Page 177 - big friday
P. 177
Menachem Begin, commander of the Etzel, emerged from hiding and delivered a
first public speech. In the photograph, Begin, as Rabbi Sassover, with his wife and
son, during the struggle
Masaryk to the Czechoslovak nation when it attained its freedom after three hundred
years of slavery, has special significance for us. In 1918, when Masaryk disembarked at the
Wilson railway station in Prague, he warned his cheering countrymen: ‘It is difficult to set
up a state; it is even more difficult to maintain it.' Truly, it has been difficult for us to set
up our state. Tens of generations, and millions of wanderers, from one land of massacre to
another, were needed; it was necessary that there be exile, burning at the stake and torture
in the dungeons; we had to suffer agonizing disillusionments; we needed the warnings -
though they often went unheeded - of prophets and seers; we needed the sweat and toil
of generations of pioneers and builders; we had to have an uprising of rebels to crush the
enemy; we had to have the gallows, the banishments beyond seas, the prisons and the
cages in the deserts - all this was necessary that we might reach the present stage where six
hundred thousand Jews are in the homeland, where the direct rule of oppression has been
After the Declaration 175
first public speech. In the photograph, Begin, as Rabbi Sassover, with his wife and
son, during the struggle
Masaryk to the Czechoslovak nation when it attained its freedom after three hundred
years of slavery, has special significance for us. In 1918, when Masaryk disembarked at the
Wilson railway station in Prague, he warned his cheering countrymen: ‘It is difficult to set
up a state; it is even more difficult to maintain it.' Truly, it has been difficult for us to set
up our state. Tens of generations, and millions of wanderers, from one land of massacre to
another, were needed; it was necessary that there be exile, burning at the stake and torture
in the dungeons; we had to suffer agonizing disillusionments; we needed the warnings -
though they often went unheeded - of prophets and seers; we needed the sweat and toil
of generations of pioneers and builders; we had to have an uprising of rebels to crush the
enemy; we had to have the gallows, the banishments beyond seas, the prisons and the
cages in the deserts - all this was necessary that we might reach the present stage where six
hundred thousand Jews are in the homeland, where the direct rule of oppression has been
After the Declaration 175
