By BARRY STEINBERG
Special to Lehigh Valley Source
Eilon, 2009
Hello friends
Rambling through the orchard the other day I received an "outside" phone call. A woman with a Russian accent announced that she was from Zvulon Plastica and was contacting me about my "appointment". Taken aback by the woman with the Russian accent and the invitation, my mind went into a spin like a prize wheel as many of the irrigation firms have some form of plastic in their company names: Plassim, Plasson, Rotoplast, Metzerplas. Then again, the woman with the Russian accent may have been representing an East European soccer club, mistakenly confusing me with a promising midfielder for a salary review with FC Zvulon Plastika. It was of course neither of these, but an effort to reschedule an appointment with what is locally referred to as the plastic chirurgeon [surgeon].
On Wednesday I traveled with Eilon's shuttle van into Nahariya, where I would board a bus to the Zebulon clinic. Standing near the empty queue barrier I noticed one of my elderly neighbors Lolik searching for the departure gate of Haifa bound buses. Lolik is a retired teacher and academic. For the remainder of the day we immersed ourselves in a review of a goodly part of the twentieth century replete with an up to date analysis of the Obama presidency.
We began our conversation by discussing the chief causes behind the entry of the United States into the war in Europe in 1917. As some may recall, despite the mediatory efforts of President Wilson to bring about a "peace without victory" Germany planned the resumption of "unrestricted submarine warfare". This was Berlin's response to a very effective British naval blockade of Germany. It would mean the sinking of neutral merchant shipping bound for Great Britain. The idea was to sink so much tonnage that the British would sue for peace on favorable terms for Germany. The United States would surely enter the war, but basically unprepared for it, she would not be ready to make much of an impact on the war in Europe before the anticipated British [and subsequent French] collapse. While the German command was much in favor of this approach, the German Foreign Ministry was scheming to instigate a war between the United States and Mexico in the hope that Japan would seize the moment, switch alliances and ensure an American defeat. Many people in the German intelligence community precipitated Japanese territorial expansion in the Pacific, [an idea that came to fruition twenty years later] but the United States, firmly established in Hawaii and the Philippines stood in her way. Germany would then ensure the restoration of invaluable territory to Mexico which had been ceded to the US in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo which concluded the war with Mexico in 1848. Even after the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare, President Wilson still hesitated to throw the administration's weight behind a declaration of war. Washington severed diplomatic relations, but then the intercepted telegrams between the German Foreign Minister, Arthur Zimmerman via the German ambassadors in Washington and Mexico City, decoded by the British, exposed the German plot and pushed Washington over the edge and into war with Germany.
Lolik's expertise, it would appear, seemed to revolve around his personal experiences around the period of World War II. A native of Warsaw, he immediately attended university in France upon graduating high school in 1937. This enabled him to establish contact with other foreign students in a nation that was entirely different from pre-war Poland. He did not encounter the prevalent anti-Semitism that made distinctions between its Polish citizenry. [Students, I was told, sat on opposite sides of the classroom according to their ethnic affiliations].
Despite the institutionalized discrimination, many Poles were immune to its pernicious effects.
War in Europe erupted when Germany invaded Poland. The various issues that preoccupied the Powers which Berlin had raised prior to the invasion of Poland dealt with territorial rights regarding Poland. A short time before, after Germany occupied most of Czechoslovakia, the Poles too were eager to attain some territorial aggrandizement at Prague's expense. Prague was compelled to cede more territory in Slovakia with mixed but mainly Polish populations to Poland.
Evidently these acquisitions were very popular within Poland, before anyone had a chance to fully appreciate that Poland's turn would be next in the ambitious German plan of domination. Lolik could recall militants marching through Warsaw's streets, banners held aloft with their hefty slogans, vociferating their nationalist demands for the cession of Český Těšín from Czechoslovakia.
As the Germans chose to invade Poland at the end of the summer Lolik found himself unable to return to France to continue his studies. He believes that the way things turned out for him, that had the war begun during the school year he would have been stranded in France, which was eventually occupied. Lolik informs me that most of the foreign students that tarried in France were liquidated by the Gestapo after Germany occupied the country. Lolik, already in Poland during the school recess, succeeded in reaching the Soviet Union and found employment as a tractor driver in Uzbekistan.
Although we debated some of the implications of Moscow's infamous alliance with Berlin, which pretty much removed the major obstacle in Germany's onslaught into Poland, one factor that contributed to Moscow's late switch was the perceived Franco-British snub of the Soviet Union in their bid to conciliate the Germans in Munich, which resulted in the division and dissolution of Czechoslovakia.
In Uzbekistan, Lolik often found himself driving his tractor on the agrarian collectives. He was once invited to the home of a Uzbek hierarch, whose traditional status had been annulled by the Soviets. At the advent of the German invasion the Wehrmacht had made tremendous progress into the Soviet state. With the Red army reeling in a succession of defeats and retreating eastward, Josef Stalin, the Soviet ruler, was desperate to secure any aid from wherever it could come. The problem was that the British, whose backs were against the wall defending themselves against Germany, had little to spare and few routes with which to supply the Soviet Union. A sea lane existed in northern Murmansk, before the seas iced over. When Iran refused accessing her territory to supply the Soviet Union with war materiel, both Britain and the Soviet Union invaded the country. A brief war ensued. Throughout the remainder of the Second World War, with a new Shah succeeding the uncooperative Reza Shah, the British attempted to extend their influence deep into the region. According to the Uzbek hierarch, sipping coffee with his Polish Jewish refugee friend, promises had circulated regarding a post-war settlement which would deprive the Soviet Union of more than one of her central Asian republics, with just the hint of sovereignty beneath a British sphere of influence. Lolik had no reason to doubt the venerable but deposed hierarch's wishful predictions, he understood that the British were also keen in upsetting the Soviet order.
As I mentioned earlier, Lolik touched on many topics, not least of which are his current observations regarding the Obama presidency. Lolik was recently in the US visiting his son who emigrated from Eilon. His son is a successful fruit grower on his own upstate New York orchard. Lolik believes that with the American economy in such disrepair that the administration should be concentrating primarily on the economy. Without suggesting what reforms or policies need to be adapted, Lolik believes that a rebounding economy would endow this presidency with enormous political capital to implement the kind of health care reforms [and other reforms] that are necessary, even to ensure a healthy economy. He is dismayed at the obstructionist policies of the Republicans and their intent to wreck or weaken the administration early on.
Lolik has expressed disappointment regarding the Obama foreign policy.
Afghanistan can be a quagmire and is becoming increasingly unpopular with most Americans anyway. Despite the promising rhetoric at the recent Organization of American States summit in Port-of-Spain, Lolik has been unable to track much progress regarding American relations with Cuba.
Citing change, the establishment of new American military bases in Columbia seems to revive older memories of unfettered intervention in Latin America. The reduction in troops in Iraq or their withdrawal from Iraqi cities are agreements that can be accredited to President Obama's predecessor. The recent upsurge in violence in Iraq raises questions regarding the fate of the American expedition there.
Although President Obama's Cairo speech was received warmly in the Arab world, sanctions are still in place against Damascus, even though, rightly or wrongly, the culprits that were imprisoned after the former Lebanese prime minister Hariri's assassination have all but been absolved, thus tentatively removing the taint of Syrian complicity.
Efforts to reach Iran half-way over the nuclear issue have foundered; either because the Iranians are intent in their own game of deception, or some percipient inching toward détente was rocked off its trajectory by the recent fraudulent presidential elections in Iran. According to Lolik there is considerable disinformation regarding Iran's nuclear potential.
These discussions and much more occurred outside a doctor's office, inside a shopping mall, the bookshop and pharmacy, a bus station, two buses and the intersecting lanes outside of my son's home. We took no notice of time beneath a blazing sun on a typically hot summer day.
Scholarly Lolik, indefatigable and constantly smiling, had concluded his prologue and had just begun to offer his discourse.-Barry
