Where the Wild Jews Are: Maurice Sendak’s Real Life Monsters

For the monsters in the book "Where the Wild Things Are", Maurice Sendak had in mind people he actually knew. The dark themes of his children’s books, which have been the subject of repeated criticism, reflected the world he inhabited

Yael Ingel | 07.06.23

Writer and illustrator Maurice Sendak against a background featuring characters from his book "Where the Wild Things Are", photo: Clarence Patch

“And when he came to the place where the wild things are

they roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth

and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws

till Max said ‘BE STILL!’

and tamed them with the magic trick

of staring into all their yellow eyes without blinking once and they were frightened and called him the most wild thing of all and made him king of all wild things.”

“Scary.” “Gloomy.” “Not suitable for children.” “High potential for nightmares.” These were some of the criticisms used to describe Maurice Sendak’s books.

In Where the Wild Things Are, young Max encounters terrifying creatures with pointed teeth and sharp horns after being sent to his room without supper. In In the Night Kitchen (1970), a boy barely escapes drowning in a pot of cake batter, and in Outside Over There (1981), yet another boy is kidnapped by goblins. But despite the dark themes (or maybe because of them?) Maurice Sendak’s books have been a huge international success.

Maurice was born in 1928, the youngest of three children, to Polish-Jewish immigrant parents. His mother Sarah didn’t speak a word of English when she arrived in the United States on her own at the age of sixteen in the early 1920s, following a terrible quarrel with her mother. His father Philip also arrived alone from Poland. Philip’s father, a communal rabbi, cut ties with his son when he decided to leave home and move to the States. From careful reading between the lines of Sendak’s books, as well as from various interviews with the author, it appears that the melancholic atmosphere of his parents’ home, each of whom had left their family behind after a falling out, greatly influenced Maurice and his work. Of course the looming shadow of the catastrophe of the Jewish people in those years also played a part.

Maurice Sendak as a baby with his family, 1928. From the book: *The Art of Maurice Sendak*

Sendak himself said that he did not grow up in a happy home. His descriptions of his childhood and the atmosphere at home are characteristic of the stories of second-generation Holocaust survivors. Although his parents did not experience the horrors of the Holocaust first-hand, it was nevertheless a pervasive presence in his communal and family space in Jewish-Yiddish Brooklyn. Gloom was an integral part of his home life as a child, and he conveys this in his work.

In his books, he acknowledged the less agreeable parts of childhood and the cruelty and loneliness that can accompany it. “I refuse to lie to children,” he said. That is why, rather than beautifying reality, he chose to write also about the less pleasant experiences of childhood that would be familiar to every child. And perhaps this is precisely the secret of his success.

The clearest example of this is Sendak’s description of his inspiration for the famous wild creatures of Where the Wild Things Are:

“The wild things are my aunts, uncles and cousins who came from the old country, those few who got in before the gate closed, all on my mother’s side. These people didn’t speak English, only Yiddish. And they were unkempt. Their teeth were horrifying. They had hair unravelling out of their noses. And they’d pick you up and hug you and kiss you. ‘Aggghh. Oh, we could eat you up’, they’d say. And we knew they would eat anything. Anything.”

Sketch for *Where the Wild Things Are*, 1963. From: *The Art of Maurice Sendak*

The diasporic Jewish context permeated Sendak’s childhood. One tragic personal memory stands out: on the day of his Bar Mitzvah, his father received the terrible news that his entire family had perished [in the Holocaust]. Not a single relative remained alive. He collapsed on his bed and refused to get up. Thirteen-year-old Maurice walked into his father’s bedroom and screamed at him: “You gotta get up, you gotta get up!” And he did. The event took place as planned, but Sendak was left with terrible feelings of guilt for the way he behaved to his father.

In interviews later in his life, Sendak’s descriptions of his parents were unbearably harsh. “They should have been crazy,” he said. These were traumatized, angry people who lived miserable lives.

Sendak didn’t like school, and started drawing at a young age. His first works were very “Jewish.” The first book he illustrated was called Good Shabbos, Everybody, published in 1951 by the United Synagogue Commission on Jewish Education.

Another Jewish-themed work written and illustrated by Sendak was Chicken Soup with Rice—a lovely book that teaches toddlers about the months of the year, and describes how chicken soup—the traditional Jewish dish known as a cure for almost everything—is suitable for every month.

His parents did not particularly appreciate his work and were even disappointed when he took a job as an illustrator instead of going to university. However, a momentous reconciliation occurred when Sendak was asked to illustrate the stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer, the Nobel Prize-winning writer. This was something his parents could be proud of.

Before starting work on the illustrations for Zlateh the Goat and Other Stories Maurice pulled out his parents’ family photo albums from Poland. Inside he found pictures of his father standing next to his tall handsome brothers and women with long hair adorned with flowers. He went through all the albums, selecting some of his father’s relatives and some of his mother’s, and drew them with great precision. His parents burst into tears when they saw the drawings and recognized their relatives. Maurice cried with them. He recalls this as a special moment in their relationship when they realized that thanks to him the memory of their beloved relatives had been made indelible in the book.

Maurice Sendak’s maternal grandparents. From the book *The Art of Maurice Sendak*

In a way, Sendak saw himself as a Holocaust survivor. He always remembered that he was alive by chance; that if his parents had not boarded the ship from Poland when they did, he would not be here. He and his older brother chose not to have children. “People always ask me,” he once said, “if I am so interested in children, why don’t I have children of my own. The answer is simple: I think I would be a failure as a parent. And I hate to fail. I had a very troubled childhood. As an adult I didn’t feel I had the right qualities to be a parent.”

Maurice Sendak passed away in 2012, at the age of 83. As a person who came from a Jewish-Yiddish background, his life was characterized not only by melancholy and a deep uncompromising desire to tell his truth, but also by a sharp sense of humor. An interview with Emma Brockes of The Guardian just a few months before his death captured his sarcastic wit: The reporter, arriving at his house in rural Connecticut, was greeted first by Sendak’s big German Shepherd named Herman (after Herman Melville).

When Sendak came out to meet her, he whispered to her: “He doesn’t know I’m Jewish”.

The Jewish Designer Who Transformed the Future of Modernism

World-renowned designer Josef Frank rebelled against artistic norms, delivered scathing critiques of fellow artists, and was repeatedly forced to defend his identity. Despite this, he became one of the most famous, if also one of the most controversial, Jewish designers in history.

Mia Amran | 28.05.23

Ashkenazic Jewry Austria-Hungary Austrian Jewry Diaspora Europe Gesher L’Europa Jewish Art Jewish Culture Jews Vienna

Josef Frank's original watercolor from a 1936 tufted carpet, The life of Josef Frank, the Josef and Margit Hoffman Judaica Postcard Collection, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Folklore Research Center, the National Library of Israel

“We should design our surroundings as if they originated by chance,” wrote Josef Frank in his essay Accidentism. This may seem like a strange sentence from a celebrated interior designer – someone famous for placing color, light and object with such focused intention. But Josef Frank was never going to fit into the mold and adhere to the conventions of those around him – it simply wasn’t in his nature as a defiant, opinionated, Jewish artist.

In the agricultural, Ashkenazi Jewish village of Heves in Eastern Hungary, Isak and Jenny, two young religious locals, fell in love and were betrothed to one another. Moving to Austria to start a new life of opportunity together, they gave birth to a son and named their little boy Josef – little did they know how important the name Josef Frank would become.

Josef Frank grew up to be a proud Austrian, and a creative, opinionated youth. He enrolled to study architecture at the Vienna University of Technology, and it was there that, despite his professors’ best efforts, he discovered a hatred of interior design. “Away with universal styles,” he wrote. “Away with the idea of equating art and industry, away with the whole system that has become popular under the name of functionalism.” – The idea that homes and buildings should be fashioned by a designer who has never experienced those spaces and will never have to live in those spaces frustrated him. He believed that a home was a sanctuary and not something to be filled with artistic yet essentially useless objects.

But, as most of us turn away from the things that we despise and pursue other passions in their place, Josef Frank did the opposite. He ran towards interior design head first, and decided that instead of abandoning architecture to those whom he felt didn’t do it justice, he would enter the field himself, and rip up the rulebook from within.

In 1921, only two years after Frank and his unconventional attitude had been accepted into the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts, his father Isak passed away. Isak and Jenny were traditional Jews and Josef knew that it was important for them to be buried in Jewish graves. He went and sought out the Jewish section of the Vienna Central Cemetery, looking for two side-by-side plots for his religious parents, but he couldn’t find a grave that pleased him.

Grave of Isak and Jenny Frank in the old Jewish section of the Vienna Central Cemetery. It was designed by their son, Josef Frank. Via Wikimedia Commons

Thus he was faced with his first real-life design task. He wanted to create a set of Jewish gravestones that would satisfy his parents’ traditional roots, while remaining true to his own ideals of functionality, so he came up with a simple modernist design. This morbid project resulted in Josef Frank’s fateful realization that object design was an area he excelled in, and pursing this dream together with two other prominent designers of the day, he set up Haus & Garten in 1925, a design and furniture company that focused, in the words of architectural journalist Marlene Ott, on “the use of light, flexible and convenient, stand-alone pieces of furniture, combining different forms and materials, and allowing homeowners to arrange them according to their own precise needs.”

In this way, Frank rebelled against the prominent Austrian trend of Gesamtkunstwerk, the idea of creating a complete stylized interior in which everything has its own place and comes together to form one singular piece of art. Instead, Frank focused on workable items which would allow each individual to customize their own space, rather than conform to uniform standards.

*Terrazzo 1885-1985, Josef Frank commemorative poster*, the Josef and Margit Hoffman Judaica Postcard Collection, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Folklore Research Center, the National Library of Israel

So it was that Frank found himself looking for a way into the already crowded European design market, but he had an edge that many others lacked: his religion. Many of Frank’s peers and community members were middle- and upper-class Jews with money to spend on home furnishings. The majority of Haus & Garten’s clients in those days were therefore rich Jews who had ties to Frank and his family, and helped boost his brand to fame. Design historian Elana Shapira writes that Frank “developed a unique principle of empowerment in design during his early career while designing the homes of members of Viennese Jewish families.”

It was ironically while he was rising to artistic fame with the help of his Jewish roots that life started to turn on its head for Josef exactly because of this Judaism. As the Nazis came to power, Josef Frank had the foresight to know that this would not be a positive development for him. He decided to move to Manhattan and the relative safety offered by the USA, but soon after meeting his Swedish wife Anna, she convinced him that he would be both safe, and able to continue flourishing as a designer, in Sweden, and together they moved to Anna’s home country, where Frank gained citizenship in 1939 and lived out the rest of his days in the Scandinavian town of Stockholm.

Josef Frank’s application to emigrate from Austria, Application submitted in Vienna (Austria), May 14, 1938, the Vienna Jewish Community, the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, the National Library of Israel

It was there that he found Svenskt Tenn, or more likely, Svenskt Tenn found him! Just 9 years earlier, the wonderfully artistic Estrid Ericson had set up her design company, and it was soon flourishing. When she hired the controversial Austrian Jew Josef Frank, she was taking a huge gamble, especially as his Jewish genealogy meant that his citizenship in Sweden wasn’t guaranteed to be permanent, but the risk paid off and Frank helped boost the firm to become the most prominent design company in all of Sweden (IKEA hadn’t yet been founded!)

*Svenskt Tenn order form*, 1985, the Josef and Margit Hoffman Judaica Postcard Collection, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Folklore Research Center, the National Library of Israel

Frank believed that design should be an answer to the day-to-day functionality of life, and reflect modern needs. Pursuing this ideal, he mixed trends from the past with future predictions, and created a new way of designing which shocked many. In the media, he was criticized for his “feminine interiors,” and he was often forced to swim against the tide of modern-day architectural norms.

Despite this, Josef Frank fit into Swedish society well, and he loved the socialist values that he was greeted with. As the Nazis continued to rise to power, it was not just Jews who sought refuge in neutral Sweden, but many minority groups, and those who were fleeing what would become the battle grounds of World War ׀׀. Many of these refugees ended up in Sweden, for which the country was not well equipped. But that’s where Frank fit in. He had experience designing functional homes, and was commissioned by the municipal government to create vast social housing blocks for these fleeing Jews and refugees, many of which are still standing today. In stark contrast to other social housing, these blocks were attractive and meticulously designed with aesthetics in mind. Blending together livability and beauty was, after all, Frank’s objective. This may seem normal to us, but actually this was one of the many forays that led to his expulsion from the International Congress of Modern Architecture, who found that he held an “increasingly critical attitude” towards the harsh functionalism, metals, and concrete on which they believed that the new world would be constructed.

The life of Josef Frank, the Josef and Margit Hoffman Judaica Postcard Collection, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Folklore Research Center, the National Library of Israel

But Frank was not only a master of design, he was also an intellectual. Brother of philosopher Philip Frank, Josef did not escape the curiosity gene which was so clearly part of his DNA. Frank’s assistant Ernst Plischke said of him that he “wasn’t really an architect, but an intellectual who built ideas.” Most of Frank’s time was spent in deep philosophical ponderance of architecture, and he wrote widely on the topic, including authoring architectural novels which spanned 400 pages or more! After his death, another 800 or so pages of manuscripts with his musings on design were found, and wait eagerly to be published.

Most of Frank’s writings were derisive criticisms of modern design, which he said was led by “extremists.” As a man who had experienced the Nazi uprising, it is unclear how he could have believed that glass coffee tables represented extremism, but he acutely felt that home designers were misguided. He thought that houses were becoming art galleries instead of places for living, and one can only image what he would have thought of the stylistic minimalism which is so popular today! He was probably the first proponent of what we might call ‘Scandi’ design – simple spaces with lots of room to move around, and furniture carefully placed to meet the needs of its occupants.

In his work Accidentism, he attacked German designers, saying that their “applied art has become a problem and destroyed the whole meaning of those objects with which it has become concerned, filled them with pathos, and hence rendered them useless.” It is clear to see what he means but the critique is perhaps a tad unfair, as his own furniture design was sometimes whimsical or colorful and often made use of space in unconventional ways too. But above all, Frank really never did stray away from his priority of well-being, saying that “one can use everything that can be used” and making sure that if nothing else, his furniture would be comfortable and agreeable to use. He was widely criticized for his usage of patterns and upholstery, as well as vivid colors and movable furniture. He left blank spaces in rooms, intended for users to fill, in stark contrast to the predominant attitude of filling a designed space. Almost every prominent Scandinavian and German designer had some comment on Frank, and often they were not positive. Thankfully he could dish out the scathing remarks as fast as they were received.

Josef Frank was constantly under attack for his ideals and creations. But more than that, he was under attack for his identity. He had suffered greatly under the auspices of antisemitism, and despite the fact that his Jewish connections had bolstered his career, they also nearly brought about his downfall. Some German artists didn’t take his criticism seriously, assuming that it was just a rebellion against their country’s complicity in the Holocaust, and they saw his insurgence against traditional European art as one born from a place of trauma and rejection.

*Josef Frank’s original watercolor from a 1936 tufted carpet,* the Josef and Margit Hoffman Judaica Postcard Collection, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Folklore Research Center, the National Library of Israel

In fact, Frank became so distressed by constantly having to defend his Jewish identity that he decided to distance himself from religion altogether. Despite having been born to traditional Jewish parents, Frank didn’t follow religious customs, and promised that Judaism’s influence on his art was negligible. It is a great shame that the negative forces of antisemitism pushed Frank to abandon his roots, especially as this Judaism was what propelled him into architecture in the first place.

Even further, his art almost seems reactionary to his Judaism. Take, for example, his candelabra – a gorgeous set of candle sticks, fused together with gold tubes – they look exactly like Shabbat candle sticks, aside from only being created in sets of 3, never 2, forbidding a Jew to use them for sanctification of the Sabbath. Or his dishes – beautiful glass kitchenware, which he labeled as “for lobster and seafood” – meals which are decidedly non-kosher. A candlestick in the shape of a sun – reminding the viewer of Christ’s halo and also portraying a symbol prohibited to depict in Judaism. Add to this the even more explicit Christmas baubles, Easter decorations and an entire dining set created for a “crayfish party”. His only noted Jewish design (his parent’s gravestones) was of tragically morbid origins. Frank’s rebellion against Judaism makes sense in the context of his life – it was due to his Judaism that he was forced to flee his home country, and many critics discredited him, believing that his fame was due only to his Jewish connections. His troubled relationship with Judaism shines through in his work, but despite this, his philosophy was Jewish in its entirety – to make use of life’s offerings, to utilize spaces to host guests, lay down roots, and feel safe in one’s own family-friendly home. Despite his insistence on secularity, there is something uniquely Jewish in his large dining tables, bright table cloths, pomegranate and grape vine patterns – these are pieces that simply couldn’t help but fit into the home of an Ashkenazi Jewish bubbe.

Josef Frank left behind a rich and full legacy. He wanted design to be “fun and accessible,” but he felt that he had not succeeded in this goal. “Everyone needs a certain degree of sentimentality to feel free. That will be lost if we are forced to make moral demands of every object, including aesthetic ones,” he wrote in Accidentism, but he supposed that he never quite managed to convince the world around him of this value. He died not knowing what an impact he had made on the future of modernism, and feeling lonely and isolated. He had abandoned his religion, his home country, and belittled many of his peers in pursuit of his one true passion, and despite dedicating his life to a philosophy of design, he had not managed to convince many people of its correctness.

Memorial plaque for Josef Frank in Vienna’s 4th district, Wiedner Hauptstraße 64, Feldkurat Katz, via Wikimedia Commons

Depressed and disconnected, he passed away, not quite understanding how celebrated he had really been. Maybe he was not able to convince the whole world of his own beliefs, but it didn’t mean that people didn’t listen. They did. In the 1980s, there was an upsurgence in demand for his joyous and colorful works, which started to do exceedingly well on auction floors. IKEA decided to model some of their pieces after his signature style of modernism, and now his designs sell for tens of thousands of dollars. If only he could have seen that his life was not in fact a waste, as he sometimes believed it to be. In actuality, he is surely one of the most celebrated of all Jewish designers, and maybe even one of the foremost designers in world history.

“The Mother of Monasteries” vs. “The Tower of Babel” in World War II

The Abbey of Monte Cassino, often called the “Mother of Monasteries”, occupies a very strategic location dominating the road leading north-west to Rome. From January to May 1944, fierce battles took place there in which Allied soldiers from more than twenty different nations faced off against German, Austrian and Italian troops. The campaign ended with a German withdrawal after Allied troops breached the “Gustav Line”…

Noa Reichmann | 16.05.23

Jewish Manuscripts World War II

Polish soldiers inside the ruins of the Abbey of Monte Cassino. Photo: Melchior Wańkowicz

The Abbey of Monte Cassino, founded in the 6th century, is the oldest of Western Europe’s monasteries. Its founder was Benedict of Nursia, who was also the founder of the Benedictine Order. Benedict is buried at Monte Cassino alongside his sister, the nun Scholastica. The regulations established by Benedict served as a prototype for the monastic orders that followed, which led to Monte Cassino being dubbed the “Mother of Monasteries.”

Over its lifetime, the monastery accumulated many treasured artworks. During the Second World War, works of art from the museum in Naples were transferred there for safekeeping. As the Allies neared the monastery, the Germans organized the transfer of some of the pieces to the Vatican, as well as to other monasteries in Italy. The evacuation operation led to disputes among the German officers over where to take the works and who would escort them. This was mainly due to the intention to transfer some of the artworks to none other than Hermann Göring, after whom their military division was named. Göring was notorious for “adopting” looted works of art from occupied areas.

Among the Hebrew manuscripts found in the National Library of Israel’s catalog is a scan of an interesting manuscript currently kept at Monte Cassino. It is in fact a palimpsest, that is, a manuscript written over an earlier manuscript. In our case – a Latin book of Psalms written over an earlier Hebrew manuscript from the 13th century containing the religious Jewish laws of Rabbi Isaac Alfasi for the Talmudic tractate Eruvin.

In World War II, after a failed series of ground attacks to capture the abbey from the Germans who controlled the area, the Allies bombed the monastery from the air. Despite its importance to the Christian world and the Vatican’s attempts to prevent its destruction, the bombing of Monte Cassino was carried out due to public pressure following the heavy number of allied casualties from the ground offensives, primarily in the United States. To this day, researchers still debate whether the Germans did in fact have positions on the grounds of the monastery, although none dispute that the Germans had observation posts and machine guns positioned outside the monastery’s walls which benefited from their shelter.

After the war, the monastery was restored, and most of the art and cultural treasures were returned.

The Monte Cassino campaign exacted a terrible price: over 54,000 Allied deaths, and about 20,000 deaths for the Axis countries. Many studies have been published on the strategic and tactical considerations and military decisions of the warring parties. I would like to focus on the personal and human aspect of the campaign and its later cultural influence.

The Allied forces that took part in the battles at Monte Cassino were made up of people from many different countries and nationalities: Americans soldiers—including Japanese US citizens; British soldiers— including forces from England, Australia, New Zealand (among them Maoris); and India (among them Punjabis and Gurkhas). In the French Expeditionary Corps, alongside French European troops, there were also Moroccan, Algerian and Tunisian soldiers. They were joined by Polish and Italian volunteers, as well as troops from Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, the various Baltic countries, and soldiers from as far as Brazil. And of course, among these, were also Jewish soldiers, whether in the Polish Anders’ Army, in the British Army or in the US Armed Forces.

“The New Zealanders, these tall, raw-boned men who had come from halfway around the world, now contributed their distinctive accent to the polyglot medley of shouts and curses along the road. One of the officers described his introduction to the multinational world of the Fifth Army:

‘Running up Highway Six we were nearly put in the ditch by American Negro drivers. An Indian military policeman warned us to waste no time at the San Vittore corner, beyond which we overtook an Algerian battalion with French officers. We passed through an English field regiment’s area, several hundred American infantry working on the road, and reached Corps headquarters immediately behind two Brazilian generals. In the first room I was astounded and mystified to hear that the Japanese had taken the castle'”. (Monte Cassino, by David Hapgood and David Richardson, pp. 160-161).

The officer in question was most likely Major General Sir Howard Kippenberger, whose autobiographical book Infantry Brigadier gives a similar description. In it, he explains that the “Japanese” are American soldiers of Japanese origin.

In his memoirs, Jan Eibenschutz, a Jewish soldier who served in Anders’ Army, in the 3^rd Carpathian Rifle Division, offers a glimpse into the lives of the soldiers and their feelings in wartime on the road to Rome:

“During the first months, I discovered that what characterizes our units is physical effort and fatigue, the fear of danger was only a secondary component. To think that I received this impression while serving in the modern British Eighth Army, of which our unit was a part and which had at its disposal enormous amounts of services and means of transportation. Despite this, at the frontline, we almost always had to reach our destination on foot, walking along difficult paths, while carrying heavy weaponry.”

(Translation of an excerpt from Eibenshcutz’s memoirs published in Hebrew:

יאן אייבנשוץ, “שביתי פלוגת צנחנים גרמנים”. בתוך: עדות, 13: 112, 1996)

And this is how Eibenschutz describes the arrival at Monte Cassino, from the chapter “Journey to Hell”:

“Here we are in the Monte Cassino theater facing a key position of the German defensive Gustav Line. Here, in November 1943, the Germans managed to stop the attack of the American Fifth Army and then one after another the attacks of the English, New Zealanders, Indians, the South African units, the French (which included Algerians, Moroccans and Italians) while causing heavy losses of life and equipment. All these were not helped by the heavy bombardment of hundreds of bombers, which turned the famous Benedictine monastery on the mountain into ruins.

Now it’s our turn to attack Monte Cassino.

The approach to the front line began on April 27, a beautiful spring day. We climbed a steep path on foot which even jeeps could pass up to a certain point. The path led to a hill situated between the monastery and the top of Monte Cairo, which was over 1,500 meters high, and from where the Germans controlled the whole area and all the access roads. Already, the trees growing there had become naked black skeletons, but the entire ground was covered with carpets of red poppies; it would be hard to describe a greater contrast” (p. 113).

Jan Eibenschutz and his friends remained at Monte Cassino until May 1944, when the monastery was conquered.

“On the night of May 17, everything was ready to strike at the Germans and finish them off…

Shortly before dawn we received the order to capture the monastery, which was on the other side of the valley. We had to take up new deployment positions… It wasn’t until around 10 o’clock in the morning that we noticed movement near the monastery ruins. A short time later we saw the red and white flag flying over it. We let out cries of relief and joy.

It happened on May 18, my 24th birthday.

…with a joint effort of the Fifth and Eighth Armies, the ‘Gustav Line’ was finally breached and the Germans found themselves in retreat.

Two weeks later on June 4, 1944, Allied forces entered Rome and liberated the city from the Germans” (ibid., pp. 114–115).

About 1000 Polish soldiers are buried in the Monte Cassino cemetery, and among the gravestones about 20 are decorated with the Star of David.

One exceptional Polish soldier stood out on the battlefield – he was awarded a medal of bravery and promoted from the rank of private to corporal. This soldier was a Syrian brown bear named Wojtek that had been bought as a unit mascot and was eventually officially recruited into the 22nd Polish Artillery Supply Company in Anders’ Army. Wojtek the bear, who had learned by imitating his fellow soldiers to walk upright, could, thanks to his great strength, single-handedly lift and carry an artillery munition crate that would normally require four soldiers to transport. In the Battle of Monte Cassino, Wojtek excelled in speedily carrying crate after crate of heavy ammunition while under fire, which earned him both a medal for bravery and a promotion. Wojtek was even commemorated on the unit’s official emblem, and in May 2019, a commemorative statue of him was installed in Monte Cassino’s town square.

Jewish Brigade soldier Yehuda Harari’s illustrations, which he published in a book in 1946, also reflect the difficulties experienced by the soldiers in the battles to break through to Rome.

The Hebrew sign reads: “Don’t move -The enemy sees you”. The captions reads “Too late!” in Yiddish.

“Don’t be an antisemite!” reads the Hebrew caption

The Battle of Monte Cassino also led to the writing of one of the canonical works of modern science fiction. Walter Michael Miller, Jr. served in World War II as a tail gunner in the US Air Force. He participated in the bombing of the Abbey of Monte Cassino, and said that this experience influenced his entire life’s work. His dystopian novel A Canticle for Leibowitz published in 1959, was awarded the Hugo Award for Best Novel by the World Science Fiction Convention in 1961. It is considered by many to be one of the seminal works of speculative post-apocalyptic literature. The only book he published in his lifetime (alongside short stories), it describes a world after a nuclear holocaust in which Catholic monks are the guardians of humanity’s cultural knowledge and values.

A Hebrew translation of the science-fiction classic *A Canticle for Leibowitz,* by Walter Michael Miller Jr – inspired by the Battle of Monte Cassino

The legacy of the Battle of Monte Cassino lives on to this day. For example, the Swedish metal band Sabaton, whose songs deal with military history from different periods, were so inspired by the combined efforts of the Allies at the Battle of Monte Cassino, involving so many disparate nationalities, that they wrote a song about it, which they titled “Union” (The song is featured on the album The Art of War. Original battle photographs and film clips appear in the official music video and related video segment analyzing the battle).

Mile after mile our march carries on
No army may stop our approach
Fight side by side
Many nations unite
At the shadow of Monte Cassino
We fight and die together
As we head for the valley of death
Destiny calls
We’ll not surrender or fail

To arms!
Under one banner
As a unit we stand and united we fall
As one! Fighting together
Bringing the end to the slaughter
Winds are changing
head on north

What resonates most in the recollections of those who took part in the campaign, and in later military analyses of the battle, is the cooperation that existed among soldiers from all over the world, among army units with different battle doctrines, languages and even diametrically opposed traditions of officer/soldier relations. But the common goal of subduing the Nazi enemy bridged the gaps and resulted in victory in the battle at Monte Cassino and the opening of the road to Rome.

The Many Lives of the Synagogue El Transito

When Samuel Ha-Levi illegally built a synagogue in the provincial Spanish town of Toledo, no one could have known that it would one day become a church, then a military barracks in the Napoleonic war, a national monument, and finally a museum… but that’s just the beginning!

Mia Amran | 14.05.23

Antisemitism Conversos Diaspora Gesher L’Europa Inquisition Jewish Communities Life Before The Holocaust Sephardic Jewry Synagogues

The synagogue of Transit in Toledo, the Josef and Margit Hoffman Judaica Postcard Collection, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Folklore Research Center, the National Library of Israel

Toledo, the capital city of Old Castilla, is a beautiful town just south of Madrid. It is home to medieval buildings, fresh Spanish air rippling off the quaint river that runs through town, and breathtaking views of the surrounding countryside. The history of Toledo dates back all the way to the Romans, and the place is endowed with a deep feeling of being loaded with antiquity and significance. As you meander through the winding streets, you can’t help but understand that there is no way to grasp the vastness of Toledo’s history, no matter how much time you have to spend in the area. A whole world lurks beneath the intricate architecture and map-wielding tourists, and you wonder to yourself how so much could have happened in so small an area? Perhaps this is why the women of Toledo gathered to protect its history and defend the precious town during the Spanish Civil War of 1936, refusing to let its magnificent history be destroyed. Perhaps this is why the Spanish poet Garcilaso de la Vega used Toledo to inspire so much of his work, promising Toledo in dramatic prose that “the strength of your beauty would be sung.”

And perhaps this is why the Synagogue El Transito, sitting right inside the historic town, is endowed with such a full and theatrical history.

We don’t know exactly how far back Jewish history in Toledo dates, but we can be sure that Jews have lived there since at least the 6^th century, for in the year 589 CE the Council of Toledo created a decree prohibiting Jews from marrying Christians, holding public office or owning Christian servants. As you can imagine from the intonation of those decrees, the Jews suffered greatly under Christianity in Toledo, especially when the 8^th Toledo Council created even more extreme antisemitic legislation in the year 652CE. They say that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and this was never truer than when the rift between the Christians and the Jews led the Jewish community to aid in the Muslim conquest of Toledo in the year 715 CE. The Jews made fast friends with the new conquerors and even spoke Arabic in this period, as evidenced by the fact that Jewish documents from this time were written in Arabic (Asher b. Jehiel, Responsa, No. 56; Solomon ben Adret, Responsa, iii. 427.)

In 1252, King Alfonso the 10^th (9 Alfonsos weren’t enough apparently) captured the city of Toledo and declared it Christian once again, yet this time he made sure that the Jews were treated as equals.

*Photograph of Samuel Halevi Abulafia Private Synagogue (Nuestra Señora del Tránsito) in Toledo*, 2016, Photographer: Vladimir Levin, Center for Jewish Art Collection, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the National Library of Israel

By this point many Jews had migrated to Toledo, as Muslim persecution in other parts of Spain drove them to seek refuge. These Jews rose to prominence, holding important roles in politics and government. At one point the King of Toledo even graced the Jews with the biggest compliment of all by taking a Jewish mistress (Fermosa) and a Jewish royal physician (Hayyuj Alfata)!

In the mid-1200s, the Archbishop of Toledo grew concerned by the financial and political prominence of the Jewish community and decided to curb it by imposing a tax and housing tithe on every Jew over the age of 20 (Jacobs, “Sources,” No. 1265.) This seems not to have worked out so well, considering the fact that by 1290, nearly half of the town’s considerable wealth was still owned by Jews!

During this time period, the Nasi or leader of the Jewish community doubled up as the spiritual leader of the community, and in 1305 the Jews of Toledo chose the learned nobleman Asher Ben Jehiel Abulafia (d. 1328) to lead their congregation. It was under his political and religious guidance that our story begins.

On a fine Spanish day in 1320, a boy named Samuel Ben Meir Ha-Levi Abulafia was born into the influential Abulafia family. The Abulafias, including the aforementioned Asher, had been leading the Jewish community in both Toledo and in fact all of Castilla for over 100 years. However, Samuel’s parents died of the plague while he was still a boy, and because Samuel was too young to take over their legacy, he was instead apprenticed to the Knight Juan Alfonso. Owing to a nice bit of nepotism, his political dynasty serving the kings of Castilla for several generations, Samuel rose quickly through the ranks of the court until he found his own meaningful employment in the court of King Pedro the 1^st of Castilla, also known as King Pedro the Cruel (which we won’t go into – let bygones be bygones, and all that). Samuel was first crowned the Mayor of the town, then the Treasurer, and finally the High Judge of Toledo. It was during his stint as Treasurer that he decided to build a synagogue. It was by no means the first synagogue in the area – Toledo was already home to the largest synagogue in Spain as well as 9 others, but this one was Samuel’s own house of worship.

In 1357 the synagogue was opened. It was connected to Samuel Ha-Levi Abulafia’s house and he presided over the services. Generously paying it back to the community who had so exalted him, Samuel also opened the synagogue as a hub for Jewish education, and a Yeshiva house of study.

One of the many things that made this synagogue interesting was the fact that in the 14^th century, Spain had actually decreed a ban on all construction of Jewish educational institutes and synagogues. However, Samuel’s close relationship with King Pedro (cruel or otherwise), meant that he was able to find some legal loopholes, and more importantly, get away with them. The ban on synagogues did not extend to private homes, and bribes were sometimes accepted for the construction of Yeshivot, which King Pedro turned a blind eye towards. Maybe this was a nod to their close friendship, or maybe it was a royal token of apology for the persecution that the Jews had just faced in Toledo during the Black Death of the 1340s. Either way, the synagogue was allowed to stand, and for that we can be grateful.

Samuel Ha-Levi quite deliberately disobeyed the regulations requiring synagogues to be plainly decorated, smaller, and lower than churches, and once again King Pedro looked the other way. The rectangular prayer hall has a 12-meter-high ceiling and is decorated lavishly in a mix of styles. Hebrew inscriptions can be seen even till this day which extol both King Pedro and Samuel Ha-Levi. Arabic inscriptions and Psalm passages are also apparent on the walls, next to the Ha-Levi coat of arms and lots of magnificent windows.

During services, a second-floor gallery was set aside for the women, which was pretty forward thinking for the time! Contrary to the highly decorated interior, the façade of the synagogue was constructed of brick and stone, and was relatively unadorned, in order to draw less attention to the illegal structure, despite the fact that its towering roof raised the whole synagogue somewhat above all the nearby structures.

This house of prayer was a vibrant and animated place of worship for many years, but then tragedy struck. As the 14^th and 15^th centuries wore on, antisemitism had been back on the rise yet again. Samuel Ha-Levi obviously set out to protect Jewish rights and freedoms, but due to this, King Pedro was unable to keep defending him. Eventually the rift between the two men grew into an all-out war – Samuel was arrested on charges of corruption and eventually tortured to death. His house remained, as did the synagogue, and despite repeated and growing attacks on the Jewish community in Toledo as the 1300s came to an end, the synagogue was saved. This was not an act of good faith, but rather one of self-interest, for the synagogue was soon to be converted into a church.

In 1492, amidst a further uptake of antisemitism, the Jews were finally given an ultimatum: the Catholic monarchs of Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella, issued the Alhambra Decree, which gave Spanish Jews the choice to either convert to Catholicism, leave the country, or face expulsion. The decree was supposedly motivated by the belief that Jews had not fully assimilated into Spanish society and that their presence was a threat to the country’s religious and cultural identity, but no justification can be made for the horrors which befell the Jewish community during these terrible years of persecution. The Spanish expulsion marked the apparent end to centuries of Jewish presence in Spain, and led to the forced migration of thousands of Jews to other parts of Europe, North Africa, and the Ottoman Empire.

As no practicing Jews remained in Toledo, the synagogue was turned into a church. As if they had not inflicted enough harm already, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella donated the building to the Order of Calatrava who turned the structure into a church housing a Benedictine priory. The name “El Transito,” which honors the Virgin Mary’s Assumption, was given to the building during its stretch as a church, but ironically the synagogue has still kept this name until today, which is why it is known as the “Synagogue El Transito.” Juan Correa de Vivar painted a mural of Mary’s Virgin Transit over the original Jewish engravings on the walls, but thankfully the canvases he used were eventually removed and preserved without ruining the Jewish prayers so lovingly inscribed below.

The Synagogue El Transito was to remain a church until the early 1800s, when, during the Spanish War of Independence against Napoleon in 1808, Toledo was forced to play a leading role. Toledo is very strategically located in the center of the peninsula of Spain and close to Madrid, so it became one of the central hostile points in the country. Despite heavy resistance, over 10,000 French troops along with their 400 horses took up residence in Toledo, under guidance from General Dupont. The Spanish fought back, and the ever-changing defensive lines of both armies often fell smack-bang in the middle of Toledo, causing much damage and unrest to the town. During that time, the Spanish revolutionaries and fighters needed barracks, and the vast space of the Church of El Transito provided just the right shelter.

We can be grateful for this strategic placing of the Spanish army barracks, as the synagogue would almost certainly have been destroyed if it wasn’t being used to house their troops. Many notable buildings and heritage sites were lost during these fierce battles, and during the Civil War, more of Toledo was destroyed than ever before. Despite the piles of horse manure and stray bullets, the synagogue persevered, and by the end of the war, the synagogue-turned-church-turned-military barracks had become a symbol of Spain’s success, and the independence that they had fought for.

Having lost its status as a church, the Synagogue El Transito was turned briefly into a national monument. The decline of Christianity in the late 1800s combined with the building’s military prowess meant that it was easily turned into a heritage site, and it was only after gaining this national monument status that its history was slowly excavated, one layer at a time.

During the 19^th century, Spanish Jewish communities began to rebuild themselves, slowly at first, as Jews tentatively returned to their homes and found a more welcoming society than the one their ancestors had fled from. Despite that, no Jews returned to settle in Toledo. But as historians and world heritage staff explored the grounds of the building, they recognized just how important it had once been for the Jewish community, and pledged to return it to their possession.

A restoration effort began. The first part of the restoration was to the Torah ark, often considered to be the holiest site in a synagogue. The original ark still stood, but needed a good deal of repair and cleaning. At least 14 lattices needed to be fixed and the Hebrew inscriptions had to be painstakingly restored, letter by letter.

Arturo Mélida y Alinari became the head architect of this immense restoration project and he worked tirelessly, firstly on the roof and outside walls, and then as he grew to notice all the many safety hazards present in the structure, he turned his attention to reinforcing the ancient building. In 1911, the building was given to the Museum Fund of Spain, who pledged to gift it back to the Jewish community as a Museum of Sephardi Culture and History. They doubled down on the restoration efforts, and started on the interior walls and the women’s gallery. A debate soon raged over whether to also restore the church features, and eventually it was decided that it would only be fair to pay homage to the building’s years as a church, so the choir stage and a few other Christian features were also restored to their former glory. Finally, some new features were added to the building, including a large Jewish library and a new Center for Hebrew Studies.

Of the five grandest medieval synagogues in Toledo, only two have survived: the Synagogue El Transito, now the Sephardic Museum, and Santa María la Blanca which also, as the name suggests, spent some time as a church. Toledo is sometimes known as the “Sephardic Jerusalem” due to its beautiful Jewish heritage buildings and synagogues, and its historic Jewish quarter which can still be visited today.

*Photograph of Don Samuel Halevi Abulafia Private Synagogue (Nuestra Señora del Tránsito) in Toledo – Model 1/20*, 2016, Photographer: Vladimir Levin, Center for Jewish Art Collection, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the National Library of Israel

The Synagogue El Transito no longer hosts prayer services, and the only Jews in the town today are visitors, snapping pictures and tracing the vast Jewish history of the area, seeking to view some of Spain’s most precious medieval Jewish architecture. From a synagogue to a church, to a military barracks, then a national monument, and finally a museum and synagogue once again, the Synagogue El Transito tells the riveting and tragic story of Spanish Jewry all the way from the Middle Ages, until today.

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