The Shoah, Aliyah Bet and the Palestine Regiment in WWII
A wanted poster published by British authorities in Palestine for information leading to the capture of anti-British Jewish insurgents. Menachim Begin, the sixth prime minister of the State of Israel, is listed on the far-left.
As another Anglo-German confrontation loomed on the European continent in the spring of 1939, the British government was eager to resolve the unrest that had slowly intensified across Palestine during the Arab Revolts of the 1930’s. A delegation of Mideast Arab leaders and representatives from the Jewish Agency were invited to a conference in London in February, later dubbed the St. James’s Palace Conference after its primary venue. Since the Arab delegation refused to sit in the same room with the Zionists, Britain’s colonial secretary held separate meetings with each group. Arab demands were simple: a single, independent Palestinian state (in which Arabs would be the two-thirds majority), and the end of Jewish immigration into Eretz Yisrael. The Jewish delegation was lead by Chaim Weizmann, chairman of the World Zionist Organization, and David Ben-Gurion, chairman of the Jewish Agency. Both men had convinced the World Zionist Congress to accept the original recommendations of the defunct Peel Report, which they used as a basis for negotiations. They sought a continuation of Jewish immigration and investment in Palestine, as well as an eventual partition pf the Land into Jewish and Arab states. As the official talks stalled, both delegations agreed to send representatives to an informal, sidebar meeting in order to meet face-to-face. The issue of Jewish immigration became the primary point of contention. While Weizmann appeared willing to compromise with his Egyptian counterpart who was demanding that the aliyahs come to an end, Ben-Gurion held fast, refusing to curtail the influx of olim beyond what was practicable for absorption by Jewish population centers.
As negotiations continued in London, it became increasingly clear to the Zionist delegation that the the final British proposals would not be in their favor. A draft copy was circulated in late February which proposed a single Palestinian state in which the Jewish Yishuv would receive protected minority status. Ben-Gurion sent an ominous cable back to the Land on February 27, which was published in a Hebrew-language daily newspaper, reading, "There is a scheme afoot to liquidate the National Home and turn us over to the rule of gang leaders." The following day, a series of bomb attacks across Palestine killed at least 33 Arabs, making it clear that Jewish radicals would refuse to accept the British proposal. By the beginning of March, the negotiations were dead, and most delegates had returned home. Weizmann officially withdrew the Zionist delegation by letter on March 17. Only two days before, the German army had moved to occupy all of Czechoslovakia, far beyond the cession of the Sudetenland that had been granted to Hitler at Munich. Once again, the European continent sat at the edge of war, and the controversy in the Land was no closer to being resolved.
Secretary MacDonald officially published his “White Paper” on May 17, 1939, proposing a single-state solution, with restrictions on Jewish land purchases, and the reduction of Jewish immigration to 10,000 per year until 1944 (allowing for 25,000 additional refugees in the event of war, or 75,000 total). Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain addressed the proposal to Parliament shortly afterwards, and his cabinet began implementing it as policy. The reaction of the Yishuv was overwhelmingly clear. Large crowds of Palestinian Jews began demonstrating across the Land in protest of the “treacherous paper.” Ze’ev Jabotinsky, leader of the conservative Zionist movement which had spawned the radical HaIrgun (Etzel) paramilitary group, had been exiled from the Land by the British, but was still very much engaged with his movement. In the wake of the publication of the British White Paper, Jabotinsky began plotting an insurgency against British occupation with his lieutenant in Palestine, Menachem Begin. Etzel was already considered a terrorist group by British authorities, responsible for over 20 attacks on Palestinian Arabs since the beginning of the Arab Revolts. The Jewish Hagenah defense force, in league with the British during the revolts, was also actively working to suppress their own radicals in Etzel, many of whom were former Hagenah members themselves. Etzel militants began sabotaging British radio and telephone lines. A British policeman who had allegedly tortured Etzel members in custody was assassinated by an explosive device. A dragnet was initiated by the mandate authorities in order to round up the leadership of Etzel in August, 1939. But just as a Jewish insurgency began to heat up in Palestine, events in Europe eclipsed the troubles of Eretz Yisrael.
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The Second World War began on September 1st, 1939 when Nazi Germany invaded western Poland. Hitler’s legions quickly occupied the northern swath of the old Pale of Settlement, where over 300,000 Jews were settled. As the major European powers declared war once again, the resulting German Blitzkrieg swept across western Europe from the Mediterranean to the shores of the English Channel in Spring, 1940. In the meantime, reports had been circulating across the Jewish diaspora that all Jews in Nazi-occupied lands were required to register with German authorities, prior to being forcibly relocated. Hundreds of emigrant Jews had already entered Mandate Palestine “illegally” during the Fifth Aliyah, as they fled from the Third Reich to their ancestral homeland. But British restrictions on Jewish immigration and the onset of war accelerated these clandestine activities. Thousands of refugees left Europe, crossing into into the Galilee from Lebanon, or embarking on “cargo” ships bound for Jaffa, Haifa and Tel Aviv. Many were intercepted by the British military and turned back, after which the mandate authorities placed a moratorium on all Jewish immigration through the Spring of 1940. This did not dissuade Etzel and other subversive groups from continuing their clandestine programs of human smuggling, known as Aliyah Bet, meaning secondary, or secret Aliyah. Another Jewish militant group named Lehi, which had broken from Etzel for not being sufficiently radical, even supported an alliance with the Third Reich against their British occupiers, which they hoped would allow for the evacuation of more Jews from Nazi-occupied territory.
Zionist officials tried to walk the tightrope in their alliance with the British against the Nazis abroad, while also opposing British policies at home in the Land. David Ben-Gurion quipped that Palestinian Jews should, “support the British as if there was no White Paper and oppose the White Paper as if there was no war.” Officially, the Hagenah denounced illegal immigration, while at the same time, members of its secretive Mossad L’aliyah Bet (Institute of the Aliyah Bet) were actively involved in chartering and piloting ships loaded with Jewish refugees from Europe to Palestine. In all, over 110,000 European Jews were smuggled into the Land during the war, while several thousand of the entry visas for legal Jewish olim were never even distributed.
After fascist Italy declared war on Britain in June,1940, the North African Campaign began. The German Afrika Korps, led by the formidable Erwin Rommel and his armored divisions, began advancing across North Africa from Tunisia. His prize was undoubtedly the British-held Suez Canal in Egypt, from which the German Field Marshall could expel Allied forces from North Africa and invade Mandate Palestine. Meanwhile, Germany had broke its treaty with the Soviet Union in June, 1941 by launching an all-out invasion that spanned from the Baltic to the Black Sea. German tank divisions quickly swallowed up the Baltic States, Eastern Poland, Belarus, Ukraine and Romania before driving deep into Russia. Within months, the Third Reich controlled the entire Pale of Settlement, the seat of European Jewry. Rumors began to circulate that special units of the German SS were rounding up Jews throughout the Pale and forcing them to dig their own mass graves before executing them by firing squad. Hundreds of Jewish communities began to vanish in the fall of 1941, just as Rommel was advancing across North Africa towards the Promised Land.
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Jewish fears were further confirmed when Hajj Amin al-Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and arch-enemy of Zionism, traveled to Berlin to meet with Adolf Hitler in November, 1941. Al-Huseini expressed his solidarity with the Fuhrer in their mutual antagonism towards the British, the Communists, and especially the Jews. Hitler was not supportive of al-Husseini’s plan to orchestrate an Arab Revolt across the Middle East, but he was in strong agreement with the mufti’s opposition to a Jewish national home in Palestine. By that time, massive camps were under construction in German-occupied Poland, and invitations had already been sent to Nazi leadership for the Wansee Conference, which would meet just three months later to finalize a “final solution to the Jewish Question.” Hitler told al-Husseini that he “was resolved, step by step, to ask one European nation after the other to solve its Jewish problem, and at the proper time to direct a similar appeal to non-European nations as well.” Al-Husseini returned from his meeting in Berlin with delight, reporting that Hitler’s “fundamental attitude was clear: Germany stood for uncompromising war against the Jews.” In light of the horrifying reports from the Pale and al-Husseini’s German alliance, the specter of a half-million Palestinian Yishuv falling under Nazi occupation was daunting.
Weizmann and Ben-Gurion once again proposed an all-Jewish regiment in the British army to assist in a counter-offensive against Rommel’s Afrika Korps. They were initially rebuffed, and were instead offered Jewish enlistment in regular British colonial regiments, on the condition that an equal number of Arabs were enlisted with Jews. This lead to an unlikely Zionist campaign in which Palestinian Arabs were paid by the Jewish Agency to enlist in the British army. As strange as it was, the campaign was successful in recruiting enough Arabs to allow the enlistment of several thousand among the Yishuv. The first elements of the Palestine Infantry Companies were formed in September, 1940, consisting of both Jewish and Arab companies. Although the Arab enlistees were willing to take money from the Jewish Agency, many were unenthusiastic about fighting for the British, and desertions were rampant. What was supposed to be a balanced force eventually saw Jews outnumber Arabs by a factor of almost three-to-one. Over 14 Jewish companies were eventually formed, including over 5,300 volunteers. The Palestine units first saw action in Greece, where they served with distinction in a failed Allied campaign to defend the peninsula from a German offensive. Over 100 Palestinian Jews were killed-in-action, while another 1,700 were captured by the Germans.
The Jewish and Arab companies were reorganized into the Palestine Regiment in 1942. That same year, Rommel’s Afrika Korps were advancing across Libya toward Western Egypt. The Palestine Regiment was deployed in support of a failed British counter-offensive, engaging the Axis forces and suffering casualties near Benghazi. As the German armored divisions continued to push the Allies back into Egypt, a desperate stand was planned at El-Alamein, only 100 kilometers from Egypt’s vital port city of Alexandria. British forces fought Rommel’s legions to a grinding stalemate in July, forcing the overextended Germans to withdraw and resupply. But the glow of victory was dimmed by its incredible price. Tens of thousands of colonials from across the British Empire had fallen at El-Alamein, including both Arabs and Jews from the Palestine Regiment. Many are still buried together in its military cemetery.
The halt of German forces at El-Alamein in July, 1942 meant that Jews in the Land were beyond Hitler’s grasp for the time being. However, whatever relief the Yishuv might have felt would be soon overshadowed by the magnitude of events unfolding to their north. The “Great Whirlwind” (Hebrew: Shoah) descending upon Europe would eventually ripple across the world. In few places would it be felt more painfully than in Eretz Yisrael.
