We Jews have had a rough time, massacres by Roman invaders, Muslim invaders, Crusaders and others. In Europe, we had massacres in most countries, during Crusader times, the Inquisition, the Black Death, Pogroms and the Holocaust. 

Now we have our own country and the words "Never Forget" and "Never Again" are an integral part of the Israeli and Jewish psyche. Here in Israel we have two remembrance days where there are sirens, the first on the anniversary of the outbreak of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the second a week later for the remembrance of our fallen soldiers. Simply put the first remembrance day is to remember the cost when Jews did not have a country of our own and the second to remind us of the cost of holding on to a country of our own.

But the horrors of Europe during the Nazi years was not only felt by Jews, but by everyone. Austria was one of the countries that was occupied by the Nazis. After the war and its liberation from Nazism, the Allies were in control of Austria. However in 1946, the Allies signed an agreement that loosened their control. The Austrian Parliament was almost relieved of Allied control. A decision of parliament could be overturned only by a unanimous vote by all four Allies: France, England, America and Russia, but the Russian vote was almost always vetoed.

Along comes an Austrian stamp issue in 1946 for a "Never Forget" ("Niemals Vergessen") exhibition on the crimes of Nazism.  Eight stamps were prepared, six of them displayed below. The surtax was intended to pay for the exhibition. 




The stamps were designed by Alfred Chmielowski, who won the competition for the stamps to accompany the exhibition. The designs must be interpreted against the background of the idea to not offend the Austrians who believed that they were the first victims of Nazism and their feelings were above others who had been persecuted. So they show demonized power anti-fascist and Christian symbolism, (wreath of thorns, seductive snake, etc.). Nothing about anti Semitism is mentioned, even the hand of a dying prisoner is bland.

Designs by Leopold Metzenbauer were rejected. They show, for example as shown on the left, a chain of people passing by a burial ground and in the foreground there is the Jewish star. Perhaps a more apt design for Never Forget, but then again that is my Jewish perspective.

Interestingly enough during the Nazi years, that same snake was used against Judaism, as can be seen in the stamp on the left from German occupied Serbia in 1942. This stamp was part of a set of four issued as a part of an Anti Masonic exhibition. This exhibition was, in effect, an anti-Semitic exhibition, one of many during the Nazi years.

In a previous blog post, we learned that of all the countries in the world, only Czechoslovakia was selling arms to Israel and only because mother Russia, or Big Daddy, allowed them to.

Now Mommy Russia was not doing it out of the goodness of her heart, oh no, who would do that? Russia was one of the countries that immediately recognized the new state of Israel, albeit three days later. Maybe it took the email three days to arrive.

So why? Well the Cold War between the west and the east had begun in 1947 and tensions were high. The cold war actually started in 1947 with what was called the Truman Doctrine. The Americans did not want Russia to spread communism around the globe, they wanted to spread democracy instead. Good luck with democracy in Islamic countries, but that is another issue.

Many of the big boys in the Jewish State had origins in the eastern bloc. Many even spoke Russian. OK they also spoke English, German, Yiddish, French and nonsense, but since when is that relevant. So the Russians naturally thought that Israel would become a Russian satellite. Who knows they may even become a communist country.

America, on the other hand, did not trust the Jewish State for the same reason and placed an arms embargo. Actually POTUS called David Ben Gurion just before the declaration and begged him not to declare independence. The American Secretary of State George Marshall did not believe that the Jewish State would survive the war and did not want to support it. WW2 had just ended. He also did not want to loose the Arab countries. Logical after all, they had more money and were huge.

England did not want Israel not as a Jewish State and not as anything and some of their Spitfire jets attacked Israel. Some of their soldiers were actually caught as prisoners of war. Their ships still patrolled the port of Haifa after the Mandate ended and one of their generals, Glubb Pasha, was in charge of the Jordanian Legion.

But after the war, Israel did not become a satellite of Russia, nor did it buy arms from them. They bought from France. However Israel was not really on either side, the new kid just wanted to survive. Can't really blame her, right? She was faced with belligerency on all sides and constantly attacked and the world did nothing. Wait are we talking about 2021 or 1950?

Now tensions between East and West are high and the west had created the NATO defense pact. In May 1955, the Soviet Union and her satellites created their own defense pact, the Warsaw Pact. Bulgaria was one of the countries which was a part of that pact and there begins our story of the day.

EL AL, Israel's state airline, which was once jokingly referred to as Every Landing Always Late, was on a routine flight from London to Tel Aviv on the evening of Tuesday, July 26, 1955. It departed Heathrow Airport en route to Lod (today Ben-Gurion International Airport), via Vienna and and then Istanbul. After a brief layover at the Austrian capital, the Lockheed Constellation – a four-engine propeller plane – took off for Istanbul shortly before 3 A.M. on July 27.

Soon after takeoff, the flight encountered a thunderstorm, something that was known to cause distortions in the old-fashioned NDR navigation system in use in those days. In the case of LY-402, which was flying along the “Amber 10” air lane, it appears that the pilot changed course after concluding incorrectly that he had passed over the Skopje (Macedonia) navigation beacon. This change of direction caused the aircraft to cross from Yugoslavia into Bulgaria, near the border village of Tran.

Detecting the violation of its airspace, the Bulgarian air force scrambled two MiG-15 “Fagot” jet fighters from the Dobroslavtsi airfield to intercept the intruder. The plane flew over Bulgaria for 200km with the two Bulgarian jets trailing it for most of that distance, and at the time the pilots claimed to have issued several warning shots, but this claim was soon retracted. According to a history of Bulgarian aviation, the deputy commander of Bulgarian air defense, Gen. Velitchko Georgiev, told the two pilots, “If the plane is leaving our territory, disobeying orders, and there is no time left for more warnings, then shoot it down.”

What’s clear is that, as the civilian plane neared the country’s southern border and was about to cross into Greek airspace, the MiGs fired at it. The Constellation exploded at an altitude of 2,000 feet, with its pieces falling to earth near Petrich, Bulgaria. 51 passengers and seven crew members were killed.