September 11, 2015

Finest Hour 165, Autumn 2014

Page 25

By CYRIL MAZANSKY

Some years ago now, my younger brother visited Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Memorial, to record the names of my father’s family who had perished.


He found that they had already been recorded there as long ago as 1953 by one Leah Slonimsky, who was listed as living on a kibbutz by the Sea of Galilee. Months of research brought him into contact with her. He sent me her location a few days before I was leaving on a trip to Israel with my family.

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Arriving at the kibbutz, we were directed to her apartment. Her family later told us that she had been extremely emotional over our visit. As this diminutive woman of 80 emerged through her door, she threw her arms around me and stood weeping on the steps for several minutes. Over refreshments, she unfolded to us the story of my family’s annihilation.

Leah had been a lifelong and very close friend of my Aunt Channah. In 1934, she immigrated to Israel from Ponavez, Lithuania, where my father’s family lived as her neighbors. After the war, she was told the story of their murders, and of her own family, by a survivor who had joined the partisans and had witnessed their deaths.

One day in August 1941, exactly the time Sir Martin referred to, as the Germans were approaching Ponavez, local peasants herded the Jewish population into the forest. There they made them dig their own graves and undress. There, among others, my grandmother, my Aunt Channah, my Uncle Chaim and my Uncle Moishe, together with their spouses and my cousins, were cold-bloodedly shot. Please God may their souls rest in peace.

Leah gave me photographs of my family which she had kept since the 1930s. They are now permanently preserved in these walls. As we left, our guide, an extremely intelligent, sensitive, native-born Israeli, knocked me over with the statement: “It is stories like this that have made the State of Israel. Many of us believe that, if it were not for the Holocaust, there never would have been an Israel.” That is why this museum tour ends in creation of Israel. Good will always be victorious over evil.

Until today the nagging questions that I have always had, with all my deep respect for Winston Churchill, were: What did he know about this mass murder? If he knew, what did he try to do about it? Why was more not done by the Allies?

In a way, my Israeli guide had given me a partial answer. But the fact that Churchill gave the last ounce of his energy and force to destroy one of the most vicious barbarians that humanity has ever produced, and thus allowed the free world to survive, proved to me that, regardless of anything else, he had played an instrumental role in the ultimate salvation of the remnants of the Jewish people.

Until today, I rationalized my family tragedy with the overall British and Allied efforts. I knew that were it not for Churchill’s efforts and leadership, particularly in the dark days of 1940-41 when he was the sole bastion against that evil empire and its cadre of nefarious thugs, neither British nor Western civilization as we know it would have survived. Certainly the Jews, never mind Israel, would not now be in existence. And for me that is more than enough reason to revere an individual who must be considered among the greatest of non-Jewish friends of the Jewish people.

In fact, I found my conclusion was in agreement with the description of Martin Gilbert in his eloquent and moving tribute to Emery Reves, in the 25th Anniversary issue of Finest Hour: “No wonder that Reves saw Churchill as a savior: had Britain not taken up arms against Nazi rule in 1939, and persevered despite great odds throughout 1940 and 1941, and then led the coalition against Hitler until the Nazi system was totally destroyed, how many more millions might have perished is a question not for doubt, but for arithmetic.”

Today, Martin, you have gone even further. You have provided the factual evidence that Churchill gave everything of himself, personally and politically, not only to lead the destruction of that blight on humanity, but also very specifically to try to save the Jewish people. That he could do no more was the result of factors beyond his control. For me personally, you have provided the complete answer—rationally, intellectually and emotionally. And that is worth everything.


Dr. Mazansky, a radiologist in Boston, Massachusetts, is a longtime contributor to FH and a former member of the Board of Governors. This article is extracted from his speech of thanks after Sir Martin’s lecture, “Churchill and the Holocaust,” at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial in 1993, during the Tenth International Churchill Conference. Sir Martin’s remarks may be read online at : http://bit.ly/1nkcL5N.

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