From the Holocaust to a New Dawn by David Shachar, Gefen Publishing House, 2011, ISBN 978-965-229-546-0; 198 pages, No price listed.
By Donald H. Harrison
Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO– David Shachar is not a world leader, nor are his Holocaust experiences particularly extraordinary, although they are, of course, tragic. Yet Shachar has written a personal memoir that admirably portrays a period in world history– that of the circumstances leading up to the founding of the modern Israel, and the new nation’s efforts to develop its infrastructure and economy.
After migrating to Russia in the wake of the division of Poland by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, being sent with his family to frigid Siberia, going in the post-war period to France to train for the IDF, and eventually to Israel in time to serve in the independence war in the Negev, Shahar eventually built a life for himself as a public projects engineer and electronics store operator in Kiryat Shmona and later represented Israel Aircraft Industries in Italy.
His portrait of Kiryat Shmona, a town near the Lebanese border largely populated by Arabic speaking Jewish refugees from North Africa, provides an interesting slice-of-life portrait of Israel in the 1950s.
Shachar came to public attention in his successful campaign to have a memorial built to the Jews, including his father, who were shot to death in September 1939 in the Polish town of Krasnosielc — one of the first instances of mass murder by the SS. He unearthed records indicating that even the German Army commander assigned to the area was so shocked by this that he recommended the perpetrators tried for court martial, which they were but given a light sentence. The memorial stands close to the mass burial pit and synagogue where approximately 50 Jews were executed in the opening days of World War II.
Shachar, né David Himmelfarb, next moved on to a project to memorialize all the Jews who fought and died with the Polish Army against the Nazis — a project that was subjected to various levels of intrigue and bureaucracy before it came to fruition at Israel’s national cemetery at Mount Herzl.
While Shachar had the opportunity to meet several of Israel’s prime ministers and presidents, his account of ordinary life in the Negev, the Galilee, and later in Ramat Gan in the greater Tel Aviv area is what will make his memoir of lasting interest. I was struck by his observation that as a new immigrant who had survived the Holocaust, he felt scorned by native Israelis, who seemed to consider all who were slaughtered in Europe as “sheep” and all those who survived as possible collaborators. Only after serving in the military did he start to feel accepted, Shachar writes.
Assigned by Israel Aircraft Industries to a military project in Italy, Shahar wrote of the clash of values between the Italians’ love of luxury, fine clothes and the good life, versus his fellow Israelis’ emphasis on simplicity and pragmatism.
It was not the first time he had to work his way through a clash of values. In Poland and Siberia, he had grown up in a religious home, but was drawn to a more secular life style. He felt grateful that his mother, while observant , did not try to force her religious beliefs on him. As long as their actions weren’t sinful, she backed her children however they wanted to direct their lives.
SAN DIEGO– David Shachar is not a world leader, nor are his Holocaust experiences particularly extraordinary, although they are, of course, tragic. Yet Shachar has written a personal memoir that admirably portrays a period in world history– that of the circumstances leading up to the founding of the modern Israel, and the new nation’s efforts to develop its infrastructure and economy.