Jewish response to The Forty Days of Musa Dagh

Some Jews believed that the book The Forty Days of Musa Dagh was full of symbolism connected to Jewish history and Judaism. They used to say about the book: "Only a Jew could have written this work". Yair Auron writes that he has no doubts that Musa Dagh is Mount Moses. The book's title is The Forty Days of Musa Dagh although according to different documentary sources, the rebellion lasted for 36 days, or for 53 days, or 24 days. Apparently no source says forty days, and Auron believes that this number was chosen to symbolize the forty days of the Great Flood, or the forty days that it took Moses to ascend the mountain. Writer and journalist Huberta von Voss says: Werfel filters the true story of the Armenians' resistance through a Hebrew prism: the chronicle of the exodus. Forty days of resistance, forty years wandering in the desert. Werfel describes the exodus from Egypt, from fate-imposed passivity. The social order in his novel is extracted from the Torah with a firm gouge. One a political leader, the other, a spiritual leader, they guide the fighting chosen people: of course, they are Moses, the prophet, and Aaron, the high priest. Ms. von Voss also makes a parallel between the hero of the novel Gabriel, which means "hero of God" and Moses in the Bible. They both grew up as strangers to their people. Auron sees "clear analogies" between the fate of Gabriel of Musa Dagh and that of Moses. Gabriel died on top of Musa Dagh, and never saw his people being saved by French ships. Moses died on top of Mount Nebo, forty years after the Exodus in which he led the Israelites out of Egyptian's slavery, and just before his people reached The Promised Land. ==Impact in Eretz Yisrael==

During World war II, the Jewish Community in the British Mandate for Palestine feared a Nazi invasion led by Erwin Rommel. Some argued they had no choice but to surrender. Others said they should fight, and Mount Carmel was chosen to rally the Jewish forces. This plan received different names, one of them being "The Musa Dagh Plan"; a leader of the Haganah stated because "We want to turn Mount Carmel into the 'Musa Dagh' of Palestinian Jewry." One of the members of the Jewish community remembers this time: "I will never forget that patrol. We marched from Ahuza along the Carmel ridge. The moon smiled down on us with its round face. I imagined to myself the Jewish Musa Dagh which was to ensure the future of the Yishuv, and guarantee its honor. We put our faith in the power of endurance of the Jewish 'Musa Dagh' and we were determined to hold out for at least three or four months." Yisrael Galili, a Chief of Staff of the Haganah, wrote to his wife: "On the way, we reexamined and elaborated on the idea of Haifa-Tobruk. Or perhaps Haifa-Masada-Musa Dagh? In any case the idea is exciting." ==Impact on resistance forces and Jewish ghetto culture==

While in Eretz Yisrael, the plan to resist a possible Nazi invasion was compared to Masada, to Tobruk, and to Musa Dagh. The Jews from the ghettos talked about Musa Dagh more often than they did about Masada. To them, Masada was more a symbol of suicide than a symbol of a battle, while Musa Dagh was a symbol of rebellion. Haika Grossman, who in her youth was a partisan and a participant in the ghetto uprisings in Poland and Lithuania, said that Musa Dagh was popular with Jewish activists in Europe, was read and "passed from hand to hand": According to testimony from the Warsaw Ghetto, Musa Dagh had a big impact on Janusz Korczak, a director of an orphanage for Jewish children. A member of Korczak's staff said that they discussed Musa Dagh in the summer of 1941 at one of their meetings. In particular they discussed the episode in which a pastor abandoned the children to save himself (in the book he later came back). During this discussion, Korczak said "that he would not under any circumstances be parted from his children" and he did not. He was offered sanctuary on the "Aryan side" by Żegota but turned it down repeatedly, saying that he could not abandon his children. He perished together with the children. Emmanuel Ringelblum known for his Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto wrote: What are people reading? This is a subject of general interest; after the war, it will intrigue the world. What, the world will ask, did people think of on Musa Dagh.... One more testimony comes from the Kladovo-Šabac group: "Like Jews throughout the world, from the ghettos of Eastern Europe to the pioneering settlements of Palestine, the Kladovo refugees (young and old) read The Forty Days of Musa Dagh by Franz Werfel and became enthralled by the story of Armenia's struggle against Turks during the First World War." A member of the Dutch underground said about Musa Dagh: "It was a 'textbook' for us. It opened our eyes and spelled out for us what might happen, although we did not know what in fact would occur." In a 1938 letter written from prison in Benito Mussolini's Italy, Vittorio Foa stated: "In a novel by Franz Werfel, The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, I found a pretty faithful description of what the treatment of Jews would be in Mitteleuropa". ==Jewish critics of the book==

In 1933 Dov Kimchi wrote: A people ravaged by 'sacred' suffering on the biblical pinnacle of tragedy, unparalleled in the twentieth century; but didn't that nation become dedicated to its agony, uplifted, sanctified by a new life, compelled into interpreting all these torments as a reward for suffering? Or, like those who suffer from their weakness, who wither away, their immolation neither shaking the planet nor turning the individuals or the people into Chosen Ones? It is a quintessential Jewish belief in being smoldered and sanctified by fire. This is a typical Jewish question which the Jewish poet has transposed to a different dimension, seeking answers among the Gentiles, since he will not seek them here, among his own people. In a review published in 1934, R. Zilegman writes: "The book is very interesting for the educated reader in general, but the Jewish reader will find it of special interest. The fate of this Armenian tribe recalls, in several important details, the fate of the people of Israel, and not surprisingly the Jewish reader will discover several familiar motifs, so well known to him from the life and history of his people." ==See also==