New Book: WW2 Jewish Brigade (part of British Army)

Inside the Jewish Brigade’s untold Holocaust survivor rescue operations

Shlomo Shamir’s daughter, Yael Driver, uncovers her father’s hidden rescue efforts and role in shaping Israel’s future.

      Shlomo Shamir (L)

The Jewish Brigade was instrumental in helping the war effort for the Allied forces in World War II and later helped track down Holocaust survivors and bring them to the Land of Israel. But while there is much information in Hebrew about this critical part of Israel’s creation as an independent state, there is little such data in English or any other language.

That has now been rectified with the publication of a new book titled Dance of the Fire: The Jewish Brigade in WW2: Facts, Myths, Appraisal. It is based largely on the personal memoirs of Shlomo Shamir, who served in the brigade as a British officer but, more importantly, as its covert commander on behalf of the Jewish Institutions in Palestine. The Magazine spoke with Yael Driver, Shamir’s daughter and the book’s editor.

Driver took her father’s memoirs, which had been set down in writing before he passed away in 2009, and conducted additional and confirmatory research in archives and newspapers in England, Germany, Israel, and elsewhere to corroborate facts and dates about the Jewish Brigade’s activities. 

In 2014, she privately published the Hebrew version of the book, which, translated, is titled Three Miracles and a Jewish Flag in the British Army. This autumn, following further research, an updated and expanded commercially available English version of the book was released, with new references, footnotes, and historical photographs.

Part of Driver’s more recent research related to a ceramic clay relief that had hung on the wall of her family’s home since her childhood. The memento had been carved in 1941 by an Italian prisoner of war, one of some 10,000 POWs interned in the Latrun detention camp, a significant British Mandate-era prison in Israel where Jewish resistance fighters were held. The relief was inscribed with a dedication to her father.

“This Italian prisoner gave my father a ceramic relief, which he made on site in conditions unimaginable, as a token of appreciation,” Driver explained. As part of her research for the English version of the book, she located the son of the POW and learned more of the backstory. The two families have remained in touch as a result.

Another family with whom Driver has become friends as a result of her research is that of the British commander of the post-war British Search Bureau in Northern Germany. Driver called it another “Sherlock Holmes story,” which also finally explained why this British officer was so sympathetic to the Jewish cause.

Having tracked down his daughter, it transpired that the man was a descendant of the renowned Recanati family from the Italian Jewish community. This was something that the British commander never mentioned, but it may well have influenced his sympathy with the Jewish Brigade’s requests regarding improving the conditions in displaced persons camps holding Jewish survivors.

Italy was an important chapter in the story of the Jewish Brigade. Driver explained how the brigade was instrumental in the Italian Campaign, which liberated Italy and helped turn the tide of the war in favor of the Allies.

“Volunteers from the Jewish community in Palestine to the British Armed Forces numbered about 34,000 people,” Driver stated. “That was almost 10% of the Jewish community in Palestine, an unheard-of percentage. In the Jewish Brigade alone, there were 5,000 troops, the great majority of whom were from the Jewish community in Palestine.”

Shamir’s memoir details the often-awkward nature of being a loyal British officer, while also looking ahead to the future creation of a Jewish state. The British White Paper of 1939 had severely curtailed Jewish immigration and the right to buy land, as well as imposing other restrictions. Later that year, Germany invaded Poland, and World War II began. Driver quoted the famous line by David Ben-Gurion regarding how the Jews in Palestine should react: “We shall fight the war as if there were no White Paper, and fight the White Paper as if there were no war,” he stated.

“The volunteers from Palestine faced a dichotomy,” she explained, “but in the end, it was first and foremost about the ability to fight the Germans. There was also the idea that this would give some possibility of getting military training, which would eventually be useful.” And, indeed, the Jewish Brigade troops formed the bedrock of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) when the British left Palestine in 1948.

Driver described some initial skepticism of British officers about the capabilities of the droves of Jews joining their ranks, but eventually they more than proved themselves in battle.

After WW II ended, the Jewish Brigade continued for another year as a military unit. In fact, some of its most important work was done during this period. In his memoir, Shamir describes the dramatic rescue efforts made to track down Holocaust survivors and guide them to pre-state Israel.

During the Holocaust, Jews under Nazi occupation were forced to wear a yellow Jewish star with the word “Jude” (“Jew”) on their arm as a source of shame. This was in contrast to the blue-and-white Jewish star emblem worn on the arms of the Jewish Brigade soldiers. 

'Scenes of people collapsing from excitement'

Driver described how Shamir had recalled in his memoirs the emotions of the survivors upon being approached by Jewish Brigade troops. “For them to see a soldier with a Magen David on his sleeves, coupled with the insignia ‘Jewish Brigade,’ was something they could not believe,” she said.

“There were scenes of people collapsing from excitement and crying in the way that could be expected when you come from hell and then see the Messiah. The meeting between the survivors and the Jewish soldiers from Palestine was a very moving event.”

She continued to describe the importance of the Jewish Brigade’s efforts to bring survivors to the Land of Israel during the time that the British and the newly formed United Nations were debating Israel’s future.

“They were extremely successful in meeting, caring for, orienting, and ensuring that She’arit-Hapleta [the Holocaust survivors] eventually declared Palestine as their preferred destination for immigration,” Driver said. “This was a most critical thing to achieve, and a significant contributor to the subsequent UN decision for the creation of the State of Israel.”

Many might have opted to return to their home countries or immigrate to the United States, although there were strict quotas on immigration to the US at the time.

The survivors had been living through “six years of terrible circumstances,” she said. Although there were many Zionist groups in European Jewish communities, many survivors were not aware that there was a thriving Hebrew-speaking population in the Land of Israel that was striving for independence.

“They hadn’t heard anything about Palestine,” Driver explained. “What is Palestine? Who is in Palestine? Does Palestine exist? So, this was an educational orienting campaign of great importance.”All this had to be done under the watchful eyes of the British, many of whom opposed turning over British-controlled territory to the Jews.

Another dramatic experience that fills an entire chapter in the book is the search for activist Enzo Sereni. In 1944, at the age of 39, the prominent Italian-born Jewish community leader in Palestine volunteered to parachute into Northern Italy with the aim of establishing contact with the Italian resistance. But he had disappeared without a trace.

After the war, Shamir led the search to track him down. The search ended in sadness when it was uncovered that he had been captured and sent to the Dachau concentration camp, where he perished.

When independence finally came for Israel in 1948, Shamir helped turn the fledgling Israel Defense Forces into a professional military force. As part of the preparation for forming the IDF, Ben-Gurion tasked Shamir, who at the time was heading the Yishuv’s Mission to the US, to recruit Mickey Marcus, a former colonel in the United States Army.

As an IDF officer, Shamir became commander of the Israel Navy and later commander of the Israel Air Force.

After entering civilian life, he established and headed Israel’s phosphate mining business, and was then in charge of the Israel Lands Authority. In his 50s, he went back to study and earned a master’s degree from Tel Aviv University.

Not bad for a Jewish immigrant born in the Russian Empire.

To summarize the importance of the Jewish Brigade, Driver concluded that in addition to channeling Holocaust survivors to Israel and building the foundation of the IDF, “it was the only military unit in the vast assembly of Allied forces that operated under a Jewish insignia. It therefore not only represented the 1.3 million Jews who fought in Allied nations’ armies but also allowed non-serving world Jewry to ‘walk tall.’”

The book, with a foreword written by President Isaac Herzog, is published by Unicorn Publishing Group and is available from Amazon. It will also be available in Israel at Tzomet Sfarim bookstores.

https://www.jpost.com/history/article-879951