The IJN solicited verbal postcards from Denverites who lived through the Six Day War, June 5-10, 1967.
Clara Elefant
My husband had a sabbatical coming in 1962 so we went to Israel for a year. We liked it so much that we stayed another year and that second year turned into 18 years for me and 20 years for him. I was there until 1979. He was teaching at Bar Ilan University.
We lived in Kiryat HaYovel in Jerusalem. A couple of weeks before the Six Day War, on the highway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, we saw tanks and other war machines hidden behind trees and structures, I guess getting ready for the war. It was very concerning to us but that was the reality.
We were told to prepare shelters and any other safety devices. Of course, we started with food and began working on the shelter very soon afterwards. It wasn’t much of a shelter. It was on the ground floor. We found out after the war that the air holes, about one and a half feet square, were put on the bottom instead of on the top. Anyway, thank G-d, we survived. We tore up old sheets for the windows of our apartment, to keep glass from flying, and taped them on the window vertically and horizontally.
“When the war finally came, we went into the shelters with many neighbors. The only news source that we had was transistor radios. We heard the shooting and the bombing, but we didn’t know who was shooting who until the announcement came that the IDF forces had bombed Egyptian planes that were grounded and destroyed all of them. They announced that 441 were destroyed.
At that time, my dear husband, who was very involved in Gematria, figured out that 441 in Hebrew was emet, which is truth. Later on it was announced that more than 441 were destroyed, so his theory was sort of knocked out.
When we found out that the IDF had taken the Old City, including the Western Wall, we were very awed and thankful. Of course, we were grieving for the soldiers who were killed, including the other side. It was a tough period.
After the war, the Kotel area was cleared of all the old homes and buildings. They had to clear the way for the people to come so they worked very hard to clear a wide path from the Western Wall to West Jerusalem so that people could come on the first day of Shavuos, a very few days after the war was over, to visit the Kotel.
That was a very moving experience for us. We went there on Shavuos morning and we walked with hundreds of people from all over Israel. Although it was a very large crowd it was very orderly and I suspect that the reason for that is that everybody was awe-stricken and very reverent. When we got to the Kotel, naturally it was full, many people were praying at the Wall.
I did not see the ladies mingling with the men by the Kotel. There were so many people there that I couldn’t see very well, but there must have been a place for them. I think that even in those days the ladies sort of knew that they shouldn’t be mingling with the men.
One of the sights we saw there was the soldiers dancing with the chasidim. The soldiers were wearing the chasids’ streimels, the fur-trimmed hats that they wear, and the chasidim were wearing the soldiers’ hats. And it was so beautiful I just can’t forget that.
I really couldn’t get close to the Wall because of the crowd, but I could see what was going on. I was awe-stricken. It was almost unbelieveable. It was a very hot day — in Israel it’s already hot on Shavuos. It was a most moving experience for my husband and I.
At that time, the religious aspect of it didn’t enter my mind. I know what the Bible says, but it was just a reality that was hard for me to believe.
I still feel that awe coming to the Kotel for the first time on Shavuos morning. I think that feeling will probably remain with me for all time.
Dr. Herzl Melmed
Hazel and I had made aliyah about a year-and-a-half before the war, in 1966. We were living at Tel Hashomer Hospital where I was doing my residency training in obstetrics and gynecology.
“There was a three-week buildup to the outbreak of the war. All eligible men and women had been called up. We were not yet Israeli citizens so I wasn’t called up to the army, but as I had been trained as an anesthesiologist, I was part of a three-person team that could therefore work around the clock in eight-hour shifts if casualties required it.
The TV news before the war from Britain and other Western military experts predicted that Israel was in big trouble. The waiting was hard and Prime Minister Levi Eshkol’s famous speech in which he spoke badly didn’t help morale.
The war started. Hazel and our firstborn, Ari, who was 11 months old, spent the first night in an air raid shelter in the hospital. I was part of the medical team waiting in the hospital. The first night we heard many of the sounds of war. The next morning Hazel emerged with Ari who had mosquito bites all over his chubby little body!
A radio at the hospital was tuned to an Arab station where the announcer was shouting about the imaginary Arab victories, but ‘unofficial’ news was coming in that cheered us up. The air force was decimating the Egyptian air force! The relief was palpable. When we heard the words ‘Har ha-Habayit be-Yadeinu (the Temple Mount is in our hands) our hearts overflowed with joy. We were living a miracle.
On Shavuot that year the army had cleared most of the mine fields around Jerusalem and made a dirt path about as wide as a regular street leading to the Old City and the Western Wall. It was packed with throngs of people, including us walking to the Old City.
It was a peak moment in my life. I felt at that moment that I had been privileged to witness the realization of the thousands year dream of the Jewish people returning to Zion. I felt that I could not ask the Alm-ghty for anything more after being so blessed.
Sheldon Steinhauser
When the Six Day War broke out, I was in Los Angeles attending a Western States staff meeting. All of us agonized over whether to return to our home communities or to use our time to plan for a supportive role in our communities back home.
Since the Denver community, like the others represented, was already being mobilized, we thought it best to remain and plan for how we could be most helpful when we returned.
When the war broke out, my colleagues and I were alternately frightened for Israel’s existence and exhilarated when the breakthrough came in East Jerusalem and the Western Wall was liberated.
We all returned with renewed dedication to participate actively in the celebrations and to intensify our roles in support of Israel and the hopes for peace.
In 1968, Jan and I took our first trip to Israel. I remember vividly our excitement at walking through the Old City to the Wall and basking in the glow of the mix of people, Jews and Arabs, walking throughout the city. We were all so filled with pride about Israel’s achievement, so hopeful.
“Regrettably, that moment of hope could not continue for very long, but we still treasure the experience.”
Dick Snyder
“It was the first week of June, 1967. I was wrapping up my freshman year at the University of Missouri at Columbia. How did I end up at this backwater bastion of bigotry, Christian fundamentalism, dull intellects and broken spirits, let alone return for another year? That’s another story.
Located in the lone Missouri county to secede from the Union in 1861, the campus even featured a Confederate war memorial and countless yahoos waving Confederate flags at incredibly boring football games. Missouri had yet to discover the forward pass.
African Americans were generally referred to with the N-word. Pizza was considered an exotic delicacy. Jews? They were those funny looking people who killed Jesus and had bumps on their heads where horns might grow someday.
Preparing for finals and a return home, news reports of an enormous war of extermination in the Middle East raised the interest of even the most out of touch Mizzou students. What was going to happen to Israel? my friends asked. Aren’t you worried?
I assured them that given the ineptitude and lack of resolve among their enemies as well as the superiority of Israeli personnel and leadership, there would be no contest and no worries.
Most seemed to accept my take, although it was difficult for some to understand that Jews, perceived as a bunch of wimpy folks with big noses, could succeed at the manly art of war.
And it happened. The stunning preemptive strike against the Egyptian Air Force stands as one of the greatest shows of audacity in military history.
We all remember the images that followed. Egyptian soldiers tossing their boots and weapons, fleeing in disorder across the Sinai sands. Wrecked columns of Arab trucks and armor abandoned along the roads. Moshe Dayan and his eye patch. Best of all, visibly moved Israeli soldiers standing for the first time at the Western Wall.
Those were heady times. It was all so quick and painless for those of us in the diaspora. Jews showed the world, don’t mess with us. The pride was everywhere. I felt it. I saw it. I returned to Mizzou for my second (and last) year with a stronger sense of not only who I was but how special I was. Others realized it as well.
So what does it all mean? Nineteen sixty-seven ushered in a new sense of Jewish pride that hasn’t wavered. Suddenly, we had a new identity, not as history’s victims, but as its champions. That sense of identity remains with us today
Let us hope that we can exist as one proud people, respectful of each other and with a strong understanding of how we arrived at this place.