Hero of the Week 102

 Welcome back viewers

This week's hero is...

Yonatan Netanyahu 

Yonatan "Yoni" Netanyahu was born on March 13, 1946, in New York City. Three years later, his family moved to the new country of Israel. After he graduated highschool, Yoni Netanyahu joined the Israeli Defense Forces in 1964. He saw combat in the Six Day War of 1967 and the Yom Kippur War of 1973. By 1976, he was a highly decorated and experienced soldier. However his most important act of valor would not occur on a battlefield in the Middle East, but at a small airport in Uganda. An airport called, Entebbe.

On the morning of June 27, 1976, Air France Flight 139 departed from Tel Aviv with 246 passengers and 12 crew members. After landing in Athens, Greece it picked up an additional 58 passengers and departed for Paris at 12:30. Just minutes after takeoff, four armed people stood up from their seats and hijacked the plane. They then forced the crew to deviate from their current course and land at Entebbe Airport in Uganda. An additional four hijackers were waiting for the plane's arrival. The hijackers demanded the release of 53 Palestinian militants who were incarcerated for terrorist attacks or plots against Israel. They also demanded a ransom of $5 million US dollars. If these demands were not met, the hostages would be executed on July 1.

Horrified by the hijacking, the Israeli Prime Minister (Yitzhak Rabin) demanded the Ugandan President (Idi Amin) rescue the hostages and arrest the terrorists. To his astonishment, Amin not only refused, but sent the Ugandan Army to aid the terrorists. As soon as the Ugandan Army arrived, the terrorists began sorting the passengers and crew into two groups. One group was comprised of Israelis and non-Israeli Jews. The second larger group was comprised of gentiles. 

Over the next five days, negotiators were able to convince the hijackers to release half of the hostages (mostly from the gentile group) and extend their deadline to July 4. What the hijackers didn't know was that while they had been negotiating with the Israeli government, a small group of the Israeli Sayeret Matkal (special forces) had landed in the neighboring country of Kenya. By July 3, they had successfully snuck into Uganda and drove to Entebbe. The man leading this force was, Yonatan Netanyahu.

Early on July 4, the commandos launched their assault. With Netanyahu at the head, they first attacked the Ugandan soldiers surrounding the airport. After killing most of the Ugandans, the commandos turned their attention to the terrorists who were located in the airport's terminal. They simultaneously burst through two entrances and gunned down all seven of the terrorists before the latter had chance to aim their guns at the hostages. The commandos quickly gathered up all the hostages and called in four large C-130 transport planes to take fly all them all out from Uganda. As the liberated hostages were being loaded, the commandos turned their attention to eleven Ugandan fighters parked nearby. To ensure the Ugandans would not pursue them, they quickly destroyed the fighters and boarded the C-130s. Less than an hour after it had began, the operation was over. 

During the rescue, all seven terrorists and around 40 Ugandan soldiers were killed. Sadly four of the hostages had also been killed in the crossfire. During the assault,  Lieutenant Colonel Yonatan Netanyahu had been shot by Ugandan soldiers perched in the Air Traffic Control tower. The bullets had pierced his heart and he died on the tarmac. He was the only rescuer to die in the operation. Two days later, he was buried in Jerusalem with full military honors. Thousands of Israelis (including the surviving hostages) attended his funeral. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Distinguished Service. On March 31, 2009, Yonatan's younger brother (Benjamin Netanyahu) was sworn in as Israel's Prime Minister. 

Today, Yonatan Netanyahu is remembered as an international hero. He is seen as a patriotic soldier who nobly gave his life so that others could live. Directly due to his courage and valor, more than 100 people were saved from being victims of terrorism. He truly is someone to be held in high regard.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/yonaton-quot-yoni-quot-netanyahu

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/25/entebbe-raid-40-years-on-israel-palestine-binyamin-netanyahu-jonathan-freedland

https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/we-had-ensured-we-would-shoot-first-remembering-the-entebbe-raid/story-nlAjymYVrg976XIzE0J5OJ.html

Hero of the Week 101

 Welcome back viewers

This week's hero is...

Harold Garman

Harold Garman was born on February 26, 1918, in Fairfield, Illinois. In April 1942, he enlisted in the American Army as a medic in the 5th Infantry Division. In August of 1944, he found himself standing on the bank of the Seine River near Montereau, France. Little did he know, that he was about to face fierce combat.

On August 25, small boat was being used to ferry wounded American soldiers across the Seine. All of a sudden, a hidden German machine gun opened fire on the Americans by the river. The wounded men on the boat quickly scattered into the water to avoid the enemy fire. Most of them were able to swim to opposite shore. However, three of the wounded soldiers were unable to swim due to the severity of their wounds. Realizing that they would most certainly be killed if they remained on the river, Private Garman decided to do something that seemed utterly suicidal.

Garman dove into the Seine River and swam out to the drifting boat. Once he reached it, Garman grabbed a rope and began pulling the boat across the Seine. With the three wounded soldiers still clinging to it, Garman towed the boat through a hail of enemy bullets. Despite being shot at numerous times, he was able to successfully rescue all three of the wounded without receiving any wounds himself. Garman's brave act of valor also inspired the rest of his comrades to get into other boats and row across the Seine and attack the enemy machine gun. Within just a couple minutes, the gun was knocked out.

For his extraordinary heroism in diving into a river, swimming through a hail of gunfire, and rescuing three severely wounded comrades, Private Harold Garman was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. After the war, he received an honorable discharge and returned to Illinois in 1946. He lived a quiet life with his family until his death on August 13, 1992. 

During the entirety of World War II, approximately 464 American servicemen received the Congressional Medal of Honor for courage and valor above and beyond the call of duty. As of April 2021, only one is still living. As the world's largest conflict continues to become a distant memory it becomes more imperative to tell the stories of those who served. Stories of great men like Harold Garman are ones that definitely must be told and will always hold great value.

https://www.defense.gov/Explore/Features/story/Article/1962524/medal-of-honor-monday-army-tech-5th-grade-harold-a-garman/

https://www.ammoland.com/2019/10/medal-of-honor-monday-army-tech-5th-grade-harold-a-garman/#axzz6s2OOrx7s

https://www.sofmag.com/army-tech-harold-garman-swam-into-enemy-machine-gun-fire-in-the-seine-wwii-moh/

Iconic Image 4

 Welcome back viewers

The iconic image for this month is...

The Warsaw Ghetto boy

Intro

This photograph depicts a group of unarmed people (mostly women and children) being forced from a building into a street. They are being held at gunpoint by heavily armed soldiers. At the centerpiece of the image is a small boy who stands slightly away from the crowd with his hands raised above his head. The look on his face is one of complete terror. Behind him, an emotionless soldier aims a gun in the boy's direction. This image would ultimately come to symbolize a horrific chapter of human barbarity. One that continues to haunt humanity to this day. 

Part I

In April of 1943, thousands of Jews were imprisoned in the Warsaw ghetto. After most of them had been deported to death camps, the ones that remained decided to revolt against their captors. Despite being severely outnumbered and outgunned, the Jews in the Warsaw decided that they were going to escape from the ghetto or die trying. After receiving weapons and ammunition from the Polish underground, the Jews launched their attack on April 19.

Although the nazi guards were caught by surprise (they thought the Jews had been broken by now), they quickly retaliated. Led by a fanatical member of the German SS (Jürgen Stroop), they attacked the ghetto with tanks and planes. After nearly a month of fighting, Stroop demanded that the Jewish insurgents surrender. When the latter refused, he ordered the Warsaw ghetto to be burned down. When it was over, nearly all of insurgents were either dead or captured. Only about 200 managed to successfully escape.

As the ghetto was being liquidated, Stroop ordered his subordinates to document his, "triumphant victory". Hundreds of photographs and hours of video footage were taken inside the Warsaw ghetto as it was being liquidated. At least 50 of these photographs were published in an infamous 125-page report labeled the, "Stroop Report". It was originally called, "Es gibt keinen jüdischen Wohnbezirk in Warsaw mehr! (The Jewish Quarter in Warsaw is no more!)". In this report, Jürgen Stroop (and other notorious members of the SS) bragged about crushing the uprising, used dehumanizing terms for the Jews, and presented the photographs with racist captions. One photograph in particular however, would ultimately cause outrage around the world and become an iconic symbol of the barbarity that was the Holocaust. 

Part II

Since it was first developed there have been numerous efforts to identify the ghetto boy. At least four different boys were initially identified. The most credible of these four was, Tsvi Nussbaum. 

Nussbaum had been born in the year, 1936. He and his family went into hiding, but were caught and arrested in 1943, at a roundup near a Polish hotel called, "Hotel Polski". Nussbaum described being ordered to raise his hands high above his head during the arrest and forced at gun point through a courtyard. He was then separated from his family and taken to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. He survived to be liberated and testified about his experiences. For many years, he was believed to be the Warsaw ghetto boy by the general public. However, recent investigations by historians seem to have disproven this. 

If one were to compare Tsvi Nussbaum's photo to the boy in the ghetto, they would notice that the latter has attached earlobes. Nussbaum's are clearly detached. And by his own testimony, Nussbaum admitted that he and his family had been arrested at the Hotel Polski, which was not located in the Warsaw Ghetto. He also claimed to have been arrested on July 13, 1943. At least two months after the ghetto uprising had been put down. When all of these factors are considered, it becomes clear that Tsvi Nussbaum, could not have been the boy in the photograph. When asked about it, Nussbaum replied, "I am not claiming anything - there is no reward. I didn't ask for this honor. I think it's me, but I can't honestly swear to it. A million and a half Jewish children were told to raise their hands". Tsvi Nussbaum passed away in 2012.

Part III

There is only one individual in the photograph that has been identified beyond any doubt. It is the man who is standing behind the boy. The man who is pointing the sub-machine gun at him with a look of complete impassiveness, SS-Rottenfuhur Josef Blösche.

Josef Blösche was born on February 12, 1912, in present day Austria. He grew up supporting far-right organizations in German and joined the Nazi party in 1938. Those who knew him, remembered Blösche as being one of the most fanatic members of the Nazi party's SS. He saw combat during the Invasion of Poland and was eventually assigned to the Einsatzgruppen (the infamous Nazi death squad on the Eastern Front). In the first three years of the war, Josef Blösche oversaw the killings of thousands of people across Europe. He was so brutal that the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto referred to him as, "Frankenstein".

Blösche's identity can be verified because this photograph is not the only one to feature him in the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto. In the Stroop Report, Josef Blösche was photographed at least five times. Like his commanding officer (Jürgen Stroop) Blösche took great pleasure in gunning down unarmed people and burning down the ghetto. For his great and noble "valor" in the Warsaw Ghetto, Blösche received the German War Cross of Merit. Little did he know, that the images taken of his role in crushing the uprising would eventually come back to haunt him.

Epilogue

After Germany's defeat in 1945, Jürgen Stroop was arrested and charged with war crimes. At the US Military Tribunal in the Dachau concentration camp, he was convicted of the murder of nine American prisoners of war and sentenced to hang. Before the sentence was carried out however, the American Justices agreed to an extradition request by the Polish government. In 1947, Stroop was flown from Germany back to Poland to stand trial for his crimes in Warsaw. In 1951, he was convicted of overseeing the murder of more than 50,000 people. He was hanged on March 6, 1952. Today he is remembered as one of the most evil and vicious men to ever walk the face of the Earth.

Josef Blösche was captured by the Red Army in 1945. After spending two years in a labour camp he was released. He spent the next nineteen years living in the German village of, Urbach where he worked as a master tradesman. But in 1967, his horrific crimes came back to haunt him. When the Stroop Report was released to the public in 1961, eye-witnesses were able to identify Blösche in at least five of the fifty-three photographs (including the one with boy). He was arrested on January 11, 1967. On April 30, 1969, Josef Blösche was convicted of crimes against humanity by an East German court. He was executed on July 29 of that year.

Although the picture of the Warsaw Ghetto Boy was officially published in 1945, it did not attract much attention until the 1970s. Despite numerous attempts to identify the boy, none have been able to find anything conclusive. Investigations to identify other people in the photo have also returned inconclusive. During his trial, Josef Blösche was asked about the incident. He replied, "The picture shows me, as a member of the Gestapo office in the Warsaw Ghetto, together with a group of SS members, driving a large group of Jewish citizens out from a house. The group of Jewish citizens is comprised predominantly of  children, women and old people, driven out of a house through the gateway, with their arms raised. The Jewish citizens were then led to the so-called Umschlagplatz, from which they were transported to the extermination camp Treblinka". Based on this statement, it is highly unlikely that any of these people (including the young boy) survived the war.

Some of the most powerful photographs ever taken are very difficult for people to look at. While many images depict acts of bravery, valor, and hope, there are also many that depict suffering and tragedy. The photo of the Warsaw Ghetto Boy is one of these images. It tells the story of one of the darkest chapters of human history and serves as a warning of the human capacity for great evil. Although the boy's identity will probably never be discovered, his legacy lives on. He remains an iconic symbol of all the children who perished in the Holocaust. 

http://100photos.time.com/photos/jewish-boy-surrenders-warsaw

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/josef-bl-ouml-sche

https://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/12/the-ghetto-the-nazis-and-one-small-boy/

http://www.deathcamps.org/occupation/stroop/index.html

http://www.auschwitz.dk/Star/Nussbaum.htm

http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/nazioccupation/boy.html

https://www.holocausthistoricalsociety.org.uk/contents/germanbiographies/josefblosche.html