Mishpacha's Rabbi Ephraim Schwartz Tours Akko's Old City

[Music] we have arrived over here at the old city walls of akko over here and here we see a very interesting and important historic site we have these old city walls over here these were originally built by the crusaders right in the 1200s and we'll speak about them a bit right but they were reinforced by the 17 in the 1700s when the city was rebuilt by the turks um particularly by somebody named dar al omar al-jazar you don't really care right what is important is that in 1799 this short little um french man napoleon bonaparte comes to the conquer the entire world napoleon bombard comes to our destroyer he comes to yafo conquers yaffo he goes to haifa he conquers and then he comes up to the city of akko and he lays siege around the city the city obviously is terrified oh no what are we going to do napoleon's wiping out everybody how are we going to make it through el jazar has a good thing going for him he has a nice jewish um advisor named khayim farqi khai and fakhi a super wealthy person an advisor very politically astute goes over to uh al-jazar and he says to him what we can do is like this why don't we reinforce while napoleon is laying siege on our wall let's build a second wall within the first wall sure enough that's what the jews do after about a month siege over here outside the city walls napoleon comes and finally smashes through the city walls and lo and behold he gets struck by the next wall the soldiers are sitting there he was not expecting it they shoot down and they fire at napoleon's army and napoleon's army is wiped out right napoleon takes heavy losses and then he decides you know this is just too much already he hears that things are not going good in europe he heads back to haifa he takes his soldiers that are hit that are stuck in the hospital over there brings them back to the shoreline gets ready to vote them up and then he focus lines them all up and he kills his own soldiers with a bayonet over there um why should he take back extra luggage i guess they had limited amount of space that they were allowed to take napoleon goes back he loses the battle of waterloo and he dies meaning if not for the city of akko we might be speaking french today right so this is really the last stop on napoleon's world conquest ends over here in the city of akko kassidin have a little different version of the story they suggest the reason why the city of akka was saved is because at that time in the city locked into the city was none other than a very big target named nachman of breslau was here at the city and it was in his house that the city of the of ako was saved so this is the old city walls we're going to go inside and check out some of the fantastic sights in the old city here we are in the old city of acco now aqua is a unique city it's actually uh doubly recognized by unesco unesco is united nations society for historical and archaeological sites all over the world and akko is actually doubly recognized one of the reasons why akko is recognized by unesco as well as a world heritage city which is about 850 sites um is because you actually see two different civilizations living here at one time at one place what do i mean meaning about here we're going to talk a little bit more about the crusaders but in the year 1099 the crusaders come to eretz israel they wipe out the jewish population over here and they conquer the entire country throw out the muslims and they establish their crusader city over here they were destroyed again comes up in the year 1187 comes up from egypt with of course his loyal doctor the rambam and they come to our israel and then the crusaders throw the crusaders out the crusaders come back again they're kind of like strep throat they just keep coming back again and again and again and they conquer the city and ultimately they come to an agreement with salah hadin where the crusaders will remain on the coastline of earth's soil while the muslims will stay to a large degree in the center of the country that lasts for about 50 years or so so there's a new group of arabs that come they're called the mama loops right they're slaves from egypt they come up they conquer the entire arab israel they wipe out the crusaders and what they do is they don't want the crusaders to come back again so they bury all of their cities they knock them down till the bottom and this entire city becomes buried it's about the in the in the late 1200s or so it took about another 400 500 years until the turks returned terrorists around the 1700s and they decide to rebuild the city however they rebuild the city on the remains of the former crusader city that was below so over here what we have is two different civilizations down below we have the crusader cities up above here where we're all walking this is the ottoman turkish city the ottomans too largely weren't even familiar that there was an underground city it was until after the state of israel in the 1950s that we excavate here and we discover the incredible halls and tunnels from the times of the crusaders let's go inside and talk a little bit more out of the about the crusaders munich readers and website viewers today are lucky because i don't generally come down here with my tourists um we're standing inside of the halls of where the crusader was actually this is the big courtyard to the right of us we have these huge halls where the crusaders would eat whether they would dance where they would party um there's the where they would pray and uh frankly this place doesn't really interest me that much take a look behind me you see these flags over here lions isn't that i want you to replace those flags those gloriously flags with something called a swastika correct a swastika would you be interested in me taking you to show you where the nazis ate where the nazis drank that would go ahead and pray at the big parade right the crusaders to largely were like the nazis they were murderers they were white skinned they started off in europe when they realized that this was the dark ages the 1100s or so and the pope realized that there was way too many people having babies there in the dark ages and what are we gonna do with all of these kids ah i have a good heart we'll send them off to the holy land and have them liberate the holy christian sites from the muslims as an added incentive we'll let them kill murder massacre pillage burn every single jewish city that they like along the way and they'll be forgiven when they come to the holy land um and they did they wiped out the crusaders worked out it's estimated almost 30 percent of the jewish population throughout europe they come over here and they take care of disrael and they conquer registrar the crusaders to a large degree were even worse in many ways than the nazis the nazis had the benefit of machine guns gas chambers the crusaders it was by sword men women and children burning killing destroying so frankly it's not that interesting to show you where these people these highest really lived where they ate where they celebrated but this is where they were this is the crusaders every shabbos we remember the period of the crusades we have a tequila that remembers the martyrs of the crusades even more than that the period of omer when we're in mourning which we're told in yeshiva is from the tamil akiva and that is true however the men hugged him that we have not to get married not to go ahead and listen to music not to shame them in hagia bayless all starts the er brings down after the crusades it was such a dramatic terrible thing that took place because the crusaders always came in the spring period so this is the area where the crusaders were these are the walls these are their tunnels take a look around over here and think of the faces of the right slim and the murderers that killed our people and then think of the fact that barak hashem we're still here we're back here claudia's role is here here in arizona and where are they and so we have arrived here at this huge fortress overlooking the city of akko this building was built by the turks in the 1700s and it was used as a fortress to keep the prisoners that they would capture and even execute here from throughout their empire during world war one the turks had joined with the germans and lost and the british took over eretz israel under the british mandate continued to be used as a prison for the jewish and arab prisoners that they had arrested this prison was known as the alcatraz of the middle east and we can understand why from just looking at the conditions here the walls are thick impenetrable a huge moat surrounded the prison and it was built up against the sea there was no way out the conditions inside of the prison were terrible they were 20 to 30 prisoners inside one cell it was dark it was bars on the windows it was impossible to then to see sunlight you would be allowed out for an hour a day there was a latrine on the floor that they would use they would have a wall that they would allow visitors every once in a while but it was out in the beating sun it was terrible terrible conditions for the prisoners to be there who were the prisoners that were kept here the jewish prisoners well after the british had taken over the land of israel it was can you believe this a difference of opinion amongst the jewish residents of israel in how they would liberate the country and establish a jewish state over here there was three underground armies that were formed the haganah the irgun and the lefi some were more radical in their approach attacking the british others decided to use means of diplomacy and were involved in illegally bringing refugees into the land of israel prisoners were kept here together and yet all of them shared one common dream they dreamed of a day that they would be able to liberate this country and create a jewish home for all jews to come to and with that in mind the members of the argon got together and they planned their escape the most remarkable escapes to take place in the founding of the state of israel so this is the prisoners escape they knew that they had to get out of here and so they had planned in advance the turkish bath house they knew that was there on that side the uh they took a lottery they figured they could get three jeeps into the old city they just have like telephone repairmen and they pretend like they were fixing wires meantime they placed explosives on all of the walls right at the at the designated time they set off explosives on the other side of the prison the haganaso the atl soldiers the immigrant soldiers that were staying remained over there the 41 soldiers that were chosen to escape blew up the wall over there they blew up this gate they ran down there to the fourth window they jumped down out of the window when the when the women exploded and they landed into the jeeps the three jeeps took off and they started leaving the city um while they were leaving the city one of the jeeps made a wrong turn and there was an off-duty police officers that heard them and opened up fire on them the shootout went back and forth some of the prisoners were killed some of them were recaptured and brought back here to the prison in the end 27 soldiers escaped to prison that day three of them that were brought back were hung here in the gals and sentenced to death when the prison breakout took place this became the straw that broke the camel's back this was world news all over you have to realize whenever it's jews it's news and this was news it was also this person was like alcatraz it was the most fortified prison in the middle east and the jews had broken out it brought set a spotlight on the people over here where they saw that there were jewish prisoners holocaust survivors of them being held behind chains and bars the pressure mounted on the british until they realized that they couldn't take it anymore they turned to the united nations that that then that time they said figure it out we're not going to do this anymore the united nations ultimately came back with a few months later actually november 29 1947 with its historic vote that there will be a two-state solution a jewish state and an arab state so this prison and the breakup from the prison is really the straw that broke the camel's back that led to ultimately the establishment of the state of israel in that the war of independence began after that we're here at the final room this is the gallows this is where the prisoners that we spoke about were brought to be murdered by the british there were nine prisoners that were on the hung over here yosef mordechai schwartz dove grinner mordecai okay elizabeth these prisoners were brought over here usually taken out in the middle of the night so that they wouldn't create a ruckus they would come over here they would they would have a hood put over their head and then they would be sentenced to death and and killed i remember hearing a story once i was talking to rabbi beryl wine and he told me something very incredible he remembered after the after world war ii the panovich around came parachute and he had lost his entire family in earth israel and he came to america to try to raise money to rebuild life again and he came to chicago and he comes to chicago and he gives them a share in his class after this year he tells them that that's my entire kinder i want to tell you something my dear children today in eretz israel in akko in islam in the prison there are sitting 10 20 30 soldiers 40 soldiers that are sitting they're being imprisoned by the british for fighting against fighting for architectural herzegtsu mark my words he said to them he said if these 20 to 30 soldiers as they've had arrested women and that arrest varfin the british for narrative israel they're going to take the british and they're going to throw them out of israel and they that oys boy medina they're going to build a jewish state abraham from them if i had 20 30 talmidim it had the zelda mysterious nephesh the same dedication the achara is for claudius raw the sacrifice that these young boys do they can oyste medina in eric israel we could build a torah state in our israel as well i don't have these students learn up from these boys what it means to be ibrahim for claudia israel this is i think the message here we come here we see these people that were maestro nefesh al-qaeda they sang for us to be here today this is the final message