| Jewish Brigade | |
|---|---|
  Insignia and sleeve patch of the Jewish Brigade | |
| Active | 1944–1946 |
| Country |  United Kingdom |
| Branch |  British Army |
| Type | Infantry |
| Size | 5,000 Palestinian Jews |
| Engagements | |
| Commanders | |
| Notable commanders | Ernest Benjamin |
TheJewish Infantry Brigade Group,[1] more commonly known as theJewish Brigade Group[2] orJewish Brigade,[3] was a military formation of theBritish Army in theSecond World War. It was formed in late 1944[1][2] and was recruited amongYishuv Jews fromMandatory Palestine and commanded byAnglo-Jewish officers. It served in the latter stages of theItalian Campaign, and was disbanded in 1946.
After the war, some members of the Brigade assistedHolocaust survivors to illegally emigrate to Mandatory Palestine as part ofAliyah Bet, in defiance of British restrictions. Other members formed the vigilante groupsGmul and theTilhas 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 JewishKapos.[6]
After theFirst World War, theBritish and theFrench empires replaced theOttoman Empire as the preeminent powers in theMiddle East. This change brought closer theZionist Movement's goal of creating a Jewish state. TheBalfour 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]
TheLeague of Nations incorporated the Declaration in theBritish 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 theSecond World War.[7]
In 1939, the British Government ofNeville Chamberlain appeared to reject the Balfour Declaration in theWhite Paper of 1939, abandoning the idea of establishing a Jewish Dominion. When the United Kingdom declared war onNazi Germany in September 1939,David Ben-Gurion, the head of theJewish 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 theZionist 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 theBritish Army. His request for a separate formation was rejected, but the British authorized the enlistment of Palestinian volunteers in theRoyal Army Service Corps (RASC) and in thePioneer Corps, on condition that an equal number of Jews and Arabs was to be accepted. TheJewish 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]
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From 1942, a large number of further Palestinian Arab-Jewish 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'sAuxiliary Territorial Service and a Woman Territorial Air Force Service,[12] and several auxiliaries in local units of theRoyal Army Ordnance Corps,Royal Engineers, andRoyal Army Medical Corps.[10]
Nine non-combat infantry companies were raised as part of theRoyal East Kent Regiment ("the Buffs"), to be used as guards for prisoners-of-war camps in Egypt. In August 1942 thePalestine 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" who had enlisted just for the cash bonus provided by the Jewish Agency.[13]
There was no designated all-Jewish, combat-worthy formation. Jewish groups petitioned the British government to create such a force, but the British refused.[14] 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 toRafael Medoff, Churchill consented because he was "moved by the slaughter of Hungarian Jewry [and] was hoping to impress American public opinion."[14]
After early reports of theNazi atrocities ofthe Holocaust were made public by the Allied powers in the spring and early summer of 1942,[15] British Prime MinisterWinston Churchill sent a personal telegram to theUS PresidentFranklin 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, theBritish 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.
TheZionist flag was approved as itsstandard. It included more than 5,000 Jewish volunteers from Mandatory Palestine, organized into threeinfantry battalions of thePalestine 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."[16]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."[17]
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In October 1944, under the leadership of BrigadierErnest F. Benjamin, the brigade group was shipped to Italy. It joined theBritish Eighth Army in November, which was engaged in theItalian Campaign under the15th Army Group.[5][18]
The Jewish Brigade took part in theSpring Offensive of 1945. It took positions on the front line for the first time on March 3, 1945 along the south bank of theSenio River, and immediately began engaging in small-scale actions against German forces, facing the42nd Jäger Division and the362nd 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. On March 15, it successfully ambushed an enemy patrol, inflicting an estimated eight casualties for none in return.[19]
In one notable raid, it was supported by tanks of theNorth Irish Horse andSouth 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.[19]
The brigade first entered into major combat operations on March 19–20, 1945 atAlfonsine.[20] In its first sustained action on March 19, the brigade inflicted 30 enemy casualties and took 11 prisoners for the loss of two killed and 19 wounded in a series of clashes. The brigade continued the action into the following day and repulsed an attack by a strong enemy patrol, losing another three dead and six wounded. On March 27, the brigade's third battalion took positions facing elements of the German4th Parachute Division commanded byGeneralleutnantHeinrich Trettner. Both sides sent out patrols which clashed in a series of short and intense firefights and engaged each other with intermittent artillery and mortar bombardment.[21] Other brigade forces also engaged in clashes with the Germans throughout the following days.
From April 1–9, the brigade continued to engage the Germans in a series of small-scale clashes. It returned to offensive operations during the "Three Rivers Battle" on April 10, during which it crossed the Senio River and captured the two positions allocated to it, establishing a bridgehead. While theFree Polish unit on the brigade's right flank also succeeded, the attack on the Germanredoubt on its left flank by theItalian Co-belligerent Army failed and the brigade was subsequently assigned to destroy it. The brigade launched a fierce attack that began with a bayonet charge and wiped out all enemy positions in fifteen minutes. It then withdrew as ordered.[22][20]
The brigade proceeded to expand its bridgehead over the Senio River and advance further, engaging in more clashes. On April 12, the brigade captured Monte Ghebbio in a battle with German paratroopers.[22] As the Allies advanced onBologna, the brigade was ordered to take command of a sector in the Monte Grande area north of San Clemente, which overlooked Bologna and was at the junction of the US Fifth Army and British Eighth Army. The brigade's headquarters took six British and Indian battalions and the only British mountain artillery unit in Italy under its command. Their task was to hold the Monte Grande area as Bologna was besieged. As Allied forces pushed towards thePo River, the Germans retreated and the main brigade forces lost contact with them. A handful of units attached to other nationalities encountered rearguard actions. The brigade's engineering units assisted in bridging the Po River to enable Allied forces to cross it. The brigade then received orders to break off from the advance and remain as a reserve unit in the British 10th Corps. This marked the end of its wartime combat operations. The Jewish Brigade spent 48 days on the frontline in Italy - March 3 to April 20, 1945.[20]
The commander of theBritish 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.[23]
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.[24]
The Jewish Brigade was represented among the liberating Allied units at a papal audience. The Jewish Brigade was then stationed inTarvisio, near the border triangle ofItaly,Yugoslavia, andAustria. They searched for Holocaust survivors, provided survivors with aid, and assisted in their immigration to Palestine.[5] They played a key role in theBerihah'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 theSelvino children. In July 1945, the Brigade moved toBelgium and theNetherlands.[18]
During the course of the Second World War, the Jewish Brigade suffered 83 killed in action or died of wounds and 200 wounded.[25] Its dead are buried in the Commonwealth's Ravenna War Cemetery at Piangipane.[26]
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 assassinations of Nazis, facilitated the illegal immigration of Holocaust survivors to Mandatory Palestine, and smuggled weaponry to theHaganah.[5]
The Jewish Brigade also joined groups of Holocaust survivors in forming assassination squads known as theNakam, for the purpose of tracking down and killing formerSS andWehrmacht 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. With the end of the war in Europe, a secret unit within the Jewish Brigade calledGmul ("Recompense") was formed to hunt Nazis. Working in teams of no more than five men, Gmul operatives generally approached their targets wearing British military police uniforms and told them they were being taken for interrogation before killing them. The operation lasted for three months, during which between 100 and 200 Germans were killed. It ended when the British, hearing complaints about disappearances from German families, understood what had been happening and redeployed the brigade to the Netherlands and Belgium. The Haganah command also issued an order to end the Gmul operations. However, brigade members continued to hunt and kill Nazis, working under the name "Operation Judgement" in secret killing squads. The number of Nazis the TTG killed is unknown, but may have been as high as 1,500.[27][28][29][30] 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 theVIII Corps District of the British Army of the Rhine (Schleswig-Holstein), the Jewish Brigade was disbanded in the summer of 1946.[31]
Many members of the Jewish Brigade assisted and encouraged the implementation of theBricha. 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 wasYehuda 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.[32]
In 1945, Arazi and his partnerYitzhak 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, establishinghachsharot, supplying food, and compiling lists of survivors.[33]
When Arazi reached the Jewish Brigade inTarvisio in June 1945, he informed some of theHaganah 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.[34] Jewish Brigade officerAharon 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.[35]
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Another Jewish Brigade soldier actively involved in the Bricha wasIsrael 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.[36]
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.[36]
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).[37] 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 ofGraz, 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.[38]
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 toPontebba, 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 tohachsharot in Bari, Bologna and Modena. After recuperating and completing theirhachshara training, the DPs were taken to ports where boats would illegally set sail for Mandatory Palestine.[39] 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.[40]
In 1948, after theIsraeli Declaration of Independence, many Jewish Brigade veterans served with distinction in theIsrael Defense Forces during the1948 Arab–Israeli War. Many veterans served as high-ranking officers in the Israeli military, with 35 becoming generals.[41][42]
Among the brigade's soldiers, 78 werementioned in dispatches, and 20 received military decorations (7Military Medals, 7Order of the British Empire medals, 4Military Crosses, and 2 US awards).[43] Veterans of the Brigade were later entitled to theVolunteer Ribbon and theFighters against Nazis Medal of the State of Israel.[44]
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 World War II. The medal was attached to the warflag of the Israeli7th Armored Brigade, heirs of the Jewish Brigade Group, in a celebration at the Bet Hagdudim (Battalions Museum) inAvihayil.[45]
The Jewish Brigade inspired numerous memoires, books[46] and films.[47] 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.
InLeon Uris novelExodus, and the subsequentfilm, protagonist Ari Ben Canaan of theHaganah 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 CWGC lists 110 names of the Palestine Regiment of whom about 20 have non-Jewish surnames
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link) CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) (Private edition in Hebrew). Shamir was the Jewish Brigade Covert Commander on behalf of the Haganah and the Jewish Institutions in Palestine.
Media related toJewish Brigade at Wikimedia Commons