For far too many around the world, when one mentions World War II and the Jews, the sole focus of their thinking and conversation is logically centered on the horrific Shoah and the loss of the Six Million. The international tragedy of the Holocaust and the focus on the victimhood of our people is the dominant theme in Jewish educational and cultural circles.
But there is another important story about WWII that needs to be told. That is the story of the courage and resistance of the Jewish People to the forces of the Axis nations, as represented by the 1,500,000 Jews who served in the Allied armies, as partisans and as members of resistance movements. Very few know that 250,000 (one in six) of this number fell in the course of the fighting. And even fewer realize that the Jewish People’s participation in the fighting, on a percentage basis, was among the highest in the world.
Far from being a story only of victimhood, the Jewish role in WWII speaks to broad-based participation with distinction, in all armies and military forces, in all service branches, in all places, and at all levels. There were 550,000 Jews in the U.S. military, 500,000 from Russia and 450,000 spread across all the other participating Allied forces and fighting groups.
Beyond these important facts, there is a fabled further chapter that was written by several thousand veterans of WWII who came from overseas and assisted in the establishment of the State of Israel by joining the Machal fighters during the 1948 War of Independence (Machal, מח”ל is an acronym of מתנדבי חוץ לארץ, “volunteers from abroad”). Machal volunteers strengthened the emerging IDF and were an integral part of the defense of the new Jewish state.
The full story of the heroism and important contributions of our people during this sad period in history is finally being told in Israel with the recent opening of the Museum of the Jewish Soldier in World War II. The new museum is named for Chaim Herzog, Israel’s sixth president and a WWII veteran. The state-of-the-art facility is located in Latrun, off the main highway midway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. It shares the campus of the well-known Yad L’Shiryon museum and memorial dedicated to the fallen soldiers of Israel’s armored corps. The new museum will welcome visitors and researchers to its exhibition, research and study facilities.
An extremely important ongoing effort by the museum offers families and communities the opportunity to commemorate these heroes of our people. A public archive, already available on-line, contains military documents, records and photographs for individual fighters.
Creating an archival entry for a loved one who served is a beautiful way to honor them and create a permanent memorial for them in Israel. To learn more about how you can create such an archival file on-line, simply access the museum’s website below where you will find helpful information on how to complete the form and upload information about your soldier: http://www.jwmww2.org/en
The following is a link to a recent 6-minute YouTube video with an overview all about the museum:
The Museum of the Jewish Soldier in World War II
The museum staff looks forward to greeting you on your next visit to Israel!!
Howie Mischel made Aliyah to Israel from New Jersey in 2009. He volunteers in the research library of the Museum of the Jewish Soldier in WWII in honor of his late father, Julius Mischel, a combat veteran wounded in the Battle of the Bulge.
