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Chelsea Now photo by Eva Deutsch Costabel

“The Brigade” author Howard Blum, who spoke at the Fashion Institute of Technology last week for Holocaust Remembrance Day

Origins of Israeli army recalled as state turns 60

By Mathilde Piard

Israel will have to be less violent if it is to prosper into the next century, warned author Howard Blum at a Holocaust commemoration event last week.

Speaking at an annual event organized at the Fashion Institute of Technology in Chelsea, Blum drew comparisons between the country and “The Brigade,” a book he authored in which three members of the Jewish Brigade take an emotional journey from revenge to redemption.

“We are here today because we recognize the sanctity of these storytellers, as well as their own solemn obligation to pay close and constant attention to listen and to pass on to the generations that follow all that we learned,” said Dr. Joyce Brown, president of FIT.

For the past seven years, the school has organized an annual event to commemorate Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, which was observed last Thursday. The speakers have been drawn from diverse pool, Brown said, but have always offered firsthand accounts of their varying experiences. Because May marks the 60th anniversary of the creation of the state of Israel, she said organizers thought it would be especially relevant to “draw the indelible connection between the Holocaust and the creation of the homeland for the Jews.”

“The Brigade” tells the story of the Jewish Brigades—predecessors of the Israeli Army—told through the eyes of three members who left Palestine to fight in Europe during World War II. Two of the men, after discovering the reality of concentrations camps in Italy, decided to take revenge by tracking down and executing Nazi SS soldiers. An encounter with an orphan changed them, and their mission then became to smuggle Jewish orphans from displaced-persons camps to Israel. In total 48,000 children were brought to Israel in this way.

By the time Israel declared itself in 1948, the children who had been brought from Europe had moved to the front lines of the first war Israel had to fight, having been taught to shoot by brigadiers on their journey to Israel.

“The story of these three men—what they did—is instrumental, integral to the creation of the state of Israel,” Blum said after he finished recounting the stories of the trio he wrote about. “At a time when Jews were being taken away and marched off to the camp, they helped to show the world that Jews can fight back, that Jews will not just be passive victims.

“Most importantly, they showed to themselves that one can make the move from violence to a more redemptive state of mind. And this last lesson, this moving from violence and total ferocity, is perhaps a move that the state of Israel will have to make, will have to learn if it’s going to survive for another 60 years.”

Chelsea resident Eva Deutsch Costabel, 83, a Holocaust survivor, designer and painter, said she was very moved by the talk because her cousin had been in the brigade. He had been in Italy looking for her, just like one of the characters in the book who searched for his sister all over Europe. However, she added she didn’t understand Blum’s comments about redemption.

“We get a very bad rap, you know, that we are cruel,” Costabel said. “Israelis are extremely kind. They are being attacked all the time. You know, if you are being attacked you have to fight back!”