When Hitler Nearly Reached Israel

In early 1942, the 500,000-strong Jewish community of pre-state Israel faced the threat of Nazi genocide during World War II.

The German army launched a campaign to seize the Middle East, then largely under British control. The targets: vital oil fields, the Suez Canal, and the land of Israel itself, then called Palestine. If Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps reached its borders, the Jewish community there would be in grave danger.

Rommel, considered invincible after a string of military triumphs, led the Axis assault. After taking the Libyan port city of Tobruk, his forces pushed east into Egypt. The British 8th Army fell back to El-Alamein, 60 miles from Alexandria, a position chosen by Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck because a vast desert depression on one flank made it defensible ground.

Rommel, confident of a breakthrough, declared: "Once through El-Alamein, our road to the Nile was clear." From the Nile, the road to Palestine would be wide open.

In Palestine, local Arabs anticipating a Nazi victory grew emboldened. Swastikas appeared on streets, copies of Mein Kampf filled Arab bookstores, and some Arabs greeted each other with "Heil Hitler."

Alexandria descended into panic. British personnel fled in trucks. Refugees packed the trains. Officials frantically burned their records.

The situation was dire.

In Palestine, local Arabs anticipating a Nazi victory grew emboldened. Swastikas appeared on streets, copies of Mein Kampf filled Arab bookstores, and some Arabs greeted each other with "Heil Hitler." Jews feared to be outside after dark.

On July 26, 1942, German radio promised Palestinian Arabs they would receive Jewish property once the Nazis arrived. Arabs were already marking Jewish homes they intended to claim. Rabbi Haskel Besser, an eyewitness, wrote in The Rabbi of 84th Street: "Streets filled with Arabs who were actually fighting among themselves over who was going to get which house."

The British-appointed Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin Al-Husseini, a fanatical antisemite with close ties to Nazi leadership who had met personally with Adolf Hitler and Adolf Eichmann, stood ready to form an Arab unit to assist SS forces in slaughtering the Jews.

In Palestine, the Jewish community braced itself. Shelters and first aid stations were set up across the country. Buses were retrofitted as ambulances. The Haganah (the Jewish underground defense force) planned both a defense and, if necessary, a last-stand evacuation to Mount Carmel near Haifa, from which civilians might be evacuated by sea. But to where? The question had no easy answer.

This period would come to be known as the "two hundred days of dread."

Many Jews turned to prayer. Rabbi Zev Paretzky's book Miracle at El-Alamein describes the intensity of those prayers in synagogues, in small prayer houses, and at the graves of revered sages. Public fast days were declared.

Rabbi Eliezer Yehuda Finkel, who had fled Mir, Poland in 1941 and re-established the renowned Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem, declared: "It is true that there are no weapons, but there is a way to escape the troubles of Hitler — Torah and prayer."

Rabbi Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman, who had rebuilt the great Ponevezh Yeshiva in Bnei Brak after it was destroyed by the Nazis, cited the prophet Obadiah (1:17): "And on Mount Zion will be refuge." The Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, Rabbi Tzvi Pesach Frank, quoted the same verse when asked about the situation. The Zhviler Rebbe of Jerusalem was unequivocal: "The enemy will not be able to enter."

Rabbi Yitzchak HaLevi Herzog, the Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi of the Palestine Mandate, was urged by Lord Halifax, the British Conservative politician then serving as ambassador in Washington, not to return to Palestine given the danger. Rabbi Herzog replied: "The prophets did not foretell a third destruction of the Temple. I firmly believe the enemy will not reach the gates of our land."

Then fate, and Hitler himself, intervened.

Even as Rommel stood within striking distance of a world-altering victory, Hitler refused to commit the reinforcements that might have pushed him through.

Even as Rommel stood within striking distance of a world-altering victory, Hitler refused to commit the reinforcements that might have pushed him through. Preoccupied with the Soviet front and dismissive of the North African campaign as a sideshow, Hitler repeatedly denied Rommel the troops, tanks, and fuel he needed and urgently requested. Some historians argue that had Hitler backed Rommel fully in the summer of 1942, the Middle East could have fallen. Instead, Rommel's overextended forces attacked El-Alamein on June 30, 1942 — and failed. The Allied line held.

At the Second Battle of El-Alamein, from October 23 to November 4, British forces under Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery broke through German lines for good, ending the Nazi threat to the region. It was the first major Allied land victory of the war. Churchill captured its significance precisely: "Before El-Alamein, we never had a victory. After El-Alamein, we never had a defeat." He called it "the end of the beginning."

The victory denied Germany access to Middle Eastern oil and secured vital supply routes. It was a turning point in the war.

There is a painful irony here. British immigration restrictions had blocked Jews from fleeing to Palestine during the Holocaust, yet it was a British victory that saved the Jews of Palestine from the same fate.

Since the Arab pogroms of the early 1920s, the Yishuv and later the State of Israel have faced existential threat after existential threat and survived them all against staggering odds. During the darkest years of the Holocaust, the Jewish community of Palestine was spared a Nazi invasion.

Between Purim and Passover, the holidays that mark Jewish survival and redemption, may the Jewish people merit complete redemption in our time.