Terror in Galilee: British-Jewish collaboration and the Special Night Squads in Palestine during the Arab revolt, 1938–39

This essay examines an aspect of British counter-insurgency in Palestine in the 1930s during the Arab revolt there against British colonial rule and Jewish settlement: the pro-British, anti-rebel Palestinian militia “peace bands,” associated with the Palestinian Nashashibi family and raised with British and Jewish military and financial assistance, and with support from the British Consul in Damascus, Gilbert MacKereth. Using Hebrew, Arabic and untapped local British regimental sources, it details how the British helped to raise the peace bands and the bands’ subsequent activities in the field; it assesses the impact of the bands on the course of the Arab revolt; and it sets out the views of the British Army towards those willing to work with them. In doing this, it extends the recent thesis of Hillel Cohen on Palestinian collaboration with Zionists to include the British and it augments the useful but dated work of Yehoshua Porath and Yuval Arnon-Ohanna on the subject. Such a study is significant for our understanding of British methods of imperial pacification methods, especially the British Army’s manipulation during colonial unrest of “turned” insurgents as a “loyalist” force against rebels, an early form of “pseudo” warfare. The collaboration by Palestinians resonates with broader histories of imperial and neo-imperial rule, it extends military histories on colonial pacification methods, and it provides rich, new texture on why colonial subjects resisted and collaborated with the emergency state, using the Palestinians as a case study

Jewish Chaplaincy in the British Armed Forces, from its Inception in 1892 until the Present Day

Only during the last two decades has the entire subject of the interface of war, faith and religion begun to receive scholarly attention. Research has not until now extended to the thesis topic of British Jewish military chaplaincy. The thesis is therefore based largely upon original research, locating material from a broad spectrum of sources, publicly available and private, to form a coherent narrative of British Jewish chaplaincy from its inception in 1892 until the present day. The thesis seeks to understand Jewish chaplaincy as a product of larger social and institutional change and to contextualise it within broader interpretations by leading contemporary historians of British Jewish history and of Jewish military history. It argues that the initiative for the creation and development of Jewish chaplaincy in the British armed forces derived at key points mainly from the British Jewish community through its representative bodies and from some individuals, with the governmental and military authorities in a generally supportive but essentially reactive role. It also argues that during both world wars in the frequent inevitable absence of an official chaplain what might be termed unofficial chaplaincy by Jewish soldiers facilitating spiritual support and religious observance for themselves and others was of real significance

Introduction: Beyond Inclusion and Exclusion

This chapter appears in a larger collection published by Berghahn Books (https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/CrouthamelBeyond). CITATION: Crouthamel, J., Geheran, M., Grady, T., & Köhne, J. B. (2018). Introduction. In J. Crouthamel, M. Geheran, T. Grady & J. B. Köhne (Eds.) Beyond inclusion and exclusion: Jewish experiences of the First World War in Central Europe (pp. 1-28). Berghahn.During the First World War, the Jewish population of Central Europe was politically, socially, and experientially diverse, to an extent that resists containment within a simple historical narrative. While antisemitism and Jewish disillusionment have dominated many previous studies of the topic, this collection aims to recapture the multifariousness of Central European Jewish life in the experiences of soldiers and civilians alike during the First World War. Here, scholars from multiple disciplines explore rare sources and employ innovative methods to illuminate four interconnected themes: minorities and the meaning of military service, Jewish-Gentile relations, cultural legacies of the war, and memory politics

The Polish Army Ghetto: The Internship of Jewish Soldiers in Jabłonna in 1920

At the height of the Polish-Soviet War in August 1920, the Polish army interned thousands of its Jewish soldiers at Jabłonna near Warsaw. Although the internees were released after several weeks, the events gave rise to numerous domestic and foreign policy debates and shaped Polish-Jewish relations in the years to come. ‘Jabłonna’ stands pars pro toto for the problems of the Polish state and Polish society in dealing with a heterogeneous population at the beginning of the interwar period. In recent decades, the events surrounding the internment have been taken up and contextualised sporadically by historians and publicists, but usually without them having made recourse to the available archival sources

A War of Letters - What do we read in Soldiers' Letters of Russian Jews drom the Great War?

The letters written during the Great War by Jewish soldiers from the Russian empire have often been read as individual accounts of a particular Jewish war experience. However, they were part of an ongoing debate within the Jewish community as well as in the wider Russian and European public sphere aboit social issues. Therefore, these letters should be understood rather as a source for the history of these debates. The letters of Samuil Efimovich Sistrin (1880-1914) are discussed as a case study. Les lettres de soldats juifs de l’Empire russe écrites pendant la Grande Guerre ont souvent été interprétées au prisme d’une expérience de la guerre spécifiquement juive. Cependant elles étaient parties intégrante d’un débat parcourant la communauté juive, la sphère publique de l’Empire russe et plus largement de l’Europe à propos des questions de société en temps de guerre. De fait, ces lettres doivent être interprétées en tenant compte de cette dimension. Il me semble, pour ma part, que les lettres de soldats juifs étaient bien plus influencées par les débats publics concernant la Russie en temps de guerre que par une perspective juive particulière sur la guerre. Quoi qu’il en soit, l’historicisation des récits de soldats juifs concernant leur lutte solitaire pour leur reconnaissance nous livre de nouveaux éclairages sur l’expérience de la guerre de la population juive de Russie. Comme étude de cas sont examinées les lettres de Samuil Efimovič Sistrin (1880-1914)

MS-130: World War I Letters of Henry W. Straus

This collection comprises 48 letters from Henry W. Straus to his wife Anna. They were written between June 1918 and March 1919, when Henry, as a U.S. Army medical officer, was serving a British ambulance corps in France. Throughout the letters, Straus addresses his wife with great tenderness and yearning, anticipating their reunion and post-war life. He also displays a progressive attitude with respect to women’s independence, abilities, and right to do useful work. Special Collections and College Archives Finding Aids are discovery tools used to describe and provide access to our holdings. Finding aids include historical and biographical information about each collection in addition to inventories of their content. More information about our collections can be found on our website http://www.gettysburg.edu/special_collections/collections/.https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/findingaidsall/1117/thumbnail.jp

The Jews in Finland and World War II

In the years 1989–1944 two different wars against the Soviet Union were imposed upon Finland. During the Winter War of 1989–1940 Germany remained strictly neutral on the basis of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact&&Great Britain and France planned intervention in favour of Finland. When the second, so-called Continuation War broke out in the summer of 1041, Finland was co-belligerent of Germany, and Great Britain declared war on Finland in December 1941. De jure, however, Finland was never an ally of Germany, and at the end of the war, in the winter 1944–1945, the Finnish armed forces expelled the German troops from Lapland, which was devastated by the Germans during their retreat to Norway. Military service was compulsory for each male citizen of Finland. In 1939 the Jewish population of Finland numbered 1 700. Of these, 260 men were called up and approximately 200 were sent to serve at the front during the Winter War

In the service of the empire : continuity of Jewish military service in the armies of Rome

The main debate regarding Jewish soldiers serving in the Roman armies is still focused on the question whether these Jews actually existed. Unfortunately, this debate is not only limited, but at times it also misses the larger picture. The current article will conclusively show that Jews served in the Roman armies, even in large numbers, and that the main debate we must conduct is whether they served in accordance with their percentage of the general population, or even in higher numbers. Furthermore, the article will irrefutably prove that Jewish military service was a continuous phenomenon from the last decades of the Republic until the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD, and possibly continued, to some extent, in the Eastern Roman Empire until the first half of the 6th century AD

Sentenced to Marriage: Chained Women in Wartime

On September 7, 1971, military chaplain Rabbi Aryeh Lev wrote a long and detailed letter to renowned Reform Rabbi Solomon Freehof describing the break-up of the Committee on Responsa (COR) of the Jewish Welfare Board. He explained how mainstream rabbinical organizations had slowly abandoned, and finally dissolved the Committee which had been on the decline since the end of World War II. During its golden years, between 1942 and 1945, the Committee on Responsa achieved something remarkable: all three major denominations in Judaism - Conservative, Orthodox, and Reform - worked together to make Jewish legal or halakhic decisions for servicemen in the American military. Today, fractious fighting between Jewish religious denominations makes it difficult to fathom how such a committee could have existed

In the Service of the Empire: Continuity of Jewish Military Service in the Armies of Rome

The main debate regarding Jewish soldiers serving in the Roman armies is still focused on the question whether these Jews actually existed. Unfortunately, this debate is not only limited, but at times it also misses the larger picture. The current article will conclusively show that Jews served in the Roman armies, even in large numbers, and that the main debate we must conduct is whether they served in accordance with their percentage of the general population, or even in higher numbers. Furthermore, the article will irrefutably prove that Jewish military service was a continuous phenomenon from the last decades of the Republic until the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD, and possibly continued, to some extent, in the Eastern Roman Empire until the first half of the 6th century AD