About 250,000 Jewish soldiers were killed while fighting for Allied armies, more than 200,000 were decorated
Itzchak Tessler
Simha Goldin and his father, a Polish soldier who was taken captive by the Soviet Army
(Photos: Ido Erez, the Goldstein-Goren Diaspora Research Center at Tel Aviv University)
There is not a single student in the Israeli educational system who doesn’t learn about the Jewish Brigade from Palestine that fought in the British army in World War II. The bravery of the 5,000 Brigade soldiers should be praised and admired, but it’s just a drop in the ocean of Jewish blood which was shed in the fight against the Nazis.
About 1.5 million Jews fought as part of the Allied armies. They stood out both because their number was much higher than their percentage in their homelands and because of the huge losses they suffered.
About 250,000 Jews were killed fighting and a relatively high number of Jews received medals of honor.
Shimha Goldin, the son of a Polish soldier taken captive by the Soviet Army, and the father of Lieutenant Hadar Goldin, who was killed in Operation Protective Edge in Gaza in the summer of 2014, decided to highlight the role of the Jewish fighters in World War II.
Goldin, director of the Goldstein-Goren Diaspora Research Center at Tel Aviv University and a senior lecturer at the Department of Jewish History, initiated a conference held this past week in the presence of researchers from leading universities in Israel and the world.
Outstanding contribution
Goldin says the Goldstein-Goren Diaspora Research Center managed to get its hands on a particularly large number of letters written by Jewish soldiers who served in the Russian army.
“If you break down the number of Jews among the high-ranking soldiers and those who received citations, alongside the huge number of losses, the Jews’ contribution stands out both in the Russian army and in the American army,” he says.
What effect did the anti-Semitism in Europe and in the United States have on the Jews’ military service?
“Prof. Catherine Merridale, the author of ‘Ivan’s War,’ examined the lives of fighters in the Red Army and discovered, among other things, that although everyone was equal according to the Soviet model, there was definitely anti-Semitism inside the army and Jews were required to demonstrate courage.
“The research in this field is at an early stage, and thanks to the huge amount of archive material collected by Brigadier-General (res.) Zvika Kan-Tor and the Museum of the Jewish Soldier in World War II, we will be able to publish studies on the issue in the future.”
A Jewish girl’s letter to her father the soldier (photo courtesy of Tel Aviv University)
200,000 fallen Jewish soldiers in Red Army alone
Prof. Dina Porat, the chief historian of Yad Vashem and head of the Kantor Center at Tel Aviv University, strongly opposes the attempt to compare the Jewish Brigade’s contribution to the war and that of Jews who fought for the Allied armies.
“The Brits didn’t want to train an army which would act against them in the Land of Israel later on,” she says. “That’s the reason why even after agreeing to create the Brigade, they only did it in September 1944, nearly at the end of the war, and sent the soldiers to fight in just one battle or two.
“But the Brigade’s contribution was particularly significant in caring for the Holocaust survivors and bringing them to Israel. The fighters stole food and clothes for them from the British Army’s warehouses, got hold of fuel and trucks to drive them and played a significant part in the establishment of the Israel Defense Forces and in turning it from an underground organization into a regular, trained army.”
Prof. Porat agrees, though, that the Jewish fighters in the Allied armies have yet to receive the honor they deserve and provides some amazing figures: “Of the one and a half million Jewish soldiers, half a million were in the US Army and 36,000 of them received awards of excellence.
“Half a million Jews served in the Red Army, 120,000 of them were killed in action and 80,000 were taken captive by the Nazis and murdered. Of all the Jewish soldiers in the Red Army, 300 were generals, 160,000 received citations, and 150 of them were awarded the prestigious title “Hero of the Soviet Union.”
‘Some concealed the fact that they were Jewish’
Goldin explains that in the 1930s many Jews enlisted for regular service in the Red Army and were promoted. They worked as professionals in all of the army’s branches, including combat service for women who worked as flight physicians, nurses on the front and combat pilots.
Jews in the US, on the other hand, did not see the army as a professional field.
“But Jews did stand out in the rest of the armies and among the partisans. As the extent of the Holocaust was revealed, they sought to prove to their colleagues that Jews don’t go like lambs to the slaughter. So they volunteered for any dangerous mission and made double the effort.
“Some concealed the fact that they were Jewish, and that’s why the extent of their contribution was only revealed later on. When at the end of the war, the Soviets learned of the huge number of Jews among the soldiers who received citations, they decided not to award the medals to the all the Jewish fighters who were entitled to them, as they were afraid of the implications in the Soviet Union.”
This article was written by Itzchak Tessler and is published courtesy of [ Ynet ]
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