The IJN solicited verbal postcards from Denverites who lived through the Six Day War, June 5-10, 1967.
Crisp, animated memories range from white-knuckle fear that the Arabs would destroy Israel to unwavering confidence in her victorious destiny.
Rosetta Steinberg
I was terrified during the Six Day War.
We were so worried it was like our hands were tied. I heard that some people were trying to find a way to send Israel arms. I never knew who was involved, but it was happening. They weren’t sitting on their hands like we were.
I was just amazed that it turned out as good as it did.
I couldn’t imagine how this little group of people survived.
Cantor Isaac Koll
I was 28, living in Chicago and working for the IRS in 1967. The Six Day War created a lot of concern in Chicago’s Jewish community. Meetings took place in all the shuls. I attended a big gathering at KINS (a West Rogers Park congregation).
I wasn’t concerned about Israel’s survival but I worried about casualties. They needed money for weapons, so I increased my Israel Bonds contribution by 500%.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out that there would be fighting once Egypt united the Syrians and Jordanians.
Levi Eshkol was Israel’s prime minister, but he was reluctant to go to war. He sent Abba Eban to see President Johnson, who said he would send help. But there was nothing.
[Right before the Six Day War, Johnson warned Egypt, “Israel will not be alone unless it decides to be alone.” When Israel preemptively attacked the encroaching Arab divisions on June 5, the US State Dept. announced, “Our position is neutral in thought, word and deed.”]
Israel was being pushed to the wall; it had to take care of things by itself again. People were talking about a second Holocaust and the destruction of Israel. Not me. I worried about the casualties.
My office was at 17 N. Dearborn, and I banked at the Japanese American Bank across the street. The war started on a Monday. On Tuesday I went to the bank. The teller, who wanted to get a rise out of me, said, “I just heard Israel lost 300 planes.” I said that if Israel lost 300 planes and is still fighting, it’s a good sign.
I never expected Israel to lose the war, but I didn’t think it would win so quickly. They knocked out the Egyptian Air Force the first day.
Israel did what it had to do in the Six Day War, and still does what has to be done. It can’t depend on anyone else. Israel will survive, no matter what.
Rabbi Steven Foster
I was a student at Hebrew Union College. I had never been to Israel. We thought we were going to go but it wasn’t possible. We believed Israel was in terrible danger, and we didn’t want to see that happen. The students at HUC were devastated. We watched television day in and day out, making sure we kept abreast of everything. For me, it was a matter of hope for the Jewish people.
Israel in 1967 wasn’t the powerhouse it is now. People worried that it couldn’t survive. And that was a real possibility. So how did it survive? Israel was much stronger than the media gave it credit for. Jews everywhere supported Israel. And maybe there was a divine hand in this. I think about this all the time.
How did Israel even come into existence and make it past 1948, with a hundred million Arabs against such a small number of Jews? Maybe G-d was there — and I’m not just saying that.
I’ve always said there are three principles underlying Jewish services and holidays: creation, revelation and redemption. Sukkot talks about creation. Pesach represents redemption, and Shavuot is revelation. I do believe there is efficacy to redemption.
G-d has a role in all of it. Maybe that’s what the Six Day War was about.
Albert Banker
I was born and raised in Cairo, Egypt. Gamel Abdel Nasser toppled the Egyptian monarchy in 1952 and became the first president of Egypt in 1956. The Egyptian Army nationalized my father’s business and dismissed all Jewish employees.
My family managed to escape to Denver in 1963.
During the Six Day War in 1967, I was a sophomore at CU. My parents and I watched the network nightly news for information. Moshe Dayan was our hero.
I attended a French Jesuit school in Egypt. With the exception of one Jewish boy, my friends were Muslim or Coptic Christians. When the Six Day War broke out, I thought it was bizarre that my Muslim friends in Egypt were now fighting my cousins in Israel.
I worried about casualties; who will suffer. Will it be my cousins fighting for Israel or my former friends fighting against Israel?
The misery of war always weighs upon our shoulders. It never ends.
The Six Day War also recalled memories of the Suez War in 1956. That was a strange time for a seven-year-old Jewish boy. Cairo was under blackout orders. We had to cover our windows with black cloth. No lights were allowed at night because we were afraid that Israel would bomb us. You couldn’t drive. The streetlights were off. We gathered around candles for six months. I realized the same thing was happening in Cairo in 1967.
The last time I wrote my Jewish friend Albert in Cairo was in 1963. We had drifted apart, but I assumed he was there during the Six Day War. Through an amazing coincidence, we reconnected 50 years later.
About three or four years ago, some friends were flying to Israel and sat next to a person with an accent like mine who grew up in Cairo.
They told the man, now a rabbi on the East Coast, that they knew an Albert in Denver who also grew up in Cairo.
When he heard my last name, Albert cried, “That’s my friend Albert Banker!” and gave them his number to pass on to me.
I called Albert, who told me that he was put in a prison camp with 350 Jewish men during the Six Day War. The Egyptians imprisoned them until around 1970.
All that time I had no idea what happened to those young Jewish men.
Then Albert boards a plane and sits next to my friends. It was unbelievable.
Judge John Kane
I was in Washington, DC, at the time of the invasion, interviewing for a staff position as administrator of the Peace Corps in India. Someone rushed into my interviewer’s office and told him what had happened. We turned on the TV and started watching.
The city was electric with news of that war. There was absolutely 100% concern and support for Israel on the part of Americans in DC. I never heard a contrary view over the radio or on the streets or inside government offices.
When I came back to Denver the feeling was the same. The pro-Israel stance was incontrovertible. People resorted to language you might hear at a football game, like kicking the crap out of somebody. “This war won’t last a week because the Israelis are going to destroy the Arabs ”
There wasn’t the slightest lack of confidence — rather a “go get ‘em” kind of attitude.
I really don’t think pro-Israel sentiment was any higher than it was during the Six Day War.
Dennis Gallagher
The photographs of people flocking to pray at the Western Wall, a sacred place so long denied them, stand out in my memory. Last May, when I finally visited the Wall myself, I witnessed accumulated centuries of longing, prayer and hope as demonstrated by the faithful there.
I remember being pleased that the Egyptian territory captured by Israel in 1967 included St. Catherine’s ancient monastic site. The monastery’s remarkable library is home to some of the oldest copies of scribal manuscripts in the world. I’m not sure the Egyptian government could adequately protect this sacred space.
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