In the history of World War II most Jewish people were happless victims of Nazi extermination.
But not in every case. Some Jews fought back: in the Allied armies, the Jewish Brigade, as partisans.
In this video you will learn about the Jewish Parachutists of the Second World War II.
It's a very extraordinary story. So keep watching.
Many people asked themselves why didn't the Jews fight the Axis Powers.
Here is what historian Benjamin Ginsberg has to say about it:
In this video we're gonna discuss the Jewish Parachutists who came from the Mandate Palestine.
Palestine was previously owned by the Ottoman Empire that crumbed after WW1.
Then the British took control over the area as a League of Nations Mandate.
The Jewish Agency for Israel, a body dedicated
to the establishment of Israel, asked the British government for help in training and
dispatching hundreds of parachutists into Europe to fight the Nazis. The word was spread
among the Jewish Palestinian troops that served with the British Army and members of a Zionist
youth organization. In August 1942, a group of Jewish women arrived
in Palestine. They brought horror stories of what was going on in Nazi-occupied Europe.
The Jewish Agency saw this as an opportunity since these people had knowledge of the geography,
language and costums. As mentioned before: Jewish resistance lacked even a modicum of
central coordination or leadership, but these people could provide this. The Agency set
up an ambitious plan to drop 1,000 parachute-trained special agents over war-torn Europe who
could make contact with Jewish resistance and maybe starting an uprising. It took months
to get the idea off the ground and eventually 250 Jewish men and women
volunteered. The British were cautious
in providing resources and transforming ordinary men and women into seasoned commandos as they
could become a threat to British rule in Palestine once the war was over. The British demanded
they would prioritize setting up radio and telegraph communications, sabotage, and aiding
downed Allied Pilots.
Italian-bron Enzo Serini and Hungarian-born Yonah Rosen took up the organization. As we
saw with other Zionist militant groups like Haganah and Palmach, women were welcome to
join and so Slovak-born Haviva Reik and Hungarian-born Hannah Szenes joined. Initially there were
250 volunteers, 110 were trained and 37 were left after the training.
The British had plans to drop them into Axis-controlled Yugoslavia. There they could link up with
Josip Broz Tito’s Partisans, however the volunteers claimed this was too risky. The
Partisans controlled only fractions of the territory and dropping all the volunteers
in one place was too risky. They then suggested “blind jumps”: with teams dropped onto
different countries. As Enzo Sereni stated:
In March 1944 the first jumps began. The volunteers were parachuted into six European countries—9
to Romania, 3 to Hungary, 5 to Slovakia, 10 to Yugoslavia, 3 to Italy, and 2 to Bulgaria.
Mostly the were sent to countries where they had been born and could speak the local language.
Five others infiltrated they countries via overland routes.
The first team was led by Hungarian-born Hannah Szenes. Her team was dropped into
Yugoslavia. From there she hoped to get to Hungary (her mother and brother hid there) which was an Axis nation but not under
German control. However that month the Germans moved in a took over the country. That had
to do with the fact that the Germans doubted the loyalty of the Hungarian leaders and its
military to continue the war on the Axis side. The parachutist were disillusioned and one of them wrote:
Nevertheless, the jumps were undertaken. The first team was led by Hannah Szenes was dropped
in Partisan-held Yugoslavia. They spent several months with the Partisans and then tried to
infiltrate Hungary, her home country. However, since the Nazis had taken control of her country, two of her fellow
men believed it was too risky so they turned back. Szenes continued. However, when crossing
the Hungarian border she was caught by the Hungarian police who found a British military
transmitter. A grim future awaited her. The guards wanted to know the code she used to
signal her comrades. She was taken to a prison and tied to a chair where for three consecutive days she
was beaten. She lost several teeth because of this. She was taken to a Budapest
prison and the torture continued. Eventually the guards
threatened to kill her mother (who was also arrested), she still refused to give in. Towards the
end of October 1944 she was tried. By now the fascist Hungarian Arrow Cross regime had seized
power. On 7 November 1944 she was executed by firing squad. Szenes was an accomplished
poet, and the circumstances of her death helped give her poetry an international audience.
Another female parachutist was Slovak-born Haviva Reich (Reik). She had emigrated to
Palestine in 1939 and joined the SOE (Special Operations Executive); a secret British organisation
to perform espionage and covert operations behind German lines. In September 1944 she
was sent to Slovakia. At that time the Slovak Uprising was in full swing.
She and others helped to rescue Allied POWs and downed pilots as well as helping Jewish children to escape
the country to Palestine, providing escape routes. However, in October 1944 she was
arrested by Ukrainian Waffen SS soldiers. She was killed along with around 1,000 others
in the Kremnička massacre, which was carried out by Hlinka Guards Men and Einsatzgruppen
in the aftermath of the crushed Slovak National Uprising. Two of her comrades died in concentration
camps and another managed to escape and joined the Soviet partisans. After the war Reik's
remains were later transferred from the mass grave in Slovakia to the new state of
Israel.
Five of the parachutists participated in the 1944 Slovak uprising. Ten parachutists
fought alongside Tito’s partisans. The Germans, however, captured twelve of the parachutists
and executed seven of them. In Romania, parachutists moved
swiftly and undetected through the Ploiești oil fields to rescue stranded Allied airmen.
Others made carrying out the resistance work till the Allies reached them.
In 2013, at the age of 95 the last of the volunteers died. Surika Braverman (Sara Braverman).
As she put it:
There were other groups, such as the Jewish Brigade, or as partisans, or in the Special Interrogation Group
but that is all for future episodes.