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It was a particularly hot and humid August today in 1954 when a French foreign

legion corporal led his squad of soldiers through the fields and scrubland along road 18,

east of the Vietnamese village of Buccanean. Suddenly, a barrage of bullets shot out from a cluster

of trees 100 metres away and flew towards the exposed legionnaires. The squad's corporal,

a short and stocky man in his late 40s, yelled for his troops to take cover and dropped

onto his chest in the long grass and mud. The gunfire eventually stopped and the air fell silent.

The corporal cursed under his boozy breath, ranting quietly about the violence he would inflict

should he capture the enemy. For the time being, no one was moving and to no further shots were fired.

The corporal was momentarily relieved. His fellow soldiers were positioned a little further back,

safely obscured by grass and shrubs. All of a sudden, he heard a voice behind him say,

Stanescu.

Eliahu its Givitz was born in the early 1930s and lived in Kishinau, Bessarabia, a region

then annexed to Romania. Eliahu, known as Elie, didn't come from a wealthy family,

but he was loved by his parents and three older brothers who ensured his early years were filled

with joy. Everything changed by the time Elie was 10 years old. Anti-Semitism among ethnic

Romanians had already been brewing for decades. Then, on September 6, 1940, a fiercely

Jew-hating government minister named John Antonescu overthrew Romania's king and was installed as

dictator. Antonescu's ultimate goal was to quote, racially purify Romania.

He wasted no time in implementing even Harsha anti-Jewish laws than had previously existed.

...