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Israel Our Land The connection of Israel with the genocide and the Resistance is so self-evident that it appears virtually impossible to question it. Not only is the foundation of the State of Israel due largely to the genocide of the European Jews. Auschwitz became the central historical argument developed by the national movement for Israel. Auschwitz provided proof of the urgent need to establish a Jewish national homeland. So from the very beginning, Israel laid claim to the monopoly of commemorating the genocide. To support this claim the Beth lohamej ha'getaot (House of the Ghetto Fighters/Museum of the Holocaust and Resistance) was founded in 1948 and the Yad Vashem Memorial in 1953. They have preserved the remembrance of the genocide and the resistance movement involved in it up to the present day. Beth lohamej ha'getaot, the first museum to commemorate the genocide, is devoted to the Warsaw ghetto fighters. It reflects the early self-consciousness of the Israeli state. The uprising is alongside Auschwitz one of the central memories because it emphasizes the heroism with which the Jewish people struggled against their annihilation. |
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In 1945, even before the State of Israel was founded, the Zionists endeavoured to situate the genocide in the context of the Jewish national independence movement. The poster, which links the development of the country, a metaphor for salvation, with the genocide, is to be understood in this sense.
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The poster, which was published in the occasion of an international conference on the Jewish struggle and resistance in World War II that was held in the Beth lohamej ha'getaot kibbutz, is a significant example of making the connection between the ghetto uprising in Warsaw and the founding of the State of Israel. The star, the national emblem of Israel, builds a bridge between the ghetto fighters and Israel.
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