Jewish Brigade | |
---|---|
Active | 1944–1946 |
Country | United Kingdom |
Branch | British Army |
Type | Infantry |
Size | 5,000 Palestinian Jews |
Engagements | |
Commanders | |
Notable commanders | Ernest Benjamin |
The Jewish Infantry Brigade Group, [1] more commonly known as the Jewish Brigade Group [2] or Jewish Brigade, [3] was a military formation of the British Army in the Second World War. It was formed in late 1944 [1] [2] and was recruited among Yishuv Jews from Mandatory Palestine and commanded by Anglo-Jewish officers. It served in the latter stages of the Italian Campaign, and was disbanded in 1946.
After the war, some members of the Brigade assisted Holocaust survivors to illegally emigrate to Mandatory Palestine as part of Aliyah Bet, in defiance of British restrictions. Other members formed the vigilante groups Gmul and the Tilhas Tizig Gesheften, which assassinated hundreds of German, Austrian, and Italian war criminals. [4] [5] There were also at least two instances in which Brigade veterans were implicated in the assassinations of Jewish Kapos. [6]
After the First World War, the British and the French empires replaced the Ottoman Empire as the preeminent powers in the Middle East. This change brought closer the Zionist Movement's goal of creating a Jewish state. The Balfour Declaration indicated that the British Government supported the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine in principle, marking the first official support for Zionist aims. It led to a surge of Jewish emigration in 1918–1921, known as the "Third Aliyah". [7]
The League of Nations incorporated the Declaration in the British Mandate for Palestine in 1922. Jewish immigration continued through the 1920s and 1930s, and the Jewish population expanded by over 400,000 before the beginning of the Second World War. [7]
In 1939, the British Government of Neville Chamberlain appeared to reject the Balfour Declaration in the White Paper of 1939, abandoning the idea of establishing a Jewish Dominion. When the United Kingdom declared war on Nazi Germany in September 1939, David Ben-Gurion, the head of the Jewish Agency, stated: "We will fight the White Paper as if there is no war, and fight the war as if there is no White Paper." [8]
Chaim Weizmann, the President of the Zionist Organization (ZO), offered the British government full cooperation of the Jewish community in Mandatory Palestine. Weizmann sought to establish an identifiably Jewish fighting formation within the British Army. His request for a separate formation was rejected, but the British authorized the enlistment of Palestinian volunteers in the Royal Army Service Corps and in the Pioneer Corps, on condition that an equal number of Jews and Arabs was to be accepted. The Jewish Agency promptly scoured the local Labour Exchange offices to recruit enough Arab unemployed as "volunteers" to match the number of Jewish volunteers, and others were recruited from the lower strata of the Arab population, offering cash bounties for enlistment. [9]
The quality of the recruits was, not surprisingly, abysmally low, with a very high desertion rate particularly among the Arab component, so that at the end, most units ended up formed largely by Jews. The volunteers were formed in a RASC muleteers unit and a RASC Port Operating Company, and in the Pioneers Companies 601 to 609. All but two were lost during the Greece Campaign, with the last two returned to Palestine and disbanded there. [10]
From 1942, a large number of further Palestinian Arab/Jew mixed units were formed, with the same mixed ethnic composition and the same quality problems encountered in the Pioneers Companies. These included six RASC (Jewish) Transport Units, [11] a women's Auxiliary Territorial Service and a Woman Territorial Air Force Service [12] and several auxiliaries in local units of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, Royal Engineers and Royal Army Medical Corps. [13]
Nine non-combat infantry companies were raised as part of the Royal East Kent Regiment ("the Buffs"), to be used as guards for prisoners-of-war camps in Egypt. In August 1942 the Palestine Regiment was formed, again plagued by the same mixed recruiting and its associated low quality problems. The regiment was derisively called the "Five Piastre Regiments", due to the large number of Arab "volunteers" that had enlisted just for the cash bonus provided by the Jewish Agency. [14]
There was no designated all-Jewish, combat-worthy formation. Jewish groups petitioned the British government to create such a force, but the British refused. [15] At that time, the White Paper was in effect, limiting Jewish immigration and land purchases. [5]
Some British officials opposed creating a Jewish fighting force, fearing that it could become the basis for Jewish rebellion against British rule. [5] In August 1944, Winston Churchill agreed to the formation of a "Jewish Brigade". According to Rafael Medoff, Churchill consented because he was "moved by the slaughter of Hungarian Jewry [and] was hoping to impress American public opinion." [15]
After early reports of the Nazi atrocities of the Holocaust were made public by the Allied powers in the spring and early summer of 1942, [16] British Prime Minister Winston Churchill sent a personal telegram to the US President Franklin D. Roosevelt suggesting that "the Jews... of all races have the right to strike at the Germans as a recognizable body." The president replied five days later saying: "I perceive no objection..."
After much hesitation, on July 3, 1944, the British government consented to the establishment of a Jewish Brigade with hand-picked Jewish and also non-Jewish senior officers. On 20 September 1944, an official communique by the War Office announced the formation of the Jewish Brigade Group of the British Army. The Jewish Brigade Group headquarters was established in Egypt at the end of September 1944. The formation was styled a brigade group because of the inclusion under command of an artillery regiment.
The Zionist flag was approved as its standard. It included more than 5,000 Jewish volunteers from Mandatory Palestine, organized into three infantry battalions of the Palestine Regiment and several supporting units.
The New York Times quoted The Rev. Dr. Israel Goldstein that the British announcement of the creation of a Jewish Brigade "is a belated but nevertheless welcome token of recognition of the Jewish part in the war effort, particularly the contribution of Jewish Palestine." [17] The Manchester Guardian lamented, "The announcement that a Jewish Brigade will fight with the British Army is welcome, if five years late. One regrets that the British Government has been so slow to seize a great opportunity." [18]
In October 1944, under the leadership of Brigadier Ernest F. Benjamin, the brigade group was shipped to Italy. It joined the British Eighth Army in November, which was engaged in the Italian Campaign under the 15th Army Group. [5] [19]
The Jewish Brigade took part in the Spring Offensive of 1945. It took positions on the front line for the first time on March 3, 1945 along the south bank of the Senio River, and immediately began engaging in small-scale actions against German forces, facing the 42nd Jäger Division and the 362nd Infantry Division. The brigade carried out aggressive patrolling during which it engaged in numerous firefights in order to improve its positions, clear the south bank of German troops, and take prisoners, and carried out small-scale raids against German positions across the river to test the enemy's strength and map out enemy defensive positions. [20]
In one notable raid, it was supported by tanks of the North Irish Horse and South African Air Force fighter aircraft. The South African pilots, many of whom were Jewish, flew in a Star of David formation during their attack run as a tribute to the brigade. During the raid, the brigade's infantrymen ran ahead of the tanks and mopped up the German positions, returning with prisoners and greatly impressing the seasoned troops of the North Irish Horse. [21]
The brigade first entered into major combat operations on March 19–20, 1945 at Alfonsine. [22] In its first sustained action on March 19, the brigade killed 19 German soldiers and took 11 prisoner for the loss of 2 dead and 3 wounded in a series of clashes. The brigade then moved to the Senio River sector, where on March 27 it fought against elements of the German 4th Parachute Division commanded by Generalleutnant Heinrich Trettner. [23]
From April 1-9, the brigade again engaged the Germans in a series of small-scale clashes. It returned to offensive operations during the "Three Rivers Battle", crossing the Senio River on April 10 and capturing the two positions allocated to it, establishing a bridgehead and widening it the following day. It was assigned to clear out a German redoubt to the left of its position that another Allied unit had failed to capture. The brigade managed to complete the mission in a fierce battle, wiping out all enemy positions in fifteen minutes. [24] [22]
It engaged in a series of small-scale clashes and captured Monte Ghebbio in a battle with German paratroopers. The brigade was then removed from the frontline for rest and refit before the liberation of Bologna (April 21, 1945). The brigade's engineering units assisted in bridging the Po River to enable Allied forces to cross it. The Jewish Brigade spent 48 days on the frontline in Italy - March 3 to April 20, 1945. [22]
The commander of the British 10th Corps praised the Jewish Brigade's performance:
The Jewish Brigade fought well and its men were eager to make contact with the enemy by any means available to them. Their staff work, their commands and their assessments were good. If they get enough help they certainly deserve to be part of any field force whatsoever. [25]
There are indications that brigade members summarily executed surrendering German soldiers, particularly SS soldiers, in order to take revenge for the Holocaust. Although Brigadier Benjamin urged his troops not to kill surrendering Germans, emphasizing that intelligence gleaned from interrogation of prisoners would hasten the end of the war, he and his staff understood the desire for vengeance among the soldiers, and no Jewish Brigade soldier was ever punished for killing or otherwise mistreating surrendering enemy troops. [26]
The Jewish Brigade was represented among the liberating Allied units at a papal audience. The Jewish Brigade was then stationed in Tarvisio, near the border triangle of Italy, Yugoslavia, and Austria. They searched for Holocaust survivors, provided survivors with aid, and assisted in their immigration to Palestine. [5] They played a key role in the Berihah's efforts to help Jews escape Europe for British Mandatory Palestine, a role many of its members were to continue after the Brigade disbanded. Among its projects was the education and care of the Selvino children. In July 1945, the Brigade moved to Belgium and the Netherlands. [19]
During the course of the Second World War, the Jewish Brigade suffered 83 killed in action or died of wounds and 200 wounded. [27] Its dead are buried in the Commonwealth's Ravenna War Cemetery at Piangipane. [28]
Tilhas Tizig Gesheften, commonly known by its initials TTG, loosely translated as "kiss [literally, lick] my arse business", was the name of a group of Jewish Brigade members formed immediately following the Second World War. Under the guise of British military activity, this group engaged in the assassination of Nazis, facilitated the illegal immigration of Holocaust survivors to Mandatory Palestine, and smuggled weaponry to the Haganah. [5]
The Jewish Brigade also joined groups of Holocaust survivors in forming assassination squads known as the Nakam, for the purpose of tracking down and killing former SS and Wehrmacht officers who had participated in atrocities against European Jews. Information regarding the whereabouts of these fugitives was gathered either by torturing imprisoned Nazis or by way of military connections. The British uniforms, military documentation, equipment, and vehicles used by Jewish Brigade veterans greatly contributed to the success of the TTG. The number of Nazis the TTG killed is unknown, but may have been as high as 1,500. [29] [30] [31] There were also at least two instances in which Brigade veterans were implicated in the assassinations of Jewish Kapos. Kangaroo courts executed two Kapos, one by gunshot and another by drowning him in a river. [6]
After assignment to the VIII Corps District of the British Army of the Rhine (Schleswig-Holstein), the Jewish Brigade was disbanded in the summer of 1946. [32]
Many members of the Jewish Brigade assisted and encouraged the implementation of the Bricha. In the vital, chaotic months immediately before and after the German surrender, members of the Jewish Brigade supplied British Army uniforms and documents to Jewish civilians who were facilitating the illegal immigration of Holocaust survivors to Mandatory Palestine. The most notable example was Yehuda Arazi, code name "Alon," who had been wanted for two years by the British authorities in Palestine for stealing rifles from the British police and giving them to the Haganah. [33]
In 1945, Arazi and his partner Yitzhak Levy travelled from Mandatory Palestine to Egypt by train, dressed as sergeants from the Royal Engineers. From Egypt, the pair travelled through North Africa to Italy and, using false names, joined the Jewish Brigade, where Arazi secretly became responsible for organising illegal immigration. This included purchasing boats, establishing hachsharot , supplying food, and compiling lists of survivors. [34]
When Arazi reached the Jewish Brigade in Tarvisio in June 1945, he informed some of the Haganah members serving in the Brigade that other units had made contact with Jewish survivors. Arazi impressed upon the Brigade their importance in Europe and urged the soldiers to find 5,000 Jewish survivors to bring to Mandatory Palestine. [35] Jewish Brigade officer Aharon Hoter-Yishai recalled that he doubted the existence of 5,000 Jewish survivors. Regardless, the Jewish Brigade accepted Arazi's challenge without question. For many Jewish soldiers, this new mission justified their previous service in the British forces that had preceded the creation of the Jewish Brigade. [36]
Another Jewish Brigade soldier actively involved in the Bricha was Israel Carmi, who was discharged from the Jewish Brigade in the autumn of 1945. After a few months, the Secretariat of Kibbutz HaMeuchad approached Carmi about returning to Europe to assist with the Bricha. Carmi's previous experience working with survivors made him an important asset for the Bricha movement. He returned to Italy in 1946 and attended the 22nd Zionist Congress in Basel, where he gained insight into how the Berihah operated throughout Europe. [37]
Carmi proposed establishing a second Berihah route across Europe in case the existing route collapsed. He proposed dividing the Bricha leadership into parts: Mordechai Surkis, working from Paris, would be responsible for the financial workings. Ephraim Dekel in Prague would run the administrative element, and oversee the Berihah in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Germany. Carmi, working from Prague, would oversee activities in Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Romania. [38]
Jewish Brigade soldiers, assisting with the Bricha, specifically took advantage of the chaotic situation in post-war Europe to move Holocaust survivors between countries and across borders. Soldiers were intentionally placed by Merkaz Lagolah at transfer points and border crossings to assist the Jewish DPs (displaced persons). [39] For example, Judenberg, a sub-camp of the Mauthausen concentration camp, acted as a Berihah point where Brigade soldiers and partisans worked together to assist DPs. Similarly, in the city of Graz, a Bricha point was centred in a hotel where a legendary Bricha figure, Pinchas Zeitag, also known as Pini the Red or "Gingi," organised transports westwards to Italy. [40]
One of the Jewish Brigade's greatest contributions to the Bricha was the use of their British Army vehicles to transport survivors, up to a thousand people at a time, in truck convoys to Pontebba, the brigade's motor depot. These secret transports generally arrived at 2 or 3 a.m., and the Brigade always ensured that DPs were greeted by a soldier or an officer and welcomed into a dining hall with food and tea. Everyone was given a medical examination, a place to sleep, and clean clothing. Within a few days the group was moved to hachsharot in Bari, Bologna and Modena. After recuperating and completing their hachshara training, the DPs were taken to ports where boats would illegally set sail for Mandatory Palestine. [41] Historians estimate that the Jewish Brigade assisted in the transfer, between 1945 and 1948, of 15,000–22,000 Jewish DPs as part of the Bricha and the illegal immigration movement. [42]
In 1948, after the Israeli Declaration of Independence, many Jewish Brigade veterans served with distinction in the Israel Defense Forces during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. Many veterans served as high-ranking officers in the Israeli military, with 35 becoming generals. [43] [44]
Among the brigade's soldiers, 78 were mentioned in dispatches, and 20 received military decorations (7 Military Medals, 7 Order of the British Empire medals, 4 Military Crosses, and 2 US awards). [45] Veterans of the Brigade were later entitled to the Volunteer Ribbon and the Fighters against Nazis Medal of the State of Israel. [46]
In October 2018, after a unanimous support vote by the Italian Parliament, the war flag of the Jewish Brigade Group was awarded the Italian "Medaglia d'Oro al Valor Militare" for its contribution to the liberation of Italy during WW2. The medal was attached to the warflag of the Israeli 7th Armored Brigade, heirs of the Jewish Brigade Group, in a celebration at the Bet Hagdudim (Battalions Museum) in Avihayil. [47]
The Jewish Brigade inspired numerous memoires, books [48] and films. [49] In 1998, filmmakers Chuck Olin (Director) and Matthew Palm (co-producer) released their award-winning documentary, In Our Own Hands. The film aired on PBS in the United States and played in numerous film festivals around the world.
In Leon Uris novel Exodus , and the subsequent film, protagonist Ari Ben Canaan of the Haganah succeeds in organising the movement of refugees to Palestine, through his experience of action and use of procedures gained during the war as an officer of the Jewish Brigade.
The Irgun, or Etzel, was a Zionist paramilitary organization that operated in Mandatory Palestine between 1931 and 1948. It was an offshoot of the older and larger Jewish paramilitary organization Haganah. The Irgun has been viewed as a terrorist organization or organization which carried out terrorist acts.
The 1948 Arab–Israeli War, also known as the First Arab–Israeli War, followed the civil war in Mandatory Palestine as the second and final stage of the 1948 Palestine war. The civil war became a war of separate states with the Israeli Declaration of Independence on 14 May 1948, the end of the British Mandate for Palestine at midnight, and the entry of a military coalition of Arab states into the territory of Mandatory Palestine the following morning. The war formally ended with the 1949 Armistice Agreements which established the Green Line.
Haganah was the main Zionist paramilitary organization that operated for the Yishuv in the British Mandate for Palestine. It was founded in 1920 to defend the Yishuv's presence in the region, and was formally disbanded in 1948, when it became the core force integrated into the Israel Defense Forces shortly after the Israeli Declaration of Independence.
The Jewish Legion was an unofficial name used to refer to five battalions of the British Army's Royal Fusiliers regiment, which consisted of Jewish volunteers recruited during World War I. In 1915, the British Army raised the Zion Mule Corps, a transportation unit of Jewish volunteers, for service in the Gallipoli campaign. Two years later in August 1917, the decision was made to raise an infantry battalion of Jewish soldiers which would be integrated into an existing British Army regiment.
The Palmach was the elite combined strike forces and sayeret unit of the Haganah, the underground army of the Yishuv during the period of the British Mandate for Palestine. The Palmach was established in May 1941. By the outbreak of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, it consisted of over 2,000 men and women in three fighting brigades and auxiliary aerial, naval and intelligence units. With the creation of Israel's army, the three Palmach Brigades were disbanded. This and political reasons compelled many of the senior Palmach officers to resign in 1950.
Yehuda Arazi, code name Alon, was an Israeli who was active in the Haganah in Palestine during the British Mandate era.
Aliyah Bet was the code name given to illegal immigration by Jews, many of whom were refugees escaping from Nazi Germany or other Nazi-controlled countries, and later Holocaust survivors, to Mandatory Palestine between 1920 and 1948, in violation of the restrictions laid out in the British White Paper of 1939, which dramatically increased between 1939 and 1948. With the establishment of the State of Israel in May 1948, Jewish displaced persons and refugees from Europe began streaming into the new state in the midst of the 1948 Palestine war.
The Atlit detainee camp was a concentration camp established by the authorities of Mandatory Palestine in the late 1930s on what is now the Israeli coastal plain, 20 kilometres (12 mi) south of Haifa. Under British rule, it was primarily used to hold Jews and Arabs who were in administrative detention; it largely held Jewish immigrants who did not possess official entry permits. Tens of thousands of Jewish refugees were interned at the camp, which was surrounded by barbed wire and watchtowers.
Mordechai Gichon was an Israeli non-fiction author and military historian.
Meir "Zarro" Zorea MC was a general in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and later a member of the Knesset. He earned distinction through his combat actions in World War II and in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. He was a founder of Democratic Movement for Change, an initially successful but short-lived centrist party.
Bricha, also called the Bericha Movement, was the underground organized effort that helped Jewish Holocaust survivors escape Europe post-World War II to the British Mandate for Palestine in violation of the White Paper of 1939. It ended when Israel declared independence and annulled the White Paper.
The Patria disaster was the sinking on 25 November 1940 by the Jewish paramilitary organization Haganah of a French-built ocean liner, the 11,885-ton SS Patria, in the port of Haifa, killing 267 people and injuring 172.
Hanoch Bartov was an Israeli author and journalist.
Nakam was a paramilitary organisation of about fifty Holocaust survivors who, after 1945, sought revenge for the murder of six million Jews during the Holocaust. Led by Abba Kovner, the group sought to kill six million Germans in a form of indiscriminate revenge, "a nation for a nation". Kovner went to Mandatory Palestine in order to secure large quantities of poison for poisoning water mains to kill large numbers of Germans. His followers infiltrated the water system of Nuremberg. However, Kovner was arrested upon arrival in the British zone of occupied Germany and had to throw the poison overboard.
Tilhas Teezee Gesheften was a group of Jewish Brigade members formed immediately following World War II. Under the guise of British military activity, this group engaged in the assassination of Nazis and SS conspirators, facilitated the illegal emigration of Holocaust survivors to Mandatory Palestine, and smuggled weaponry for the Haganah.
Operation Hametz was a Zionist operation towards the end of Mandatory Palestine, as part of the 1948 Palestine war. It was launched at the end of April 1948 with the objective of capturing villages inland from Jaffa and establishing a blockade around the town. The operation, which led to the first direct battle between the British and the Irgun, was seen as a great victory for the latter, and enabled the Irgun to take credit for the complete conquest of Jaffa that happened on May 13.
Israel (Yisrael) Carmi, born 1917, died 20 January 2008, was the founder of the Tilhas Tizig Gesheften.
Hasan Salama was a Palestinian Arab nationalist guerrilla leader and commander who led the Palestinian Holy War Army in the 1948 Palestine War along with Abdul Qadir al-Husseini.
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The CWGC lists 110 names of the Palestine Regiment of whom about 20 have non-Jewish surnames
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: CS1 maint: location (link) CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) Shamir was the Jewish Brigade Commander on behalf of the Haganah and the Jewish Institutions in Palestine.Media related to Jewish Brigade at Wikimedia Commons