One of the lesser-known chapters in the history of the Land is the Nazi attempt to establish extermination camps in the Dothan Valley. Haj Amin al-Husseini made contact with the Nazis and planned to build extermination camps and crematoria in the Dothan Valley. Why there of all places?
Because a railway line runs through the middle of the valley, and it is nevertheless more isolated than the central Jezreel Valley.
In a chilling coincidence, the Nazis planned to build the extermination camps in the very place where the brothers threw Joseph into slavery. A story that is the mother of all wars between brothers, and a historic stain that, according to the Sages, brings troubles even hundreds of years after the deed.
In the same place where the brothers threw Joseph into the pit, the Germans planned to throw us into the killing pits.
Guilt is rolled onto the guilty place — so, subconsciously, thought the Nazis.
But they did not know the valley’s later history.
For in the Dothan Valley there was also the great repair of the abandonment of our brother. Joseph’s stirring cry, “I seek my brothers,” which became the motto of the journeys to our brothers murdered in the Holocaust, was also the motto of the three further events that took place in Dothan:
The battle of Elisha against the Arameans besieging Dothan, in which, despite numerical inferiority, we won a great victory. In II Kings chapter 6, the prophet Elisha utters one of the verses that most expresses the secret of the few against the many: “for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” When we are united, despite numerical inferiority, our true strength is greater.
The second event is connected to Hanukkah. The army of Holofernes camps around Dothan on its way to conquer Jerusalem. The people of the valley are bewildered and stunned. But Judith, who lives in the town of Bethulia above the Dothan Valley, does not lose her composure. She goes alone to Holofernes’ tent, plies him with wine (or, by other versions, milk), and when he falls asleep she cuts off his head. When she returns to her town with his head, she spurs her townspeople to go out to war — in which they win a brilliant victory (hence the custom of eating dairy foods on Hanukkah).
The third event: the battles of the Dothan Valley in the Six-Day War. It was the largest armored battle of the entire war, and the battle that decided the whole conquest of Judea and Samaria (nearly all the Jordanian tanks were diverted to Dothan, so there was almost no fighting in the other sectors). The battle’s most striking feature is the fighters’ self-sacrifice for their brothers. Gadi Rafan and Zvi Sadan, who pulled the wounded out of the burning tanks despite being badly burned; the four tanks that stood alone at the Qabatiya junction against 43 tanks and did not retreat until they had stopped the Jordanian force; Aharon Tene, who set out on a suicide mission for the slim chance of rescuing his besieged comrades from under the bridge; and more and more…
In the very place of the terrible rupture of the selling of a brother, we proved time after time: we seek our brothers. And we will risk our lives for them. We are responsible for one another. Judith endangering herself for her townspeople and for Jerusalem; Elisha opening the eyes of the lad to see how great our strength is when we are united; and the fighters of the Six-Day War who pulled their brothers out of the pits, even at the terrible price of 51 dead.
The Nazis did not carry out their scheme in the Dothan Valley.
Joseph’s pit did not become a killing pit, but a pit of repair, from which Joseph’s motto continues to burst forth:
I seek my brothers!
