I flew across the country, to Washington D.C., to attend a prestigious event…
The purpose of the trip was to receive an honor on behalf of my father, Leon Uris. I would be representing the Uris family at this prestigious event to be held at Washington D.C.’s Arthur Mellon Auditorium, to honor 70 individuals and groups of Americans, who have contributed the most to the birth and survival of Israel. I had three days before the event. The first afternoon…
Long overdue, I spent several hours visiting my father’s gravesite at Quantico, Virginia; for the first time since his funeral, fifteen years earlier. 95-degree weather and the stifling humidity added to an experience that overwhelmed my emotions, and brought welcomed tears of closure. Remembrance, feelings and family pride took the place of words—I was certain his soul had made the long journey, to be with me on this day.
A World War II veteran, his love for the Marines inspired two novels. Battle Cry, his fist book published—on my actual birthday; and Ohara’s Choice, his last book, with the last chapter unfinished—still in the editing process. Note: out of section 18 at the cemetery, his was the only grave that I saw, marked with a Star of David. Although he enlisted as a Jew, and fought in the Pacific Campaign, he placed his Jewish pride aside, for sanity sake, and wore the mask of a Protestant—to avoid persecution.
I walked fifteen miles on day two of my visit…
As a US citizen, I had not been the only one who came to grasp a better understanding of their roots. I would guesstimate half of the visitors were foreigners, having traveled across the globe to experience these massive monuments first hand. This was my first tour of DC, and it took on a powerful significance—not that I was an American, but that I was only one of many, part of the whole. Any prior connotation that I had, that my race, creed or color was better than anyone else’s, all seemed to fade amongst the masses. And together, side by side, all of us marched, from one monument to another, with an unstoppable will and determination.
Honest Abe Lincoln spoke from the heart…
Day three of my Washington DC trip…
During the day, I prepared for that evening’s historical event, of the 70th anniversary DC celebration of the formation of the State of Israel. What more solemn a place to regain my affinity with my Jewish roots (my father’s side of the family), than to tour the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The typical tour length lasted two and a half hours. Leaving no stone unturned, my tour lasted five hours.
Hitler headed the Nazi Party in 1933...
By Hitler’s death in 1945, the Nazi regime was responsible for the genocide of six million+ Jews and millions others, whom he and his followers deemed sub-human—also credited with the additional killing of 19.3 civilians and prisoners of war. In addition, 29 million soldiers and foreign civilians died as a result of military action in the European theatre—the deadliest conflict in human history. The wholesale massacre of the Jews started with classification, segregation, destroying businesses and professions, stripping them of all human rights, and eventually herding the Jews, and other undesirables, into mass executions. The above photo depicts one such gathering, where victims were shot and then buried. Sephardic Jews, my ancestors had lived in the Belarus Wolkowysk area of (the then) Poland since the Middle Ages. Those not murdered locally were sent to death camps.
Several of my ancestors perished in Treblinka and Auschwitz…
Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, the mentally ill and crippled, enemies of the state, and other undesirables were stuffed into cattle transport trains, starved without water for several days, until arriving at labor and death camps. Labor camps arrivals were further dehumanized, tattooed with numbers, and spent the remainder of the war frozen, starved, diseased, beat, defiled, tortured and medically experimented upon—and worked to death. Those who paused to catch their breath were shot. I could write several volumes of the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime. In brief: most arrivals at the death camps were immediately de-clothed and stripped of personal possessions, women’s hair shaved (for later sale to companies for mattress and quilt stuffing), and then they were ‘unknowingly’ escorted into underground gas chambers for delousing…
Nonstop gas chambers and crematoriums…
With thousands of new arrivals every day, the gas chambers and crematoriums murdered and disposed of millions of victims. The chambers were filled to capacity, and then the doors closed and gas was released. Some of the gasses took several minutes to take effect. Chaos, horror, panic and struggle ensued. Eventually, everyone died. The Nazi’s made every effort to deny any wrong doing, and went to great lengths in fear of being held responsible for war crimes. By the time the Allied Forces liberated the camps, the Nazis destroyed and buried most evidence of any wrong doing. Eye witness accounts by thousands of survivors, and years of unearthing the sites, proved all the allegations of genocide to be true.
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel, who was also honored at Israel’s 70th anniversary celebration, remembers those dark days in Jewish history…
U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower upon arrival at the death camps during WW II…
These museums, monuments and personal recollections stand as a reminder for us, and a clear message for our youth, to never allow genocide to happen again…
During a world research trip with my father, I experienced my first Holocaust Monument…
47 years ago, in 1971, at age eighteen, my father subjected me to the anguish that he dreaded most. After interviewing hundreds of Holocaust survivors, and met with thousands, having visited scores of museums and monuments, Mauthausen Austria was not a place he wanted to visit, it was a place he needed to visit.
Here are quotes from my memoir, The Uris Trinity:
“Dad wanted me to experience an Austrian Nazi prison work/death camp known as Mauthausen. The moment we walked through the front gate of the labor camp we were transported back in time to a nightmare that had occurred just over two decades ago. When I first arrived at the labor camp I didn’t know why anyone would maintain such a place as a monument. But the time I left, I fully understood why it must remain for all times as a memorial to the people who died there…”
“Walking through the labor camp, all of my senses came to life. As a whipping breeze took hold of the dust, I could smell the dried sweat and tears from the tortured prisoners. More blood had fallen there than rain. The tainted air filled my lungs with every breath and made me cry. I could hear faint echoes from a past era. These echoes of the past were now trapped inside my memory…”
“Since that day I’ve visited many such museums and monuments. Talking with holocaust survivors I listened to memories of events that would haunt them for the remainder of their lives. I commend their bravery for sharing those recollections with the world. Some things should never be forgotten—no matter how gruesome and horrid—lest we become complacent and forget…”
On the night of the 70th Anniversary celebration of the State of Israel, 70 contributors to the founding and survival of Israel were honored.
The Ambassador of Israel to the United States, H. E. Ron Dermer, is welcoming and honoring me, with a medal for my deceased father, Leon Uris, for his valuable contributions to Israel and its alliance with the United States. Besides writing the popular Israeli/Jewish novels Exodus, Mila 18 and QB VII, and in giving worldwide speeches in support of Israel and the Jewish people, my father dedicated his life to insure the survival of Israel, world understanding for the Jewish plight, and solutions for a lasting peace in the Middle East. It was an honor to represent my family, in having the privilege to accept this award on Dad’s behalf.
With 1000 guests in attendance, the event took place at DC’s Andrew Mellon Auditorium
The Ambassador, is lovely wife Rhonda, and his staff were a gracious delight throughout the evening. Security had been heightened as Vice President Mike Pence attended and gave the keynote address on behalf of President Donald Trump. Trump (not one of my favorite politicians, as I am a devoted Democrat) and his administration has been a devoted ally to Israel in moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, and in being the first US administration to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Articulate, Pence gave a gifted speech in recognition of Israel’s 70th birthday celebration, in that, even though our domestic politics differ, I humbly thank him for his inspiring words and ongoing support of Israel.
In my memoir, The Uris Trinity, I offered a humble solution to a lasting peace in the Middle East…
In one chapter of the book, I have a dream, to bring a lasting peace to Israel and to finally end the generational conflicts in the Middle East. In the sequence, I travel to Jerusalem, to the top of Mount Zion with my Dad, and give a speech to a million residents who gathered. These few words were no match for the thousands that my father so passionately wrote, and offered in hundreds of speeches…
The novel Exodus started a revolution, of understanding and recognition to the Jewish plight throughout history…
Ambassador Ron Dermer wrote:
An American author of historical fiction, Leon Uris was known for his commitment to historical accuracy and extensive research. The people of Israel can be especially grateful that this literary giant brought the early history of Israel to the attention of millions of people throughout the Western world, making them sympathetic to the newly established Jewish state. Most of all—his method of writing for all his novels, Uris’s connection with Israel was especially intense and passionate, reflecting his family’s history. His father, Wolf Yerushalmi, had fled Czarist Russia for Palestine in the early 1920’s, and, though eventually emigrating to the US, he was forced to change/shorten the family name at Ellis Island, from Yerushalmi, or “man of Jerusalem”—a family name his brothers who stayed behind in Palestine kept.
Leon Uris conducted more than 2,000 interviews in writing the book Exodus, and many of its characters are based on real people. The epic novel Exodus was so successful that it was made into a film directed by Otto Preminger and starred Paul Newman. It is said to have been the best-selling novel in the US since Gone with the Wind in 1936. By mid-1960’s sales exceeded five million copies. Today, the novel has been translated into over fifty languages, with sales over 300 million, and readership at one billion. Uris wrote other novels that told important Jewish stories, including QB VII about the Holocaust, and Mila 18, a depiction of the Warsaw ghetto uprising. In league with his Irish novel Trinity, Exodus remains his greatest work. A fictional portrait based upon true events, David Ben-Gurion said that it was “the greatest thing ever written about Israel.” My first memories had been sitting on his lap as he wrote Exodus. I recall tears falling from his eyes—hard to forget, chapter one in my memoir recalls those days.
I spent some time with honorees. One of them stood out amongst the rest, Ruth Wisse, a woman of matchless wit and passion…
Like my father, Ruth has stood against the prevailing intellectual currents, and defended the Jewish state from its detractors, serving as a mentor to students and other faculty who engage in honest study of Israel and work on its behalf. The Martin Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard is widely considered the foremost living expert on Yiddish literature.
Wisse has pioneered the serious study of antisemitism as a political phenomenon, including its effects on Jews themselves. She has criticized the tendency among Jews and non-Jews alike to assume that Israel or Jews must be at least partly to blame for attacks against them. In reality, she argues, antisemitism and hatred of Israel are elements in a political strategy designed by others to deflect form their own weaknesses and vulnerabilities. To apologize to such assaults by apologizing for alleged Jewish wrongdoing is to justify and feed an aggression that has single-mindedly fixed the Jews in its sights.
Retired, she continues, as my father did, in her lifelong dream to enlighten the masses, and uproot antisemitism from all walks of life, and into the history books where it belongs.
I visited with the descendants of other honorees, including the families of Senator Scoop Jackson, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt Jr., and many others…
It rained that night, and instead of taking a taxi, I decided to walk back to my Hotel, a mile away. Luckily, there was a nearby store where I purchased an umbrella. I felt alive, like never before. This would become my longest mile, one brimming with family pride, of reflection, and of recollection, for the lifetime of achievement that my father so valiantly offered, for the support of his people, out of respect for our ancestors, he selflessly gave all he had for the betterment of the human condition.
To top off the evening, my father came to me in a dream. He didn’t say anything, but his smile meant the world to me.
Find The Uris Trinity at Amazon.com
Read Michael’s blog/journal at” www.michaelcadyuris.com
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