Nazi ally, is the only country in Europe where there were more Jews after the war than before.  The mountain "warlords" of Albania were livid with rage when they learned the German "intruders" wanted to take the Jews of Albania away.  They passed the word down, "No way!"  Other Jews elsewhere in Europe heard the Albanians were protecting their Jews and managed to make their way into Albania.  These aren't fables.  I've made it my business to get to know these heroes personally.

Are you surprised Hitler's allies protected the Jews?  Almost all of them did!  Jews who managed to get into the Italian zone of occupation were protected.  Unfortunately, the Italians occupied only the French Riviera and the western part of what was then Yugoslavia.  The Japanese, believe it or not, had a pre-war plan to bring one million German Jews to safety in Japan.  The outbreak of war limited the rescue to fifty thousand.  They lived unmolested in Japan all through the war.  Franco's Spain used its pro-German neutrality to save tens of thousands of Jewish lives.

And the foregoing is just an incomplete accounting of friends of the Jews during World War II alone!  Now, we're almost down to the line that sounds like Jewish sucking-up to Christians.  You're free to call it that.  But I dare you to deny its validity.

We Jews have had many enemies and many friends.  But the best friend the Jew has ever had in five thousand years of history is the American Christian.  Here, now, is "the line":  If it weren't for the American Christian there would be no state of Israel and no Jew alive, except those who successfully masqueraded as something else. 

What gives me the right to say that?  America was the "swing vote" that won World War II.  When America entered the war, Britain and the Soviet Union were two elephants dangling over a cliff with their tails tied to the same daisy.  America's un-bombable industrial complex, the Arsenal of Democracy, supplied and energized the effort of our embattled allies.  America's entry against Germany and Japan turned tired blood into sparkling burgundy.

The American military was 97% non-Jewish, because the American population was 97% non-Jewish.  If all those Christian American men had not gone un-complainingly to fight Hitler, the Jews of Kansas City and everyplace else would have suffered the fate of the Jews of Warsaw, Prague, Budapest, Zagreb; you get it.

Occasionally a Jewish member of my audience will challenge me and say, "Wait a minute.  Those American soldiers didn't go to war to save the Jews."  I didn't say they did. However, in fighting for America, American Christians made possible the state of Israel and Jewish survival!

Merry Christmas!