In 5727 (1967), the whole world seemed to change before our eyes. After the great miracle of Israel’s survival and the astonishing victory of the Six-Day War, I left my yeshiva in England and came straight to Eretz Yisrael.

I arrived just after the war ended to begin learning there, but nothing could prepare me for what I saw with my own eyes. I was no longer reading history in newspapers or hearing about it from far away. I was living inside it. And because I witnessed those days myself, I feel there is a mitzvah to tell the story and pass it on.

To understand what those days felt like, one must remember the terrible fear in the weeks before the war. It had been only 22 years since the destruction of European Jewry. Around me were Holocaust survivors and children of survivors. The memories were still raw and painful. The air itself felt filled with the fear of another churban. When Gamal Abdel Nasser spoke about “throwing the Jews into the sea,” nobody heard empty words. We heard the echo of the threats that had once come from Europe before the Holocaust. Many truly believed another destruction was standing at the door.

The Jewish world........

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