Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, March 15, 1992                   TAG: 9203150254
SECTION: HORIZON                    PAGE: F-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By DAVID IGNATIUS
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

BEGIN'S VISION WAS SHAPED BY HOLOCAUST

"This is my generation," Begin said during an interview that day, outlining the chapters of his book. "I survived 10 wars, two world wars, Soviet concentration camp, five years in the underground as a hunted man and 26 years in opposition in the [Israeli] Parliament. Twenty-six years, never losing faith in a cause."

And how would Begin end his book? "People ask me sometimes the question, `How would you like to be remembered?' " he said. "Perhaps I will end the book with this. And the answer is, as a decent man."

Begin never published the book, but in a sense it was unnecessary. For Begin's entire life was the story of that generation - of the impossible tragedy of the Holocaust, and the impossible triumph of Israel.

The last time I saw Begin was in August 1983. By then, he was the Lion in Winter, gaunt and sad-eyed, brooding about the war in Lebanon that had gone so badly wrong. A man who had devoted his career to saving Jewish lives and making Israel more secure was now caught in a war that was daily killing Jews, without adding to Israel's security.

Begin's aides explained that he couldn't take his mind off the continuing Israeli death toll in Lebanon. He would ask each day for the latest casualty figures, for the details of how each soldier had died. When his aides tried to change the subject, he would steer them back to the death and destruction.

A few weeks later, Begin was gone. He resigned as prime minister on Sept. 15, 1983, saying he could not continue. He spent the rest of his life as a virtual recluse, surfacing only occasionally - but never to explain or complain.

The Begin I got to know was a different person from the unsmiling, unyielding man Americans met on their television screens. He was an old-world gentleman who dressed in a formal business suit even when everyone else in Israel was wearing an open-necked sport shirt; a lawyer who worked in an office lined with Israeli texts, a Jewish encyclopedia and a "Jane's" guide to military weapons around the world. And he was funny. When I mentioned that I had just read his book, "The Revolt," he responded: "What? You were having trouble sleeping, maybe?"

Begin knew who his enemies were: the Palestine Liberation Organization, which he always called the "so-called PLO." He explained during our first conversation, in July 1981: "My language is `so-called PLO.' Not because of the `P' and not because of the `O.' They may stay. Because of the `L.' What kind of a liberation is it to try to destroy a people, and all the time to turn the weapons against the civilian population?"

He talked about one old man from the town of Nahariya who recently had been killed by the PLO's Soviet-made Katyusha rockets, and the way he described it reminded his listener that for Begin, the Holocaust was always present in memory.

"Amongst the people who got killed by the Katyushas was a man age 68," Begin said. "Yes, he lived for several years in Auschwitz. . . . And then he survived Auschwitz and came to this land. . . . And here, 36 years after the end of the war, and after he had survived Auschwitz, the Soviet-supplied Katyusha - supplied to a neo-Nazi organization, which killed a Jew because he is a Jew - it got him."

That was the essential Begin. He was born into his generation of holocaust and redemption, and it was foolish of the Americans, let alone the Arabs, to imagine they could sweet-talk him out of it, and into a sense of security and confidence his entire history denied.