Mr. Robert Sandler shares that his Jewish History class had Chaim Levin come and tell the second part of his father’s Ben Levin’s dramatic story. Ben’s parents were killed by Lithuanians during the Holocaust when he was 14 years old and he became a partisan that destroyed German infrastructure & battled Nazis. Read part 1 of Ben’s story in Update #17 from his last visit by clicking the link.
Chaim shared with the class how after the war Ben joined the Irgun, a radical Jewish resistance group that smuggled Jewish refugees to Palestine. He was captured by the Soviets and put in a gulag in Siberia. Then, he traveled to Italy and eventually became part of the famous Altalena Affair. The Altalena was a ship carrying a huge cache of weapons and over a thousand Jewish immigrants into Palestine, but it was in the middle of a cease fire in the 1948 War. Ben Gurion controversially ordered his army to fire on the ship & 16 Jews died and the ship sank. For more info on how a young Israel almost descended into civil war five weeks after its birth, read this article. The students were riveted. The next topic in class is the Six Day War and how it transformed the Middle East. Much thanks to Mr. Sandler for always providing such detailed and interesting narratives each week! (photos courtesy of Mr. Sandler)
