Category Archives: Extraordinary Individuals

Unique Jews In a Category of Their Own

Jew of the Week: Joel Brand

The Man Who Tried to Save a Million Jews

Jenő Yoel Brand (1906-1964) was born in what is now Romania to a family of traditional Hungarian Jews. He spent a part of his childhood in Germany, and then moved to New York when he was 19. He struggled to make a living, working difficult odd jobs, and eventually joined the International Communist Party, soon becoming one of their sailors and traveling across the Pacific. He returned to Germany in 1930, but when Hitler came to power Brand was arrested for being a communist. He was released the following year and returned to Hungary, joining the communist-Zionist Poale Zion organization, and then the Jewish National Fund. He started a clothing business with his wife, and the couple grew wealthy, employing over 100 people in their factory. The Brands were planning to make aliyah and join a kibbutz, but an influx of German Jews entering Hungary compelled them to stay and support the refugees. By 1943, they had set up the Aid and Rescue Committee, forging documents and running an underground network of safe houses. All in all, the committee saved about 25,000 Jews, at times collaborating with people like Oskar Schindler and Rudolf Kastner. In 1944, the Nazis invaded Hungary, and notorious SS officer Adolf Eichmann requested a meeting with Brand. He offered 1 million Jews in exchange for supplies from the Allies to help German soldiers fighting the USSR. Eichmann called it the “blood for goods” deal, and wanted 1000 trucks full of supplies for every 100,000 Jews. After three meetings, he gave Brand several weeks to come back with an answer. Brand immediately got on a train to Istanbul, planning to meet up with future Israeli president Chaim Weizmann. When he arrived, it was a different “Chaim” waiting for him, offering no assistance. Brand felt betrayed by the Jewish Agency, who told him to now go to Aleppo and meet another future Israeli president, Moshe Sharett. On the way, Brand was stopped by the British and arrested, imprisoned in Egypt and brutally tortured. The British had no interest in saving Jews, nor bringing in anymore refugees into the Holy Land. (In fact, during the little-known 1943 Bermuda Conference, the British and Americans had already decided to do nothing about the Holocaust and resolved not to help the Jews of Europe.) Brand eventually went on a hunger strike, and was only released after 17 more days. By that point, most of the Jews he was trying to save were already murdered. Brand was not permitted to return to Hungary, and resettled in Israel. Not surprisingly, he joined the Stern Gang that fought passionately against the British to expel them from the Holy Land. Brand went on to testify at the 1954 Kastner trial, as well as the 1961 Eichmann trial, where the latter denied that he ever had the authority to stop the mass-killings. Some say the “blood for goods” deal was a Nazi ruse and only meant to confuse and split the Allies. Others say it was a legitimate offer made by desperate Nazis, and a million Jews could have been saved. Brand himself believed a bit of both. Shortly before his death, Brand told a reporter: “An accident of life placed the fate of one million human beings on my shoulders. I eat and sleep and think only of them.” Brand died, quite literally, of a broken heart, suffering a fatal heart attack at the young age of 58.

Short Animation: How the Ottoman Empire Was Carved Up

The KGB and Anti-Israel Propaganda

Words of the Week

The local population in Palestine is racially more closely related to the Jews than to any other people… It is quite probable that the fellahin in Palestine are direct descendants of the Jewish and Canaanite rural population, with a slight admixture of Arab blood… it is impossible to distinguish between a Sephardic porter and an Arab labourer…
– Dov Ber Borochov (1881-1917)

Jews of the Week: Belkinds and Hankins

Israel’s Great Pioneers

Israel Belkind (1861-1929) was born near Minsk, Belarus. After a Hebrew elementary school education, he enrolled at a Russian gymnasium and planned to study in university. However, the terrible 1881 pogroms turned him into a passionate Zionist, and the rest of his life was dedicated to saving the plight of diaspora Jews. He founded an organization called BILU (an acronym of Beit Yaakov Lechu v’Nelcha, from an End of Days prophecy in Isaiah 2:5, where the Biblical prophet encourages Jews to get up and take possession of their land). In the summer of 1882, Belkind led the first group of Biluim to the Holy Land. After several years of working on Jewish agricultural settlements, he decided to focus on education instead. He taught at a school in Jaffa, and then in Jerusalem. In 1904, Belkind started his own school for children orphaned by the devastating Kishinev Pogrom. Meanwhile, Belkind wrote several important Zionist texts, and was also a noted anthropologist. Intriguingly, he did a great deal of research among the local Arab population and came to the conclusion that they must be the descendants of Jews who had been forcibly converted to Islam! He noted how the locals did not even refer to themselves as “Arabs”, but only “Muslims” (they called the Bedouins “Arabs”), and many of them knew about their Hebrew ancestors. They had various customs that resembled Jewish ones, used an Arabic dialect peppered with old Jewish terms, and venerated the same Biblical figures as the Jews. His dream was thus to open Hebrew schools for the Palestinians, and slowly return them to the Jewish fold. (Later, thanks to the opportunities created by the Zionist movement, a massive influx of non-indigenous Arab immigrants came from neighbouring areas, particularly Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon.)

Yehoshua and Olga Hankin in 1910

Belkind’s older sister was Olga Hankin (1852-1943). She studied in St. Petersburg to become a midwife. Olga joined her brother in the Holy Land during the First Aliyah of 1886, making her the first professional midwife in the region. She soon became the most famous midwife in the land, and was sought out by Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike. She made a name for herself as being the only woman to ride alone on horseback—even at night—and became something of a feminist icon. Olga married Yehoshua Hankin (1864-1945), originally from Russia. Hankin was well-respected by local Arabs, and was able to negotiate a purchase of a massive plot of land on behalf of the Zionist movement in 1890. This land became what is today the city of Rehovot, a name proposed by Israel Belkind based on a verse in Genesis. In 1891, using donations from diaspora Jews, the Hankins purchased what is today Hadera (the neighbourhood of Givat Olga in Hadera is named after Olga Hankin). In 1908, Yehoshua Hankin joined the Palestine Land Development Company and became its number-one real estate agent in the Holy Land. His most famous deal was the Sursock Purchase, acquiring Haifa Bay and the Jezreel Valley from the Sursocks (an Orthodox Christian family who had purchased the land from the Ottomans decades earlier). Hankin’s work secured hundreds of thousands of dunams of land for the Jewish cause, and he is credited with being the top negotiator of land purchases in Israel’s history.

Understanding the Arab-Israeli Conflict in 5 Easy Points

The Incredible Story of the “Mensch of Malden Mills”

Words of the Week

We are worth what we are willing to share with others.
– Sir Moses Montefiore

Jew of the Week: Temerl Sonnenberg Bergson

Europe’s Greatest Jewish Businesswoman

Tamar “Temerl” bat Avraham of Opoczno (c. 1765-1830) was born in Poland to a wealthy and deeply religious Jewish family. She married young, but her first husband tragically died soon after. She got remarried to a young businessman named Dov Ber (“Berek”) Zbytkower. He went on to become immensely wealthy, and supplied the Polish and Russian armies. He took on the last name “Sonnenberg”, and was nicknamed the “Polish Rothschild”. Meanwhile, besides being a devoted mother of six children, Temerl was busy supporting the nascent Hasidic movement, founded just a few decades earlier by the Baal Shem Tov. Temerl played a huge role in bringing Hasidism to Poland. In fact, she financed the construction of Warsaw’s first Hasidic synagogue. She paid the salaries of numerous Hasidic rabbis in Poland (along with non-Hasidic rabbis), including the great Simcha Bunim of Peshischa. Temerl was a huge philanthropist and gave to all kinds of other causes as well. In 1818 alone, she donated some 54,000 rubles to Polish charities. After her husband passed away, Temerl took over his business. (In honour of their father, her children changed their last name to “Berekson”, or “Bergson”, which is why she came to be known as Temerl Bergson, too.) She also founded her own new bank. Temerl was one of the top businesswomen in all of Europe at the time. She was so influential that the Russian government gave her special permission to buy an estate, making her only the third Jew to own property outside the ghettos. She continued to do everything she could to assist the plight of the Jews. In 1824, she used her influence to rescind a government decree against Jewish pilgrimages. In fact, some Hasidic leaders came to refer to her as Reb Temerl! (A title traditionally reserved for men.) In her will, she left 300,000 zlotys to charity. Temerl was called the “Polish Hasidah”, and her tombstone states: “To her nation she was a protector against oppression—a helper during distress. To the poor she was a mother. She was a virtuous woman, powerful and famous.” The renowned philosopher and Nobel laureate Henri Bergson was her great-grandson.

Chanukah Begins Sunday Night – Chag Sameach!

18 Incredibly Brave Women in Jewish History

Archaeologists Find 2200-Year-Old Coins Confirming Chanukah

The Peruvian Villager Who Led Hundreds to Convert to Judaism

When Jews & Greeks Were Brothers: The Untold Story of Chanukah

Words of the Week

The Sabbath is the day we focus on the things that have value but not a price, when we neither work nor employ others to do our work, when we neither buy nor sell, in which all manipulation of nature for creative ends is forbidden and all hierarchies of power or wealth are suspended.
– Rabbi Jonathan Sacks