“For us, there are no air raid shelters and the small children, Gila among them, help to fill sacks with sand. Picture for yourselves my emotions — that here is my Gila, aged 5, learning suddenly what war is, about enemies, about air raid shelters.”
So stated “Mrs. J. Gael of Herzlia, Israel,” in a letter written to her cousin in Milwaukee, Jean Biller, in 1967, just before the Six Day War, and shared with The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle (published in the June 30 issue).
May 1967 had started out looking like it would be just part of a typical year in the life of the Milwaukee Jewish community, as The Chronicle reported it.
The community marked Israel’s 19th birthday with an event on May 14 at the Jewish Community Center, then located on Prospect Ave.
The Milwaukee Jewish Welfare Fund, the previous name of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation, announced that it would hold its annual meeting on May 24 at Congregation Beth Israel, and announced that it had raised $1.6 million in the annual campaign.
A young Israeli violinist named Itzhak Perlman, then 22, was scheduled to give a recital at the Pabst Theater on May 6. A noted author and Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel, who had recently published a book “The Jews of Silence” about the Jews in the Soviet Union, was scheduled to speak Friday, May 26, at services at Congregation Emanu-El B’ne Jeshurun.
Then around May 16, news came of Egyptian troop movements in the Sinai Peninsula toward Israel; and Radio Cairo announced, “The peak hour has come. The battle has come in which we shall destroy Israel.”
‘A sleepless time’
As tension mounted and Israelis like Gael began to prepare for what was expected to be a horrible war, concern mounted in Milwaukee’s Jewish community as well.
“I was very emotional,” said Melvin S. Zaret, then the chief executive of the Welfare Fund. “For me it was a sleepless time.”
And he was hardly the only one, he recalled. “People were thinking in different terms than ever before,” he said. “If Israel was destroyed, we felt it was our end as Jews. The Jewish world could be destroyed.”
The Welfare Fund instituted an emergency campaign, and people responded. The late Marvin Klitsner, then president of the Welfare Fund, “practically went berserk,” said Zaret. “He became a furious campaigner.”
“Givers who weeks ago gave respectable and generous gifts are now responding … by doubling, tripling or even quadrupling those contributions,” The Chronicle reported.
Women came to offer their jewelry; one man thought about offering his house, said Zaret. The Chronicle reported that Hebrew schools were raising money; that some bar mitzvah boys were turning over all their money gifts; and that some local Jewish organizations offered funds from their treasuries.
Gifts came from non-Jews as well. The Chronicle reported that local Chinese Americans requested pledge cards for their donations.
Zaret said that when the crisis was over, after Welfare Fund staff members worked long hours, he tried to offer an overtime check to one of the Christian staff members, and she refused to accept it.
Above all, the Welfare Fund called an emergency meeting at the JCC on Monday, June 5 — which turned out to be the first day of the war.
Some 3,000 people attended, according to the June 9 Chronicle.
By the time the campaign was done, Milwaukee had raised a record $3.4 million total for 1967, including the annual campaign and the Israel Emergency Fund (which raised about $1.8 million), said Zaret.
Winter to spring
But for all the worry and concern, there may have been some forewarnings of the amazing victory that was coming. Gael in her letter told her Milwaukee cousin, “Keep smiling. We shall win!”
Zaret said that during the crisis days of May, he and other Welfare Fund executives and officials from all over the country traveled to New York City for meetings.
While there, Zaret said he saw Abba Eban, then Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, walking on the way to a meeting, and Zaret approached and spoke with him.
“I’ll never forget his calmness,” said Zaret. “I was shocked by his sense of calm…. There was I, sleepless, and he was so normal.”
Soon after the war started, there came announcements from Egypt that Israel was losing badly. “We were shivering,” said Zaret. “All the stuff we were getting was that Israel was being destroyed.”
But then on television there appeared Eban saying the exact opposite. “When Eban spoke, we went from the depths of winter, everything frozen, to spring and sunshine,” said Zaret.
And after the news of victory was certain, The Chronicle in a page one editorial in the June 9 issue wrote, “These are the days when Jews all over the world are filled with pride. A sense of exhilaration is being felt by all of us… What has happened this past week will be told from generation to generation. It will stand for all time as a sign of the eternal and indomitable spirit of the Jewish people.”
But if the victory was cause for relief and pride, Zaret soon after saw a sign that it might bring future trouble.
“Some months later,” Zaret went to Israel and toured the conquered territories. He said he saw sights and signs of the war, such as bunkers “red with blood” on the Golan Heights that Israel captured from Syria; and he bathed his feet in the Suez Canal from the Sinai Peninsula, which Israel had captured from Egypt.
But he also said he wanted to see the Gaza Strip, which Israel had captured from Egypt; and his guide warned him to keep the windows of the car shut and to look straight ahead; and the guide took out a pistol and put it on the seat at ready.
And even with that, Zaret said that he could see on the faces of the Gaza Arabs “hate like I’ve really never seen. It was a horrible sight.”
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