Papers by Martin Sugarman
No attempt has yet been made to describe the part played by Jewish aircrew in the Battle of Brita... more No attempt has yet been made to describe the part played by Jewish aircrew in the Battle of Britain during that distant, hot summer of 1940. The gen? teel anti-Semitism of the British establishment and that of other Western societies has always been subtly keen at best to play down and at worst to ignore completely any Jewish contribution. At the same time this lends understated credibility to the comments of those such as the author Roald Dahl, who alleged that he 'never saw a Jew in the front line'. This statement bestows a great responsibility on Jewish historians to dis? pel the racist myths and prove beyond any doubt, through carefully sourced research, that Jews in Britain and other nations have indeed participated in the defence of countries in which they have lived. Furthermore, as I shall show, this participation has frequently been out of proportion to their num? bers in the general population. The Allied victory in the Battle of Britain was a major turning point in the Second World War. The RAF, assisted by Allied squadrons, defeated the might of a numerically far superior German Luftwaffe in an air battle that lasted (as officially defined) from 10 July to 31 October 1940. As a result, Hitler indefinitely postponed his planned invasion of Britain, because he and his High Command understood that without control of the air, German losses in a sea and air invasion would have been unacceptably high and the project would probably have failed. This decision changed the course of the war, as Churchill's 'Few' held back the tide so that Britain and its allies could fight another day, and ultimately win the struggle. A participant in the Battle of Britain is defined as one of those 2917 Allied men of 71 squadrons or units who flew operationally on at least one authorized sortie with an eligible unit of RAF Fighter Command, Coastal Command or the Fleet Air Arm, as a pilot or aircrew, between 10 July and 31 October 1940. Those thus defined were awarded the Battle of Britain clasp worn on the 1939-45 Star, or a silver gilt rosette if medal ribbons only are worn. Of the Allied participants (see list below for the breakdown by nation), 544 were killed and a further 794 killed before the war's end.1
, the son of Joseph and Mrs Tilly Newman (née Cohen), pious and poor Jews who had arrived as immi... more , the son of Joseph and Mrs Tilly Newman (née Cohen), pious and poor Jews who had arrived as immigrants to Britain from Lithuania in 1909. Joseph's original surname had been Naviprutsky, but this was changed when they immigrated. 1 He was one of thirteen brothers and sisters, most of whom stayed on the Continent and perished in the Holocaust. Two younger brothers, however, escaped with the Polish army in 1939 and eventually reached Israel where their families still live. 2 The Newmans were married at New Briggate Synagogue, Leeds, on 11 June 1912, prior to which Joseph had been living at 8 Gledhow Terrace and Tilly at 22 Whitelock Street. 3 Both were tailors and pressers. They lived at 11 Kepler Street (or Grove), 4 Leeds, at the time of Isidore's birth. 5 Isidore was the middle of three brothers. The older was Benny (Bernard), born in 1914, 6 who, although extremely clever, developed acute mental illness as a young man (he had to leave school in the sixth form having shown great promise) and was in and out of institutions much of his life. 7 He died in Hull at some time in the 1970s or 80s. The other brother, Montague, seventeen months younger, was slightly physically disabled. He eventually became a medical technician in the Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle, married a non-Jewish woman and appears to have lost touch with the family after Joseph and Tilly died. The family moved to Durham in 1922 when Isidore was six years old. An old friend, Dr Nat Cannon (aged ninety-four at the time of writing and living in Vancouver), remembers clearly that the family lived at 6 Cross
In the Public Record Office at Kew, London, file WO 329/2359 (a Medal Roll of the First World War... more In the Public Record Office at Kew, London, file WO 329/2359 (a Medal Roll of the First World War), about forty sheets into the un-numbered pages is a list of 189 names of the Jewish Labour Corps who fought in Gallipoli. Typed along the top of the first page is the comment, 'Prepared in accordance with War Office letter NW/2/18747 (A.G.4. Medals), 3rd March 1928' and that the 'individuals are entitled to The British War Medal (Bronze)'. The pages are signed by Lieut H. Wetherall. Unusually, attached to the first page are copies of War Office letters which in summary explain that the unit was formed in Egypt separately from the Zion Mule Corps (ZMC) but may have been misnamed as the second battalion of that Corps, and that the army numbers range from 1 to 320 with gaps. One letter says that the rates of pay were is per day for a labourer, is 6d for a ganger, 2s for a foreman and ?12 10s per month for the superintendant (who was called Bension Ventura). All the men were enlisted between 15 and 22 April 1915 and served only until 22 and 28 May 1915. The entry was not made in the Medal Roll until 14 May 1928 and clearly there had been some appeal from the veterans about receipt of the medal, which had not been forthcoming till then, as is shown by a letter from the War Office in London to the Chief Rabbi of Alexandria and Zion Mule Corps Commission (Veterans) in Alexandria. Comparison with the ZMC Roll in the British Jewry Book of Honour shows that the names are not included among those of the ZMC, so these men were clearly a separate group. None of the names appeared among other Jewish units (the Jewish Royal Fusiliers) or the Labour Corps in the Book of Honour. They all have Oriental names and were clearly locally enlisted Egyptian and Palestinian Jews. Perhaps not surprisingly, these mens' names were therefore mistakenly omitted by Michael Adler from the British Jewry Book of Honour in 1922. This discovery thus adds a further 189 names to the record of Jewish British and Empire personnel in the First World War.
Geoffrey Green's article in Jewish Historcal Studies volume 41, entitled 'England Expects... more Geoffrey Green's article in Jewish Historcal Studies volume 41, entitled 'England Expects...: British Jews under the white ensign from HMS Victory to the loss of HMS Hood in 1941' (pages 63-97), is a superb piece of work. But I and others have found a large number of Second World War Royal Naval British and Commonwealth fatalities which should be published as an addendum to Green's study. These have appeared since the original publication of We Will Remember Them by Henry Morris1 and will be included in the forthcoming updated edition co-authored by myself and with the help of the late Gerald Bean (assisted by the records manager at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission or CWGC).2 It is appropriate that they appear also here. They exclude Merchant Navy casualties, of whom there were well over a hundred. I have added near the end those I could not find on the CWGC website, but who seem to have been killed and to have been Jewish (from sources such as synagogue memorials, Jewish cemeteries, relatives, the Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and Women [AJEX] Chaplain cards and national newspapers). We at AJEX would be glad to hear from anyone who can throw more light on these names or any other matters. Harold Pollins also completed further work in February 2008 on other First World War Jewish Royal Navy casualties not included by Green. These appear after the Second World War names.
The British forces in the Second World War spawned many 'special', or uncon? ventional un... more The British forces in the Second World War spawned many 'special', or uncon? ventional units. Some were well known, such as the Army Commandos, the SAS (Special Air Service) and the LRDG (Long Range Desert Group). But among the most ambitious, daring and mysterious were the Jewish commandos of the SIG. Colonel Terence Airey who ran G(R) Branch (formerly Military Intelligence Research at the War Office in London) wrote in March 1942 that part of the recently disbanded No. 51 Middle East (Jewish) Commando, consisting of many German-speaking Palestinian Jews, was to be formed into 'a Special German Group as a sub-unit of M E Commando . . . with the cover name "Special Interrogation Group", to be used for infiltration behind the German lines in the Western Desert, under 8th Army ... the strength of the Special Group would be approximately that of a platoon'.1 The letter continued: 'The personnel are fluent German linguists . . . mainly Palestinian (Jews) of German origin. Many of them have had war experience with 51 Commando. ... it is essential that they be provided with transport; a) one German Staff car b) two 15 cwt. Trucks.'2 A second letter added: 'this issue [of transport] is of high operational importance'. The SIG were a subgroup of D Squadron ist Special Service Regiment. Some were also recruited, according to Maurice Tiefenbrunner (Tiffen), my main informant (see Appendix 1), directly from the Palmach, the strike arm of the Jewish underground army, the Haganah3 and Etzel (the Irgun), a semi-legal Jewish underground group. Two of the Irgun members were Dov Cohen and Israel Carmi (later an officer in the Jewish Brigade and the Israel Defence Forces) and another recalled by Tiffen was Karl Kahane. All three survived the War. The SIG's true strength has never been made known, though it was prob? ably about twenty-eight, according to Tiffen. Other recruits he remembers coming from Jews in the Free Czech Forces (about eight), the French Foreign Legion (perhaps two) and German-speaking French Jewish troops. Tiffen recalls their first training base as having been at Geneifa near Suez. When he returned from Eritrea with the 51st Middle East Commando, he and his comrades were visited by a British captain looking for German-speakers, whom he knew he would find at Geneifa. In fact the War Diary of the 51st Commando survives, and a cryptic entry by the CO for 17 March 1942 describes the arrival at Burgh
Simmon Latutin was born on 25 July 1916 at 20 North Villas1 off Camden Square, Camden Town, Londo... more Simmon Latutin was born on 25 July 1916 at 20 North Villas1 off Camden Square, Camden Town, London.2 His father, Moses Vlatutin, had been born in Riga3 in 1887 ana" was distantly related, family history has it, to a Russian-Jewish general of the same name who in the Second World War lifted the siege of his home town, Kiev, where he died soon after. Moses Vlatutin's father was a regimental tailor who travelled with his family as the regiment was posted from place to place. His first wife the mother of Moses died, but he remarried and had a second family. At least one of Moses' stepsisters reached Israel where relatives live to this day. Moses himself became a master tailor at the age of sixteen and earned the right under the anti-Semitic laws of the time to move from village to village for work in Czarist Russia. He made his way to Odessa and later to Romania, where he worked for some years saving for his emigration to America. In around 1912 he arrived in London having crossed Europe in stages by train from city to city. Here he met and fell in love with Fradel Kraftcheck,4 who later shortened her name to Frieda/Freda Kraft. She had been born in Warsaw in 1895, and was brought to England with her brother and parents when she was three years old. Moses became Morris and the couple married in 1913. An orthodox Jewish working class family, they first lived in Stamford Hill, Hackney, and later moved to a rented house in Camden Town where Shimeon (later Simmon) and his younger sister Blanche were born. Simmon's mother did not enjoy good health and for many years his father,
Jewish participation in the hazardous war of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) during the Se... more Jewish participation in the hazardous war of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) during the Second World War was as in all theatres of war far out of proportion to the community's numbers in the general population. Some of the Jewish SOE agents are quite well known: Captain Adam Rabino vich (codenamed 'Arnaud'), Croix de Guerre, murdered by the Gestapo; Captain Isadore Newman ('Julien' or 'Pepe'), MBE, murdered at Mauthausen Camp; and Captain Maurice Pertschuck ('Martin Perkins' or 'Eugene'), MBE, murdered at Buchenwald Camp. In addition, hundreds of other Jews fought with SOE agents in resistance groups in occupied countries, especially in France and Poland.1 Much less well known, however, are two of the Jewish women who fought in France: Denise Bloch, Croix de Guerre (who was French, but served in the British forces); and Muriel Byck, Mentioned in Despatches, who was British. The SOE was a British secret war department, formed in 1940 to 'set Europe ablaze' by organizing and supplying underground resistance movements against the Nazis (and later the Japanese) in all occupied countries. It was one of several such secret armies, and was commanded from London by General Colin Gub bins, who was Vice-Chair of its Council; the Chairman was the banker Charles Hambro, until succeeded by Gubbins in 1943.2 The French section of SOE, however, was commanded by Colonel Maurice Buckmaster, a Dunkirk veteran, working from secret offices at Marks and Spencer's HQ in Baker Street, London.
Lyn McDonald has described the Dardanelles and Gallipoli as the most tragic and most romantic of ... more Lyn McDonald has described the Dardanelles and Gallipoli as the most tragic and most romantic of battlefields. Helen of Troy looked across its straits; Leander swam the Hellespont each night for a tryst with Hero, priestess of Aphrodite, who flung herself into its waters when she discovered he had drowned; in the sixth century BCE the Greeks founded Heliopolis, now Geli bolou, on its shore; Xerxes built a bridge of 300 boats over it in the fifth century BCE before marching on Thermopylae; and a century later Alexander the Great crossed it on his way to conquer India. The Dardanelles campaign of the First World War, that took place between April 1915 and January 1916 and included the fighting at Gallipoli, was designed to spearhead an Allied invasion through southern Turkey to Istan? bul, to defeat Turkey and in this way release Allied men and resources from the Middle East to fight in Europe, thereby shortening the War and saving lives and money. In the shorter term, forcing Turkey to withdraw troops from its Russian border would ensure Russia a much-needed victory, raising the morale of its troops sufficiently to reduce the danger of mutiny and impending revolution and to ensure that their assault on Germany's eastern front would continue. The fighting in Gallipoli was bitter and, as the detailed histories of the battle show, on two occasions the Allies came close to com? plete victory. But the final failure sealed the fate of the Russian regime and led indirectly to seventy years of Soviet rule. The War Cabinet in London at first hoped the Allied navies would break through the narrows separating the Gallipoli peninsula from the Asiatic shore (the Straits of the Dardanelles), enter the Sea of Marmara, shell Istanbul (Constantinople) and so break through the Bosphorous into the Black Sea. This would enable supplies to reach Russia and help her continue the war against Germany. Troop landings on the peninsula were intended only to support the naval push, but the naval effort failed owing to the presence of massive Turkish coastal guns which sank several Allied ships, leaving the army to bear the brunt of the Turkish defences. The land war was a disaster,
The Shanghai Volunteer Corps (SVC) was set up in 1853 as a voluntary international militia by var... more The Shanghai Volunteer Corps (SVC) was set up in 1853 as a voluntary international militia by various European countries, and including Russia, Japan and the USA, to protect their foreign-trade missions from the frequent local civil wars and general disorder in Shanghai during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At one time the SVC had volunteers of more than twenty different nationalities. It was usually mobilized in response to riots or to augment regular foreign garrisons in the city (a strategic reserve) or to form expeditionary forces, such as during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900. For most of its existence, the force was funded by the Shanghai Municipal Council, but volunteers received no pay, with the exception of the professional White Russian Company. It comprized at its peak twenty-three different units, among them Light Horse, Artillery and Air Defence, as well as national units such as Portuguese and Chinese. These included from 1932 a Jewish Company. 1 The SVC's roll at its peak in the late 1930s was 2300 men. Its longest mobilization was in August 1937 during the Sino-Japanese War. The Japanese had surrounded the city from 1932, and the SVC's task was to keep them out and to help patrol the entry points facing the Japanese forces. When the British formally withdrew in 1940, the SVC took permanent control of the so-called International Settlement, the area within the city where the foreign residents lived and mostly worked. The SVC was finally disbanded by the Japanese occupation forces in early 1942, following the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. The last, albeit unofficial, reunion of the SVC was for the centenary celebrations in April 1954, held in Hong Kong at the Royal Yacht Club. As was typical at the time, the SVC was not racially integrated. The Commandant was always a Briton and the British A Company, for example, was mostly European and exclusively white, whereas B Company was Eurasian.
In the Public Record Office at Kew, London, file WO 329/2359 (a Medal Roll of the First World War... more In the Public Record Office at Kew, London, file WO 329/2359 (a Medal Roll of the First World War), about forty sheets into the un-numbered pages is a list of 189 names of the Jewish Labour Corps who fought in Gallipoli. Typed along the top of the first page is the comment, 'Prepared in accordance with War Office letter NW/2/18747 (A.G.4. Medals), 3rd March 1928' and that the 'individuals are entitled to The British War Medal (Bronze)'. The pages are signed by Lieut H. Wetherall. Unusually, attached to the first page are copies of War Office letters which in summary explain that the unit was formed in Egypt separately from the Zion Mule Corps (ZMC) but may have been misnamed as the second battalion of that Corps, and that the army numbers range from 1 to 320 with gaps. One letter says that the rates of pay were is per day for a labourer, is 6d for a ganger, 2s for a foreman and ?12 10s per month for the superintendant (who was called Bension Ventura). All the men wer...
Geoffrey Green's article in Jewish Historcal Studies volume 41, entitled 'England Expects... more Geoffrey Green's article in Jewish Historcal Studies volume 41, entitled 'England Expects...: British Jews under the white ensign from HMS Victory to the loss of HMS Hood in 1941' (pages 63-97), is a superb piece of work. But I and others have found a large number of Second World War Royal Naval British and Commonwealth fatalities which should be published as an addendum to Green's study. These have appeared since the original publication of We Will Remember Them by Henry Morris1 and will be included in the forthcoming updated edition co-authored by myself and with the help of the late Gerald Bean (assisted by the records manager at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission or CWGC).2 It is appropriate that they appear also here. They exclude Merchant Navy casualties, of whom there were well over a hundred. I have added near the end those I could not find on the CWGC website, but who seem to have been killed and to have been Jewish (from sources such as synagogue memori...
Simmon Latutin was born on 25 July 1916 at 20 North Villas1 off Camden Square, Camden Town, Londo... more Simmon Latutin was born on 25 July 1916 at 20 North Villas1 off Camden Square, Camden Town, London.2 His father, Moses Vlatutin, had been born in Riga3 in 1887 ana" was distantly related, family history has it, to a Russian-Jewish general of the same name who in the Second World War lifted the siege of his home town, Kiev, where he died soon after. Moses Vlatutin's father was a regimental tailor who travelled with his family as the regiment was posted from place to place. His first wife the mother of Moses died, but he remarried and had a second family. At least one of Moses' stepsisters reached Israel where relatives live to this day. Moses himself became a master tailor at the age of sixteen and earned the right under the anti-Semitic laws of the time to move from village to village for work in Czarist Russia. He made his way to Odessa and later to Romania, where he worked for some years saving for his emigration to America. In around 1912 he arrived in London having ...
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Papers by Martin Sugarman