Jewish Heroes of World War Two
During World War 2 countless Jews perfomed acts of heroism, by resisting the Nazi Holocaust, by fighting in various national armies, and by saving others. Here are just a few of them:
- Henrietta Szold (1860-1945), Baltimore-born founder of Hadassah, took a large medical unit to war-torn Palestine in 1916. Heeding the danger of Nazism in 1933, she created Youth Aliyah, which rescued and rehabilitated thousands of young Jews.
- Hannah Szenes (or Senesh) (1921-1944), a Hungarian Zionist who left for Palestine at 18, joined a British elite squad that parachuted into Yugoslavia to help trapped allied troops. In 1944 she crossed into Hungary to save Jews from the death camps. She was captured by Nazis and tortured. She divulged nothing and was shot as a consequence.
- Mordechai Anielevich (1920-1943) was a Zionist youth leader who led the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. For a while he halted Nazi deportations; but his forces were hopelessly outnumbered and he was killed on Mila 18 Street. Israel's memorial to Jewish partisans, Yad Mordechai, is named after him.
- Abba Kovner (1918-1987) and Rozka Korczak-Marla (1921-1988) were leaders of Hashomer Hatzair, a Zionist youth movement. The two masterminded the Vilna Ghetto Uprising of 1942 and then fought Nazis in the Baltic woods. In Israel they set up Moreshet, a memorial to Jewish partisans, and taught about the Holocaust. Abba Kovner became a famous poet.
- Roza Robota smuggled arms into Auschwitz-Birkenau after 1942, but was arrested after the abortive 1944 Sonderkommando revolt. Roza was tortured but revealed nothing. She was shot in January 1945, just weeks before liberation.
- Yefim Anatolyevich Dyskin (b 1923) was a volunteer in the Russian Red Army tank corps. Dyskin resisted a German onslaught on Gorki in 1941, though his comrades were all dead and he was badly wounded. He was made hero of the Soviet Union.
- Raymond Zusman (d 1944) was the son of Russian immigrants to the USA. 2nd lieutenant Zusman led a successful US tank attack on the German-held town of Naru La Borge. He fired until he ran out of ammunition and was slain. He killed 19 German soldiers, seized a further 93; and won a posthumous congressional medal of honor.
- Avigdor Goldsmid was a British Army major who in 1944 repulsed a fierce German attack on Goteshty, Russia. Three months later he led tanks and infantry to relieve the French town of Hologin. His courage and cunning won him a Military Cross.
- Marc Bloch (1886-1944), an esteemed French historian, won the Croix de Guerre for brave service in World War I. In 1939 he was 53 and a father of six children; yet he re-entered the French Army to fight the Nazis. In 1943 he joined the resistance when Nazis occupied all of France. Collaborationist Vichy police captured him in 1944; Gestapo Chief Klaus Barbie tortured him before he was shot by a firing squad.
- Avraham Etiah (b 1924), an Algerian-born Jewish hero who joined his nation's Cavalry Regiment in Italy, 1943. Twice in 1944 he captured enemy soldiers to glean vital intelligence. He gained a medal for launching daring raids in the Fico region. After a year in hospital, Etiah overcame many obstacles to arrive in Israel in 1949.
Of course there was a particularly compelling reason for Jewish heroism in World War 2: the need to prevent the extermination of the entire Jewish people.
