"Season of Our Liberation," is the popular name for Passover, and it was powerfully conveyed in Vice President Harry Truman's speech during a seder at the National Jewish Welfare Board's Washington, D.C. headquarters on March 26, 1945.
This remarkably prescient address was also broadcast on CBS radio to the "Jewish men and women in the American armed forces."
The vice president astutely universalized the holiday's overriding message:
"This evening as the Passover begins, all God-fearing people can join with those of Jewish faith to thank the Almighty for the many blessings received.
"Already millions of people recently held in bondage in Europe, Asia and Africa, have been liberated by the forces of freedom."
Truman also emphasized that while "this tragic world-wide conflict still continues to demand a heavy toll in lives and wealth, gratifying progress has been made toward the all-essential goal – complete victory!"
Amazingly, over the next five months, Truman would play the pre-eminent leadership role in the annihilating defeats of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.
On April 12, 1945, only 17 days after the Passover address, Truman was sworn in as president by U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone, a few hours after President Franklin Roosevelt had died of a cerebral hemorrhage in Warm Springs, Georgia.
While the ill Roosevelt was president for more than 12 years, Truman had served as vice president for less than three months.
In July 1944, a few months before the presidential election, the Democratic leadership wisely dumped hapless Vice President Henry Wallace and successfully replaced him with the senator from Missouri.
On April 30, 1945, Adolf Hitler committed suicide in a Berlin bunker, as Red Army soldiers were completing the conquest of Nazi Germany's capital, and American GIs (including my father) were joining with Soviet troops at the Elbe and Mulde rivers in eastern Germany.
Additionally, in his Passover radio broadcast, Truman declared that Hitler "sought to exterminate the entire Jewish race … [t]o pave the way for his plans for world domination."
But the German dictator did not "reckon with the courage and endurance of a race hardened by centuries of oppression."
One of their monumental contributions during World War II is the 1.5 million Jewish combatants who fought in the Allied armed forces and underground resistance movements, including 550,000 in America's, 500,000 in the Soviet Union’s, and 100,000 in Poland's.
President Truman's next historic World War II achievement, less than one month into his extraordinarily successful presidency, is Nazi Germany's unconditionally surrender to the Allies on May 8, 1945.
And on Aug. 14, 1945, he announced Japan's unconditional surrender, one week after commander in chief Truman had ordered the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Thus ended the bloodiest conflict in human history that caused between 70 million and 80 million military and civilian deaths.
Another accurate prediction in Truman's March 1945 Passover message is that the Jewish people firmly believed "that ultimately another Moses must come to lead them out of their modern bondage and into the Promised Land."
Between the early 1920’s and early 1960’s, David Ben-Gurion was the Zionist leader who played the central role of establishing and building the Jewish state.
Between Sept. 1939 and May 1945, he directed the 500,000 Jews in Palestine in vigorous support of the successful Allied war effort in Mideast and Mediterranean, despite Britain's despicable closure of the Holy Land to Jewish immigration in May 1939.
Between 1945 and 1948, under President Truman's continuing indomitable leadership, America terminated Great Britain's duplicitous trusteeship over Palestine, and the United Nations General Assembly's voted in late Nov. 1947 to partition the region into Jewish and Arab states.
On May 14, 1948, only 11 minutes after Prime Minister Ben-Gurion and other Jewish leaders in Palestine declared Israel's independence, the U.S. State Department extended de facto recognition of Israel.
President Truman acted despite the vociferous opposition of the State Department, military and intelligence services.
Six months later, in Nov. 1948, Jewish Americans richly rewarded President Truman with a critical 75% of their votes, while giving only 10% to Republican challenger Thomas Dewey.
Truman received 303 Electoral Votes, to Dewey's 189 EVs and segregationist Strom Thurmond got 39 EVs from four Southern states.
However, Jewish voters for Truman were crucial in three key states – California, Illinois and Ohio – with a combined 78 EVs, which he won by a miniscule total of 59,000 votes.
Switching these EVs to Dewey would have given the New York governor the presidency, with 267 EVs to Truman’s 225 EVs.
Finally, 81 years after Vice President Truman's 1945 Passover speech, in which he declared that the "Angel of Death is again passing over the homes of modern tyrants," President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have been relentlessly demonstrating they are worthy successors to President Truman and Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion.
Both leading democracies still produce highly-qualified and brave military leaders, soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines.
Mark Schulte is a retired New York City schoolteacher and mathematician who has written extensively about science and the history of science. Read more Mark Schulte Insider articles — Click Here Now.
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