The Haj Essay, Research Paper
Leon Uris has done an excellent job of presenting the drama covering the events leading up to the German holocaust and the formation of a new Jewish Israel. In Exodus, it is clear to see that Uris sympathizes with the Jewish people. However, he has given an accurate portrayal of the injustices encountered upon Jews throughout history. The treatment of Jews in worldwide ghettos, concentration camps, displaced persons camps, and in dealing with a United Jewish Nation, are horrendous.
The reader sees the struggle not only through the eyes of a Jewish command leader, but also through the eyes of an American nurse who at first detests the country and what is happening in it. Throughout the story, the reader is led through important events, which shaped the makings of a downtrodden people who were un-willing to give up. The description of the living conditions of the pre-war ghettos, from the unruly anti-semantic mobs to the high taxations, was profoundly accurate in creating an image of destitution, which was un-able to crush the Jewish spirit.
Once again, the world wide un-acceptance of Hitler s plans was publicized, however Uris went to other depths in recounting the own rejection displayed by Jewish people. Once the holocaust was ended however, Uris discerns how the English government, for political reasons, placed the survivors in horrible displaced persons camps almost parallel to the early German ghettos. This is today a little publicized fact, and the depth on which he unfolds a tale of the measures taken to suppress the rise of Judaism is astronomical.
Once Israel is concluded to be, according to the UN, a Jewish nation, the Arab war, which breaks out, is shown to be a massive deception upon the common Arab. When hearing of the block of Judaism into Israel by the Arabs, it is assumed that the population as a whole threatened to put a stop to it. The political maneuvers displayed by the Arab leaders demonstrates how the villagers were led by mob rule into a warlike situation while truly they had no objection to Judaism.
My knowledge of the Jewish dilemma in establishing their own nation was greatly amplified by Exodus. I am also now very much interested in the suppression of the Jewish people and anti-Semitism throughout history.