TO DIE IN JERUSALEM , livre ebook

Outskirts Press - Howard Schwach

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220 pages

English

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To Die In Jerusalem is a novel that delves into the heart of the conflict between American diaspora Jews and the right-wing government of Israel. Morris Gruenwald is eight years old and living in the Kisvarda (Hungary) when the Jews of the town are sent to the death camp at Auschwitz. There, he watches his mother and younger sister marched off to the gas chamber. He survives and is smuggled to the shores of Palestine, evading the British blockade. He is sent to a kibbutz and fights in the 1948 war. Morris believes that his entire family is dead and that his future lies in Israel. He fights again in Israel’s various wars against the Arabs – in Suez in 1956 and in Jerusalem in 1967. A random photograph of him praying at the newly-liberated Western Wall in 1967 is seen by his aunt, who left Kisvarda for the United States. His family brings him to America, where he becomes a pro-Israel Senator until an increasingly right-wing Israeli government and the feelings of his grandchildren bring him to the realization that he can no longer support an anti-democratic regime.

Sujets

20th Century

Jewish

Historical

Segunda Guerra Mundial

Jews

General officer

World War II

General

Fiction

Seconde Guerre mondiale

Informations

Publié par	Outskirts Press
Date de parution	29 juillet 2023
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781977267221
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0500€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

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TO DIE IN JERUSALEM A NOVEL All Rights Reserved. Copyright © 2023 Howard Schwach v1.0
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author and do not represent the opinions or thoughts of the publisher. The author has represented and warranted full ownership and/or legal right to publish all the materials in this book.
This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Outskirts Press, Inc. http://www.outskirtspress.com
Cover Photo © 2023 INTERFOTO/Alamy Stock Photo. All rights reserved - used with permission.
Outskirts Press and the "OP" logo are trademarks belonging to Outskirts Press, Inc.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Dedication
To Susi, my wife of 50 years who passed from us much too soon. Susi always nudged me to put the stories that were rattling around my head onto paper and to empty my bucket list by writing a novel.
To Rob and Amy, my two adult children who have taken care of me since Susi’s passing and are always nearby when I need them.
To my grandchildren, Ryan, Corey and Lauren, who have always been there for me as well and who have now all become productive adults in their own rights.
To my daughter-in-law Belinda, who has always been on my side as well as by my side.
To all those millions of Jews and others who were impacted by the Shoah. Their voices grow dim with the passing years and we need to hear their stories before they are stilled.
To those American Jews who continue to support the state of Israel while understanding and decrying the basic flaws in its right-wing’s government’s treatment both of its Palestinian population and its non-religious Jewish population as well.
Israel will never be a truly democratic nation until equal rights are held by all its residents.
Table of Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Twenty-four
Twenty-five
Twenty-six
Twenty-seven
Twenty-eight
Twenty-nine
Thirty
Thirty-one
Thirty-two
Thirty-three
Thirty-four
Thirty-five
Thirty-six
Thirty-seven
Thirty-eight
One
Washington, District of Columbia
January 6, 2021
Senator Robert Grossman was frightened and slightly disoriented by the action of the mob swirling around him.
He was frightened, unsure of his safety for the first time in many years, perhaps since he was eight years old and standing in line for the selection process at Auschwitz.
The feeling wasn’t pleasant.
The short hairs on the back of Grossman’s neck begin to stand at attention. His old military sixth sense was beginning to kick in.
Grossman was considered by his colleagues in the United States Senate to be one of the steadiest, least-flappable members of the body, but today he felt like this day might well be his last.
He touched the Kippah, the tradition headgear worn by religious Jews, pinned to what was left of his thinning white hair, perhaps for good luck, perhaps just his nervous habit when he was not sure of what was going on. Perhaps he just wanted to make sure it was still in place.
He saw one of his favorite colleagues, his friend Senator Jesse Slye of Texas, a Republican and an Evangelical Christian almost as old as himself.
Despite their political and religious differences, they were long-time friends who had worked together over the years to pass important laws, many of them impacting the future of Israel.
He wondered what Slye thought of what was going on around them. He suspected that Jesse was as angry and worried as he was.
Grossman subconsciously added the day to the few times in his long life that he was really afraid that his life would soon end: first in Hungary when he was eight years old and had a different name, a different life; He saw again the Nazi soldiers and Hungarian police officers who marched him and what was left of his family and friends to the Kisvarda train station before they were packed into cattle cars bound for "resettlement to the east;" then, again, when he arrived at the killing field called Auschwitz, as he watched his mother and young sister walk away from him for the final time; the fighting on Mount Scopus, Mitla Pass and again at the Lion’s Gate in Jerusalem. And, finally, when he was attacked by neo-Nazis in his home community in Queens.
"The people here today are not much different from those Nazi officers who pushed us to the gas chambers in Auschwitz," he thought to himself. In fact, many of them were emblazoned with Nazi tattoos. Some even carried flags with the dreaded Swastika emblazoned on them.
His thoughts went back to Auschwitz. He had thought to run to his mother and sister after a German officer waved them to the left, while he was waved to the right.
In that hell, left meant instant death, right meant a living death.
It seemed to him that today he was walking on auto-pilot, moving through the chanting crowd without seeing them, without thinking.
He flashed forward in his mind to Palestine, to the King David Hotel in Jerusalem exploding into a thousand pieces, with wounded and dying British soldiers all over the street, and then to the arid deadly road, when he and his fellow teenaged volunteers stood off against Jordanian regulars for several hours until a Palmach unit relieved them on the road to Mount Scopus and, finally, at the Lion’s Gate, the entrance to the Holy City as they drove Jordanian regulars off Ammunition Hill.
Those were the newsreels of his life. Now, that same feeling came once again and the disparate events became comingled in his memory.
He awoke from his reverie back to the real world of MAGA Washington, 2021.
He had never expected to experience real fear such as he was experiencing here in Washington, in the United States that had adopted him many years in the past, but this, he thought, not for the first time, was a new and unpredictable world that he lived in.
Despite the heavy overcoat he wore against the harsh January weather in Washington, he felt a trickle of perspiration fall from his neck down to the inside of his collar.
Grossman leaned heavily on his cane and walked haltingly towards the large Capitol Building where he and his fellow United States Senators were scheduled to join together with the members of the House of Representatives in upholding the Constitution by certifying the election of the new president of the United States.
The idea in his mind was that democracy itself stood mostly on the idea that a peaceful transfer of power after an election every four year was sacrosanct, He certainly expected that constitutional duty would be completed today, but he was beginning to have his doubts as the flag-waving, chanting, acolytes of the recalcitrant, deposed president crowded all the urban streets leading to the Capitol building.
Grossman thought that the odds were now more like fifty-fifty that the vice president would be willing and able to count the votes and declare the election over, that Jesse Biden would be the new president two weeks hence.
He caught up with Slye, who had stopped for a moment to wipe his forehead, sweating although the temperature was in the high 30’s.
"Can you believe this?" he asked his friend, raising his voice to be heard above the chants.
Slye turned to him and smiled.
"I’m glad for company," he said. "I was about to turn around and walk away."
"We can’t do that. If we do, the bastards win. We can finish our constitutional duty only if your colleagues in the Republican leadership don’t bow to the conspiracy lunatics and overturn the will of the electorate," he said. "It all depends on whether or not we can get into the building without being hung."
"Few of my Republican colleagues will agree with what is going on here today" his friend said sadly. "Some will, but most won’t."
"How about your president?"
Slye was silent for a moment. He looked around and Grossman could not tell his thoughts by looking at his face.
"These are his people and they’ll love him forever. I have to admit that he alone brought them here and brought Democracy to this low point."
"Yet you supported him," Grossman said, sounding more angry than he meant to."
Slye was basically a good man and often worked with Democrats on meaningful laws.
"Yes," Slye answered. "We all did. Part of it was a fear of opposing him and his base. Being reelected, holding power is the prime directive. It remains clear that if a Republican like me wants to be reelected, he or she had to go along with the right wing of the party and that meant Trump.
"However, another part of his hold in the party is the things that Conservatives wanted that he got done like the tax cut and the justices he put on the Supreme Court. You certainly should love the things that he did for Israel – moving our embassy to Jerusalem and allowing settlements on the West Bank."
Grossman looked pensive, but he was becoming angered by his friend.
"I’ll never understand how you evangelicals could support a man whose morals are in the gutter and are antithetical to everything you believe about family values," Grossman said angrily.
"Sometimes you have to forgive bad behavior for the good of an outcome you want. One of the tenets of my faith is forgiveness. That extends to Trump as long as the outcome is what we were looking for all along. Having three new Christian activists on the Supreme Court is what matters. "