Sometimes it’s not especially difficult to figure out the message the universe is trying to send you.
First it was Steven L. Ossad’s new biography Chasing the Shadow: Mickey Marcus’s 200 Days of Destiny. It arrived at the IJN months ago, but with everything going on in the world, I hadn’t had a chance even to peruse it.
Then it was meeting Brig.-Gen. Dr. Robert Enzenauer (story coming next week in our Generations magazine). He’s a font of military history. He gives me the distilled version but then follows up two weeks later: The DVD of “Cast a Giant Shadow” and the Ted Berkman biography it was based on are delivered by the Post Office. A week later, Jonathan Feldstein submits an op-ed to the IJN on occasion of Marcus’ yahrzeit.
Sometimes the universe is pretty darn blunt.
Don’t judge me but I started with the movie. It stars Kirk Douglas as the Jewish WW II US Army lawyer who planned the Nuremberg trials. Marcus’ encounter with the horrors at Dachau seems to have connected him to his people’s story in a life-altering way.
As with many movies of that era, “Cast a Giant Shadow” opens with a short place-setting descriptor that ends with a few simple words capturing the complicated history in the Middle East: Some of these things are still going on . . .
Boy is that the understatement of the century! I’m watching this 600+ days since Oct. 7, with hostages still held in a devastated Gaza, with Israel preemptively striking Iran, with a non-Shiite Jordan allowing Israel to use its air space, with Israel having played a crucial role in dethroning Assad in Syria . . . some of these things are still going on.
I won’t know until I get deeper into the Marcus story, but that phrase, “Some of these things are still going on,” sums up the story of the Jewish people and why Marcus devoted himself to helping Israel achieve its independence, tragically paying the ultimate sacrifice. The recognition that one is part of a millennia-long tradition is powerful! Marcus responded to that in the most incredible way — he ensured the perpetrators of the Holocaust would be held to task and then helped ensure Israel could emerge as a nation from its war of independence — an asymmetrical conflict that the oddsmakers had Israel losing badly.
I’m putting together a list for my generation of the greatest people we’ve never heard of (alternate working title: It’s a crime these heroes are unknown). Also in there, Colorado’s Gen. Felix Sparks, who liberated Dachau.
Thank you Steven Ossad, Dr. Enzenauer and Jonathan Feldstein for rectifying, at least for me, my substantial knowledge gap.
Shana Goldberg may be reached at shana@ijn.com
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