Mussolini A new life by Nicholas Farrel 2003 480pg

    Mussolini  A new life by Nicholas Farrel 2003    480pg   

This is a revised view of  Mussolini , it tries to portray his more positive aspects  27/2/2017

With the end of WW1 Italy was plunged into rampant inflation, rioting and strikes. Soldiers were kept occupying the territories received but most were kept busy dealing with the unrest. Returning victorious soldiers felt they had no gains from the war. Even though Italy had been united in 1871the war had brought about a unity of classes and dialect divisions.

You had universal suffrage of men over 21 and illiterates over 30.  400 thousand Italians had died in the 1919 flu epidemic.

The government feared a Socialist Revolution as in many cities arson was being used to get workers wage increases, lead by d' Annuncio

Fascism stood for the reincarnation of the Roman Empire. In the 1919 election the Fascist failed to achieve many votes. The church discouraged the public from voting. Fascists decided the socialists were the Russian army camped in Italy.

Blocco National with Mussolini and Giofitti won the election in 1921 defeating the socialists; the aristocrats lost control due to universal manhood suffrage. 

 

In Ravenna celebrating 600 years of Dante death the blackshirts converged. Mussolini declared fascism a political party.

Pope Pius saw fascism as the best chance for peace in Italy.  Victor Emmanuel was hostile to the Vatican and did not like parliament's incompetence. When Mussolini arrived in Rome he was greeted by black shirts. Mussolini was the sole candidate appointed by the king; he was 39 and the youngest PM since unification.

Fascism was between production and workers a third way for the corporate state.  The fascist parish was national.  

The Soviet example shows a new aristocrat replacing the Tsar through "democracy"

Italy had had 3 and a half years of war

        4 years of virtual civil war

        2 years of red violence

        2 years of black violence. Mussolini represented the last chance. 

1922 Luigi Facto became the PM a liberal weak leader with infighting in the party and fascist gangs were creating havoc against socialists and trade unions.  The socialist feebly called for a national strike and this played into Mussolini's hands and people were worried about a revolution.

The march on Rome was by 30thousand mostly unarmed fascist Mussolini and most of them arrived by train.  There was an army garrison that could easily have dealt with this and it was ready. The march on Rome was more of a victory celebration.

The Mussolini government was sworn in and wanted a years emergency powers. He thanked the workers for their support, the King for not unleashing the army in the civil war and God for help that conciliation with the Vatican.

He then sent the marchers home. In parliament were 7 previous liberal  PMs 5 of whom supported him.

 1923 Italian diplomat killed on the Albania/Greek conflict Italy bombed Corfu and invaded then Conference with France and British Ambassidors to arbitrate giving Mussolini prestige and indicating his iridescence in future.

Under Minister Gentili education reforms pleased the Vatican with crucifixes to be put in classrooms barracks courts and contraception to be banned.

They simplify tax reduced national debt, improved public services and railways, reduced beaurocracy and brought internal security and national pride.

 In 1924, 23 list were voted on in the elections and he Fascist won 66.3% liberal, nationalist, and Catholics had joined his list, many as opportunists.  Matteoti the socialist leader claimed the election were a fraud and this caused the fascist party to challenge Mussolini. He sent squadrati to deal with Matteoti but they killed him and as this was leading to Mussolini he declared a dictatorship. Elections were postponed to 1924 and the elections to place in an atmosphere of terror, the elections were rigged but the party was very popular and won 65% of the vote.

When the socialist Matteotti  published a dossiers of fascist crimes abroad that the elections were rigged . meant to ruff him up killed him and the evidence of this lead to Mussolini, later this go out of hand and he made himself dictator. The murderer was put in jail and money was paid to hush the story. Many thought the scandal was so bad it was the end of Mussolini including the fascist but he grabbed power

 

 

The first move to dictatorship was to control the Black Shirt violence , by bringing the squadrati to being part of the militia, so that their allegiance was not longer to their ras. he used them against his opposition but also against the fascist party. The grand council of fascism was a parallel cabinet. He formed a coalition with the nationalists, the Catholics and the liberals to stand against the socialists.

 

1925 Safferetti wrote Dux in Italy. She moved across the road from Mussolini while he was in church negotiations.

In 1926 became the dictator and closed down all political parties except the PNF after 4 assassination attempts and he also used this as an excuse to clamp down on opponents.

Everything in the state nothing outside the state. The word Totalitarian gained widespread usage in Italy at this time. Now the fasces became the state insignia, the axe enclosing the bundle of rods.  After the 4th assassination attempt he tightened his power grip. The special tribunal that lasted 16 years sentenced 4596 to prison but only executed 31

He set up a Ministry of Corporation and it represented both the workers and the state and industrial strife was ended.

His slogan was "If I advance follow me, if I retreat kill me, if I die revenge me. Statute of 1848 he King could only rule by decree through his Prime Minister now Mussolini took this power. Italian in exile who spoke against Mussolini lost their citizenship and property.

Through the prefect of police he ended to the squadratti violence.  Cesare Mori the prefect was appointed and he put an end to the Mafia in Sicily resulting in the fleeing to the mountains or America or landing in jail. Mussolini saw the Mafia as a threat to Fascism and the economy of Sicily developed enormously by not having to pay protection. From America they returned with the Allies in 1943; Lucky Liociano and after that it took till the end of the cold war in 1990 to bring them under control again.

In Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia the police imposed the regime. In Italy the police were controlled by the state and not by the party.

A revalued lira was put on the gold standard. Wheat and sugar imports were taxed and with a new program importation of wheat dropped 75% as home production increased.

The concept of low birth rates in the cities would lead to a decline in the state's power and bachelors between ages 25 and 60 were taxed to give money to childbirth programs.Thus Mussolini had 2 more children, and the Vatican was pleased with this program.  

Railway bridges connected Venice to the railway system and the Milan station is a grandiose project of the Mussolini era.   

While he was a journalist he supported freedom of the press but now he controlled it by various methods, threatening editors and paper sellers who sold non fascist papers and delivery trucks.

Private industry was encouraged but a Ministry of  Corporation was set up and unions were made to work for the good of the state. 

1926 Once Mussolini was dictator he was strong enough to negotiate with the pope secretly  " Questiono Romano"

Fascist you were developed with the slogan "Believe obey fight"  Crucifixes were put into every class room with pictures of the Pope   Fascism "Everything in the State nothing outside the state."

 

5 years after he became PM he brought his wife Rochella to Rome and had a Catholic marriage and baptised the children then had 2 more children and encouraged Italians to have bigger families but at the same time 

1929 Lateran treaty.  The Vatican Independent State came about and Catholicism was defined as the state religion but all other religions would be tolerated and the pope lost all temporal power.  The church agreed to stay out of politics and then could again publish. The church was more anti-Semitic than the Fascists. 

Mussolini however did rule by consent.  In many democracies the government has less than a 50% mandate while Italians were both active and passive supporters and not because they were evil. Parliamentary democracy had failed and only a dictatorship could move the country. The fascist had the better song  Giovanezza and Toscanini refused to play it at concerts and left Italy in 1931.

Arnaldo, his brother a teacher and journalist died in 1931 leaving a great loss to Benito

Fascism was optimistic about the future and exalted values of ancient Rome to make the new man, renovation.   It did not burn books, it exalted the countryside, the Latin Mediterranean and values of the peasants. It stood against bourgeois values but supported the entrepreneurial spirit

Fascist Doctrine was not a layed down dogma and had to be developed and he moved along Gentili wrote about this but they were never able to define it as Marx had defined Communism. His speeches attracted the public but had little content. He himself might have reached a point where he was just using fascism as a tool to hold power.

  The Futurists gave it support.  It was not interested in an official art cult like the Nazis or Bolsheviks. 

1926 Churchill regarded Mussolini as a remarkable man and as Chancellor of the Exchequer agreed to reschedule the Italian war debt from WW1

1926 to 1939  Pontine Marshes this is a vast area south east of Rome that only had 1800 poor farmers suffering from malaria. A national project drained these and 5 towns were build with hundreds of settlers  brought in with vast agriculture.

The ship Rex build in Genoa was the record holder of the fastest passage to NY.  The aeroplane Maachi has the record of the fastest aeroplane in about 1931.

Between 1932 and 1935 Oswald Moselys union of  fascist party was subsidised by Mussolini but once Mosely in 1936 married Diana Mitford in Berlin Mussolini refused to see him.

Mussolini told Ludwig Emil Cohn that there was no such thing as a pure race; it was a spiritual feeling.

By 1930 the squadrati had disappeared and  most political detainees were released.

In 1933 FDR invited Mussolini to Washington as he was worried about Hitler instead Guido Jung, finance minister (Jewish) was sent. Could Italy safeguard world peace??

Edda Mussolini had a relationship with Wallace Simpson, she fell pregnant and had an abortion which left her sterile.

1927 Sport Mussolini became Italy's Number one sportsman, playing tennis, on a white horse driving racing cars. Sport was taken over by the party and YMCA and Catholic clubs were closed and scouts a foreign imitation in 1928. Government sponsored sports clubs were opened and at a boxing club Mussolini's remark " I don't want a nation of mandolin players I want fighters"  Italy won the Mondiale  in 1934 and 1938

Rossi wrote that he moved from cynicism to idealism , impulsiveness to caution, generosity to cruelty, resolution to indecision, moderation to intransigence and this all gave him stronger powers.

D' Annuncia  an influential writer and poet was against any alliance with Germany but he died in 1938

1938, “The Manifesto of the Race

1938 academics had to take the fascist oath and the race laws came about Enro Fermi whose wife was Jewish moved to the States. Schools were brought  under the fascist regime but they failed with the universities. Safratti at this stage left for South America.

When the anti Semitic laws were introduced 10 000 Jews or about a third of the adult Jewish population were members of the PNF. There were only 50 000 Jews in Italy but now refugees were arriving. Jews of mixed marriages were accepted as well as anyone who fought in WW1 or in the Italian army. Jews were not expelled from the PNF and were promoted in the army. The church was part of the problem - you could convert to Catholicism like you could convert to fascism.

1943 After Mussolini was deposed for 20 month that is when the Italians got the worst of fascist militia  under German occupation and the worst atrocities in Italy and the Balkans occurred as shown in "Captain Corelli Mandolin"

Surviving Hiroshima : A young woman's story, by Antony Drago and Douglas Wellman 2020 255pg

Kaleria Palchikoff the daughter of White Russian who fled the Bosheviks and lived in Hiroshima 15/12/20

Antony Drago is Kalaria's (Kay) son.  Douglas Welman is a writer on WW2

The Palchikoff Marquis coat of arms from 1620  They were wealthy landowners who were rewarded by the Tzar for  loyalty and leading an  army.

1861 Alexander II emancipated the slaves   

1673 The Romanov Family were rulers of Russia till 1917

The author's mother was 24 living in Hiroshima when the atomic bomb was dropped. This is a firsthand account of events recorded for posterity.

1904  Japan attack Port Arthur  Port Arthor was a Russian port leased from China, and this could threaten Japan in Korea,     

1922 They were fleeing the Bolsheviks in the Russian Far East.  His mother Kaleria Palchikoff was born in Vladivostok 1921

Tinian Island is only 39 square mile and had been under the rules of Spain , Germany and Japan before theAmericans.

The B29 had a pressurized cabin.  The target was the Aioi Bridge that spans the Honkawa and Motoyasu Rivers, the bomb was dropped at 8.15am

His grandfather Sergei Alexandrovich Palikoff was born in 1893 . They thought that the aristocracy and their role would go on forever. The family had a tradition of being musicians but he became a lawyer, and they joined the Imperial Army as was family tradition.  The White Army was made up of several separate armies.  Both the Red and White armies could not get enough volunteers and conscripted where they were .The White Army initially received support from Wetern powers.

Her grandmother born in Irkurs's  family were part of  Molokan community forced from Western Russia via Armenia and eventually to Harbin in Siberia which in the 1920s had nearly   200,000 immigrants from the west.  They were basically stateless and that is where her grandparents married in 1920

The Revolutionaries had ceded the eastern territories of Finland , Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia as part of the armistice of Oct 1917. The Bolsheviks wanted to kill every member of the aristocracy.  They fled to Vladivostok and hijacked a Japanese ship to take them away. They destroyed all their weapons just before the Bolshevics arrived in 1922. The ship's captain offered them a better option to arrive in Japan stateless as refugees. 1923 landed in Hiroshima as asylum seekers. From there many went to other places in Japan, China, Europe S. America and the USA , they stayed in Hiroshima.

Japan was prepared to recognise Russia's authority over Manchuria if Russia would recognize Japan over Korea. 

Her father began working as a musician in the silent movie hall, the musical scores were usually well known classical pieces and he could sight read them., later was asked to teach music at the Methodist all girls school where he taught for 25 years.There were many American missionaries and Jesuit priests at the Catholic convent she went to and she later went to the Canadian Academy in Kobe.  And learned English. English and returned to Hiroshima as a English language teacher, There were about 30 white people in the whole city.  A reason they  remained in Japan as there was a Terror Brigade from Russia to hunt down Russian aristocrats. Attempts to assassinate caused the Japanese Communists to be banned in 1933.

The Japanese military hired her grandfather to teach the cadets Russian. 

Japan thought by destroying the American fleet they could keep her out of the war while they captured the Philippines and oil rich Indonesia. But the dry dock maintenance shops and storage facilities were not targeted. Only 29 Japanese planes were lost against Pearl Harbour. 

Her grandfather was interned as an alien but eventually released with no explanation by the Japanese authorities.

America had broken Japan's codes and knew of the battle plans.

Kalaria's brother Nick was studying in California. Did not mention that he was born in Japan and enlisted in the US army and saw action in the Pacific with troops listening to the Japanese signals.

1944 July Tojo was forced to resign and General Kuniaki Koiso replaced him; he allocated more rice  and potato rations.

In the 1944 election Henry Wallace was replaced as vice President by Harry Truman. Wallace was considered too liberal by the Democrats to be President  and it was realized that Roosevelt was ill and might not last his 4th term. Truman got more votes in the primary. 

 1945 April Franklin Roosevelt died  

1945 May 8th German capitulation

.1945 July Potsdam Declaration, demanded Japanese surrender unconditionally.  Japanese PM Suzuki Kantaro refused.

Leaflets were dropped telling Japanese to move out of their cities but did not specify where they would drop the bomb.

Kakura ,Hiroshimo, Yokohama Niigate and Kyoto were on the list . All cities that had not suffered bombing yet.  Kyoto was removed from the list as it was a historical capital and had cultural value.

Military targets had to be attacked and Hiroshimo was a port for raw materials, had a military population of 40,000 and was a transportation hub with a total of 430,000 people.

Tinian Island is where the Enola Gay to off carrying the bomb, the island only 39 square mile and had been under the rules of Spain , Germany and Japan before the Americans. The B29 had a pressurized cabin.  The target was the Aioi Bridge that spans the Honkawa and Motoyasu Rivers, the bomb was dropped at 8.15am

1945 August 6th Hiroshima atomic bomb, radius of destruction was one mile killing 80,000 initially. Their house collapsed and they were slightly hurt and started moving to the mountains. High winds of the blast caused  a firestorm  spreading towards the mountains. The Hiroshima mayor was killed and Field Marshal Hata stepped in to assume leadership.  We get a description of the wounds and that doctors never knew how to treat them.  Black radiation raindrops followed and anyone who drank his died. Ready cooked pumpkins were found in the fields.

Her family was at this stage living in a northern suburb of the city Ushita. Most of the hospitals had been destroyed.

1945 August 9th Russian troops launched a surprise attack and won against he Japanese in Manchuke

1945 August 9th  Nagasaki bomb dropped  It was meant for Kokura but it had cloud cover. Nagasaki had the Mitsubishi and Electrical Ship yards but many of the shockwaves were deflected by the mountains. This city had been targeted previously by bombers and was better prepared for ordinary bombing.

Once the allies guaranteed that Hirohito would remain on the throne Hirohito gave the casting vote to surrender.

6197 Shiya suicide boats packed with explosives were meant to attack US invading ships.

August 31st General Mc Author on the USS Missouri also  USS Stergis next to it, Japanese foreign minister  Shigemitsu signed the surrender.

Nick was one of the first to arrive with the American's and took a trainthe 420 miles from Tokyo. In Hiroshima by luck he happened to be at the place where the insurance agent was handing out money to claimants and saw his father. He organized that his sister got a job in Macarthur's staff as there was a great need for English/Japanese speakers.

80% of US air force personnel were discharged within a year. 

She was one of the very few English speaking witnesses of the bomb , a hibakusha (an atomic bomb survivor.) Richard Charmers painted a picture of Kalaria called Under the Mushroom Cloud and it is on display in the Pentagon. The term Radiation Sickness is a new word from then.

1947 July Truman separated the Airforce from the army.

 She met Paul Drago and came later to the US and they married in  1948.  Her parents followed and as a result of the Cold War there was a demand for Russian teachers and he was one of the first to found the army Russian program/

She was interviewed on radio and met the Enola Gay crew.

George Santayana "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

1974 The US government made a donation to build the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.

1986 She visited Hiroshima with her children and went to a reunion of the Woman Academy. She also heard for the first time the recordings she had made in 1945to the army  on Hiroshima.

2014 Kalaria died at the age of 93 in California.

Eyewitness Hiroshima: The story of Mankind's deadliest discovery in words of those who were there by Adrian Weale 1995 174pg

The Story of the development of the Atomic Bomb     13/12/20

1627 to 1691 Robert Boyle creating of Boyles Law was the beginning of ths physics and chemistry of atomic theory.

1901 Roetgen received the Nobel prize for his X Ray discovery.

WW1 Gas warfare was never properly used mainly because they didn't the technology to deliver it.  WW1 ended because of  a combination of economic and political collapse on the homefront. The German Army had not been comprehensively beaten

1939 the discovery of fission

1941 Britian had a lead over the US in atomic bomb research

Many Jewish scientist who fled Nazi Gemany managed to find sanctuary in the west amd were worried that the Nazi's might discover a nuclear fisson bomb first. Luckily the Germans had reached the conclusion that the bomb was infeasible. Pleople had 6 and a hallf years to get out of Germany from the start of the Nazi laws till the war began.  The most important source of uranium was the Belgium Congo.

Lise Meitner, Otto Fisch, Albert Einstein, Eugene Wigner, Edward Teller, Rudolf Peireos , Hans Bethe , Enrico Fermi and Franze Simon fled Europe.  Enrico Fermi had a Jewish wife.  America at the end of the war discovered that Germany was at least 3 years behind.  

1941 Dec 7th Japan attacked Pearl Harbour

1942 April the General James Doolittle mission from the USS Hornet with B25s bombed Tokyo And 3 other Japanese cities and abandoned their planes in China. 

Rooseveld appointed  Vannevar Bush sto deal with the Manhattan Project and he appointed  Colonel Leslie Groves to take charge.

1942 July Battle of Midway destroyed the biggest Japanese fleet.from this point Japan started losing the war.

1942 Sept Colonel  Leslie Groves who was deputy chief of construction in the US army and had just completed supervision of the Pentagon construction.  Grove risked being accused of misappropriation of funds especially in 1944 when  it was realized that Germany had abandoned the bomb project. The Manhattan Project cost $2 billion and the expenditure Henry Stimson , never offered to Congress to approve it.  It was founded on "possibility rather than probability. There was a supply of 1,250 tons uranium ore on Staten Island quayside and Groves immediately appropriated it.  Robert Oppenheimer was appointed scientific director and he selected the site Los Alamos Ranch , New Mexico.

1942 Nov Enrico Fermi at Chicago University with graphite rods and uranium proved that you can cause a spontaneous reaction that gave off heat..

1943 Nov The Heavy water plant in Rjukan Norway was destroyed by US bombers.

1944 Nowthey  B29 began bombing Tokyo again from the Mariana islands.It was 2 and a half years after the Doolittle mission. Japan had not developed night fighter aircraft and so they  attacked at night with incendiaries against the wooded homes.

1945 May 8th VE day Germany capitulated 3 months before the atomic bomb was ready. It was for this purpose the bomb was invented.  Japan's supplies of fuel , food and other resources  by then had been severely depleted.

1945 March 334 B29s dropped 2000 tons killing 100,000 Japanese. in 6 hours.

1945 April death of FDR. Truman kept on most of Roosevelt's staff and James F. Byrnes was secretary of State and he advised Trumpan to use the bomb.

1945 July USS Indianapolis was destroyed by a  Japanese submarine with a crew of 1196 of whom 318 had survived.

First they thought to use the British Lancaster plane for the bomb but later the new B29 long range bomber and pressurized to go above 30,000ft. The bomb would weigh 10 ton.   Colonel Paul Tibbits at the Pacific Island of Tinian.  The bomb removed the need for the invasion of Japan or "Operation Olympic  

1945 August 6th  It was decided to bomb an untouched city and Hiroshima was the largest.  Three targets were preserved for bombing Kyoto , Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Japan weather made it difficult as they only have 7 cloudless days a month.  The bomb only got its explosive charges when it was airborne." Litle boy" of uranium was on Enola Gay. The B29 could feel the explosive shocks and they saw fires breaking out in many parts of the city below.   The round trip from Tinian took 12 hours. Hiroshima had the Mitsubishi shipyard. 363 miles they flew from Hiroshima till they could not see the mushroom cloud.

 There was now a conflict in Japan between the realists and the militarists

 1945 August 8 Russia declared war on Japan.

1945 August 9th plutonium "Fat Man" was dropped by Bock's Car on Nagasaki as the target Kokura was covered by clouds and they were running out of fuel. Plutonium the size of a soft ball exploded like 18,000 tons of TNT.   There were several hundred allied prisoners in the naval dockyard..

Under PM Kotaro Suzuki  Hirohito was asked to intervene to break the deadlock between the peace and war faction. They would accept the Potsdam Declaration.  A second Plutonium bomb was scheduled for 17/18 August and the target might have been Tokyo

1945 15th August Hirohito spoke over the radio for the first time, thus surrender came 8 days after Hiroshima

1949Sept Joe 1 Russia developed the atomic bomb.

Telling people what they don't want to hear: A liberal life under Apartheid by Roy Izacowitz 2020 499pg

 Jock Izacowitz his life and time and the early days of Apartheid. 30/11/20

This memoir was important to me as my father was a friend of Jocks  and we had relative related to his family. 

Roys father Jock died when Roy was 10 years old, in 1962 of leukemia at the age of 47.

Roy's mother was Eileen. His wife Dodik and daughters Lior, Noar and Zoe. He has a sister Tessa and brother Steven

Jocks brother Issy as well as Roy live  in Israel. In 2017 Roy took early retirement and had a large pile of letters from his father and grandmother some from when Jock was in jail during the emergency. Jock's father also died when he was young 7 and his mother Sara Lior ne Bear born in Krok(Krakes Lithuania today) 1893 ran a grocery store in Benoni. His maternal grandmother Racher Lurie was born in Whitechapel.  Jock's parents were married in 1912

 Kelmowitz, Isacowitz , Goldberg and Sher families were related. Max Potash a close friend of Jock's, married his cousin Ruth Bear.  Sarah's father Jankel arrived in SA 9 years before his wife and children arrived leaving a chasm in the family. Jack Kelmowitz was Sarah's sister  Fanny's son.

1795 Russia took full control of Lithuania, the majority of the Hebrew intellectuals and writers were litvaks.

1880 ORT Jewish vocational training network was established in St. Petersburg

1882 May Laws - till 1920  2 million Jews a third of the population emigrated. 

1896 The South African School of Mines started in Kimberley, then became the Transvaal Technical College and became Wits University in 1922.

1902 The Immigration Restriction Act approved of Yiddish as a European Language.1907 Benoni gets a city municipality.  Jock was the 3rd of 5 children he matriculated in 1931 at the age of 16.

1907 1913 were years of mining strikes and 1922 the  Rand Rebellion.  In 1918 there were 200,000 workers on the mines, mostly black 20,000 were white.

1912 When the Union Defense Force was formed senior posts were allocated equally between English and Afrikaans speakers, black were excluded from the army.

  1912 Mines Work Act and 1913 Land Act entrenched the colour bar on all walks of life.  

WW1 230,0000 had enlisted 12,452 had been killed. 83,000 blacks and 2.500 Coloured had served mainly in labour contingents   After the war a memorial was erected in Delville Wood battlefield rather than having a controversy of erecting it in SA. The Cape Corps which eventually had 18000 men were given a place of honor marching behind Allenby into Jerusalem.

1928Jewish workers Club  in Doornfontein was established by  the Yiddish Lithuanian born Bundists. Taffy Adler must have heard about the cultural life this provided from his father?

  Nation Union of SA Students founded in 1924 by Leo Marquard and was at all white universities but the Afrikaanse Nasionale Studentbond  ANS broke away in 1933.  

1929 SA Institute of Race Relations established 

1931  Jock matriculated  . All 3 Izacowitz brothers studied pharmacy as it was an apprenticeship with an immediate salary. 1937 Jock got his Pharmacy certificate. 1940 volunteered for the army.  

Vanguard books run by Phillip Glass supplied socialist books and people met there. Baruch Hirson described this. There was also Salmon Book store in Eloff Street similar., In the mid 1937 Jock's  mother moved to Joel Street, Berea with the youngest son Shollie. 

1937 Immigrations of Jews to SA was halted.

  In 1939 40%  of the medical students at Wits University were Jewish.

The fall of Leon Blum in France . The revolt against President Cardenas who proposed distributing land to the peasants and the Spanish civil war all showed that capital and aristocracy opposed progressive's reform.

At Wits. University  Raikes  the Chancellor was a supporter of the Smuts government and the  war  and exams were brought forward so that students could volunteer for the military.

 WW2 all SA troops were volunteers to avoid a controversy, only one son of a widowed mother could volunteer. To avoid danger of Uboats in sea travel during war they took a train to Broken Bridge in N. Rhodesia and trucks over land.

The East African campaign was the first Allied  victory in the war, It is the most overlooked campaign as it is overshadowed by Stalingrad but it was important to protect the Suez Canal from the Italians. There were 91,000 Italians and 200,000 colonial troops, they were defeated and the biggest battle was on the Juba River. They then travelled on the Strada Imperiale a thousand miles from Mogadishu to Addis Ababa. Relatively few SA troops or allies were lost in this campaign.  

A quarter of the 40,000 volunteers who fought fascism in Spain from 53 countries  were Jewish.

Ruth Hayman and Marion Friedman were some of his close friends in the Liberal Party

Over 400,000 South African men white and black volunteered to fight fascism in WW2

1942 Springbok legion was formed to help SA troops especially when they returned home and Jock was elected chairman, Black and Coloured troops were in this also. Job retraining and payment on being demobilized. The AES Army Education Senter was to create less dissent in the army; it was a great success  as back home the sentiments were very against the war amongst Afrikaners. Germany's Seesen radio targeted SA in Afrikaans broadcasts. Jock was sent home in 1942 with a bad knee. In the army back home he worked in the aptitude test section to choose who was suitable to become pilots.

At war's end there were no ships to bring SA troops back and many suffered at Helwan Camp, Egypt, and there were riots, it took 10 month to get the troops home.

Jock was the  national chairman of the Springbok Legion, the brains behind the Torch Commando, founding member of the Liberal Party and had been in the Communist party while the Soviets were fighting Nazism till he became disenchanted with them. In 1951 Jock started withdrawing from activities in Springbok Legion as it began to take a communist bias. Leo Lovell was a Jewish lawyer from Benoni who worked with Jock in the Springbok Legion.

Torch Commando run by John Lang, also "Sailor" Malan, this was short lived but brought thousands of ex-servicemen out onto the streets. The issue was the disenfranchisement of the Cape Coloureds 

 

1944 Hilda Watts later Bernstein was the only communist ever elected to the Jo'burg City Council for Hillbrow.

1945 Jock married Eileen Lurie of Luipaardsvlei West Rand in Wolmarans street Shul. Her father Tevya came from Kursenai , Lituania . Jock visited the DP camps in Germany and Israel in 1948 and saw the war on.

The Holocaust had a profound effect on Jock and most Jews who had seen themselves as Atheists. Many realized that they would always be Jews and supported the establishment of Israel in this period.

 

 As a  kid Roy watched soccer at Balfour Park where Martin Cohen his parents nephew played.  He also mentioned Jock being friendly with Hilda and Dave Sakalowsky, my mothers sister.   Roy's grandmother Sarah died in Netanya in 1984.

Dennis Goldberg spent 23 years in jail. 62 of the 132 whites named under the suppression of communism were Jewish. All white defendants at the Rivonia Trial were Jewish.

Jock studied philosophy under Reunhold Hoernle who later was a founding member of the SA Institute of Race Relations.

When Britain declared war  PM JB Hertzog declared South African neutrality.  There had been German volunteers fighting with the Boers against the British, 80 to a 67 majority supported Smuts and voted to cooperate with Britain and sever ties with Germany.  Smuts's son, a 2nd Lieutenant of the engineers was posted to Wajir, Kenya where Jock was.

Harry Best had taught many kids boxing including the Toweel brothers in Benoni.

1948 After the Nationalists  were elected  the Broederbond had a hold over the railways, post office and police. They had started in 1918. Between 1948 and 1994 every SA PM or President was a member.  In the 30s and 40 the NP used the Jewish Question as a rallying cry but once they were elected and real issues presented themselves the Jewish bogeyman disappeared. There were also Jew-hater amongst the English speakers.

1948  Elected to the Executive Council of SAJB -Jewish  board of deputies.  The holocaust had a profound affect on most Jewish attitudes at this time. In SA the Jewish policy was non involvement in the political situation. Thus the Board made a Faustian bargain with apartheid regime.  Jock was involved in organizing and training SA men, mostly war veterans to fight in Israel.  

Jock often went to Smuts house in Irene for consultations , today that house is a museum. The Liberal Party had spoken about the "winds of change in Africa" long before Macmillan

1946 Kibbutz Shovel, established by SA Hashomer Hatzair.In Israel Neve Ilan was established by French Resistance fighter of WW2  Leon Pincus became chairman of El Al and later the Jewish Agency. 

1947 Mayan Baruch founded by SA WW2 veterans..

Jock bought 79 Fife Ave , Berea.  Next to the fire station. They used to swim at Bram Fischers Pool.

1948 South Africa s Foreign Minister was the first foreign diplomat to visit Israel - irony he was Eric Louw one of the leading anti-semites in the NP.

1959 Progressive Party established 

1968 Liberal Party disbanded

 

To the moon on a Plastic Bottle The story Behind Israel's Start-Up Babies. by Dan Raviv and Limor Bar-El 2020 188 reading pages..

What in  Israeli society causes entrepreneurship and creativity 15/11/2020

How did 60 000 Jews succeed in beating all those Arab armies in 1948?  The answer is that in 1925 the Hebrew University was established  and the Weitzman Institute in 1934.

Landing on the moon was never a  national strategic goal of the State of Israel

1959 Russian Luna Probe 

1969 America with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin moon landing.

2003 Ilan Ramon died on  the  Colombia , but this had led to Israel's interest in Space exploration and the Ramon Fund was set  up.

2013 China's Chang3 landed on the moon and 2019 Change 4 on the Dark side of the moon.

Google offered a competition in 2007 with a prize of $20 million .You  had to send a vehicle that could  be able to travel around.Their idea for this was that it would do small hops in the lunar atmosphere. Yonatan Weintraub, Kfir Damari, and Yariv Bash promoted -

Bareshit  (The beginning )was financed by money from the Adelsons $23.9 million and others.  IAI has the patents gained from  this. 

1994 Doron Landau set up the IDC as a private university in Herzliya.

2003 Columbia exploded over Texas killing Ilan Ramon the Israeli astronaut.

Entrepreneurship is part of a national culture, by people who take nothing for granted and argue constantly. Lack inhibitions and know how to fall down and get up.

Dangerous behaviour of adolescence, is a desire to experience new exciting sensations, in modes of dress, behaviour drugs. This behaviour is directed and not impulsive. Then they go into the IDF as  Israel is under constant existential threats. 7 of 16 world chess champions are of Jewish descent.

Immigrants children are very successful and innovation is part of Russian Jewry

2018 PepsiCola bought Sodastream for $3.2 billion

Israel has 63 companies quoted on the NASDAQ

There is a connection between faith and innovative daring. פחד  fear spelled backwards   דחף  means motivation.

1993 Checkpoint was founded and has a market value of $17 billion today.

1988 BRM founded by Nir and Eli Barkat and Nir  became a MK in 2019.

Failure is part of success. Max Levchin's fifth company was PayPal, after 3 failures.

1999 Naftaly Bennet and 3 partners started Cyota after 3 business failures. He later became a Minister in Government.  People who have experienced failure are the best people for the next innovation.  If you never failed you never tried.

Israel is the 11th happiest on the National happiness index of 150 countries.  In Israel even a child feels comfortable addressing a high ranking government official.  Many companies call workers to bring friends into jobs avoiding headhunting fees, making teamwork.

In the US everyone is polite and nobody argues, the opposite of innovation. Debate  is a way of life. The thumb up or down comes from Tulmuding debating or passing a resolution or -like or dislike.

The best time to teach children is when they ask a question.

Unit 8200 in the army cyber protection unit was named after the postal address code. 

2000Aviv Kochavi commented that the members of the General Staff all have the same opinions and use the same language and metaphors and found this scary, raising doubt about everything,  perhaps the opposite is true. Kachavi became the 22nd e Chief of Staff in 2019

Chaos feed creativity messines was Albert Einstein's trademark.  The Israeli "balagan"   You try to bring order and control life and deny the fact that it is fundamentally unpredictable. In 1928 Alexander Flemming though being messy discovered penicillin.  One has to learn to live in systemic chaos which facilitates creative thinking. High tech prefers people who have kept changing jobs.

Chutzpah - daring, audaciousness is necessary and most Israelis defy accepted norms, or refuse to bow to authority to people with knowledge. The very existence of building the State of Israel was an act of chutzpah.  The Jewish religious aspect that encourages creativity.

Israelis are always late , dress casual for almost every event and can make even the first conversation personal.  Israeli Startups have to be directed to abroad and not the local market like say France does.

2016 Tel Aviv rated the 6th best city in the world for young entrepreneurs

1996 ICQ was developed by 3 Israelis

2019 Eurovision in Israel, rockets came from Gaza but were stopped by the Iron Dome defense system.

Many retired senior army officers have been appointed as school principals, they are educators despite having no formal qualification at that. It is hard to come from the education system and grow creativity.

Under the Soviet Authorities Jews were not allowed to study physics, so some studied maths instead.

2018 , 11 years after the Google Moon competition was announced they declared it was over with no winner, but 5 teams were still in it.  In Israel the Bareshit had an Appollo effect where youths raced to study science

2019 Feb.Bareshit was launced on a rocket from Cape Canaveral. A lunar day is 2 weeks of light and 2 of night. The temp can reach plus 13C or minus 170C  The craters are from meteorites crashing into the moon, the earth's atmosphere protects us from most small meteorites.  Only 7 countries have managed to encircle the moon many  have missed and their satellite goes off to the sun.   Israel was given a $ million of the Lunar X prize as a consolation.

We did what others never dared; we got to the moon and landed but in pieces. Honor the thinkers, darers, doers .don't stop dreaming.

There are 8400 high tech companies in Israel 2300 Israeli   start ups have global activity.

2017 till then 202 Jews or 22.5% of Nobel prizes have gone to Jews of 892 prizes given.