from hochbrucke to melbourne
This story is fiction based on history
of persecuted due to prejudice..
It deals with the endurance and suffering
The tale also depicts the effective tolerance by Australians
Generations of man
(From Hochbrucke to The Land Down-Under)
At Hochbrücke in the year of the Lord one thousand four hundred eighty, life was hard and monotonous except on the sacred days of the year when everybody feared for their children for it had been said by old women who knew, over centuries that the Jews drank Christian children’s blood in honour of the great holy sacrifice on the cross.
There were tales of good and proper reasons why Jews needed Christian blood and why they used it frequently, but more often around the commemoration of the Long Friday on which every faithful follower remembered the blood of the crucified.
At Tyrnau (Tarnava) –1494 - it was well known that Christian blood healed the wound of circumcision.
The Emperor did not believe these tales and he published a finding of a synod of converts: “There is not to be found either in the Old or the New Testament, that the Jews are desirous of human blood. On the contrary they avoid contamination with any kind of blood”.
So Reb Yosef explained to his neighbours that Jews were not allowed to drink any kind of blood and that they were salting meat in order to extract all blood before cooking. He translated into understandable German the words from Genesis 9:4 You may not eat meat with blood in it That did not really help because there were all the time new stories of Jews drinking blood. It was said that Jews believed that blood mixed in food made husband and wife love more ardently. “ How can murder induce love?” asked Reb Yosef.. Even a Pope, Innocent IV, denied the false accusation. But why should an unromantic scenario be acceptable? A drama of murder and suffering sounded far more attractive to the people. Prejudices and traditional superstitions inherited from the darkest corners of various pagan mythologies, mixed magically with the mystery of the faith which retained an enigma of great attraction for the curious in Latin.
Latin and its nasal melody were the great mysteries which even most of the of the ministering friars and monks could not understand even though they pretended to understand it and they often only imitated the sounds. Reb Yosef also meditated that there wasn’t much difference between the mystery of Latin and the mystery of ‘Loshen Koidesh’, the Holy language which most Jews did not understand till they were very old. But the people interpreted the languages and the lessons they could not understand. The Latin mystery each Sunday was translated as yet another of the great suffering on the Cross and the great sadness of the Holy Mother of God.
Some of Reb Yosef’s flock also made their own translations of the Hebrew readings and most of that was the wishful thinking which predicted that when it will be at its worst, then, and only then, The Almighty, The Holy One, Blessed be He, will descend from His heaven and take them all Home to that warm beautiful place, Jerusalem, where The Holy Temple still stood and had been miraculously refurbished.
At Hochbrücke it was quiet and peaceful even if some people sometimes crossed to the other side of the street to avoid walking with Reb Yosef or with some other Jew who wore his three cornered hat with the yellow ball on top. There was something polluted and polluting about the ‘Jud’, the wandering Jews who did not belong. Heinrich Der Grosse, the tax gatherer, once left a pig’s head in Reb Yosef’s windowsill. Everybody watched as the Rabbi took the severed head and buried it in the street. They had expected some witchcraft, some incantations, and some blasphemy. The bearded old man said nothing even though he had seen the crowd. He then brought out a bucket and he carefully washed away all traces of blood. He washed his own hands and he rubbed them with ash from the oven. His wife held a towel as he dried his hands.
Hans the Der Schuster asked Reb Yosef why he did not tell the people that what they had done was against the Bible and against God’s will. Answered the Rabbi: “Who am I to teach chickens to speak?” Hans hesitated. It took him some time to understand the metaphor. Chickens have small heads, small hearts and they make a lot of noise. Hans often thought that Reb Yosef spoke much like the Biblical figures in parables.
Then one day Joachim the son of Feri ran screaming through town that his son had vanished. The lad was only ten years old. At once the Bürgermeister, the mayor of Hochbrücke announced that the lad had been murdered. Hans saw Reb Yosef and said to him: “They will say that the Jews did it.” Reb Yosef said only: “If the Angel of death is a Jew then Jews did it.” Hans shook his head:”Don’t you see that you are in trouble?” Reb Yosef shrugged: “Trouble has been our partner since we crossed the Jordan River.” Miraculously, the trouble was avoided because the boy had been with an uncle overnight and was home again. “He came back from the dead through the grace of God and Jesus!” exclaimed the priest. Joachim was ashamed to tell everybody that the boy had run away from his uncle’s house and that he was bleeding from his rectum…The uncle was Joachim’s brother and it had not been the first time that Joachim’s brother had kept a boy overnight. The Mayor however proclaimed that every citizen was under obligation to say three ‘Hail Mary’s’ light a candle and pay a coin to the town’s ‘charity’ in thanksgiving. Everybody knew that the “charity” was simply the mayor’s own little nest egg. Jews were ordered to pay two coins. Rabbi Yosef gave the mayor four coins at once. Two were for the Rabbi’s wife. And Reb Yosef said to the mayor: “God was gracious. Four coins are temporary. They will be spent. Death is for a long time.” Hans smiled and mused that he would have to strain his mind to decipher this new parable of the Jewish sage. Hans had become a student of the Rabbi because he had begun to believe that Reb Yosef was of the same kind as Jesus of Nazareth. Perhaps Jesus was murdered because people could not understand his sayings?
Then one day it happened. Another boy Gerd, vanished. He had been sent by his father to pay the butcher. He never returned home. Prayers were said. The Rosary was recited. One day after his disappearance Shani the son of Eugen said loudly. “ It was a Jewish devilish ceremony because next week it is their holy day in remembrance of the fall of Jerusalem. “They need Christian blood,” said he “ those sons of the devil and witches of the underworld.” It took only three days till the mob rounded up all Jews, thirty of them, and beat them till Itzik the tailor shouted: “Yes! Yes! I saw Reb Yosef and Moishe and Solomon and their wives. Plunging their daggers into the boy’s pale white skin till it turned red with blood and the boy was begging ‘In the name of the Holy Mother of God, please let me go!.”
Hans was enraged. He had seen the Rebbbe on the day at the time, just before vespers….Hans put his hand up to speak Then he saw Reb Yosef’s eyes looking at him grimly. He almost heard the sage shout: “Keep your peace! I know and The Almighty knows that you desired to tell the truth…But, Hans, nobody here wants to hear the truth.” And as if to continue, Reb Yosef said: Nobody here wants to hear the truth. People do not understand the Jew and his ONE unbreakable God. What they do not understand they want to destroy. What they destroy they cannot learn when it is no longer. His voice was deep and it carried. Everybody heard it and they all shouted: SORCERY! SORCERY!
It was then that the bishop arrived. His reception, although unexpected took up much time. They kissed his ring. Some knelt. Some touched his sword, which was well polished and glinted in the sunlight. The Bishop stood before Yosef and smiled: “Your time has come Yud. You killed our Saviour, it is time for you to die!” the knight bishop whispered to Yosef.. Yosef said to the bishop: “Your sword must taste blood. So be it.”
They accused Reb Yosef of sorcery. All Reb Yosef answered was: “ There is none else besides HIM said our sages. “ [Talmud: Chullin 7b} To that the crowd shouted louder: Sorcerer! Sorcerer!
Reb Yosef was preoccupied by the despair etched on the face of Hans. Silently, to himself Reb Yosef was praying: “I offer my life for the Sanctification of Your Name, please Lord spare that righteous gentile the pain!”
Reb Yosef was hurting because he knew that at the end of that farce blood will flow and that was not new for Jews. He was also hurting because he had discovered that there was Hans, whom he compared with Malchey Tsedek the priestly lord of Jerusalem who welcomed Abraham, and with Moses’ Father in Law, Yitro, who had also found the road to THE ONE. Reb Yosef had been training himself unknowingly for this moment each day as he was thanking The ONE, for all the things there were in this world. Reb Yosef used to say: “For in each generation they stood over us to destroy us.” At this moment this was his generation’s turn.
Eventually, the crowd and the Bishop and the mayor, all agreed that Reb Yosef, Moishe and Solomon were to be sentenced to ‘Eternal damnation’. And the crowd approached them menacingly and then the blows started falling. They shouted and screamed obscenities. The Bishop with his glinting sword and smiling. Hans turned away, but in his ears the voice of Reb Yosef was distinguishable because he was plaintively reciting some words in Hebrew. And repeating them over and over haltingly as the blows landed on his bloodied body. Hans fell on his knees and crossed himself. Then Hans repeated the first word of Reb Yosef’s cry: SHMA…
That was what it sounded like: SHMA.
The crowd was bloodthirsty and they shouted ‘Sorcerer!’ and a cry they had heard before: “HEP! HEP! HEP!" They did not know what that meant…
Hierosolyma Est Perdita!
The Bishop with the glinting sword laughed and shouted it in German: Jerusalem is Lost!
When he finished shouting a drop of blood soiled his sword.
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Reb Yosef’s oldest son buried his father and soon thereafter he married. One gentile was at the wedding. The wedding was not the usual joyful event and Reb Hayim who sanctified the marriage said: “This is done to keep the people of Israel alive.”
Nine months later a baby boy was born to Reb Yosef’s daughter in law. They named the boy Yosef ben Yisrael, Yosef son of Yisrael.
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And, generation after generation had sons. Several generations returned to the name Yosef. Jews may not call a newborn babe after a living relative. So, they called each generation after a dead grandfather and only in the second succeeding generation could they call the boy Yosef.
And, it also happened that Hans had a firstborn son who was named Hans and he had a son named Hans. From father to son the story of the martyrdom of Reb Yosef acquired new light, new solemnity, new aim for attempting a redress of injustices.
Only a few generations later, they heard about the exile of the Jews from Spain and Portugal. The Hans of that generation only said: “My God, my God! Forgive them for they know not what they are doing!”
Nobody else spoke like the Hans of each generation. If they did, nobody heard them, for that would have been called blasphemy.
Later, Hans decided to give his son Hans a family name, a patronymic. Hans became: Hans Hansohn, Hans son of Hans.
When Jews were given surnames, Yosef ben Yisrael, he did carry the ancient name, became Yosef Israel.
There were many pogroms they heard about and some generations of Israel weathered outrages against themselves. For: In each generation they stood over us to destroy us.
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There were a few good years. There was the time when the French had an emperor who was nicer to the Jews than the other kings.
Later came a Jewish leader. He had been converted to Christianity…yet his name was like the descendants of Reb Yosef: d’Israeli. The compatriots of the Hochbrucke Israel family who had heard of the Jew Disraeli laughed and called him ‘the little English Yud of the queen’.
Then came a great war and the Hansons went to the military and wore a uniform to fight for the Kaiser. So did the last Yosef Israel. Yosef returned from the war with an Iron Cross dangling from his breast pocket. Only the ribbon was visible. Yosef hid the cross. He had been subjected to a gas attack at Ypres.
The big depression followed and Jews felt that in the eyes of their neighbours it seemed that Jews were guilty of the high inflation. One day, when bread sold for a Mil-Bill (one million billion) one man pulled Yosef’s beard and said: “You stinking Jew!”
On top of everything else, a Jew became minister in the Government. They killed him. Jews felt as if all had been wounded.
More and more brown shirt Nazi “troopers” became visible. Shops carried posters: “Jewish shop! Don’t buy here!”
Dr. Hans Hansohn pushed a brownshirt youth aside and walked into one of the Jewish shops. He bought just one item and then walked out showing it to the Nazi. As he walked home he was seized by four gangsters in brown shirts and beaten. They were shouting: Rassenschande! (Race defilment ) “servant of Jews”. Bleeding and hurting Dr. Hans Hanson was taken by the Nazi tormentors to a camp called Dachau, near Munich, ‘for reeducation’.
The Nazis enacted laws which were ethically beneath law. They suddenly deported all Jews of Polish origin without any of their property over the border to Poland. That infuriated a Jewish boy studying in Paris to the extent that he shot a Nazi embassy official called vom Rath.
On the evening of November 9 1938 during prayers, Yosef Israel whispered a petition to his God asking him to protect the boy Grynspan, who had murdered vom Rath. “He did it for his people…for the sanctification of YOUR name!”
He then walked slowly, like a very old man walks, homeward. Suddenly, there loomed the ‘heroic’ figure of a Nazi. Yosef could hear the noise of breaking glass and he could see flames and smoke, but he did not know that the night would remain etched in history as “KRISTALLNACHT” – the night of broken glass-. “Jew swine” shouted the Nazi “Where are you fleeing?” Yosef protested that he was not fleeing. Said the angry Arian hero: “You murdered a good German, pay for it! Give me your loot!” Yosef had a small wallet with change and he handed it to the brownshirted hero. “This is not your treasure!” shouted the Nazi. He was livid. “ Give me your gold!” Yosef said that he had no gold. The Nazi then pulled his glinting silver dagger with an eagle and a hooked cross on its handle, from its scabbard. Without further discussion he plunged it into Yosef’s chest and with his face fire red, he sank it into his victim’s neck. The knight of modern hooliganism then wiped it on Yosef’s black coat and sank it back into its ceremonial place.
People who had watched the scene, crossed themselves and quickly walked away. Yosef died alone on the pavement.
His son, Avraham, came later and stopped by his father’s body. He was weeping as he whispered that SHMA which had been the final prayer of Reb Yosef nearly fivehundred years earlier.
That night Avraham and his entire family left the country of the hooked cross.
A few weeks after that, when Dr. Hansohn had been freed from Dachau. the Hansohn family also left. They migrated to the great island in the South.
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The Israel family arrived in Australia as the war broke out. They were treated with suspicion because they were Germans. Nobody cared that they were Jews. Once, Avraham asked a policeman why they don’t want to know about their religion. Why was there no space for that on their papers? The police officer looked puzzled: “Who cares? Your religion is your business.”
Avraham went home and told his wife: “This must be a strange place. They don’t care that we are Jews.”
“They must be good people…they did not bring their European sickness to this place.” Said his wife.
The Hansohn family and the Israel family meet every year on the 9th. November the day of the broken glass. The two families live fairly close to each other in an Australian city.
On the 9th of November the new head of the Israel family recites the Kaddish…the prayer which is said for the dead…then the head of the Hansohn family recites by heart the prayer which he had heard when a Jew died, at the time of his death:
Shma!
He recites all six Hebrew words even though the Hansohns are not Jews. “Hear Israel, our GOD, The Lord is ONE!”
2974 words
NB Hochbrucke is a fictional name
The persons mentioned in this story are fictional but the events and their lifecycle is based on historical facts.
posted by arab falsehoods at 3:19 PM
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