A THREE PART BOOK
ANTI-SEMITISM:
The Longest Hatred
WORLD WAR II
WWII PARTISAN FICTION TALE
SHELDON COHEN
Copyright 2017 Sheldon Cohen,
All rights reserved.
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-2895-6
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I am a first generation American. In 1904 my maternal grandmother and her three month old daughter (my future mother) left , Poland (pronounced Tiktin in Yiddish) and immigrated to the United States. My mother would claim to be born in Rochester, New York, her first residence in the New World. In her old age when the United States had the hundredth anniversary celebration honoring Ellis Island she changed her story, bragging that she had passed through the famous Island as an infant. My four year old father also arrived in 1904 from Tiktin.
As a youngster I heard stories about how my grandparents “fled the Czar.” At the time, Tiktin was a town in Poland under Russian dominance in a large geographic area known as the Pale of Settlement where Jews were forced to live. This area encompassed portions of a number of different Eastern European countries.
As I grew up, I heard other stories about my heritage including one told to me by my maternal grandmother about how, as a young child, she witnessed pogroms, including the beheading of a Jew by a sword wielding “Cossack” on horseback. From my step-paternal grandmother I learned of her twelve brothers and sisters lost in the Holocaust of World War II. She was fortunate enough to marry my paternal grandfather, a widower, in 1904 and they immigrated to the United States to escape the anti-Semitism of Czarist Russia. She left behind what would eventually become her 12 siblings, all of whom would perish in the holocaust. She told me this story when I was a young teenager, and it had a profound impact upon me. Later in life, I learned from my uncle’s daughter that my maternal grandfather deserted the Czar’s army rather than face the persecution of the Jewish soldier. Captured right before he was hoping to leave and join his family in the United States, a compassionate Russian guard said, “Let the young man go. His family is already there.” To that guard, I owe two more aunts, an uncle, and six cousins.
An interest in learning more about my heritage surfaced after I retired and had more time to reflect on such matters, so I studied the history of the Jews in Europe and their struggle with anti-Semitism, Hitler, World War II, the anti-Nazi partisan resistance, and the Holocaust. After much study I put together a non-fictional account of the history of anti-Semitism and World War 2, and a fictional account of Jewish families living through difficult times. I hope the reader will find it all informative and interesting.
Although the book has past relevance, in the present era of terrorism and rising anti-Semitism it has current relevance as well. He who fails to learn from the lesson of history is doomed to repeat it.
PLEASE NOTE
This book utilizes two different fonts:
Bold font represents actual historical events.
Regular font represents fictional events.
In this manner, I hope to clearly delineate between the actual history and its interwoven fiction
Dedication
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Sheldon Cohen has practiced Internal Medicine and served as a medical director of a Chicago suburban hospital and two Health Maintenance Organizations. He served as a quality consultant for hospitals in the United States, South America, Europe, and consulted with the Ukraine Ministry of Health for the development of a nationwide hospital accrediting body. As a matter of personal and family history, Cohen has had a lifelong interest in Jewish History and World War II, and is the author of 28 books including three other historical fiction books on these topics.
ALSO BY SHELDON COHEN
A Jewish Journey
A Jewish Story
The Twins
Brainstorm
Trojan Horses
Payback
Bad Blood (with James Baehler)
How to Get Sick and Stay Sick
The Monster Within
A Two Part Book:
1: Fiction-The Monster Within
2: Non-Fiction-Autoimmunity
How to Get Sick and Stay Sick
The History of Physics from 2000BCE to 1945
World War IV: Militant Islam’s Struggle for World Control
Grandpa’s Story-Poems and Grandkids Illustrate It Yourself Book
The Coming Healthcare Revolution: Take Control of Your Health
The Making of a Physician
All things Medical
The Slim Book of Health Pearls Series:
Am I at Risk? The Patient’s Guide to Health Risk Factors
Hormones, Nerves and Stress
Man the Barricades: The Story of the Immune System
Symptoms Never to Ignore
The Complete Medical Examination
The Prevention of Medical Errors
The Perfect Prescription (with Megan Godwin)
Challenging Diagnoses
Cancer: Past, Present, and Future
PROLOGUE
Who to hate and kill
Jew hating has been with us for many centuries. The main causes are religiously based, but also anti-Semitism has political, economic, social, cultural, and racial roots.
In ancient Rome, Jewish religious and cultural practices were tolerated until Constantine, the first Christian Roman Emperor, fueled anti-Jewish prejudice.
Christianity began its existence as a sect of Judaism rather than a separate religion. For Christians, Jesus was the Messiah, or son of God. For Jews, Jesus was a mortal man. This difference was reflected in the New Testament written in the first century A.D., a treatise interpreted as being a rejection of Judaism’s beliefs. By the second century, many Christians turned against Judaism even though it was Christianity’s parent religion. Early Christian thinkers accused Jews of being responsible for turning Jesus Christ, one of their own, over to Pontius Pilot and supported his crucifixion. This ‘God Murder’ is said to have condemned the Jews to wander the earth forever. In addition, Christians objected to the declaration made in the Torah as well as in rabbinical scripture that “Jews are a holy people whom God has chosen to be his treasured people from all the nations that are on the face of the earth.” This statement, understood to be blasphemous and arrogant, suggested that Jews considered themselves superior to those not Jewish. By the middle ages, persecution and harassment became the plight of Jews causing most of them to withdraw within themselves and avoid non-Jews. This only maximized their self-isolation interpreted