Witness to History
This slideshow with commentary says all you need to know about the birth of Israel. There is an associated article as well.
Ruth Gruber, working for the Department of the Interior, was a witness to history and the birth of a nation. Many of the displaced from the Holocaust were refused re-entry to their home country. The State Department, George Marshall, the English — none of them got it.
A young man approached us, his eyes bloodshot. In Romania, they killed 30,000 Jews in two hours, he said, his voice sounding as if it came straight from his guts. They took Jews to the slaughterhouse and hung them alive the way they hang cows, and they put knives to their throats and split them. Underneath them, they put a sign: Kosher Beef.
Gruber asked one of the children why he wanted to go to Palestine:
A 16-year-old orphan ‚Äî actually, we never used the word orphan because the term couldn’t convey the horrors these children had been through ‚Äî gave the most poignant answer. Everybody has a home, he said. The Americans. The British. The French. The Russians. Only we don’t have a home. Don’t ask us. Ask the world.
