Jewish armed resistance

While everyone now knows that ca. 6 million Jews perished in the Holocaust during WWII, few know that a million and a half Jews fought in the armies arrayed against Nazi Germany and in the many resistance and underground groups, such as partisans and Ghetto fighters. In an article detailing this story in the Jerusalem Post Metro section, entitled "Let the Jewish people know we fought," by Joanna Paraszczuk, the focus is on specific members of the Red Army and the US Army. One of the cultural changes that occured in Israel after the immigration of ca. 1 million residents of the former Soviet Union, was the introduction of parades of men wearing their medals commemorating the "great patriotic war."

It is not generally realized that the French resistance, the Maquis, consisted of a majority of Jews, both French Jews and Jews who had fled to France from Eastern Europe in an attempt to escape the Nazis. Also, the Jewish Brigade was a fully active part of the British Army consisting of two groups, British and Commonwealth Jews recruited in Britain and Palestinian Jews recruited by the British in Mandatory Palestine. At one time is is estimated that the British Army defending Egypt consisted half of Jews. Although the British were at first reluctant to put the Jewish Brigades into the front line, when they did, in battle in central Italy, they fought bravely and captured Nazi positions. Later, as I have described elsewhere ("In our own hands," July 8, 2010) these Brigades acted as conduits for the illegal immigration ("bricha") of Jewish survivors after 1945 through Italy and Holland to Palestine. The Jewish Brigades formed the core of the professional Jewish Army that later became the IDF.

It is intended, with Israel Government support, to build a "Museum of the Jewish Soldier during WWII" near the Armoured Division Museum near Latrun. There is an active campaign of fund raising and political activity to accomplish this (see www.jwmww2.org), although it is not clear how it would deal with those in partisan and resistance groups who were irregulars.

While it would be an important educational tool and a needed balance to the focus on the Holocaust, we should bear in mind that the Jewish Ashkenazi Orthodox culture in Eastern Europe was mainly passive and in effect the majority of Jews were culturally powerless. They could not fight back, rather waiting for God to help them, and in effect they were a defeated people prior to the war starting. As a German once described to me, they were the prey waiting for the German wolf to attack, and in fact, by being defenceless they invited destruction. The mainly secular Jews who fought as members of large national armies or as members of organized resistance groups, redeemed Jewish dignity.