The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust

Rating:
Summary: Israelis and the Holocaust
Review: In the the span of only two weeks, Jews mark three separate modern holidays: Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), Yom Hazikaron (Israel's Memorial Day), and Yom Ha'atzmaut (Israel's Independence Day). These holidays, while observed separately, share many commonalities. This is a book that combines the Holocaust with the State of Israel, focusing on the issue of communal memory.

It is no secret that the modern Jewish State would not be in existence without the Holocaust having occurred. Yet, we often do not consider the relationship between Israel and Israelis to the Holocaust. Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust museum has long been the first stop in Israel for visiting world leaders, and virtually no Jew who visits Israel leaves without stopping there. However, as author Tom Segev documents in his study of Israelis and the Holocaust, the story of Israel's response to the Holocaust and its commemoration of the greatest atrocity to humankind is not so simple. Looking at the role of the Yishuv (the Jewish community in pre-1948 Palestine) during the Holocaust, how Israelis received survivors in the early years of the nation, and the struggle to establish national memory, Segev tells the story of the Israeli path from contempt to acceptance, and finally to compassion and commemoration.

Israelis reacted very critically to Segev's controversial book when it first appeared in Israel in the late 1980s. By the time it was translated into English and brought to the American audience, much of the controversy had subsided, yet it still makes for an uncomfortable reading, as it is very critical of Israeli society in the first few decades following World War II. As Segev describes, most Israelis were of the belief that their European relatives walked "like sheep to the slaughter." Also telling of the Israeli sentiment toward the Holocaust was the moniker "sabon" (soap) given to survivors during the first decades of Israel's statehood, taken from the myth that the Nazis made soap from the skin of Jewish victims in the camps.

Segev writes passionately about the refugees who found themselves despised by a society devoted to heroism. The new Jewish nation wanted to focus on the heroes of the Holocaust who in the face of death rose up to revolt (note that Yom Hashoah takes place on the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising). Much of Israel's identity in the years after the Holocaust was defined by the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Israel, the secret negotiations between Germany and Israel over reparation payments (how much for a human life?), and the revenge schemes against former Nazis (including a plot to poison the water systems of major German cities hoping to exact the same outcome on six million Germans). The decisions to create a national day of memory and to construct a Holocaust museum were major controversies in Israel. The focus was to be not on the sorrow of the demise of European Jewry, but rather on the stories of courage by some who chose to fight back. After all, to the brave young pioneers, the Holocaust was nothing short of embarrassment to the Jewish people.

This controversial and compelling book shows the divisive impact of the Holocaust on the identity, ideology, and politics of Israel. Segev was able to use many documents, previously classified by the Israeli government, for his research, and for this reason, many of his stories will come as a surprise to the reader. Was David Ben-Gurion involved in secret negotiations to buy Jews out of the camps? How did Prime Minister Menachem Begin's "survivor syndrome" affect his governing of Israel? In The Seventh Million, Segev answers these questions and expertly shows how the Holocaust continued to shape the experience not only of the individuals who experienced it, but also the experience of an entire nation.

It has taken much healing and newfound understanding for Israel to confront the Holocaust. We can now see how meaningful it is that immediately after Passover (our national commemoration of our ancestors' exodus from Egypt), we first remember our six million European ancestors, and then a week later, we pay homage to those who fell while defending our Jewish homeland only to advance to joy and merriment the next day celebrating another year of Israel's independence. As we learn from this important book, we must not take these acts of commemoration for granted.

Rating:
Summary: a rare and interesting view
Review: Segev, renowned for his other books 'One Palistine: Complete' and '1949 the First Isrealis' has tackled a subject that to my knowledge has never been fully documented in another single book.

the only problem with this book is that Segev is a biased writer, coming from the left of Isreali politics and taking a decidedly revisionist tone in his documenting the birth of the Isreali state. nevertheless this book is the finer of the three he has written for it documents such interesting aspects of the holocaust as the Eichman trial, the Kastern affair, the Havarra agreements and the treatment german jews(Yekkes) recieved on arrival in palistine. He rigourously documents a myriad of sources and illuminates the struggle that Isreal has gone through to come to grips with the Holocaust.

I strongly recommend this book because it touches on so many subjects and no other account will provide the reader with such a variety of historical events, from retribution to reparations.

Rating:
Summary: ISRAEL'S PAINFULLY BRUTAL, EARLY STRUGGLES FOR SURVIVAL
Review: The casual reader of Israel's history may assume the refugees from liberated Nazi death camps would be welcomed with open arms to help Israel's early struggle for independence. These and similar wrong assumptions are what Tom Segev's "Seventh Million" documents and chronicles. No doubt the controversial Israeli writer received condemnation from his countrymen for writing about this hitherto unwritten dark history of the internal political and ideological struggles among the Jews; fighting to create a homeland and safe haven. Some casualties of the sometimes fratracidal conflict were the very holocaust survivors in whose name Israel would be founded. While clearly Segev is "pro-Israeli" he believes the unflattering truth is preferable to post-holocaust mythology. And indeed, he makes clear that the internal and external human struggles amid superhuman sacrifices that the early Jewish pioneering-soldiers had to endure made their creation of a new state all the more miraculous. One cannot have a complete picture of Israel's history without enduring the painful truths by reading, "Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust."

Rating:
Summary: ISRAEL'S PAINFULLY BRUTAL, EARLY STRUGGLES FOR SURVIVAL
Review: The casual reader of Israel's history may assume the refugees from liberated Nazi death camps would be welcomed with open arms to help Israel's early struggle for independence. These and similar wrong assumptions are what Tom Segev's "Seventh Million" documents and chronicles. No doubt the controversial Israeli writer received condemnation from his countrymen for writing about this hitherto unwritten dark history of the internal political and ideological struggles among the Jews; fighting to create a homeland and safe haven. Some casualties of the sometimes fratracidal conflict were the very holocaust survivors in whose name Israel would be founded. While clearly Segev is "pro-Israeli" he believes the unflattering truth is preferable to post-holocaust mythology. And indeed, he makes clear that the internal and external human struggles amid superhuman sacrifices that the early Jewish pioneering-soldiers had to endure made their creation of a new state all the more miraculous. One cannot have a complete picture of Israel's history without enduring the painful truths by reading, "Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust."

Rating:
Summary: The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust
Review: The Shoah and the State of Israel is a very important topic. Tom Segev in his book The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust sets out to tackle this sad instance in Jewish History. Even though the book is written extremely well and has an enormous bibliography the book actually fails in adding any new insight to our understanding of the Shoah and Israel. All Segev does is regurgitate conspiracy and fact about this dark moment in History. Segev writes about every conspiracy and critic known about Ben Gurion and the Shoah from the extreme right to the extreme left and also the religious fanatics. What he leaves his reads is a 'mish mash' of stories that are questionable at best. Even though this book is a good intro for anyone who wants the read about the Shoah and Israel it is defiantly not the final word.

I recommend you read this book in addition to: The Transfer Agreement, Jews For Sale?, Ben Gurion and the Holocaust, and Perfidy.

Rating:
Summary: Superb and well-documented
Review: This book provides a refreshing new outlook on Israel's history and how the collective Israeli culture regards its history. Although at first it may seem controversial, it's impossible to ignore the volumes of references that Segev intelligently uses to support his thesis.

Rating:
Summary: Illuminating and in the end unsurprising
Review: Tom Segev's revisionist view of the history of Israeli identity was one of the most fascinating books I've read in a long time. The prevailing mythology of the kinship between Israel and the Holocaust is revealed to be surprisingly recent, as the Jews who found themselves, all of a sudden, not an oppressed minority but the pioneers of a settler society, began to look down on their benighted brethren back in Europe during the 1920s and 1930s (Jewish literature describing the time, notably Isaac Bashevis Singer's THE CERTIFICATE, testifies to the powerful pull of the Zionist idea in the sinister days leading towards Nazism and genocide). Segev's analysis of Zionist attitudes (as expressed in contemporary newspaper stories and editorials) during the Second World War is a particular eye-opener, as there were Jews who actually sympathized with some fascist ideas who got lost in the swirl of postwar politics. While the Israelis certainly have more historical right to their homeland than, say, the Afrikaners or European-Americans (and even that's debatable), it is useful to keep in mind that the construction of historical mythologies happens in Israel as it does everywhere else.