Maccabean Heroism

Evidence of the supreme heroism of the Jewish pioneers in holding out against overwhelming odds is coming to light through a dozen official and private investigations, the eye witness accounts evoking unbounded admiration from the British officers and soldiers who, themselves, are veterans of the most sanguinary battles of the World War. As the patrols belonging to the Welsh Guards, the famous Green Howards Regiment, penetrate the evacuated Jewish villages, they become familiar with episodes of magnificent endurance and can find no other words but “Incredible!” “Unbelievable!” to express their astonishment.

The officer in charge of the Hebron area for pacification and “mopping up” operations declared cryptically, “The spirit of Judas Maccabee still goes on,” when eye witnesses, Arab and Jewish described the lone fight of a twelve-year-old Jewish boy in defending himself on the roof of a house, his sole weapon an iron bar, against eight frenzied Arabs wielding razor-edged Damascene swords, holding them at bay a solid hour until finally falling wounded in a dozen places. There are other instances of the calloused veterans of the Mons retreat and the Somme battles growing aghast at the ruthless slaughter of innocents and inoffensive old people, who were butchered in a heartless fashion after undergoing refined tortures surpassing the horrors of the Inquisition.

The concensus of opinion among the investigators is that the Hebron massacre found no parallel in history except the Sicilian Spers and the Petlura pogroms in the Ukraine.

It is now well established from the various investigators proceeding independently that the Hebron governor, an Arab, disarmed the police a few hours before the massacre, restoring arms only after corpses choked the Jewish houses and blood streamed in torrents. The police, when solely equipped with light batons, were incapable and unwilling to confront the horde of 3,000 Arabs who had worked themselves into a frenzy of religious fanaticism with the electric shout, “Allah is Allah. Death to the Jews.” The Jews in this town were wholly unprepared. They had discounted the rumors of a coming uprising, not believing that the Arab neighbors with whom they had lived in peace and amity for many years, whose sick were treated in the Jewish clinics, whose poor and distressed were alleviated with Jewish charity, whose children played with their own children, could resort to violence. A ghastly deception followed. Arabs stormed their homes the moment the Jews were preparing to go to the synagogue and were at prayer. The infuriated mob raged for hours in unbridled savagery. Little children were slaughtered, the oldest unspared. The only people who escaped this Hebraic Bartholomew, according to personal accounts given me by refugees in Jerusalem, were those who were covered by the falling corpses. In one house where Jews had congregated forty were slain. Arabs battered the doors and windows, finally breaking in. What took place inside nobody will ever know exactly, but from the chaos of corpses, the wounded, demented people who were found afterwards, it was an inferno of bestiality and bloodthirst. One Yeshiva student who came through the horror, Ralph de Cohen of 7230 Sheridan Road, Chicago, declared he had seen greater horrors than Dante in hell.

After the preliminary riots on Friday night, resulting in wounding one Jew, Rabbi Slonim went to the police to ask for protection. He was roughly told to mind his own business, says de Cohen. The next day, when the massacre was at its height, Jewish boys ran to the mounted police, clung around the necks of the horses, imploring to be taken away. The Arab troopers pushed them off and galloped away, leaving them to the mercy of the say-age mob. The blood orgy did not abate until the governor re-armed the police. Then a few shots scattered the entire mob. Attacks on the houses thereafter were not repeated.

The house of Rabbi Slonim, where (Continued on Page 4)

scores of Jews were slaughtered, will go down in Jewish history as the equivalent of the Black Hole of Calcutta. The Yeshiva student, Benjamin Sokolovsky, who, hidden across the street observed the raid, heard the blood-curdling cries of the Arab fiends as they hurled themselves on the cowering, indefensive old people. For hours terrifying screams, hardly human, emanated from the house. Then the Arabs emerged, wiping blood and sweat from their faces, saying: “Finished! No more Jews.” From the house came piteous moaning, prayers trembling with sobs. Then silence.

If 300 Jews were saved, they owed their lives to the few Arab Hebronites who observed the ancient Moslem principle, Dahlil, meaning: “Kill me first before touching anyone who sought shelter in my home.”