In 1947, the Haganah gave him the mission of a lifetime: help the Holocaust survivors stranded on the Exodus. Professor Meier Schwarz, scientist, historian, and former Haganah member, was no stranger to secret operations. Already an orphan when he fled from Germany to Eretz Yisrael at age thirteen, he helped smuggle thousands of refugees into the Holy Land, learning his lesson early on: how to be self-reliant and how to place duty before emotions.
“There were Torah-observant Jews in the Haganah?”
Professor Meier Schwarz stares at me as if to ask “What’s the question?”
What’s the question indeed? There’s an old saying that goes “History is written by the winners” and the history of the modern State of Israel is no different. Therefore when most people think of the Haganah — the paramilitary organization that defended Jewish settlements during the British Mandate and brought tens of thousands of Jewish refugees and Holocaust survivors to Eretz Yisrael illegally — the image that comes to mind is not that of a frum yungerman from Nuremberg.
But on a wintry day in Jerusalem which just happens to coincide with International Holocaust Remembrance Day Professor Schwarz eighty-five sets the record straight: “Everyone on my kibbutz joined the Haganah. We helped them and they helped us.”
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