Tragedy of Bari

The Tragedy of Bari

On this day in history Dec. 3rd 1943 the tragedy of Bari occurred. (I first heard about this when I was in the port of Bari, Italy during my service as a Navy Chaplain 42 years later!) It was like a second Pearl Harbor, but in this case the German Luftwaffe sent over 100 fighter/bombers in a surprise attack against allied shipping destroying 17 ships, damaging 7 more, and killing over 1000 merchant marines. There was a secret cargo of 2000 poisonous mustard gas bombs aboard one American Liberty ship that was blown up that caused 628 people to suffer "mysterious burns". 69 died with two weeks.

What amazes me is that the British historian writing the article says: "The Bari raid produced the only poison gas incident associated with WW2, made worse by the perceived need for secrecy in wartime. " He goes on to report that the ship, "John Harvey, already on fire, suddenly blew up, disappearing in a mighty fireball, casting pieces of ship and her deadly cargo of mustard gas all over the harbor. Mustard gas gives off a garlic odor, and now it combined with oil in the harbor, creating a deadly and volatile mixture. People were noticing a smell of garlic in the air, already doing its deadly work. "

I beg to differ. The only gas incident??? We were allowed to handle an actual gas mask worn by a Jewish slave laborer in Dachau, one of the Nazi death factories, during our synagogue's tour of the Holocaust Museum at the Klein branch JCC recently. Does the gassing of millions of Jews with Zyclon B gas by the Germans and their allies in the death camps not count as an incident? What about the gassing of "imbeciles" who were forced into specially rigged "vans" so that the exhaust gasses would kill the human "cargo?" Perhaps the author decided that since the Germans, who had invented Sarin gas, never deployed it on the battlefield, that this was the only "incident?"

Continuing the legacy of never again...

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Shalom Plotkin