“Thus says the Lord God: This is Jerusalem. I have set her in the center of the nations, with countries round-about her.” - Ezekiel 5:5
This is part twelve of the FAI Publishing series Center of Nations which examines the history of the modern State of Israel in the midst of an increasingly hostile world.
The British Palestine Regiment served with distinction in the Greek and North African campaigns in 1941-42, helping the Allies to secure a much needed victory at El Alamein. At the same time, the Western press began publishing evidence of Nazi atrocities against Jews behind the front in Eastern Europe. Massacres of entire Jewish villages and towns were reported, although the world did not yet understand the magnitude of what had begun in the Pale of Settlement. Sprawling extermination camps were already operational throughout German-occupied Poland by the end of 1942, in places like Auschwitz–Birkenau, Treblinka and Belzec, murdering almost 3,000 Jewish people every day. England’s new Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, wrote to US President Franklin Roosevelt, “the Jews... of all races [nations] have the right to strike at the Germans as a recognizable body.” Roosevelt answered with no objection, and the initial plans were laid for a distinct Jewish force within the British Army.
However, it would take over two years for the all-Jewish unit to become reality, as not all members of the British Parliament or military establishment were as enthusiastic about the venture as Churchill. The Jewish Infantry Brigade Group, or Jewish Brigade, would be led by a hand-picked British-Jewish officer corps and would bear the Zionist insignia on the sleeve of its uniforms. Brigadier Ernest F. Benjamin, a British Jew, was selected to be the brigade commander. The Jewish Brigade was officially formed in September, 1944, drawing more than 5,000 Jewish enlistees from the Palestine Regiment to form three infantry battalions and an artillery regiment. By the fall of 1944, the Allies had already pushed beyond Rome to Northern Italy and had liberated Paris. Soviet troops were beginning to advance into Poland and Slovakia, where they would encounter the remnants of the extermination camps. In October, the Jewish Brigade joined the British 15th Army Group in Northern Italy. It arrived on the front lines in March, 1945 and saw its first action near Alfonsine, Italy, about 60 kilometers east of Bologna. Later, it engaged German paratroopers on the banks of the Senio River in the “Three Rivers Battle,” crossing the river and establishing a bridgehead. After spending less than 50 days on the front lines and only 5 days in combat, it had suffered over 100 casualties.
After Nazi Germany surrendered in May, 1945, the Jewish Brigade was stationed at the triple frontier of Italy, Austria and Yugoslavia. Although its days in combat were ended, its endeavors in Europe were just beginning. Jewish refugees of the Shoah were streaming out of the Pale of Settlement into Austria and Italy, seeking to escape the wave of anti-Semitism that met them as they returned home from the camps or came out of hiding. Some members of the Jewish Brigade, overwhelmed and enraged by their discovery of the extent of the Holocaust, decided to take matters into their own hands. One officer named Israel Carmi gathered a detachment of like-minded enlisted men to form an unauthorized unit named Tilhas Teezee Gesheften, or TTG, a combination of Arabic and Yiddish terms which is literally translated “lick my ass business” but which could be more colloquially translated as “up your ass, queer.” Carmi was a member of the Jewish Hagenah in the Land, and had fought to defend Jewish communities during the Arab Revolt in the 1930’s. Under the alleged auspices of the British military, the TTG joined groups of European Holocaust survivors known as the Nakam (Hebrew for “revenge”) in carrying out the extrajudicial killings of hundreds of former SS members and collaborators who had allegedly taken part in Jewish genocide, often using fabricated orders, passes and requisitions to accomplish their work. The TTG was also involved in the theft of arms from the Allies, illegally trafficking them to the Hagenah in the Land.
As hundreds of thousands of displaced Jewish refugees languished throughout Europe in the summer of 1945, many of them still confined by Allied forces to the same Nazi camps from which they had been liberated, the TTG and the Jewish Brigade turned its focus to relief and rescue. Survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in Poland had come together with other Jewish partisans throughout Eastern Europe to form Berichah (Hebrew for “flight”), which organized the emigration of fellow survivors from Europe to Eretz Yisrael. They were aided by members of the Hagenah in the Jewish Brigade, who managed a system of human smuggling that ran from Eastern Europe through American-occupied zones of Germany and Austria to Italy. In just three months, between June and August 1945, over 15,000 Jews were “illegally” conveyed from Europe to Mandate Palestine, often travelling in British military vehicle convoys, which could transport up to 1,000 refugees at a time. In Italy, they were placed on cargo ships bound for Jaffa and Haifa ports.
Between 100,000-200,000 Jews were smuggled out of post-war Europe to their ancestral homeland between 1945-48. As British authorities grew increasingly aware of the Jewish Brigade’s underground enterprise, they sealed the borders of Palestine in an attempt to stymie the influx of Holocaust survivors. The Jewish Brigade was transferred to Holland in July 1945, but its involvement in the Berichah continued. Some members travelled as far as Poland and Czechoslovakia in search of survivors. Israel Carmi had been discharged from the British Army but returned to Europe for the World Zionist Congress and remained active in the Berichah movement as well, even coordinating new routes of overland transport.
As tensions continued to increase between the mandate authorities and the Hagenah over the issue of Bet Aliyah, the British command in London decided to disband the Jewish Brigade, ordering most of its members back to the Land to be discharged. Despite its inglorious ending, the brigade played a crucial role in accelerating the events that would lead to the end of British occupation and the formation of the State of Israel two years later. The men of the Palestine Regiments had defended Europe and North Africa against the Third Reich, hastening the end of the Shoah, and aiding its victims in reaching safety in the Land. In all, 83 members of the Jewish Brigade were killed-in-action, over 200 wounded, and 20 received decorations, including 4 who were awarded the prestigious Military Cross. The Yishuv officers and enlistees in the brigade had gained invaluable combat and command experience, although none of them realized at the time how soon it would be needed. The world war had ended, but the war for their homeland, and their very survival, was just around the corner.
Gabe Caligiuri is the editor of THE WIRE, as well as an occasional contributor to other FAI digital content on the subjects of history and geopolitics as they relate to the Great Commission. Gabe and his family live in California.