The Jewish units in the British army
The Jewish units in the British army ish were the melting pot of the new immigrants from the diaspora, with the people of the country. A place where the common denominator was Hebrew and the national Hebrew spirit. From its inception, the Hebrew volunteerism was characterized by the British army, in its quest to emphasize its national uniqueness within the foreign framework in which it was based. This effort is reflected in the struggle over the Hebrew language, the blue and white flag, the symbol and the authority to sing the anthem. The Hebrew language pushed the mother tongues of the volunteers into semi-official language in the army, so that in "mixed" units the orders were published in both languages. On the other hand, the units that became Hebrew units were proud that all the orders on the parade ground were purely Hebrew and the Sabbath was the official day of rest in the unit. The main theme shared by all was the desire to take an active part in the front. In the Yishuv's eyes, the Jewish units symbolized the contribution to the war effort.
The Royal Pioneer Corps 
About two months after the outbreak of the war, the British Mandate authorities turned to the Jewish institutions to attach Jewish volunteers to the British Army, as part of the "Corps of the Excavators." These units were to be used to prepare fortifications. The initial enlistment was done without the consent of the national institutions, and some members of the Haganah who volunteered were even removed from the organization. According to the British Royal Defense Ministry, 3222 people volunteered in Israel to the 'A.M.P.C. = AUXILIARY MILITARY PIONEER CORPS. On the symbol was written the Latin saying: Labor Omnia Vincit '' work conquers everything.”
Coy 401
The first company of diggers commanded by Major Henry Cater. Its recruitment began in December 1939, and in February 1940, after its basic training in the Sarafand camp (Tzrifin), its establishment was completed. The company was comprised of about 800 Arabs, mostly Bedouins and 200 Jews, most of whom were new immigrants whose family remained in Europe and who wanted to fight the Germans. Her job was to build railroads and she did it with high efficiency. At the end of May 1940, with the advance of the German offensive into France, the British General Staff ordered the French Expeditionary Force to withdraw, and 401's task was to guard the retreating British units on the Brittan peninsula from the city of Rhine toward Brest.
They created roadblocks on the roads, blown up bridges to Port St. Where they were surrounded by the German forces, waited a few days until they were evacuated by boat to transport coal across the La Mancha Canal to England, where they were housed in excavations south of London and then moved to the artillery school in Kimberly. On a train to London to evacuate and rescue the many casualties of the German Blitz on London, and after its mission was transferred to Glasgow, Scotland, and joined the British force on 34 ships to assist British forces in the Middle East against the German advance in the Western Desert "The Eighth Camp").
After about half an hour of sailing, the convoy was attacked, 2 of its ships were sunk by German submarines, and about 10,000 soldiers drowned, and the company convoy (aboard the Andes ship) continued to do so because of fears that Italian and German submarines did not enter the Mediterranean And went on a journey around Africa, including a two-week stay in Cape Town, from where she continued to the Red Sea, where the entrance was controlled by Italian beach guns in Eritrea and after four attempts, the convoy succeeded in moving to Suez. To the commando unit 51 and the rest to 601.
Coy 601
The company was established in October 1940, Jews and Arabs, of the 401th Battalion, who did not volunteer for the commando unit. In February 1941 the company was transferred to the western desert. And settled in Sulom (Egypt - Libya border). After the conquest of Tobruk, the company was transferred to the port of the town. The diggers were busy unloading when the port was constantly bombarded by air. In March 1941, the company was to be sent to Greece as part of the British Expeditionary Force. Its pioneer group arrived in Greece and settled in the Athens-Piraeus region, but the development of the battles changed the plan and the company remained in the Western Desert. By the end of 1941, the company had become a Jew. The company served in Tobruk until June 1942 and from there was returned to Eretz Israel. The company's liquidation ceremony took place in the Sarafand camp on October 8, 1942. Its fighters were transferred to other units, mainly infantry units that were established at the time.
Coy 602
The company's enlistment began in April 1940 and in mid-June its establishment was completed and transferred to the western desert and settled in the area of Mersa Matrouch. The company was mixed with Jews and Arabs when the Jews constituted 60% of the company. The British offensive of the winter of 1940 changed the nature of its activities. The fortification work in the Marsach-Matruch area was halted and the company was transferred to the loading of the ammunition and ammunition that had been pushed into the fighting forces as they advanced. In early February 1941, the company was transferred to the port of Tobruk. The diggers were busy unloading when the port was constantly bombarded by air. In March 1941, the company was attached to the British Expeditionary Force, which left for Greece. She arrived in Greece on April 4 and settled in Athens-Piraeus. During the fighting and the withdrawal in Greece.
The company lost about half of its members. Until it reached the evacuation beach in Kalamata. The pilots did not manage to board the evacuation ships, and most of them, including company officers, were captured by the Germans. Nine people who survived the German retreat and captivity joined Crete in the 606th Company. After that they were transferred to Egypt and gradually increased as the wounded returned from the hospitals. After what had already been done, most of them tried to avoid the continuation of the service. Some dispersed among British headquarters or were transferred to professional units. Some of the rank holders were transferred to serve as freshmen's instructors in Sarafand. In April 1942 the British agreed to dismantle the excavation units and transfer their remains to other soldiers.
Coy 603
The company's recruitment began in June 1940 and in December of that year it was sent to the western desert and settled in the area of Solom (Egypt-Libya border). After the conquest of Tobruk in February 1941, the company was transferred to the city port. The diggers were busy unloading when the port was constantly bombarded by air. In March 1941, it was decided at headquarters in Cairo to send the company to Greece as part of the British Expeditionary Force. The company arrived in Greece on 17-18 March and settled in the Athens-Piraeus region, where it unloaded cargo destined for the expeditionary force and sent it northward to the front. The German invasion of Greece began on April 6, 1941. That night there was a heavy bomb attack on the port of Piraeus that put him out of use.
When the situation in northern Greece worsened, some of the company's men were sent there. On April 21, 1941, it was decided to evacuate the expeditionary force from Greece. At the time, some of the company's members were in the Athens-Piraeus region and part of the north in the vicinity of Tebay. The piers, who were in Athens, Piraeus, sailed with the men of the 606th Company to Crete. During the voyage, the ship was attacked by Italian aircraft near the island of Milos. The ship was damaged and its passengers went ashore. On the island of Milos, the soldiers stayed for seven days, under constant German air attacks, until British destroyers arrived and transferred them to Crete. 133 soldiers from Company 603 reached Crete. The soldiers who were in Thabee and retreated to the evacuation beach in Kalamata, in the southern Peloponnese, did not have time to evacuate and the overwhelming majority were captured. In April 1942 the British decided to disband the company and transfer its members to other units.
Coy 604
Upon completion of the company's establishment, it was sent to the western desert. In March 1941 she was sent to Greece as part of the British Expeditionary Force. Its main task was unloading, sorting, storing, securing, and pushing it into the British, Australian, and New Zealand units deployed in northern Greece. During the German invasion, the company was active in northern Greece, in the area of Larissa. The invasion began in northern Greece on April 6, 1941. The Germans succeeded in breaking through the Allied front line and advancing south. On April 14, the commander of the area of the center of Greece, in which Larissa was included, decided to withdraw the non-combatant units to the south. The order of withdrawal did not reach Company 604, and on 17 April it was surrounded by the Germans. The On the morning of April 29, the commander of the Evacuation Beach in Calamata, Brigadier Farrington, decided to surrender and most of the remaining forces on the coast were captured by the Germans.
Coy 605
The company was the first company composed of Jews only. It was established among the recruits of the summer of 1940 and sent to the Western Desert in November of that year. During the British offensive in December 1940, the company was located in Solom (the Egyptian-Libyan border). After the conquest of Tobruk in February 1941, the company was transferred to the city port. The diggers were busy unloading when the port was constantly bombarded by air.men tried to get out of the encirclement of small groups on their own, but lost half their men.
In March 1941, it was decided to send 605 Company to Greece as part of the British Expeditionary Force. The company was stationed in the Athens - Piraeus area. On April 6, 1941, the German invasion of Greece began. That night there was a heavy bomb attack on the Piraeus port that put him out of use. Company 605 was then divided into small groups and engaged in loading ammunition at train stations around Athens. On April 21, 1941, it was decided to evacuate the expeditionary force from Greece. She arrived at the evacuation beach in Kalamata. After a German force entered the city and the organized evacuation was disrupted, the last unit members were given an order to try to evacuate on their own. As a result, the company commander and his deputy collected a group of Jewish sergeants and soldiers from their company, forcibly took over a Greek boat and began to sail along the coast.
Coy 606
The basic training for the fighters for the cavalry began in the Sarafand camp in August 1940. On November 23, 1940, the company was officially established. As commander, the Scottish officer was appointed Major L. ninth. And Major L. T. Murray.
On November 28, 1940, the company moved to Egypt to the Mena camp. A few weeks later, on the afternoon of December 17, 1940, the company was sent by train to the western desert, and after midnight it reached its destination, the Sidi Heneish camp on the Egyptian-Libyan border. The company's tasks were: repairing the main road that crossed the desert, paving new roads, and laying railway tracks. The work was carried out under the supervision of the NewZealand Pioneer Corps. In December 1940, the company was renamed Company 606.
After about a month and a half (27.1.1941), they were transferred to Mersa Matruh and worked in guard duty at various sites in the city. On February 10, 1941, the company was transferred to the El-Amiriya camp near Alexandria. On the evening of March 8, 1941, she boarded the light cruiser "Preth" and sailed from the port of Alexandria to Greece.
On the morning of March 9, 1941 she reached the port of Piraeus. The company settled in a forest of olive trees in the area of Kokinia, near Athens, and unloaded British equipment and ammunition ships in the port of Piraeus.
On April 6, 1941, a German attack on Greece began, and that night, after midnight, the port of Piraeus was destroyed by the explosion of an ammunition ship anchored in the harbor. The British attempted to partially resume work at the port. The company's men continued their work at the port under bombardment as groups of the company went to work at piers, which were in small bays in Eleusis and Skaramanga near Athens.
On April 14, 1941, a combined force of 100 men from the 606 and 603 companies took part in a defensive mission in the area of Larissa.
On March 15, 1941, at 19:00, a group of 90 soldiers from Company 603, led by the Israeli officer Sgt. Mordechai Leib Shifman, was appended to Company 606.
On April 21, 1941, the Middle East Command in Cairo decided to evacuate the British Expeditionary Force from Greece. Shortly after midnight, a force of 60 volunteers from the company, headed by officers Yitzhak Ben-Aharon and Baruch Chan, set out in two divisions on the road leading to Argos and the Kalamata port, with missions to check supplies and refueling and detonating bridges to detain the enemy.
That evening, at 22:00, a force of sixty of the company's soldiers, including the officer Ben Aharon and the sergeant Almogi, went on missions to blow up bridges, detain the enemy, and left the camp. The force arrived at the Gulf of Kalamata on April 26, 1941, During which the soldiers were subjected to daily air raids from enemy aircraft, when the German ground force arrived, participated in battles in the Gulf to protect the port, 2 soldiers were killed by enemy fire, and the others were captured by the Germans on April 29, 1941).
The next day, April 22, 1941, at 14:30, the remaining company soldiers were ordered to evacuate Greece via the port of Piraeus.
Later that day, the force that left Larissa returned from his missions and reached the empty camp in Cucinia. The soldiers learned that the soldiers in the company had already left for the port of Piraeus.
At 19:30, the company's soldiers in the port were ordered to board the "Pankration", a slow, rickety coal tank without any military means of defense.
The soldiers of the company found the Greek sailors who had been hiding and were in no way wanted to board the ship. Finally, after many delays, at 00:30 on April 23, 1941, the ship sailed with 392 soldiers and 4 officers from the 606 and 603 excavation companies, another 200 soldiers and three officers from the Cypriot unit 1008, a priest, 100 other soldiers, a total of some seven hundred people, with their personal belongings, including six machine guns and 180 rifles.
The ship sailed very slowly, and the following morning, April 23, 1941, at around 9:00 AM, it was discovered by Italian enemy planes and bombed from the air, and the first deputy commander of the British company, Ernest Wallace Christie, The company.
The soldiers returned fire from machine guns ("Louis-Gans"), forcing the enemy planes to raise a rum and attacking the ship with bombs and gunfire, only from a great height. The battle took about 5 hours, during which two enemy aircraft were shot down and their pilots taken prisoner. The ship continued on its way, until it ran aground at the entrance to the Bay of Milos. In this situation, it was attacked from the air for the fifth time by three enemy planes that also dropped torpedo bombs. Miraculously, the ship did not sink, as one of the bombs hit its sides, rose, jumped over it and exploded on the other side. The enemy planes continued to fire machine guns and hit other soldiers on the deck. The commander of the company, Major Murray, ordered some of the boys who knew how to swim because they would swim ashore and bring boats. Together with them came the Greek fishermen and brought the passengers and crew to the beach.
The next day, the empty ship was drowned by enemy aircraft. The men hid in the caves on the island, constantly bombarded by the air, seeing enemy planes drowning more ships in the bay.
Eight days later, before midnight on April 30, 1941, the company's soldiers noticed two destroyers approaching the island and sent armed boats to the island to check the situation. The soldiers were very tense because they did not know if they were German or British ships. Luckily for them, they were two British destroyers, Hotspur and Havock, who came to rescue them from the island. After all the soldiers were brought to the destroyers, they sailed from the island on the morning of May 1, 1941, at 3:15. Three hours later, the company's soldiers arrived at the port of Suda Bay on the island of Crete.
In the battle in Greece, about 60 soldiers were taken captive by the German Company 606.
In Crete, 273 soldiers of the 606 Company, and their commander Major Mori, were joined by another 118 soldiers from the 603 Company, who were escorted from Piraeus and the rest of their company was captured, and the officers from Company 603, Captain McCulloch and Mordechai Shifman. From Greece to Crete from the Operations Unit of the Ports 1039 and isolated from various units.In the end, the expanded 606 Company numbered approximately 455 soldiers.
On May 5, 1941, at 09:00, the company was transferred to a camp opposite the port of Soda, near Haneya, which was situated among the olive trees. The following day, as of May 6, 1941, the company was engaged in unloading ships in the port of Suda Bay, under increasing German bombardments.
On Tuesday May 20, 1941, at 7:15 am, a massive German air attack on the island began, with the participation of hundreds of enemy planes, about a hundred gliders, and thousands of parachutists. The company's soldiers, who were in the Gulf of Soda and around the city of Canea, participated in the defense of their area (42Street), because the paratroopers parachuted into their area. In the course of the fighting, the company's soldiers worked to dismantle ammunition dumps and supply them to combat units. They also tried to establish a field hospital for two nights. During the fighting, some of the company members were captured or killed.
On Tuesday morning May 27, 1941, at around 5:00 AM, before the Germans completed the capture of Crete, the company commander ordered the southern shore to be evacuated for possible evacuation. In a disorderly way, "each one for himself." He added that he thanked them for the work they had done and wished them God help them.
In a quick expedition, by foot and by car, most of the soldiers arrived at the evacuation beach in the Gulf of Spakia. In the Gulf, the companies of the diggers and other Israeli companies, the last lines were set for evacuation. As a result, many of the Israeli soldiers tried to enter the evacuees' queue by pretending to be wounded, which they preferred to evacuate. Some of them managed to get on boats, which brought them to the evacuation ships, anchored in the bay, away from the shore. Additional soldiers were wounded on the ship "Glengyle", which absorbed thousands of soldiers. The convoy sailed from the Gulf of Spakia on May 30, 1941 at 3:20 pm and arrived at the port of Alexandria on the morning of Saturday, May 31, 1941 at about 6:00. With 280 soldiers from the company and officer Mordechai Shifman aboard.
At the end of the evacuation operation, on the morning of Sunday, June 1, 1941, some 5,000 British soldiers who had not been able to evacuate remained on the beach, including many Israeli soldiers.
A few fled to the mountains and most of them were captured by the Germans. In the battle in Crete, about 150 soldiers, of whom 70 were from the original company, were captured by the German, from the expanded company 606.
In Egypt, the company regrouped in the El-Qassasin camp, about 60 km from Cairo, the commander of the company was Major Brooks, his deputy Captain Stretz, and the platoon commanders - Lot Bevan and the Jewish officers Lt. Moshe Sinto Walot. On July 18, 1941, the company boarded the port of Port Said on the Warsaw merchant ship WARSZAWA, which sailed for Cyprus and arrived at the port of Famagusta on July 20, 1941.
The next day, the company began unloading British ships at the ports of Famagusta port. From time to time, during the work, the enemy planes attacked the port. During the period when the company was in Cyprus, it maintained a training routine and protected the island from its battle positions in the Famagusta region. In June 1942 the company was transferred from Cyprus to Egypt, and from there to Eretz Israel.
On October 8, 1942, the company's liquidation ceremony took place in the Sarafand camp, and its members were transferred to other units.
https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn1004405
A video taken in Cyprus by members of the 606th Zionist pioneering training unit in Palestine, during a military training session in an ancient fortress in the port of Famagusta, on which an Israeli flag is flying.
Coy 608
Was established in the Sarafand camp in January 1941, and on January 18, 1941, was transferred to a training camp in Egypt. On February 1, she was transferred to Tobruk, where she was joined by Egged for stevedoring work in the port, which was constantly subject to aerial bombardments. On March 19, 1941, she was sent as part of the British Expeditionary Force to stop the German invasion of Greece. Upon her arrival at Piraeus, she was sent to Larissa, northern Greece, to assist the British Air Force, building shelters for the air force, and sand farms.
The German invasion of Greece began on April 6, 1941. Some of them preceded to the southwest of Mount Olympus, but under pressure from the German army, they retreated towards Athens. On April 25, the company left Athens for the evacuation beach in Kalamata, at the southern tip of the Peloponnese. Most of the soldiers were not rescued from the coast and on April 29, 1941 they were captured by the Germans.
Coy 609
The last Jewish settlement company established. It was completed in February 1941 and sent to the Western Desert.
The company, like the other British companies, was to be sent to Greece as part of the British Expeditionary Force. For this purpose, it was returned in mid-April to Egypt, but until it was ready to sail, the ring command decided to evacuate the expeditionary force from Greece, and the diggers were sent back to the western desert. The company served for about a year in the Western Desert, and after a decision was made to disperse the Palestinian experts in the professional units and the infantry companies, it was transferred to the main base of the cavalry force in the Suez Canal area and from there was returned to Eretz Israel. The company's liquidation ceremony took place in the Sarafand camp on October 8, 1942. Its last commander was Maj. Gen. (later) Major General Dan Epstein, who passed along with some of the soldiers to the infantry battalions in the Land of Israel.
Group Headquarters
In the fall of 1940, the headquarters of the Group Headquarters was established for the nine Israeli companies that were stationed in Egypt and the Western Desert. The headquarters was located in Muscat, near Ismailia, in Egypt.
The Buffs (Royal East Kent Regiment)
Infantry Company 2
The company was established in September 1940, and became the first Jewish infantry company in the framework of the Baps. In December 1940, the company completed basic training in Sarafand and set out for the Jordan Valley, where it underwent complementary training. At the end of the training she was sent to secure the Latrun camp. And from there to guard missions in the Haifa area (where she also dealt with the transfer of arms and ammunition from the army to the Haganah). Its commander was Major General N.N.Curwen. Among its members was Maxi Cohen, who later became the company commander, Mati Kornfeld (Dagan), whose headquarters at the front also included Italy, Avraham Akavia, Alex Cherowicz (Tire), Shimon Waldman (Ya'ar), Aharon Yerachmiel, Peltz, Zeev Benyamin Jarlinsky and David Alter.
On June 19 she was transferred to Lod to secure American bombers. In October 1942, she was sent to guard the Wadi Sarar warehouses near Hulda (from which about 2.5 million bullets were transferred to Sliekim in the surrounding settlements).
At the end of September 1942 infantry regiments were established, and the company was joined to the First Battalion.
Infantry Company no. 4
The company began its enlistment in September 1940, underwent basic training in Sarafand and went to the Jordan Valley, where she underwent supplementary training. Its commander - Major Flair Player, a local clerk in the Mandate and not an army man who treated his soldiers with contempt. At the end of the training she was sent to the Latrun camp for security missions and from there to the Haifa area. In the course of its operations, the maintenance of the naval munitions depots in the Atlit area, several barrels of explosives have disappeared. At the end of September 1942, the company was attached to the second battalion. From her fighters: Shlomo (Rabinovich) Shamir, Raphael Ruppin, Joseph (Eisen) Nathan, Yehuda Harari and others.
Infantry Company 6
The company underwent basic training in Sarafand and went to the Jordan Valley, where she underwent supplementary training. She was responsible for guarding Kordani and the Krayot area near Haifa (and at the same time transferring weapons and ammunition from the army's warehouses and workshops to the Hagana and the Irgun), among them Haim Laskov, Ephraim Ben Artzi and Israel Carmi. In late spring 1942, the infantry battalions were established, and the company was joined by the Second Battalion, and in the spring of 1943 it was stationed in the Achziv region of the Western Galilee, accompanied by armored vehicles traveling from Syria to the south, to Egypt.
Infantry Company 8
The company underwent basic training in Sarafand and completed training in the Jordan Valley. At the end of the training she was sent to the Latrun camp and was given guard duty and supervision of the camp's routine. From there she was transferred to the Haifa area and performed guard duties at various points. At the end of September 1942 infantry regiments were established, and the company was joined to the second battalion.
Infantry Company 10
In April 1941, the company was established. She underwent basic training in Sarafand and was sent to the Jordan Valley for supplementary group training. At the end of the training, she was sent to reinforce the guard at the Latrun camp, which was filled with Italian prisoners following the British offensive in the Western Desert. At the end of September 1942 infantry regiments were established, and the company was joined to Battalion 2.
Infantry Company 12
In May 1941, its establishment was completed after a few months of recruitment, because the infantry was unpopular among the recruits, mainly because of the marginal and boring tasks it carried out in Israel. She underwent basic training in Sarafand and went on to complete training in the Jordan Valley. Among her soldiers were Mordechai Maklef and Yisrael Tal. At the end of September 1942, when infantry regiments were established, the company was attached to the second battalion.
Infantry Company 14
The company was established in June 1941. The first commander was Major Massey, followed by Major Jones, and at the beginning of 1943 Major Eddy Tibor became the Jewish headquarters.
Among the fighters were Baruch Yitzhar, Yehuda Verber, Yossi Gliklich, Hillel Feferman, Nahum Spiegel (later the Golani Brigade commander), Ze'ev Epstein, Benjamin Zarchin, Meir (Grabovsky) Argov, Moshe Zilbertal, Yehuda Tobin, The poets Yitzhak Yitzhak ("Song of the First Battalion," All Roads Lead to Rome ") and Yehiel Hagiz (" Tzena Tzana "). The company underwent basic training in Sarafand and supplementary training in the Jordan Valley. At the end of the training she was sent to the Latrun camp and was given guard duty and supervision of the camp's routine. From there she was transferred to the Haifa area and performed guard duties at various points. At the end of September 1942, the company was attached to the First Battalion.
Infantry Company 16
The company was established in early 1942 and consisted of members of the "core of the volunteers," members of the Haganah and the labor settlement. She underwent basic training in Sarafand and completed training in the Jordan Valley. Between March and November 1942, she kept the prisoner camp in Emmaus near Latrun. At the end of September 1942, the company was attached to the first battalion that had been established. Its commander was Ze'ev Mioneon, the welfare officer in the company was Aharon Hoter Yishai. On July 16, 1943, after a skirmish with an Arab digging company in the camp, in which an Arab soldier was killed and four were wounded, and a company officer was wounded, the company was sent to guard Lod Airport. After about ten days, she was sent to Egypt until December 4, 1943, when she was replaced by Company 18.
Infantry Company 18 (Maccabi)
The company was built between October 1941 and March 1942 members of "Maccabi", Revisionists, and members of the left - settlement. The company underwent basic training in Sarafand and supplementary training in the Jordan Valley. At the end of the training she was sent for security missions at the Latrun POW camp and the ammunition depots in Wadi Sarar. When the First Battalion was established, the company was attached to it. On December 4, 1943, she was sent to Egypt to secure the oil refineries at Port Tawfiq in Suez. The commander of the first Jewish company was Kalman Kitt, who on December 9, 1943, replaced Major Macdonald Brown of Scotland. In February 1944 he joined her in Egypt, the rest of the battalion.
Infantry Company 20
The company was established in June 1942 and in October there were 218 soldiers, most of them high school graduates in 1942, who were motivated to defend the existence of the Jewish community in Palestine, after the anxiety that was present in the danger of the German invasion of the region.
After basic training in Sarafand and supplementary training in the Jordan Valley, she was sent to guard duty in the Latrun camp and the ammunition depots in Wadi Sarar, from which her men, many of whom were Betar members, transferred weapons to Etzel warehouses. From there she was transferred to the Haifa area and performed guard duties at various points. The company commander was Major Leizel. At the end of September 1942, the company was attached to the First Battalion and later became the auxiliary company. Among the soldiers in the company were Sergeant Meir Zorea (Zrodinski, Zoro, later a major in the IDF), Azaria Rappaport, Mordechai Gichon (Gicherman).
Infantry Company 22
The company was underwent basic training in Sarafand and completed training in the Jordan Valley. At the end of the training she was sent to guard the Latrun camp. From there, its soldiers, including many Betar and Irgun members, transferred weapons and tons of explosives to the underground. Following the theft of ammunition stores on January 22, 1943, she was transferred to Egypt a week later, where she was involved in securing the refineries in the city of Suez. In July 1943, the Third Battalion was established and the company was returned to Eretz Israel and attached to the battalion.
Infantry Company 24
The company was established and underwent basic training in Sarafand and supplementary training in the Jordan Valley. At the end of the training she was sent to the Latrun camp and was given guard duty and supervision of the camp's routine. From there she was transferred to the Haifa area and performed guard duties at various points. In July 1943, the Third Battalion was established and the company was attached to the battalion. Among her soldiers - Ted Arison.
Infantry Company 26
The company underwent basic training in Sarafand and completed training in the Jordan Valley. At the end of the training she was sent to the Latrun camp and was given guard duty and supervision of the camp's routine. From there she was transferred to the Haifa area and performed guard duties at various points. At the end of July 1943, the Third Battalion was established and the company was attached to the battalion.
Infantry Company 28
The company was underwent basic training in Sarafand and completed training in the Jordan Valley. At the end of the training she was sent to the Latrun camp and was given guard duty and supervision of the camp's routine. From there she was transferred to the Haifa area and performed guard duties at various points. In July 1943, the Third Battalion was established and the company was attached to the battalion.
Infantry Company 30
The last Baps company that was recruited. Was intended to complete the Third Battalion as a fifth company. She began to enlist in the beginning of 1943. She stayed in the Sarafand camp for the purpose of completing her eight-month fortification, which caused unrest in the company and a fear of disbanding. She began her activities in her absence - guarding the camps and Di Sarar, and was then transferred to Atlit. In July 1943, the Third Battalion was established and the company was attached to the battalion.
Palestine Regiment
On August 5, 1942. It was decided at a meeting of the War Cabinet in London to allow the Jews of the Land of Israel to take part in the war as part of a regiment formation. The regiment included the 15 infantry companies that were divided into three Hebrew battalions. The regiment was not operational and served as the basis for the establishment of the Jewish Brigade.
Infantry Company 100 (the elderly)
100 garrison guard coy, Palestine Regiment under the command of Yeshurun Schiff. Was recruited in the spring of 1942 and included about 200 volunteers.
Middle East Commando 51
The unit was established in October 1940, at the initiative of Major Henry Cater, and served volunteers from the 401th Returning Company, which returned from the Western European front and a few volunteers from other excavation units. 240 Jews and 120 Arabs volunteered for the unit. At the end of 1940, some of the unit's members took part in the first British offensive in the Western Desert, when they entered the Italian Regiment in Bardia, on the Egyptian-Libyan border, before it was occupied by the Sixth Australian Division, which was sent to Sudan in early 1941. It was then sent to the battle scene in Eritrea and transferred to the Fourth Indian Division.
At the end of February - early March the unit carried out patrols, ambushes, and was involved in a series of confrontations and battles in a difficult area, against an Italian enemy, who fought them well. They took part in the major attack that led to the capture of the Karen Fortress by the two Indian Divisions, the Fourth and the Fifth. In this attack they overcame a superior force, including artillery. The unit received warm praise for its fighting and its contribution to the overall success of the attack. In mid-April she fought in an improvised corpus in the battles surrounding Amoeba-Alaji until the final surrender of the Italians. She then took part in the last major battle in the campaign to conquer Africa - the siege of Gondar. After the Italians surrendered, its members were returned to Egypt.
Here began the disintegration of the unit, which until then had been praised for its performance. As part of the reorganization, it was decided to rebuild the commando units as British units. As part of this planning, Commando 51 was to be eliminated and dispersed among the British units. At the same time, Colonel Kaiter ceased to command the unit, following his injury to Eritrea, and it was difficult to maintain its existence. After two years of service in an Israeli unit, the volunteers were sent to serve in a mixed British unit, with all the sensitivities and complications involved in such service. At the beginning of 1942, most of the Jewish Agency's intervention was transferred to Jewish units. Few continued to serve in British commando units and to participate in their operations, in continuation of the fighting.
SIG - Special Interrogation Group
SIG - Special Interrogation Group (SIG), a 38-member unit composed of German speakers, whose objective was to operate in the rear of the "Corps of Africa" for the purpose of gathering intelligence and carrying out sabotage. The unit commander was Captain Herbert Cecil Buck, who was fluent in German. The manpower sources were from the "Middle East Command 51" unit, which was dismantled, serving Jews from Palestine, such as Israel Carmi (later commander of the Palmach's 9th Battalion, 27th Brigade Commander and Chief Military Police Officer) One of the founders of the paratroopers unit in the IDF), Dov Cohen (after the war, as part of his service in the Irgun, under the name "Shimshon", commanded the break-in to Akko Prison and was killed), Bernard Leventhal, Philip Kugel, Maurice Tiefenbrunner, Aryeh Shay (Sheinkin) Adolf Zeitner, the Czechoslovak battalion (which served German-speaking Jews), among them Eliahu Gottlieb and Peter Haas. The unit's training camp was established near the city of Marsa Matrouh in northwestern Egypt.
The fighters trained in the use of German weapons and vehicles, the use of explosives, face-to-face combat, desert navigators and more. Much of the training was devoted to the study of the German army.
For this purpose, two German prisoners of war - Walter Asner and Herbert Briokner, who served in the French Foreign Legion after the surrender of France - were recruited to the Wehrmacht and were captured by the British in 1941, were forced to enlist and do not support the Nazi idea. Although the Jewish fighters did not like the service worker with soldiers from the Nazi army, their commander saw them as a necessity. They taught the fighters about the German army, the weapons and the language of its speech. The unit's training camp was run like in the German army. The fighters were forbidden to speak any language other than German. They were required to march as in the German army, learned the songs of the "African Corps" and marched to the dining room in a German "Goose Goose", singing songs of praise to Adolf Hitler.
After the training period, the personnel of the unit left for short missions on the German rear. They penetrated the front lines, erected improvised barriers, arrested German convoys, and interrogated officers in the convoy about their destination and destination. Visited the German army camps, held talks with the soldiers to discover information. They toured the German rear and returned to the British lines.
David Stirling, commander of the SAS unit who was impressed by the capabilities of the unit, added the SIG to the SAS as part of Squadron D. His idea was that the SIG would help get SAS fighters into the German rear to blow up German planes.
On June 8, 1942, they embarked on an operation aimed at hitting the German airports in Drenna and Martowa (about 150 kilometers west of Tobruk). Some of them left every day, German bombers to attack the Allied convoys that brought supplies to the island of Malta. The SIG team embarked on the operation, headed by Captain Buck and with him the two Germans (Asner and Breukner). Near the front line, they joined up with French SAS fighters under Lieutenant Jordan. The SIG wore the German uniform. The fighters continued on to the front line with four vehicles - three Germans and one British. In the British truck, some SAS fighters sit openly in British uniforms and play the role of prisoners. Members of the SIG, in German uniform, play the role of guards. The other SAS fighters hid under tarpaulins in the truck, so as not to arouse the Germans' suspicion.
The convoy reached the first checkpoint, staffed by Italian soldiers. The lack of knowledge of the current password hinders them, but in the end the Italian officer allowed the convoy to pass. At the next checkpoint, this time a German, they stopped for a night stop and the next day she continued toward Darna. A few kilometers from the city, she stopped at the parking lot, and from there she took a tour of five fighters to the airport area to check the status of the targets for the attack. The patrol found that at the airport in Dardana there were dozens of 78 Junkers 87 ("Stokke") bombers, and at the airport in Mirtova, the Misercemits 110 (a plane that could be used both as a bomber and as an interception aircraft). When darkness fell, the force split into two teams. Team 1 in which: Captain Buck, German Asner, 3 SIG fighters and 5 SAS personnel went out to attack the planes in Mirtua. Team 2, which includes: Lieutenant Jorden, the German in Ryukner, nine SAS men and two SIG members (Peter Haas and Eliyahu Gottlieb) set out to attack the airport at Dardena.
Team 1 carried out its mission successfully and without losses, about 20 German planes were blown up, the fighters returned to the predetermined meeting point.
Team 2 did not succeed in his mission because of the German betrayal of Ryukner. According to the testimony of the commander of the team - Lieutenant Jordaan, when they passed through the city of Darna, in Ryukner, who was driving one of the trucks, he stopped her, claiming that the engine was heating up. He got out of the car and said he was going to ask for help from the mechanic at the garage he saw on the way. A few minutes later, German soldiers surrounded the trucks and ordered everyone to leave. The story was supported by documents captured by the British after the war, in which they learned that Briokner had gone to a nearby military police post and said that he was a German, The German).
The fighters, who understood that they had been exposed, opened fire. They hit several Germans, but eventually, after some of them were killed, surrendered and fell into captivity. Only the commander of the force, Lieutenant Jordan, managed to escape from the area, wounded. A day later he arrived at the meeting point and told the astonished Captain Buck about what had happened. According to him, the two SIG fighters in his command detonated themselves with a grenade in order not to be captured. Peter Haas - killed instantly, and Eliyahu Gottlieb - was captured and executed. Buck waited for almost a week at the meeting point, hoping that more survivors would arrive. When they realized that no one was likely to arrive-set off for the British lines. When they returned, they handed over the second German (Asner) to the military police. Later he was executed.
On the night between 13 and 14 September 1942 in Operation Agreement to attack airports, port facilities and fuel tanks of the Italian and German armies in Tobruk. The attack was to be combined - the Royal Marine Corps, Special Boat Service crews, landing from the sea, and SAS force and LDRG crews arriving by land. The mission of the SIG was to infiltrate the SAS fighters into the city of Tobruk, pretending to be German soldiers guarding "British prisoners" (SAS fighters).
On a long journey, the desert oasis was broken, which bypassed the German lines to the south. The ground force succeeded in taking over some of the targets, but the landing of the forces from the sea failed, and with it the "diversion." And the force found itself in a disadvantageous position against the Germans. The commander of the ground force gave a retreat order that had become a flight. Captain Buck instructed his men to change their German uniforms in British uniform, to destroy the forged documents and to try to extricate themselves in any way possible. The fighters joined various groups of SAS fighters and moved with them in the desert to the British lines. After a long and exhausting journey, four out of the five SIG fighters and Captain Buck managed to reach British-controlled territory. One SIG fighter was captured (the fact that he was in British uniform saved him and he survived the captivity). After the operation failed, at the end of 1942, the unit was dismantled.
Its members joined the British infantry companies (the Baps) and, in September 1944, joined the ranks of the Jewish Brigade in Shikma.
Kaf Gimel Yordei Hasira
In the early summer of 1941 the British military authorities agreed to joint operations against Vichy France forces in Lebanon and Syria. The first planned action was a sabotage mission against oil installations at Tripoli, Lebanon. It was feared that the refinery would provide the Wehrmacht aircraft fuel, and help thwart the planned invasion of Lebanon and Syria.
A plan emerged for a motor launch, carrying 23 Palmach commandos and a Major Palmer acting as an observer, to embark from Haifa on the night of May 18, 1941 on the boat Sea Lion (Ari Hayam in Hebrew), and were never seen again. It has never been determined exactly what happened to them.
Although they were not officially members of the British Army or navy, their heritage was a source of inspiration.
The paratroopers
The paratroopers were the spearhead and symbol of the Yishuv's volunteerism. Except at the stage of their formulation and training, did not operate as a Hebrew unit.
When news of the destruction of the Jews of Europe reached Israel, the Yishuv's frustration grew, in view of its helplessness to save. In the absence of an independent operational capability, every initiative on the subject required cooperation with the British authorities. The proposal of the institutions was to share Jewish forces from within the Yishuv in Eretz Israel as a mission beyond the German enemy lines. To assist in the secret activity of the underground movements in Europe and the rescue of Allied POWs, and at the same time to assist Jews in Europe.
Toward the end of 1942, the Jewish Agency approached the British headquarters and the resident minister in Egypt and felt the possibility of establishing a Palestinian commando force to operate behind the lines in the Balkans, and would also be able to assist the Jews there. The British examined this proposal, but preferred only a small number of fighters, who would be integrated into their liaison missions to the partisans in the Balkans.
As long as there was no fighting in the Balkans, and no Allied prisoners were held in the British unit dealing with the escape of prisoners and their removal from enemy force A, there were no demands for such proposals.
In January 1943, representatives of the Jewish Agency in Istanbul signed an agreement with Tony Simmonds, commander of Force A, to send a Jewish emissary from Eretz Israel to Romania to smuggle escaped pilots, prisoners and Jews.
Operation of the parachuting program began at a later stage of the war and was only possible when the British needed paratroopers to rescue their air crews, who abandoned their aircraft and parachuted into enemy territory.
The prospect of greater penetration into occupied Europe, led to cooperation with the Special Operations Executive (SOE), supported and aided the partisan movements in Yugoslavia and Greece.
After negotiations with the SOE, recruitment began. Most of the candidates, who came from the countries of the occupation, enlisted through a special committee established in cooperation with the Jewish Agency, the Mossad L'Aliya Bet and the Haganah. Few were directly recruited by the British.
The volunteers were chosen from among the Palmach fighters, especially the members of the German Department and the Balkan Department, members of the kibbutz movement and volunteers from the Yishuv who served in the British Army.
About 250 women and men volunteered for the program, of whom 110 were selected and trained. The British insisted that the Palestinian candidates enlist formally in the British Army. Against the backdrop of a dispute over this issue, several candidates withdrew from the plan. After another sort of operation, 37 paratroopers were trained and trained.
The training included the introduction and operation of wireless and codes, the study of commando and underground methods of operation, the knowledge of the enemy armies, and a parachuting course held at the British Air Force base in Ramat David.
In May 1943, the first parachutist from Palestine, Peretz Rosenberg, who was a wireless instructor in Serbo-Croatian, landed in Yugoslavia in the training base of the SOE in Egypt. The operation was the radio of the delegation of Brigadier Maclean, commander of the British delegation, at the headquarters of the Yugoslav partisan leader Tito.
At the end of September 1943, Luba Gukovski and Arie Fichman landed in Romania on behalf of Force A. The crew of the plane made a mistake in navigating them into the heart of the city, far from the place where the members of the Zionist pioneering underground in Romania awaited them. Gukowski was wounded and the two were captured by the Romanians. Fichman was sent for questioning in Germany, but was later returned to the Romanian prison.
At the same time, the SOE began to infiltrate several of the paratroopers organized into Yugoslavia, mainly as electrons in the liaison missions to the partisans. These groups were established according to the principles set forth by the British, whereby they were prepared to integrate, in an unofficial manner, individual Palestinian volunteers, even allowing them to operate on a Jewish mission.
In February 1944, the Yishuv's plan for the infiltration of larger Israeli commando units was transferred to the British, with the aim of arousing and organizing the Jews of the occupied countries into resistance, and to smuggle them into the partisan areas of Yugoslavia. Given the situation in the Balkans - the proposal was rejected. After several failures in Romania and Hungary, it was decided to drop the emissaries in the territories held by the partisans in Yugoslavia and to help them cross the border.
In March 1944, Hannah Szenes, Yoel Palgi, Peretz Goldstein, Yona Rosen and Abba Berdichev were parachuted into Yugoslavia, as a base for leaving for Hungary and Romania. About Abba Bridchev, was assigned to cross the border into Transylvania in Romania and organize the parachutists Dov Berger and Baruch Kaminker, but he could not cross the border.
On May 3, 1944, Aryeh Lufescu and Yitzhak Makarsko were parachuted into Romania. Their parachute passed peacefully, but they were caught and arrested two days later during routine inspection.
At the end of April 1944, Dan Lanner landed in Goritza, Slovenia, near the Italian border. He was a member of the partisans and was active in the collection of intelligence, which he, along with their requests for assistance, transferred to British headquarters. Dan directed British pilots for bombing purposes in the area. And later crossed the border into Austria, accompanied by partisans, in the area of Villar and Klagenfurt, from there to Droberg and around Graz. With them, dealt with sabotage on the train lines. In one of the operations, he was captured and taken prisoner. Luckily, he managed to escape. In October 1944, after a German attack in his area, he retreated with the partisans southward to the territory of Yugoslavia and from there he was transferred by plane to Bari, Italy.
On May 15, 1944, Enzo Sereni, in the occupied part of Italy, fell far from his goal. As far as is known, he fell immediately after landing, in the hands of a German unit, he was sent to the Dachau camp and killed. However, the news of a parachutist from Eretz Israel encouraged the spirits and stirred up the imagination among the prisoners of the camp (David Por, "Paratroopers of Hope", MASHAV, 1995) On June 4, 1944, the British, near the city of Arad in Romania, dropped Shaike Dan Tartchenberg In the beginning of July, Dov Berger and Baruch Kaminker landed in Romania, where Hannah Szenes, Yoel Palgi, Peretz Goldstein and Yona Rozen, who were supposed to cross the border to Hungary with the help of the Yugoslav partisans, waited three months to leave. In the meantime, Hungary was occupied by the German army and the conditions in it changed completely.
It was no longer an invasion of a metropolis, but an occupied land. Hannah Szenes was trapped after the border crossing, and as a Hungarian citizen she was brought to trial, sentenced to death and executed. Yoel Rosen did not cross the border after it became clear that his picture and plan had fallen into the hands of the Hungarian security services. Yoel Palgi and Peretz Goldstein crossed the border into Hungary and were arrested after their arrival in Budapest. Peretz Goldstein was sent to a concentration camp and was killed while Yoel Palgi succeeded in escaping and hiding in Budapest until it was liberated by the Red Army. In the summer of 1944, the Red Army captured Romania and Bulgaria. The parachutists who were on missions in these countries began to return to Cairo.
On September 15, 1944, Rafi Reiss, Zvi Ben-Ya'akov and Haim Hermesh, landed in the British liaison missions to the Slovak partisans who had been in the Banska-Bystrica enclave in Slovakia and hoped to use them as a starting point for infiltration into Hungary and Romania. They were joined by Haviva Reik, who arrived on September 18, 1944 with an American plane that was placed in the area, and later joined Abba Berdichev, who also arrived in the same way. They helped organize the Jewish refugees who had gathered in the area and succeeded in helping the Allied pilots who had abandoned their planes over enemy territory to reach safety. In a German attack on their base in the mountains - were caught, except for Haim Hermesh. Haviva Reik and Rafi Reiss were murdered on 20 November 1944. Abba Berdichev and Zvi Ben-Yaakov were transferred to the Mauthausen camp, where they were murdered at the end of December 1944.
In addition to the group of paratroopers, organized through the coordination system of the "secret cooperation" with the British, there were Palestinian volunteers who carried out missions behind the enemy lines and in the occupied countries - on their own initiative.
Among them were Dr. Israel Maharik, a physician who had parachuted many times in Yugoslavia to take care of Tito's partisans. The last time he was wounded. At the end of the war he received the "Tito Decoration" for his activity. Karl Kahane, parachuted in early 1944, a single in Albania, contacted an English force that landed on the coast and lost contact with them and led them to the partisans, with whom he remained to fight the Germans who had retreated from Greece. Yechiel Kasp and Benjamin Geffner, who volunteered in Italy for missions behind the lines and rescued Allied POWs and Jews from northern Italy to occupied southern Italy held by the Allies.
Yechiel Kasp was the Palestine volunteer who was decorated with the "Excellent Service Medal" - the highest in the war, and was killed in one of these operations. Captain Adolf Rabinovitch was a Palestine student who had enlisted at the beginning of the war in Britain, fell seven times in France, and was captured and executed for the seventh time.
The Paratroopers' activity had two aspects in the first place:
One was related to the general war effort, and the other was to help the Jews, save them and prepare them for Zionism.
The mission of the paratroopers was a relatively small operation, within the range of the British special operations in the occupied countries. The political, intelligence and planning effort invested in it was beyond its operational scope. The main importance of the paratroopers' mission remained in its great symbolism.
The Jewish Brigade
The Brigade was established in the fall of 1944 and became the largest Jewish unit established in the British Army. A brigade that was a symbol, a national-Jewish flag, and a fight against the Nazi enemy, headed by a Canadian Jewish commander - Brigadier Levi (Ernst Frank) Benjamin and Israeli commanders.
The brigade was composed of the regiments of the British Regiment, auxiliary units and auxiliary because of the high political sensitivity involved in its establishment and operation, coordinated at the level of the government and the General Staff in London.
The brigade's training was held in Burg el-Arab, west of Alexandria. Where the three battalions were concentrated (see details below) and the establishment of brigade units began. In early November 1944 she landed in Italy and was assigned to winter training in Puji, south of Rome, until the end of February 1945.
In early March 1945, the brigade was brought to the front in the Alfonsina region of northern Italy. For the first time in this war, Jews fought against the Germans, as part of a Jewish unit and under a Jewish flag. Its operational capabilities, the professional level of its commanders, and the enthusiasm of its soldiers - led to a more western position, in the region of Brizigla-Panza, in a hilly and more difficult terrain.
After controlling the area, between its front positions and the Sieno River, it participated in crossing the river north, establishing the bridgehead, conquering targets and advancing following the retreating German paratroopers, in the course of battles against the German rear guard. Its operation as part of the Allied attack in northern Italy ended on 14 April 1945 and was a great success. Despite its modest share, there was appreciation for its military capabilities at the appointed headquarters. In July 1945 the brigade moved to Belgium, and later to Holland. Its members were concerned with the security and supervision of German POWs, until the transfer of roles to the Dutch and Belgian armies. In addition to the fighters from Eretz Israel, about 350 Jewish conscripts from England joined the brigade.
On May 1, 1946, the liquidation order was reached, and at the end of May the brigade was assembled in Ghent, Belgium, and the process of liberation began on July 9, 1946. On July 9, 1946, Beyond its contribution on the battlefield, the Brigade will remember its two contributions to the future of the Jewish people: The first is to reach out to She'erit HaPleita in Europe, to inspire its recovery and to direct it to the Land of Israel. In the summer of 1945, the Jewish soldiers, proud of the symbol of the Star of David on their sleeve, were deployed throughout Europe. They worked in the DP camps, operated the escape stations, encouraged and encouraged the thousands of Holocaust survivors, and prepared the masses of refugees through the Hahayal parking lot in Treviso, northern Italy, and from there to the ports from which they sailed to Palestine.
The Jewish units provided the organizational and logistics infrastructure, the "Bericha" and "Ha'apala". Members of the Jewish Brigade enabled the Bericha to move between the occupied areas of Austria and those in Germany. They were the ones who brought the immigrants to the ships, and they supplied the ships with food, medicines, life jackets, fuel, and all the other items needed for the voyage.
In their actions, the fighters, by the initiative and resourcefulness of individual officers and soldiers, saw a national-state mission. With the dismantling of the Brigade, its soldiers organized the "Kfilim" operation, while some remained in Europe to deal with the "Bricha" and in their place they immigrated to Israel in their soldiers' uniforms and certificates, Holocaust survivors.
And its contribution to the military development of the Hebrew defensive force and the establishment of the IDF, the knowledge and experience of its fighters, areas of activity, professional knowledge and military thought, on subjects that can not be purchased under underground conditions.
The 55th Battalion - The First Battalion
On November 13, 1942, the 1st Jewish Infantry Regiment of the Palestine Regiment was established in the center of the country: 14, 16, 18, 2, 20.
The first battalion commander was Lot. Voice. Duggan, who was replaced by Major P. P. Grauss.
In February 1944 the battalion was hastily transferred to Egypt. The soldiers understood, without being told explicitly, that the reason for their transfer to Egypt was political rather than military. The British preferred to distance the battalion from Palestine out of concern for the ongoing security in the Land of Israel, should the partition plan be published.
During the trip, the soldiers waved a national flag demonstratively. The battalion was concentrated in the area of the Suez Canal and remained there until the establishment of the Jewish Brigade, while serving as guard duty in the Tel al-Kabir and other camps, hoping that the battalion would train in a concentrated manner. The Jewish Agency's Political Department demanded that the soldiers and officers in the battalion show restraint, and in May 1944 Shertok visited the battalion and was impressed by the atmosphere of disintegration in the battalion because of the decline in their self-esteem. The establishment of a brigade to take an active part in the war.
On September 20, 1944, the establishment of the Brigade was published. The political action in establishing the Brigade remained an achievement, the most important of which was its symbolism. The First Battalion did not undergo battalion-level training before the establishment of the Brigade. In October 1944, when all the battalions were assembled in the Burj al-Arab camp in Egypt, training forces were dispatched to the battalion from outside, and officers and officers were sent to the battalion, Many Kim were sent to courses. The regiment's regiment as the first line regiment was reorganized, an auxiliary company and a command company were formed and weapons were poured into them that had not been given to them.
In November 1944 the battalion, in the framework of the Brigade, moved to Fiuggi, Italy, where it entered a vigorous training regimen and participated in a formative exercise. The motivation and morale in the battalion increased.
At the beginning of March 1945, the battalion moved northward to the Alfonsina section. His entry into the front took place two months before the end of World War II in Europe. For the first time in this war, Jews fought the Nazis as part of a Jewish formation and under a Jewish flag. The members of the battalion were the entrance to the front line, the end point of a protracted process, mainly a struggle for their right to reach this moment, and to participate as Palestinian Jews initially in defending their country and then destroying their enemy. The battalion entered the front, which had been stable for months, since the Allied summer offensive had been halted south of the Lombardy plains.
On March 5, 1945, the battalion left for the line of his line north of the village. The ground in the sector was flat and open. The German enemy in front of them continued to fight stubbornly. The Germans were entrenched in their positions and British artillery fire reduced their foreign activities.
The no-man's-land between the forces was mined. The activity was typical of the routine of the line: patrols, mortar fire and artillery. At the entrance to the line a round was set for each battalion to spend twelve days on the line itself and then six days as a rear battalion on the alert for counter-attacks. On March 17, 1945, the First Battalion was replaced by the Second Battalion on the front. The Alfonsina area was relatively quiet against an enemy of an average level, which was intended to gradually put the infantry on operational missions and give its commanders and soldiers combat experience.
On March 24, 1945, the brigade was transferred to the 10th Corps command. The First Battalion moved from a flat plain to an area of mountainous and fragmented nature. The whole area was wildly mined. Between the British and the German, the Sanyo River was separated by a narrow valley. The enemy against whom the battalion was stationed was the 4th German Paratroop Division, composed of young volunteers with improved equipment and automatic weapons. In light of the day, the battalion's activity was mainly artillery, and at night there were tours, which were often involved in clashes and casualties. In April 1945, Habima actress Hanna Rovina visited the front. Another visit was Shertok's.
In April 1945, the Allies began the final and decisive offensive in Italy. The infantry's mission was to cross the Sanyo, to carry out an attack, as a diversion to the main effort of the Poles, and to take control of the ridges to the north of Sennio opposite its section. On the night of April 11, 1945, during the course of the day the infantry advanced north to Sanyo, the battalion took patrols to the north of the river. The patrols discovered mines and ammunition dumps scattered in positions prepared by the enemy but did not encounter forces that apparently retreated at night On April 12, 1945, the battalion crossed the Sniwa River and joined the advance northward, moving in the left flank of the Jewish Quarter, west of the Second Battalion. The next day, on April 13, the regiment arrived early in the morning.
On 14 April 1945, the battalion's fighters were hit by German mortar fire. On April 15, 1945, the regiment was brought back to rest south of Sennio, in the region of Brizigla, where he met the other infantry battalions. The soldiers were told they had been removed from the front for a two-day rest. In fact, the deceased lengthened beyond what had been expected, and the Chayil ended its role in the Allied offensive, feeling the frustration of the sudden amputation of participation in the front. And especially the advance north of Sieno.Although the Jewish Brigade barely took part in the attack, its headquarters were highly valued for its military capabilities. The Jewish Brigade ended its combat duty two weeks before the end of the war in Italy.
The week of victory, the surrender of the Germans in Italy on May 2, and their final surrender on August 8, served as a prelude to the new phase of the battalion's life. Unlike the other Allied soldiers, Victory Day was not a holiday for Jewish soldiers and the Jewish people as a whole. In May 1945 the battalion was transferred to the Tarbizio area in Italy, near the border triangle Italy - Austria - Yugoslavia. The battalion settled in a tent encampment in an open area. The battalion served many soldiers whose families perished in the Holocaust. Others tasted the taste of Nazi oppression in their countries of origin before or during the war. Against this backdrop, there were outbreaks of violence against the Germans, which gradually weakened.
Tarbizio was the most important and exciting meeting between the Brigade and Holocaust survivors. In July 1945, the battalion was sent as part of the Brigade to Torani, Belgium. The battalion was left in Belgium and dispersed in various anchors and ports in the Antwerp area to guard the supply depots and distribution centers, dealing with gangs of thieves who connected to the pipeline from Antwerp to Germany and stole fuel from it. At the beginning of November the battalion moved to Holland and was replaced by the Third Battalion. In February 1946 a second round was held and the battalion returned to Belgium. The official employment of the Brigade units was reduced with the transfer of more and more positions in the area to the Dutch and Belgian armies. The soldiers demanded to be released. The British reached a similar conclusion for their own considerations, and began to plan the dismantling of the Jewish units and the release of Hilan from the army.
On May 1, 1946, the order for accelerated discharge and general liquidation reached the soldier, and at the end of May the whole Jewish Brigade was concentrated in Ghent, Belgium, and the process of liberation began. On July 9, 1946, the last group of those released left for the port of Calais en route to Egypt and from there to Eretz Israel.
Battalion 56 - Second Battalion
The second battalion was established at the end of September 1942 and consisted of the companies that were stationed in the Haifa area: 12, 8, 6, 4 and 18 of the company that was still in Sarafand. The companies held guard posts in military installations in and around Haifa. The intensification of relations between the Yishuv and the authorities, and the involvement of the battalion's soldiers in weapons purchases, such as the break-in at the SOE facility on the estate in February 1943, led the British to move the battalion from Libya to Libya. The transfer was justified by alleged military reasons: the intention to use it in operational and semi-operational roles. The volunteers who enlisted in the "Habas" companies from which the battalion was formed enlisted to the slogan of the defense of the Land of Israel and in order to serve in Israel.
The reality of the war has indeed changed since then, especially after Africa was cleansed of the enemy and the Red Army began its advance westward, but the precedent-setting decision provoked ferment in the battalion and appeals to the Haganah and Yishuv institutions for instructions on how to respond to it.
After Shazar and Eliyahu Golomb calmed the unrest in the battalion, he left for Libya on July 6, 1943. During the journey, the soldiers waved national flags demonstratively, protesting their expulsion from the country.
After arriving in Libya, the battalion's soldiers were disappointed and frustrated that not only had they been removed from the Land of Israel, but also in Benghazi they had been given monopolistic guard posts on warehousing and supply stores similar to those in Palestine. The real purpose of their removal became clear to them, and a ferment broke out in the battalion. The British battalion commander, Colonel Best, warned his troops against a revolt that would thwart any chance of changing the battalion's tasks in the future.
In the end, the regiments of the battalion went out to fulfill the guard duty assigned to them, and the continuation of the struggle aimed at the question of the flag as a symbolic expression of national identity.
The flag affair broke out during the holidays. On the eve of Rosh Hashana 5704, the commanders of the companies, all of whom were already Jews from Eretz Israel, turned to Colonel Best and asked to allow the battalion to hoist the Jewish national flag during the holiday. The next day, Best ordered to remove the flags and asked to speak with the soldiers, and when he entered the hall he found him empty without flags, while the soldiers were gathered outside singing "Hatikvah." The next day, The order of the battalion commander to remove him was not implemented.
As a result of the unrest, Colonel Best asked to be released from his position, on the grounds that the battalion had refused to obey his orders, and was in general controlled by political orders coming from Palestine. The demonstrative waving of the flag was accompanied by sharp differences of opinion within the battalion. Under the pressure of the Hebrew officers, the flag was not hoisted on Yom Kippur, with the expectation of receiving instructions from the Jewish Agency's Political Department in Israel regarding its hoofing. An order was issued from the country to raise the flag on Sukkot. Colinol Best, who had obtained information about the planned hoist, warned the battalion against the consequences of another demonstration. The next day, despite the warnings, flags were raised in the residential areas of the companies. As a result, the district commander ordered the detention of the whole battalion.
The next day the ammunition was taken from the soldiers and from the company's warehouses. On October 16, 1943, the battalion transferred responsibility for its guard posts. The next day Colonel Set was called to Cairo.
Following the incident and the consultations held at the headquarters of the Middle East in Cairo in cooperation with the Battalion Commander, the British changed their attitude towards the battalion and decided to give him weapons in accordance with his full standard. But the battalion commander, Bassat, felt that after all the incidents, he would have to insist on ending his job. Colonel Kubit was appointed. The battalion's struggle in the flag affair led to a change in its mission to a more operational mission and to its training accordingly.
The conclusion of the British from the events of the unit struggle over the flag and the symbol was that the loyalty of the Jewish units in the army to the Jewish Agency increased, and the Jewish-national character of the units and their connection to the Land of Israel became stronger.
In November 1943, the battalion ceased to perform guard duties and began to receive auxiliary, regimental, vehicle, and reconnaissance weapons for the companies. At the end of the month, the entire battalion was in El-Abyar and practiced energetically, but after two months of enthusiasm for training the tension returned and the soldiers began to lose their hope of gaining the right to arrive. To the front and to fight the war, and in this atmosphere the rebellious regiment began to develop again.
Nevertheless, at the end of the service period in Kerniika, the second battalion had a trained and trained battalion headquarters, a familiar infrastructure of Pachamim and ready-made battalions, and most of the auxiliary company's platoons were ready and qualified.
Throughout this period Sharett continued to work in the political arena for the establishment of a brigade that would take an active part in the war, and on September 20, 1944, the establishment of the Jewish Brigade was published.
In October, all the battalions were assembled in the Burj al Arab camp in Egypt. This concentration of more than 2,500 volunteers in one place was unprecedented in the history of volunteering. Shertok visited them on his way back from London to Israel, and saw that the soldiers were "in a state of elation." In November 1944 the battalion sailed with the rest of the Brigade to Italy, and set out for the training ground in Fiuggi near Rome. Where the battalion entered an intensive training regimen and took part in the formative exercise that ended the establishment of the Jewish Brigade.
At the beginning of March 1945, two months before the end of the World War in Europe, the regiment moved in the brigade northward toward the front. To the men of the battalion, the entrance to the front line was the end of a protracted struggle for their right to arrive at this moment, and to participate as Palestinian Jews initially in the defense of their country and then in the destruction of their enemy.
The battalion entered the front, which had been stable for months, since the Allied summer offensive had been halted south of the Lombardy plains. In the Allied strategy at this stage of the war, Italy was considered a secondary front, and the main effort was concentrated on the western and eastern fronts.
The role of the southern front was to mobilize as many German forces as possible and prevent their transfer to Western Europe. On March 4, the Second Battalion went through Ravenna to the village of Villanova, where it seized the section of its front line. The battalion was replaced by the Welsh regiment. The ground in the sector was flat and open. The German enemy in front of him still did not see himself defeated, and continued to fight stubbornly. The Germans were entrenched in their positions, but the British artillery fire reduced their foreign activities.
The no-man's-land between the forces, which was crossed by a water channel called Poso and Tiro, was mined. At the entrance to the line a round was set for each battalion to spend twelve days on the line itself and then six days as a rear battalion on the alert for counter-attacks. The activity was typical of the routine of the line: patrols, ambushes, encounters, mortar fire and artillery shelling. On March 7, the battalion suffered its first casualties, an officer and two soldiers wounded by a booby trapped mine. The relatively large ranges between the battalion's positions and enemy positions in this section of the front led to the main activity being carried out by the auxiliary company. On March 11, the Second Battalion was replaced by the Third Battalion and became a reserve battalion.
During the days of rest, the battalion was trained in cooperation with armored corps, and the training was completed with the help of tanks with the help of tanks. On March 17 the battalion returned to the front and replaced the First Battalion. The following week he participated, together with the Third Battalion, in two intensive days of battle. On the first day of March 19, two of the battalion's companies advanced to the Fuso and Trot Canal and were hit by mortar and enemy sniper fire. The two companies suffered casualties and during their rescue the medic Moshe Silberberg was killed after receiving the military medal for the courage and dedication he displayed during the rescue. Yehuda Harari received another military medal for his performance in this battle.
The next day, two regiments of the battalion returned and advanced - this time with tanks and artillery - to the canal. They set up outposts in front of them and the following night they repulsed the German counter-attacks, which stormed the outposts, reached the range of throwing grenades, and fired the danger of the mortars and machine guns of the auxiliary company.
After the two days of the battle, the command of the companies changed, and the English battalion commander Gash took command of the battalion in place of Colonel Kubit. Two days later, three German prisoners who had fled and tried to cross the lines were captured by the soldiers of the battalion.
This was a relatively short period in a relatively quiet area against an enemy of an average level, which was intended to gradually bring the infantry to operational missions and to give its commanders and soldiers combat experience while making progress from light to heavy. Under the direct command of the 10th Corps, and in the next three days replaced the Gorka Brigade that preceded it, and the presence of the Jewish Brigade at the front was published in an official statement by the Allied Command in Italy, He sent her a special greeting, the main test of the Jewish Brigade A still stood in front of her.
In contrast to the flat and open Alfonsina section, there was the section of the new front that the Brigade entered in a mountainous and fragmented nature. The entire area was wildly mined. Between the British and German lines, the Sanyo River separated into a narrow valley. In front of the Jewish Brigade, the 4th German Paratroopers Division, composed of young volunteers with high motivation and improved equipment, was stationed in the area, and all three battalions held sections of the front and there was no rotation between them. Often in encounters and casualties, and were intended to ensure control of the no-man's land and to deprive it of the Germans.In April 1945, the Allies began their last offensive. The part of the Jewish Brigade was modest and lasted for a short period of time, its mission was to cross the Sanyo, to carry out a limited attack as a diversion to the main effort of the Poles, and to take control of the ridges north of Sennio opposite it. The Second Battalion. From the beginning of the month, the battalion's patrol began to inspect the banks of the Senio and find suitable places to cross it.
The second task of the Second Battalion as part of the brigade's offensive was to cross the Sanyo, establish a bridgehead, and take control of a group of houses named Pantaguchi north of the river. The task of conquering them was entrusted to Company D of the battalion, commanded by Uri Shai (Shogorinsky). To prepare for her mission, the company moved from its positions down the ridge to the back slope. Where her people were able to learn from observations and patrol the sector in which they were about to pass. On the night of 9 April 1945, Company D set out, crossed the river, reached the Pantagosi, discovered that it had no enemy and began to dig. At the same time the other regiments were advancing platoons to the embankment on the riverbank to secure the crossing and the company divisions.
By dawn, a disorganized and camouflaged outpost had been set up around the group of houses, without the Germans feeling the quality. That night the soldiers of the Italian Division, the neighbor of the brigade to the west, also crossed the Sienio and tried to conquer the village of Copiano. Their attack with the force of two battalions was repulsed and they retreated back to the south of Sienio. Accordingly, two patrols of Company D were sent to Kufiano, who reported that they had not encountered any suspicious movement or signs of enemy presence. On the morning of April 11, when the commander of the 10th Corps saw that the Italians had been stopped, while the Poles, the neighbors of the Jewish Brigade in the east, were already at the entrance to the town of Castel Bolognese, he ordered the commander of the infantry to continue northward beyond Sanyo.
As a result, Company D in Pataguchi received an order to attack Copiano and extend the bridgehead on the northern side of the Senio, while the rest of the battalion companies crossed the river. By that afternoon, the company had taken control of Copiano and several other houses. As she left her disguised positions, she was discovered by the Germans, who began to bombard her with mortars. On April 12, the second battalion advanced from the top of the bridge in the face of German mortars and machine guns, reached the village of Tora and continued towards the village of Malgano. Before the battalion, a patrol was conducted under the command of the officer Meir Zorea. The tour provided important information about the enemy's deployment in the area, which also helped the Poles, who had advanced east of the brigade and were grateful.
On his performance during the advance north of Sennio, Sore received the decoration of the military cross. The next day, April 13, the Second Battalion continued to advance in the center of the sector to the north. On April 14, the enemy cut off contact with the 2nd Battalion, and patrols were sent several kilometers before the battalion , The Germans were unable to locate any Germans, and the battalion was rounded up to rest south of Sennio in the area of Brizigla, and the soldiers were told that they had been removed from the front for a two-day rest. United States. The prevailing feeling was frustration, the sudden amputation of participation in the front.
At the same time, frustration was accompanied by a sense of satisfaction, which was indeed done, especially from the northward progress of Sennio. Even though the Jewish Brigade barely took part in the attack, its commanding headquarters were highly appraised of its military capabilities.
In May 1945, the battalion was transferred along with the rest of the Brigade to the area of Tarbizio, near the border triangle Italy-Austria-Yugoslavia. The days of Tarbizio marked the beginning of the encounter between the soldiers of the Brigade and Holocaust survivors, which was of even greater historical importance than the encounter with the Germans at the front.
In July 1945, the battalion left Treviso for Torani, Belgium, and later moved to Holland. The men of the battalion were supervising German prisoners.
The detachments were dispersed and accompanied by German POW units who worked in clearing mines and rehabilitating infrastructures in various parts of northern Holland. Towards the end of September, the Dutch gradually began to assume control over the POWs. The battalion concentrated on Eindhoven, where his men kept various installations. The official employment of the Brigade units was reduced with the transfer of more and more positions in the area to the Dutch and Belgian armies. On May 1, 1946, the order for accelerated discharge and general liquidation reached the soldier, and at the end of May the whole Jewish Brigade was concentrated in Ghent, Belgium, and the process of liberation began. On July 9, 1946, the last group of those released left for the port of Calais en route to Egypt and from there to Eretz Israel.
Many of the veterans of the Second Battalion filled key positions in the IDF - Maj. Gen. Mordechai Maklef - the third chief of staff of the IDF, Lt. Gen. Haim Laskov - the fifth chief of staff, Major General Shlomo Shamir, Major General Dan Even, Ben-Gal, General Yehoshafat Harkabi, Major General Israel Yariv, Major General Danny Mat, Maj. Gen. Gideon Schocken, Maj. Gen. Meir Zorea, Brigadier General Yitzhak Bar-On, Brigadier General Yehuda Gavish, Col. Hoter Yishai, Colonel Yosef Eitan, Colonel Mati Dagan, Colonel Reuven Kari, Col. Israel Carmi, Col. Moshe Nahorai, Col. Sanya Sirkin, Col. Shalom Eshet, Col. Yehuda Freher, Colonel Ami Perlin, Colonel Yosef Pressman, Colonel Yehuda Harari, Col. Emanuel Gelber, Col. Zeev Shaham (Zunik), Col. Yochanan Peltz. Many held positions in the police and security forces, in the Foreign Ministry, in local government, and in academia.
The 57th Battalion - the Third Battalion
With the establishment of the Palestine Regiment and infantry battalions in the summer of 1942, the old Baps Company was organized within the First and Second Battalions, and it was determined that the Third Battalion, the Jewish Regiment, would consist of two regiments of recruits trained in Sarafand (22- ) And from the companies that would be mobilized in their wake (later, companies 28-C, 26-D and 30-H). The company was composed of officers and noncoms from the old battalions, and the companies that formed the Third Battalion were isolated and scattered throughout the area, and since they had just completed their basic training in Sarafand, they were employed almost exclusively in guard duty.
Company 22 was parked near the city of Suez, Egypt. It was not until July 1943 that the battalion headquarters began to be established. Company No. 22 was returned from Egypt, and after the first battalion was transferred in February 1944 to Egypt, the 3rd Battalion remained in the country and began to ferment for fear of missing the war.
On the eve of the declaration of the establishment of the Jewish Brigade on September 20, 1944, the battalion received an order to move to Egypt and was the first to reach the assembly area of the Brigade in Burg El Arab, west of Alexandria, and was less trained than the other battalions. Courses.
The regiment's standard was reorganized, as a standard of first-line regiment, and an auxiliary company and a command company formed. The battalion received weapons that it had not previously possessed. In November 1944, the battalion and the entire brigade set sail for Trento, Italy, and from there to the training ground in Fiuggi near Rome. In Fiuggi the battalion entered a vigorous training regimen
And participated in the exercise. At the beginning of March 1945, the battalion moved northward toward the front, on the plains of Lombardy. On March 3, the deployment began and the battalion set out for the village of Roce in the area of Nisn - Alfonsina, in the easternmost section of the front line. The ground in the sector was flat and open.
The German enemy was entrenched in its positions and fought stubbornly. The no-man's-land between the forces was mined. The battalion was under the command of the Eighth Indian Division and served as its back-up battalion.
On March 11 he replaced the Second Battalion with the front line. The activity was typical of the routine of the line: patrols, ambushes and clashes in the no-man's-land between the lines, mortar fire and sometimes artillery shelling. On March 19, two patrols of the Third Battalion, one commanded by the British Jewish officer Tony Van Gelder (who was killed a few weeks later) and the second commanded by Officer Moshe Reinhold (Rinat), took over three positions occupied by the Germans in no man's land. , One of whom was killed by enemy fire during the movement to the battalion positions.
(The next day, March 20, 1945, the Third Battalion took a central part in the day of a preemptive battle, in which the Hahayal and an Indian brigade that operated in a nearby section improved their positions with the help of planes, tanks and artillery. The Third Battalion was to advance to a small village in the no-man's land called La Georgetta, cleanse it from the enemy and set up a post next to it, where the Germans had been captured the previous day. Therefore, when the company's patrols cleared the planned route of mines.
On the day of the battle the company advanced, accompanied by tanks and air and artillery cover, storming the German outpost in the village and capturing it. The company dug into the occupied post and at night was shelled and repelled a German counterattack. On 24 March, the infantry unit completed its part in the maintenance of the line in the Alfonsina area and transferred under the command of the 10th Corps in the Sannio River to a sector of mountainous and fragmented nature against an enemy of the 4th German Paratroopers Division. On April 11, 1945, And set up quickly for an attack across the river, and in the afternoon his first company began crossing the Sanyo as it passed tThe task of the Third Battalion was to conquer the village of Monte-Gabo up the ridge north of Sienio. Although the German paratroopers retreated, progress on the mountain in the face of the determined resistance of the German rearguard was slow and difficult. The battalion stopped at dark and burrowed into a small village of Osano after destroying several resistance rods during the day. Tours that were sent that night identified and destroyed German squads in several houses. The battalion's losses that day were three soldiers and about twenty wounded. The following day, April 12, the battalion's advance was resumed with the help of artillery, the vandalizing of British battery tanks, and the planes that cleared the road from mines.hrough the bridgehead occupied by the Second Battalion.
By midday, the regiment had taken over the whole ridge of Monte-Gavio. The battalion continued to follow the retreating Germans, and in the afternoon took over a village called Monte Kozola two kilometers further north. The retreating German forces succeeded in severing contact, and on April 14 the battalion was assembled together with the Second Battalion and was taken back to rest, south of Sennio in the area of Brizigla .
In May 1945, the battalion, along with the entire Brigade, was transferred to the Tarbesio area in Italy, near the Italy-Austria-Yugoslavia border triangle, and settled in the village of Camporoso. The battalion served many soldiers whose families perished in the Holocaust.
Others tasted the taste of Nazi oppression in their countries of origin before or during the war. Against this background, there were outbreaks in the battalion against Germans. The days of Tarbizio also marked the beginning of the encounter between the soldiers of the Brigade and the survivors of the Holocaust, a meeting that was even more important than the encounter with the Germans at the front.
At the end of July 1945, the infantry was transferred from Treviso to Belgium and the Netherlands, and the third battalion was sent to Torni, Belgium, and later moved to Wassenaar in the Netherlands, where they were deployed in various parts of the Netherlands and supervised units of German POWs who were employed to clear mines and rehabilitate infrastructures. In February 1946 a second round was held and the battalion returned to Holland.
More and more roles in the space were transferred to the Dutch and Belgian armies. On May 1, 1946, the order for accelerated discharge and general liquidation arrived at Hillel, and at the end of May, the infantry was concentrated in Ghent, Belgium, and the process of liberation began. On July 9, 1946, the last group of liberators left the port of Calais en route to Egypt and from there to Palestine.
200 Jewish Field Regiment RA
Established in the fall of 1944, it had three batteries (604, 605, 606) consisting of members of the battery of beach cannons and anti-aircraft batteries converted to field artillery, and a British unit transferred from Malta to complete the devices, De Rothschild, the fifth generation of the British Rothschild dynasty, who founded and commanded the 604 cannon battery) and another 300 British soldiers, with 24 25-pound field guns.
After their landing in Italy, the training of the establishment and consolidation, the battalion moved to the city of Forli in Italy. On March 25, 1945, he arrived at the front, in the area of Brigigla, where the headquarters of the Jewish Brigade was established. From March 27 to April 15, 1945, the battalion assisted the soldiers in the battles of protecting the Sanyo River, covering it during its incursion, hitting targets deep in the enemy and paralyzing German sources of fire. For any German purpose that was discovered, stationary or in motion and in pursuit of escapees.
The battalion was disbanded on 6 August 1946 with the liquidation of the Jewish Brigade.
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The battery of the coastal artillery (heavy artillery).
First of all - as the first volunteer activity of the Jewish community in Palestine. The first British volunteers to the British Army were sent to this unit.
On September 7, 1939, 43 members of the Yishuv were joined by Ya'akov Majidowski, who later became Lt. Col. Meidad, Manos Francki, later Colonel Perat, Yaakov Karelitz, Benjamin Pont, Yosef Shafransky Schaffer, Moshe Bar, (In Hebrew), Asher Noyes, Shimon Stanger, Yaakov Eichel, later Lt. Col. Eshel, Moshe Blecher Baram, Aharonson, later MK Luba Eliav, Ahituv Yoelman, Yehoshua Berman, Danny Langer, Asher Bleicher, Wald, Moshe Weiner.
The battery was designed to protect the shores of the Land of Israel. Was subjected to the 14th Coast Regiment, 14 Coast Regiment R.A, whose headquarters were in the Stella Maris monastery on the Carmel. It included: 7 6-inch (2-foot), 6-inch (6-inch), 6-inch, 6-inch beach guns placed on the western Carmel, 2 at Bat Galim (Ras al-Krum) And 2 at the Kishon estuary.
In the fall of 1941, the Gunda numbered 7 6-inch anti-aircraft guns: 3 - on the Carmel in Stella Maris, 2 in Bat Galim and 2 on the current Kiryat Yam coast to protect the refineries, and 2 double-barrel cannons The seaplane at the entrance to the Haifa port and another bunker positioned at the edge of the breakwater near Acre's Old City wall, to protect against naval attacks and six 90-cm-diameter floodlights, are protected by two-barreled Lewis rocket launchers.
The battery participated in the shooting and the Italian submarine "Shira".
With her discharge in the summer of 1944, her fighters were transferred to the 200th Field Rifle Regiment, which became part of the Jewish Brigade.
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The first Israeli battery for anti-aircraft guns. Lgt. R.A. Btry, R.A.
The unit of anti-aircraft guns was established in the fall of 1941. The unit initially numbered 81 soldiers and later reached 300 soldiers, among them Sergeant Major Rapaport and Avraham Yaffe (later a major general in the Israel Defense Forces.) The volunteers were trained with Italian 20 mm cannons and a heavy anti-aircraft machine gun "Lewis." One artillery battery was attached to a British artillery battalion in Lebanon and Syria, to protect the port in Tripoli, Lebanon, with 75mm cannons and searchlights. The Israeli battery, number 1, protected the Haifa area and knocked down three enemy aircraft (as well as transporting arms and ammunition from the military authority to the Haganah and the Irgun), the Naharayim power plant, the potash plants at the Dead Sea and the Tel Nof and Ramat David airports.
In 1943, the weapon was changed to 16 modern Beaufort 40mm antiaircraft guns and 2 20 mm cannons, and in July training began on moving cannons and many soldiers were sent to driving courses. A British Jewish commander named Rosenberg, and from there moved to the island of Cyprus to protect Famagusta and the Nicosia airport, one of which was sent to Castellirus Island in the Aegean Sea, and in October 1944 the unit left Cyprus and moved to Burg El-Arab to join the brigade. A Jewish officer from Palestine, with Jewish officers from Czechoslovakia and South Africa.
Ports Control and Transportation Company No. 1
The company was established at the end of 1942. It consisted mainly of adult volunteers, people transferred to it from the infantry and artillery units, and from the back of the remnants of the companies' companies. In December 1942, the unit was sent to Basra and from there its people were sent to ports and train stations in Kut and Basra in Iraq and Abadan, Kormashah, Ahwaz, Kharabad, Bandar-Shpur and Tehran. The unit's function was to handle the transport of cargo by train and convoy along the long route and to supervise its passage.
It was a small, scattered unit in a non-Jewish environment and for most of that period was the only Hebrew unit in the areas where its members were stationed. Several members of the pioneering movements, mostly Russian speakers, served in the company with the encouragement of the Aliyah Bet movement and the movement, hoping to establish contact with members of their movements who had fled Poland to the Asian regions of the Soviet Union. Hope was disappointed and the unit failed to establish ties with the Jews of the Soviet Union. However, it played an important role in fostering ties with the Jews of Iran and Iraq. At the end of the war, the supply route through Iran and Iraq ceased to operate, and the unit ended its role. The last company commander was Lieutenant Moshe Friedrich Lester. In January 1946 the last of its members was returned to Israel and it was dismantled.
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Contact Departments 82, 83 (Athletes)
Department of Communication 82,83 L.M.Setn, 7 L. of C. Signals, R.C.S. Syrian liaison officers who managed to get out of Greece were established in Syria. Were part of the supply line liaison unit. of C.7 of the tenth camp. Participated in the Syrian campaign and became part of the Ninth Army's Aramaic liaison unit. In May 1942, half of the camp was transferred to the eighth camp in Egypt. In June 1942, after the withdrawal in North Africa, she was transferred to Iraq. Its members were fighting for the establishment of a Hebrew company of all the Palestinian servicemen in the liaison units.
Equipment Corps Units R. A. O. C.
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In 1942, at the urging of the Jewish Agency, the headquarters in Cairo assembled the professionals and together with new recruits established the first Hebrew company in the equipment corps.
The first Israeli company, C.A.C., was established in March 1942. The company's name changed to 535 and then to 327. Its commanders were Israeli officers and engineers: Lee Rothenberg, Yevgeny Bushansky and Joe Creeden, all of whom received officer ranks immediately upon enlistment, and then were sent to short courses for officers, armaments and workshops. At the end of their service, these officers (respectively) reached the rank of major and lieutenant colonel.
Later, nine companies were formed - Company 514 - which included many girls of the A.T.S. And managed the equipment warehouses near Haifa, 528 Company under the command of Avigdor Yaakov Tal (Rosenthal), company 530, which was transferred under pressure from the British headquarters to Cyprus and then in Malta, Company 553 (in Benghazi-Libya), Company 554, Company 555 (Egypt) Tripoli - Libya), Company 559 and Company 560 (Egypt). The nature of the work in huge warehouses and in the workshops made it very difficult to maintain the company framework. The Corps volunteers served in Palestine (as in the Bodri Sarar ammunition depots near Hulda, where they were engaged in mines), Egypt, Libya, and Cyprus, and later also in Italy. Some arrived in Greece and some of them were captured. Few were sent to the Far East.
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The factory units R.E.M.E
Unit 313, Unit 319, Unit 329, Unit 527 (served in the large ammunition depots in the Tura caves), Unit 529, Beit-Nabala base. In the middle of 1942, the establishment of Jewish units in the Ordnance Corps began. In 1943 more than 600 Jewish volunteers enlisted in Egypt and Libya enlisted in the Ordnance Corps. In this corps, women also served as shopkeepers. By 1944, five companies had been established. Two companies operated for a while in Libya, one in Egypt and two in Haifa. These companies have a high professional level, including armor and artillery repairs, in which they acquire knowledge and experience in various types of weapon repairs, at the highest level of the workshop and the rehabilitation plant.
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Engineering units
Engineering Company 738
In the summer of 1940, it was decided to establish an Israeli unit of the Engineering Corps, one of the volunteers who enlisted in this corps from the beginning of the war and served in British engineering units in Palestine. In October 1940, the company, called the "Artisan Works Coy" (R.E. 738), was assembled in Gedera, with 200 Jews and 20 Arabs. The company commander was Major Karan. There were five Jewish officers in the company, and for the first time the command was Hebrew. The company overtook the sector not to hoist a Hebrew flag by defining it as a "faction flag" by introducing the emblem of the RE. And numbered 738 into the Star of David. The men who had enlisted in the Engineering Company were building professionals. At first they were employed mainly in tasks that were civilian in character, such as the construction of the camps, but later on, they were also trained in combat engineering missions.
Upon completion of her training, the company was transferred to Haifa and split into two: half of it was sent to the Galilee to work on fortifying the northern border, and the other half remained in Haifa. In August 1941, the Arab soldiers were transferred from the company to Engineering Company 740, which was working in northern Syria to build fortifications.
In April 1941, 738 was transferred to Egypt and was engaged in the construction of military camps. At the beginning of June 1941, she was sent to El Alamein to build a line of fortifications. This line became the stop line, and in the El Alamein system in the summer of 1942, the company was operated as a field engineering company and cleared minefields. Within three weeks the company had cleared a field of 30,000 mines, with no casualties.
Its commander was an Israeli officer, Major Yitzhak Rappaport. During the liberation of Libya from the Italians and the Germans, the company reached the Jewish community in Tripoli and Benghazi and helped rebuild the synagogues destroyed by the Germans and restore the Jewish cemetery that was desecrated.
In August 1944, the company left for Italy. She belonged to the Eighth Army and moved north with him. It dealt with the removal of mines and the training of roads that had been sabotaged by the Germans, including the construction of a bridge under heavy fire on the River Lamone in northern Italy. One of her unusual activities was the transfer of a group of partisans to her missions beyond the lines through a minefield. In return, the group of partisans brought back a group of Jews in a larger convoy of Italians.
After the fighting ended, the company settled in the Venice area of Italy, where it cared for the Jewish survivors. In the winter of 1944, the unit was engaged in saving the famous Justinian mosaics in Ravenna by building sand dunes around the churches to prevent flooding in the overflowing river water.
The company's soldiers, who were veterans of the volunteers, were also early to be released, and in February 1946 the company was disbanded.
Engineering Company 870
In July 1941, the company 870 Mechanical Equipment Coy, R.E. Which was intended to operate mechanical engineering equipment. The company's process of Judaization was gradual: at first it served British soldiers and the command was British.
Afterward, Jewish officers were appointed, British soldiers were withdrawn, and eventually the command was also Jewish. This process ended only in the summer of 1944. In September 1941, the company was sent to Syria. Teams of its soldiers and mechanical equipment were sent from Syria to carry out missions throughout the Middle East, and in January 1944 the company was dispersed from Tripoli in Libya to Iraq, including Cyprus. Its members were clearing snow and opening roads in the mountains of Lebanon, breaking roads, and preparing routes and airports in Iraq and Palestine. Among the 300 members of the unit were still a number of British officers and NCOs, most of whom had passed through it in 1944. At the end of 1944, this scattered unit began to concentrate in Egypt and part of it took part in the invasion of the Aegean islands.
In early 1945, the company was returned to Syria, except for a platoon that remained in Egypt. The company's soldiers played an important role in securing the Jewish neighborhood of Beirut during the anti-French riots that took place in the city in June 1945. The company also helped transport illegal immigrants from Syria to Palestine. In August 1945, the company headquarters was sent together with one platoon to Iraq. She settled in the Shaybah area, and the department was employed in various jobs in the area of the Abadan refinery. With the liquidation of the Iraqi and Persian command, the department dealt with the evacuation of mechanical engineering equipment from Iraq to bases in Israel and Egypt. In December 1945, part of the company in Shiva was dismantled, after the number of those who had been released and on a homeland leave increased, so that it was no longer able to function. One division of the company continued to exist in Palestine until the end of June 1946.
Engineering Company
In September 1941, Artisan Works Coy was established. R.E. In April 1942, 200 Jewish soldiers from Engineering Company 740 were transferred to the company as part of the separation of the mixed companies. This transfer ended the affair of the mixed companies of Jews and Arabs. The company was initially engaged mainly in the construction of camps that were civilian in character. But later on it was also used in combat engineering tasks, such as the construction of fortifications in Israel and Egypt. In January 1943, the company was sent to Tobruk to rebuild the ruins of the port and other vital installations, such as the construction of a military hospital.
In August 1944, the company was transferred to Egypt and began training for its departure overseas. In September 1944 the company reached Taranto and from there went to the Royal Engineers' School in Kapua. During this period close to 60 additional soldiers from the Hebrew engineering units in Italy were annexed to it. In October it became known that the company would be reorganized as a field company of the Jewish Brigade. For this purpose, the commandant Noah Atlas was replaced, due to his older age, who was transferred to command of Engineering Company 739, and replaced by his deputy, Aharon Cohen. Now the company began intensive training for joining the brigade, and was now called Field Engineering Company 643.
Engineering Company 544
In the summer of 1942, the Electrical and Mechanical Company was established. 544, which included a little more than 200 men under the command of Major Bassan. The company was sent to Egypt, operated in fragmentation, and was responsible for the maintenance of the British camps in the Delta area. In December 1942, the unit was sent to the western desert. Its mission was to restart the British-supplied water supply system during the retreat in May-June 1942. For this purpose, it was split into small groups that were scattered over hundreds of kilometers of the water pipe.
This loneliness became the hallmark of the unit. At the end of January 1943, the company was transferred to Libya, where it was again divided into smaller units and was responsible for the maintenance of the electricity and water supply system in the Kernieka district. At the end of 1944 the company was sent back to Palestine after a long service in the desert. For reasons related to the struggle against the underground organizations, the British decided to remove her from the country and transfer her to Italy. In early 1945 the company reached southern Italy. Most of the company was sent to Naples but its branches went to Rome and the town of Nola. In all three places, its members engaged in the maintenance of electricity, water and hospitals. In February 1946 the company was disbanded.
Engineering Company
In December 1940, Artisan Works Coy was established. R.E. Under the command of Major Karan. The company consisted of recruits and junior officers from Eretz Israel. The company was ostensibly involved with Arabs, but in fact the Jews constituted an overwhelming majority, and the existence of a Jewish officer actually made it into a Hebrew unit. The company was primarily engaged in the construction of the camps, which were civilian in character. During the war, she also trained in combat engineering. In April 1941 she received the equipment of Company 738, which was transferred to Egypt and began to train as an engineering unit. From June 1941, the company worked on building fortifications in the northern border in the Galilee, in the Marjayoun area north of Metula. At the beginning of 1943, the Jewish officer, Meir Tobianski, was appointed commander of the company, which concentrated many of the veteran volunteers who had enlisted in the first months of the war into British units and the cavalry corps.
In August 1943 the company left for Egypt and in October was transferred to Brindisi in Italy. The company remained in this area and engaged in the establishment and maintenance of various permanent facilities. In February 1944 she moved to Naples and worked for months in the maintenance of hospitals in the area. At the beginning of 1944, Major Atlas was appointed commander of the company. In Brindisi, members of the company met with Jewish refugees from Yugoslavia who had been rescued from the island of Wisi. The unit activists divided the territories between them in terms of responsibility for locating Jews and providing them with initial aid. The company assumed responsibility for the space between Ancona and Rimini. The experience she acquired was great, and the level reached it was high and was reflected in the assessment of the appointed commanders. In May 1945, following the Allied victory, the company was transferred to Milan and its environs. In early 1946 she was sent to Israel to disband.
Engineering Company 744
Commander Major Stein. Served in North Africa and engaged in construction activities - such as building the hospital in Tobruk. About 30 percent of the immigrants who had been in Israel between two weeks to a month, before volunteering for the British army, were made unconscious by the Zionists, which caused serious problems in the company to the point of liquidation. Sixty of its members were transferred to Company 738 and about 30 were transferred to the Israeli camouflage company. At the end of 1943 she was transferred from Tripoli to Benghazi.
Engineering Company 745
Company 745 Artisan Works Coy., R.E. Established in the summer of 1942, it was known as "Solel Boneh Company", because its nucleus was a group of Solel Boneh volunteers and Major Haimovitz, one of the company's senior managers. The company began its service in Egypt, and in the summer of 1943 it was transferred from the Suez Canal area to the western desert and was scattered from Tobruk to Tripoli. Its people were building camps, rebuilding bridges, building airports and installing water lines. Toward the end of 1943, the company was returned from Tripoli to Egypt. Before leaving for Italy, she trained in combat engineering. In March 1944 she arrived in Italy and was sent to Naples where she built three military camps and their rehabilitation. At the end of the war, she was employed mainly in the rehabilitation and construction of bridges and the repair of traffic arteries. After the Allied victory she was transferred to Milan and at the beginning of 1946 she was returned to the Middle East in preparation for its dissolution and liberation.
Camouflage Company 1
Company M.E. Camouflage Coy. Formed in Helwan near Cairo, its commander was Major Eliezer Aharonov. At the beginning of August 1942 she was transferred under the command of the Eighth Army and operated on the Al-Alamein line. She transferred camouflage courses to various units of the Eighth camp and built demons designed to deceive the enemy, prior to the opening of the attack in El Alamein in late October 1942.
After the conquest of Libya, she was concentrated in the port of Tripoli and engaged in various camouflage activities, such as the construction of bridges, artillery batteries and Sherman tanks. In November 1943 she was transferred from Alexandria, Egypt to Taranto, Italy, trained in Fiuggi and was sent to Lucara under the command of the Eighth Camp, from Monte Cassino to the Adriatic coast.
Its members operated in small groups in various units along the eastern front line, building artillery, tanks, bridges, loading beaches, and landing exercises.
In Italy the company adopted the Jewish refugees in Bavaria, collected and brought them food and clothing. The company remained in Italy until the end of the war. In early 1946 it was dismantled.
Field Engineering Company 643
It was the only Hebrew field engineering unit established in the British Army and was founded two days after the declaration of the establishment of the Jewish Brigade on September 21, 1944.
Its nucleus consisted of members of the 743 engineering company who were already in Italy. Major Aharon Cohen, a British-born British officer who studied in London and volunteered for the army at the war's level, served as an officer in the Engineering Company of the 11th Armored Brigade in England, and served in the Israel Defense Forces at the Engineering Corps base in Muaskar, Egypt, 743). On September 15, 1944, the unit arrived at Taranto and from there went to the Royal Engineers' School in Kapua to undergo training in a field engineering company. The company absorbed other soldiers from the Hebrew engineering companies in Italy.
In January 1945, the entire unit went to the training camps of the infantry unit in Puji, south of Rome, and underwent a series of training in mountainous areas on the subject of infantry and engineering The Haganah's engineering company split up: each of the two infantry battalions on the front line received its platoon, while the third platoon remained in the vicinity of the village. This department was responsible for maintaining the deputies and staffing the points of demand in the bridges in the brigade's area.
On March 24, 1945 she moved with the brigade to the Brizigla section. Some of them were engaged in training and the rest were in the maintenance of the few dirt roads in the area, which were mostly done at night, because they were subject to enemy observation. In April 1945, the Allies began their decisive offensive in Italy. On the night of April 9, 1945, the company D, the company of the Haganah, was to take over the Sanyo, to carry out a limited attack as a diversion to the main thrust of the Poles, and to take control of the ridges north of Sennio, From the second battalion to cross the Senio and set up a bridgehead on its northern bank, and an engineering company's engineering tour followed the company to the river to find a suitable place to lay a bridge.
Part of the detachment was clearing the mines laid by the Germans in the area of the crossing and along the road up the ridges north of the river. Progress was slow and difficult. On the following day, April 12, the Third Battalion regrouped with Plassim, who cleared the route of the mines, and after crossing the Sanyo, the company was sent on April 28 to build a bridge on the river And went on to the Netherlands to lay the Bailey bridges on the Rhine in the Arnhem area, and in June 1946 the company completed its missions in Belgium and the Netherlands and sailed with the rest of the Brigade to Egypt, Prior to liberation in Palestine.
Port Operations Company
Unit 1039 Port Operating Coy was established at the end of 1940, to operate ants on the axis of Allied forces advancing in the western desert. Its members were recruited from the workers of the Haifa port and included many of the immigrants from Salonika. In March 1941, the unit, which numbered about 440 people, was sent to Egypt and from there, shortly afterwards, to Greece. Its people worked in the ports of Piraeus, Elkis and Volos, unloading the ships that brought supplies to the British Expeditionary Force. During the withdrawal and evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Greece, many of the unit's soldiers were captured by the Germans. Others remained in Greece and joined in part with the Greek partisans, and a few managed to escape and form the nucleus of the renewed unit that was established in Egypt and carried it there.
(Attached is the diary of the company commander - OC Capt. A. W. Carnie RE) a link is missing
At the end of July 1941, the British re-established the unit. They transferred to it the remains of the 606th Company, which had been rescued from Greece and Crete, and had also recruited more sailors in the country. At first the company was sent to work in the port of Aqaba. In the summer of 1942 the company was sent to Egypt, and from there it advanced in the fall, following the eighth camp, to the ports of Tobruk and Benghazi. In May 1943, the company was returned from Tripoli to Egypt, and unloaded ships in the ports of the Suez Canal. At the end of May the company was transferred to Israel and began to work in the Tel Aviv port, with most of its time devoted to training. In November 1943, the unit received personnel reinforcements, and then returned to Egypt to train landing missions for a possible invasion of the Balkans.
At the beginning of 1944, the unit was awarded the Hebrew command. When the planned landings in the Aegean Sea were delayed, the company split up and its departments were sent to work in the ports of Port Said, Suez and Benghazi. The rest, as well as reinforcements from the infantry battalions, continued to train in Ismailia. Later, additional groups were sent to work in the ports of Alexandria and Tripoli, prior to the invasion of Greece in the fall of 1944. One platoon of the company was initially attached to the British invasion force and operated on the islands of Rhodes and Rhodes.
Mapping Company 524 R.E.
In February 1942, following the capture of a field unit for measurements, which was a secret unit, closed to foreigners, a shortage of suitable British soldiers was established. In February 1942, it was decided to change the procedure and recruit skilled and suitable Jews from Palestine. The company initially operated in Egypt and North Africa and later in Italy and the Middle East. The company had a mobile printing shop with maps and even textbooks for the schools established by the Jewish units in Italy. Some 300 Jewish soldiers served in the company.
For more details, see the article – a link is missing
Maps storage units
The Palestine Maps Unit was established in Jerusalem at the end of 1942 under the command of the Israeli officer of Brest, and was sent to Al-Ahwaz in Persia, where it operated until the summer of 1943, when the tenth camp moved to India. Unit 18 commanded by Lieutenant Kolinsky arrived early in Iraq in early 1943 and split between Baghdad, Mosul and Kirkuk. Units 15, 16 and 17 served in Eretz Israel and later on 15 and 16 moved to Egypt under the command of Lieutenant Tzvi Padbo and served in North Africa. Unit 20 was the first Hebrew unit to arrive in Sicily in August 1943, and its base was transferred to Italy, together with Unit 16, when the Map Storage Unit remained in Benghazi.
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The Bomb Disposal Unit
The unit was established in the summer of 1940 and opened to volunteers from the IDF. Over time, with the arrival of bomb disposal units from the UK who specialized in their role during the battle for Britain, the diggers returned to the original units. In December 1940, the unit left for Alexandria with 35-30 people. The unit operated mainly in the Alexandria area and the Suez Canal. Its job was to dismantle enemy bombs that did not explode. In the summer of 1941, the unit was dismantled. Some soldiers continued to serve in bomb disposal units, and others were assigned to various positions in the Engineering Corps in Egypt, not in Hebrew units.
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Transport Company 462
462 General Transport Coy. Was established in April 1942, on the basis of veteran soldiers of the transport company 179.
In its early days, the construction of the fortification line at El Alamein was used. At the beginning of June she was sent to the area of Alexandria, to reorganize.
Here Major Harry Yaffe, commander of the Transport Company 179, and Major Israel Boganov, commander of the 462th Transport Company, replaced them. Under the command of Jaffe, a Jew who emigrated from South Africa, the company was sent to Beirut in June 1942, but the British army's collapse in the Western Desert at the end of June and the advance of the African Corps led by Rommel to El Alamein led to a British decision Alamein.
The company led an Australian division from Syria, as reinforcements to the Eighth camp in El Alamein and participated in the fighting against Rommel in late June and early July 1942.
Even before the drivers arrived at the front, they were bombed from the air and evacuated their first casualties. During July, the company included three dead and fifteen wounded.
Company 462 operated in the Western Desert throughout the battles in El Alamein and after the British offensive in October 1942, participated in the pursuit of the "Eighth Camp" after the German enemy retreated to Libya, and the transport of ammunition to the troops.
Its members were veterans of the Eretz Israel volunteers, and the period during which they served on the Al-Alamein front made them veterans of their feelings. In those days, the unit became a source of pride and example for other transport units. It was the first Hebrew company to be sent to Malta as part of preparations for landing in Sicily.
On April 29, 1943, they sailed from Alexandria aboard the ship Erinpura, in a convoy of 27 ships, 334 officers and soldiers of the company (20 of the unit sailed on another ship). Except for her commander, Major Jaffe, the company did not know that the destination of the convoy was Malta.
On Saturday, May 1, 1943, the convoy of ships was attacked by 12 German planes. The Arinfora was hit and sank quickly in four minutes. The air attack continued, and the German planes fired machine guns at the survivors in the water around the ship.
A short time later, darkness fell, which made rescue operations difficult, but prevented the continuation of the air strike.
Half of the survivors were assembled by the minesweeper "Santa" and half by the Greek destroyer "Adrias." 139 The soldiers of the company perished in the disaster (see details below).
Many others were injured and did not return to the unit. The survivors received a maternity leave for recovery.
In July 1943, Regiment regrouped in the Sarafand camp and absorbed new volunteers. In September 1943 she was sent to Italy and landed at the head of the beach in Salerno, where she evacuated the unloading platforms and pushed supplies, ammunition and fuel to the fighting units on the front. When the front stopped on the Volturno line, the company was taken back and employed to evacuate the unloading beaches from the equipment. The unit operated within the framework of the Tenth Corps.
As the front advanced northward, the unit was still left behind on the Salerno coast. The company commander, Yafe Yaffe, moved to command a unit of British tank transporters, and was replaced by his deputy, Dov Shemer (Morak).
It was not until August 1944 that the unit was removed from Salerno, and advanced to the vicinity of Rome and at the beginning of 1945, to the north, to the area of Florence-Livorno. As the routine employment continued, the unit lost its military and disciplinary tension, causing internal friction between veterans, survivors of the sinking disaster, and the new command echelons. At the initiative of Eliyahu Cohen (later Major General Ben-Hur), several dozen veterans of the unit were transferred to other units.
In addition to her military duties, the company's fighters took part in locating Jews and providing them with assistance. The activists of the Jewish units divided the area and the responsibility. Almost every unit was established with a training point, which the unit was responsible for maintaining and supervising.
The company took over the Florence-Livorno area and held the training of Magenta near the city of Milan. In the wake of the last offensive in April 1945, 462 was promoted to Bologna, where it was part of the 13th transport column. Some of its members joined the convoy, which led the Allied Command Mission, to the German surrender. After the victory the company was transferred in early June, from Bologna to Milan, and its platoons were sent to Turin and Genoa.
In the company 462, a group of activists, headed by Eliyahu Cohen, who played a central role in the organization of the illegal immigration from Italy after the war, was the first company to be dismantled in Italy.
In August 1945, a detachment of younger soldiers was transferred to the transport company 468, and in October the rest of the company sailed to Egypt and from there its soldiers left in the coming months to be released from the army in Palestine.
To the list of casualties of the Hebrew Company for Transport 462 Coy GT - click here! (missing limk!)
Transport Company 650
Company 650, 650 General Transport Coy. R.A.S.C. Was the last Hebrew transport company to be established in the fall of 1942. Its commander was a British Jew named Major Charkham, and his deputy was Shmuel Ne'eman (who was also the Hagana commander) who replaced him in April 1944.
The unit was parked in Palestine and carried convoys from Haifa to Iraq. In these convoys, emissaries of Mossad L'Aliya Bet, Haganah and Hehalutz were smuggled to Iraq, as well as a wireless transmitter to Enzo Sereni, who served as Mossad emissary from Baghdad and served the pioneering underground in Iraq until the War of Independence. On their way back to Palestine, the company convoys smuggled immigrants from Iraq, most of them Jewish deserters from the Free Polish Army commanded by General Anders, who came from the Soviet Union through Iran and Iraq to Palestine and Egypt and then to the Italian front. In September 1943 the company went to Italy and took part in the landing of the Allies at the head of the coast in Salerno.
It was the second transport unit that landed in Salerno, and in its early days dealt primarily with leading the Corps of the 10th Corps to and from the front line. Another part of the unit was transporting ammunition and other supplies from the Salerno unloading seaports to more forward bunches. With the retreat of the Germans to the Volturno line north of Naples, and the stabilization of the front there, the unit's tasks changed. Company 650 was now engaged in a routine evacuation of the ants and occasionally transporting bridge materials to engineering units of the fifth camp.
In the spring offensive of May-June none of the Hebrew transport units participated, except for part of the company 650 commanded by Ne'eman, who landed at the head of the beach in Anzio, south of Rome, and took part in the battles that took place there.
Before the attack on the Gothic line, the company was promoted northward. The unit's operatives divided the liberated areas in Italy in terms of responsibility for locating Jews and providing them with initial aid. The company took over the Florence-Livorno area. Toward the end of 1944, the company arrived in the wake of the Allied summer offensive. Where she worked mainly with the help of the engineering units in the transportation of fortification materials and bridging equipment and in routine local functions. The commander of the unit, Shmuel Ne'eman, completed his post and was replaced by another Jewish officer, Eddy Kahanov, who was one of the veteran officers of the Israeli army. In April 1945, following the Allied last summer offensive, the unit was operated as part of the 86th transport column.
At the beginning of the progress she was transferred to Florence. After the conquest of Bologna, she moved to this city, and her trucks operated throughout the Po valley and northern Italy. From time to time convoys were sent to the south, bringing supplies directly to the port of Naples. In August 1944 the company was integrated into the transport of soldiers of the Eighth Camp to and from Austria. In Bologna, the company adopted the training farm in Nonantola and was responsible
Maintenance and training. The company operated in early 1946 in central and northern Italy and its base in Bologna. In February she was transferred to Capua in southern Italy. As one of the young Hebrew units, it absorbed remnants of veteran units that had been dismantled, as well as soldiers from Palestine who were transferred to it after serving in British units. In June 1946 the company was disbanded.
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Transport Company 178
In February 1941 General Company 178 Transport Coy was established. R.A.S.C. in order to serve the construction units of the British Engineering Corps in the Canal Zone and the Western Desert. Following the British offensive in the Western Desert in the winter of 1941-1940, in March 1941, it was moved westward to the Benghazi area, and was divided into small groups that worked with various British units. When Rommel's attack began in April 1941, the trucks of the unit led troops retreating from Benghazi eastward toward Tobruk. The unit remained in besieged Tobruk, but since it had no real employment in the besieged area, it was decided to evacuate it from Tobruk and in July 1941 its members arrived in Alexandria. The Transport Company 178 was the first Hebrew unit to win the command of a Jewish-Israeli commander, Maj. After its return to Egypt, it operated as a transport unit for works in the engineering corps.
One platoon was sent to Aqaba, where it was engaged in paving a road and a railroad track. In September 1941, the company was sent to Keena in Upper Egypt, and was employed mainly in paving the road from Sapaga port on the Red Sea coast to the Nile valley.
After a year of service in Upper Egypt, Company 178 returned to the Western Desert following the victory in El Alamein and participated in the advance towards Libya and Tunisia. In April 1943, the company was transferred from Benghazi to Tripoli in a convoy carrying ammunition, landing gear, and units intended to join the force planned for the invasion of southern Europe. Before the invasion of Sicily, the company sailed to Malta in May 1943. Here she did routine work for engineering units on the island. In December 1943, the company was transferred to Poigi, Italy, and began working there with the engineering unit in the area. Its main task was to maintain the airfields in the vicinity of Pojie.
In early May 1944, the company was promoted to the front and stationed at Wasto, north of Tremuli, where it was engaged in transporting ammunition to the trenches. In mid-August 1944, it was advanced north of Ancona for the attack on the Gothic line. In October, the company reached its land and its surroundings, where most of the Hebrew transport units were concentrated. In the Yishuv's eyes, the Jewish units in Italy at the time represented the crowning glory of his participation in the war effort. After the arrival of the Jewish Fighting Brigade in Italy at the end of 1944, it was decided in January 1945 to join the Transport Company 178 as its independent transport company. For this purpose, the Company's equipment and personnel were adapted to the standard required of a transport company of a field formation.
During the period of the organization the company was stationed in Rome, trained and absorbed soldiers from other Hebrew transport companies. During the time of the soldier's stay at the front, her transport company remained in the town of Ravenna and part of it was sent to the battalion of field artillery of the Jewish Brigade, to lead it in training and later transfer it to the front. At the end of April, the company was called upon to operate as part of the transport of the eighth camp on its supply lines, and for some time was disbanded from the brigade. In June 1945 she was transferred under the command of the Fifth Corps' transport officer, and apart from the regular maintenance of the Brigade, she was assigned various tasks, such as the transport of liberated Allied POWs, often leading to Austria and sometimes as far as Mainz, Germany, and Marseilles, France.
The company was very active in conspiring with local Jews in Egypt and Libya and in dealing with Jewish refugees in Libya and Italy. After its landing in Taranto, the company sent delegations to the refugee camps in Ferramonti and Bari and took upon itself the bulk of the ongoing care of the refugees on the eastern coast of Italy. After the company was promoted northward, it assumed responsibility for the Jews in the area between Modena, Bologna and Ferrara. After the end of the war the movers used to go back to Italy in the camps in Bavaria and Austria, and fill the empty trucks with Jews and transport them to the brigade, which was then parked in Treviso. The company moved with the Jewish Brigade to Belgium in July 1945, and in September the company moved from Liege, Belgium to Scheveningen in the Netherlands.
During this period, the company's soldiers engaged in routine tasks and in transporting soldiers to and from homeland vacations. Towards the end of January 1946, the unit's units, scattered throughout the Netherlands and Belgium, were concentrated and transferred to Antwerp. In June 1946 the company was disbanded.
Transport Company 179
Company 179 General Transport Coy. R.A.S.C. Was established in the summer of 1940, and was intended to serve the construction units of the British engineering corps in the canal area. In February 1941 she was sent to the western desert and operated between Marsa-Matruch and her barards. Two months later she was returned to the area of the Suez Canal. Since the company was not filled by Palestinian volunteers, British soldiers were added to it, in addition to the command staff.
During this period the company was a unit
A transition in which new recruits were trained for the transport units, while the veterans were transferred to the newly established units. In the summer of 1941 she was concentrated and received a Jewish commander, Major Harry was beautiful. In 1942 the company served in Egypt and the Western Desert. In June 1942 Major Israel Boganov was in command. In July she led reinforcements to the El Alamein front and then participated in the pursuit of Rommel to Tripoli. At the end of September 1943, the company landed in Salerno, Italy, and advanced in the framework of the fifth camp. It was involved in transporting supplies, ammunition and water to the front. When the advance stopped at the Volturno line, the company was taken back and employed to evacuate the unloading beaches from the equipment. Prior to the attack on the Gothic line, the company was promoted northward and concentrated together with the other Jewish transport companies in its country and environs.
In April 1945, following the last attack, some of the company's men were sent to the Fifth Corpus, where they were operating between Alfonsine and Ferrara by pushing supplies and evacuating prisoners to rear cages. The surrender of the Germans did not immediately change the nature of employment and routine in the lives of the units. Immediately after the victory, the company was attached to a large concentration, which included most of the transport units of the Eighth camp, and was operated under the responsibility of the tenth Corps. This concentration was intended to transfer vast quantities of warehouses from day to day in the Forli-Panza area to the territories occupied during the last weeks of the war and still not organized in a maintenance manner. At the end of May 1945, the company was transferred to the 86th District Command, and it was evacuated by the port of Venice to the transit caches. After other months in late 1945, the unit was moved further north to Odina.
In April 1946, the company was transferred to southern Italy, to Caserta after its involvement in illegal immigration activities was discovered, and in June 1946 it was disbanded.
Transport Company 468
Company 468 General Transport Coy. R.A.S.C. Was established in April 1942, on the basis of veteran soldiers of Unit 178. It first operated at Port Safaga on the Red Sea, paving the route to Lina in Upper Egypt, and was later transferred to the Suez Canal area. At the end of 1942 the company was returned to Palestine. During the period of the unit's stay in Israel, soldiers from the company assisted in the theft of arms and ammunition from the large warehouses in the Wadi Sarar camp near Hulda. In June 1943, the company was sent to the island of Malta instead of Company 462, which had passed the drowning disaster.
The days of the invasion of Sicily were days of great tension and hard work for drivers. After that, tension fell, work became routine again, and frustration grew, after the unit did not participate in landing in Italy. In December 1943 the company was transferred from Malta to Italy and operated within the framework of the Eighth British Army. It arrived in the Taranto area, and its missions were mainly transporting fuel, ammunition and fortifications from Taranto port to forward deposits. Sometimes she was also called to lead troops to the front line of Cassino. In the months that followed, the company remained in the vicinity of Bari, where most of the Jewish refugees from Yugoslavia were concentrated, assisting and caring for them. The company held Dror in southern Italy near Bari until it moved to Austria.
Its commander during this period was Major Yechezkel Saharov (Sahar). In anticipation of the attack on the Gothic line, the company was promoted northward and operated in the Eighth Armored Division. In August 1945, the company was transferred to Wielach, Austria, and led British soldiers to Calais, France, as part of the eighth camp vacation program. The members of the company dealt with refugee camps in the British occupied zone of Austria, where thousands of people from Eastern Europe concentrated, and smuggled some of them to Italy. After the brigade left for Belgium and Holland, the company took care of a camp for the absorption of the Jewish refugees established by the Brigade in Fontane near Tarbeszio. The British began to suspect the aid of the refugees who were trying to cross the border from Austria to Italy. These suspicions were among the main factors leading to the return of the unit to Odina in northeastern Italy after three months in Austria.
In Udina the unit continued to play an important role in the "escape" from the British occupation zone to Italy. As part of the liquidation of the company in January 1946, more than 200 people were transferred to Transport Unit 179 until their release.
Water Transport Company 148
WATER TANKS (PAL) was established in the summer of 1941, and was composed of veteran soldiers from other transport units. She organized and practiced near Cairo. In October she went to the Western Desert and took part in Operation Operation Crusader between November 18 and December 30, 1941, which led to the liberation of Tobruk and the re-conquest of Cyrenaica. It was the only Hebrew company to participate in this operation. In November 1941, the company crossed the Egypt-Libya border and continued to advance with the Eighth Camp, bringing water to its front supply depots.
In the first half of 1942, the company operated in the Western Desert, commanded by Major Yadin Frumkin, as a single and almost isolated unit of Hebrew, under particularly harsh conditions of service and employment. After the surrender of Tobruk in June 1942, the unit was integrated into the general escape of the Eighth camp, and from time to time its members found themselves against the German Pioneer. During the summer and autumn of 1942, it continued to lead water to the various units on the El Alamein front and during the pursuit of Rommel to Kernica and Tripolitania to Tripoli.
At the end of August 1943, a group under the command of Yitzhak ("Sacco") Spector was separated from the company in order to participate in the landing in Salerno, southern Italy. At the beginning of September 1943, under bombardment and bombardments, it landed on the coast and became the first Hebrew unit to arrive in Italy, where it operated within the framework of the 10th Corps and later under the command of the Salerno district.
At the end of the month Eli joined the rest of the company and was active in the fifth American camp in the front. With the capture of Naples, the company was transferred there. Following the Allied summer offensive in 1944, the company arrived in Florence and remained in the city for a long time.
In Florence, the company provided water to the civilian population in the first weeks after liberation, until the civilian water supply system was restored. The company had a major role in rehabilitating the Jewish community of Florence. They began rescue operations immediately upon the liberation of the city and continued until after the war. They took care of the physical needs: shelter, clothing and food. They went to help locate the families and continued cultural activities. The goal was to organize the youth to impart to him the Hebrew language, the experience of the Land of Israel and to prepare him for immigration to Eretz Israel. Studies were resumed at the school buildings near the synagogue.
At the same time, the company's soldiers dealt with the removal of Jewish children from monasteries in the city. The crowning glory of the company's activities was the organization of certificates for training and family members. Thus, most of them arrived in Palestine at the "Prince of Kathleen" immigration.
In the last Allied attack in Italy, which began in April 1945, the unit was operated as part of the 13th transport column in the central sector of the front.
In December 1945, the company was disbanded, and its soldiers, who did not make it, were transferred to Transport Company 650.
Water Transport Company 405
The company was established in Egypt in 1942. After the Allied attack in El Alamein in October-November 1942, it was transferred to Libya. The company commander was Major Benny Idelman.
After the end of the war in the Western Desert, while the rest of the transport units were transferred to Italy, they remained in the desert and began to smuggle weapons into the country, from the booby traps in their area of service in the Western Desert within the water tanks of their vehicles. In early 1945, groups of soldiers were exchanged between the company in Libya and the transport companies in Italy.
In May 1945, the company was returned from Kirnika, Libya, to Nafisha, in the Canal area (near Ismailia), in Egypt. The company commander was released and replaced by Major Dov Schmork, who was the commander of the 462th Transport Company, and with him the soldiers of Company 462 who had not been released. The company was transformed from a transport company into a general transport company.
The merger between the Western desert veterans and the veterans of Italy was fraught with friction. The unit absorbed remnants of other detachments, as well as drivers who had served until then in various British units. And new volunteers joined her to volunteer for the Transportation Corps. It was one of the last Hebrew units to be dismantled. During the period of her stay in Egypt after the war, the company's soldiers, under the direction of Brigadier General Eliahu Cohen (Ben Hur), helped the Mossad in Egypt and played a central role in the smuggling operation of dozens of immigrants from the Zionist pioneering youth movements on the eve of Passover, April 1946, Soldiers leaving for the holiday.
To the list of fallen soldiers of the Transport Corps, volunteers from Eretz Israel during World War II - click here! (link is missing)
ATS
On December 20, 1941, the official radio call for the opening of women's recruitment offices between the ages of 20-45 was first published. The recruitment of women to the British Army ATS - AUXLIARY TERRITORIAL SERVICE began on January 5, 1942. As for the women, there was no Jewish Agency recruitment charge as it did for men, but only volunteering.
On January 25, 1942, the first group (cadre) of 60 Jewish volunteers, most of them with the recommendation and encouragement of the Jewish Agency, were trained to be commanders and sergeants, who later commanded the women soldiers who enlisted. The course lasted for ten weeks. At the end of the course, the rank of officer was awarded to four of the finalists (Ruth Berman, Shoshana Gershonowitz, Devorah Cohen and Rachel Hibner) to four sergeants and four corporals.
These girls formed the first commanding cadre of Jewish women who guided the recruits to the training camp at the end of March 1942. Later, most of the graduates advanced to officer ranks. During the entire period of service, the senior command remained in the hands of only English commandos, except for two companies, which in the course of time were commanded by Jewish officers of the country. In March 1942, 519 Jewish women were already employed. Most of the first volunteer class was sent to serve in two hospitals in Egypt and in Sarafand Hospital, as well as at the base of equipment in Haifa. As the consciousness of enlistment in the Yishuv increased, the labor settlement changed its attitude toward recruiting women. From April 1942, he received almost universal legitimacy.
In April 1943, the Royal Air Force announced the start of recruitment of women to the WAAF. The recruitment of women to the air force began on May 25, 1943. The RFA asked mainly clerks, as well as professional workers in the fields of communication and photography. The volunteers for the Air Force initially concentrated in Palestine and Egypt, and here their main concentrations remained until the end of the war. Volunteers from Eretz Israel constituted about a quarter of all women in uniform in the Middle East. They also served British, South African and Rhodesian, Czech, Greek and Cypriot. The encounter and joint service of Israeli and British women is generally considered a success.
Until the end of the war, volunteers volunteered for A.T.S. and WA.A..F about 4350 women.
The soldiers served in different bases and facilities, but lived in separate quarters, organized in their own companies - Company 502 (with Sonia Peres, Noa Skolnik, Eshkol), Alice Hatzor and others (503, 504, 505) , Company 509, Company 510, Company 511, Company 512, Company 513 (Zippora Eytan Shahar, Ruth Nelkin, Rachel Brenner, Ruta Ofer and others), Company 519, Company 524 and Company 529. At first the command of the women's units was English, The time was entirely for the Hebrews, including the command. The A.T.S. were deployed in 16 military camps (for women only), while the WAA.A soldiers lived in the air force camps. The service camps were in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Italy, and Austria.
The female soldiers worked and contributed greatly to various fields of work, including: drivers, medical nurses, storekeepers, clerks, lab workers, communications workers, deciphers, radar operators, folding parachutes, wireless operators, filter rooms, Craftsmen and military policewomen.
Chava Szenes, who fell into the partisans in Yugoslavia, was caught in Hungary and executed, Haviva Reik - fought with the rebels in Slovakia, was caught and executed, and Shurika Spechner (Braverman) who worked with partisans in the forests of Yugoslavia. When the story of the fall of Tobruk was discovered at the end of June 1942, a concern arose for the fate of the female soldiers in Egypt, especially about the women soldiers who served in Alexandria, 502, who served in field hospital number 64, as nurses and ambulances.
Company 524, which managed the equipment warehouses in Haifa, was transferred from Egypt to Egypt. In the spring of 1944, 502 was sent to Italy and served there in a military hospital. The volunteers' work was mostly done in a non-Jewish environment, medical facilities, equipment warehouses, and offices, where most of the staff were British. The women soldiers shared the struggle of the Yishuv and the people for their future, stood up for national values, the struggle for Hebrew and Hebrew, and the right to wear a Palestinian badge on the shoulder of the shirt. The A.T.S. camps Were the focus of a meeting between the Jewish women soldiers from Palestine and other armies. They worked among the Jewish communities in North Africa, with the "Tehran children" and later in the DP camps in Europe, where they served as teachers in the schools and taught them to live again. Aroused and encouraged them to come to the Land of Israel.
On the brink of the War of Independence, at the end of 1947 and the beginning of 1948, the commanders, sergeants and soldiers with experience and professional knowledge formed the core of women's service in the Israel Defense Forces and laid the foundation for the women's corps.
The Jewish Military Band
The band was established in 1942. The director was Zvi Friedland. The members were: Eliahu Goldenberg, Batya Lancet, Raphael Balagur, Natan Kogan, Shimshon Limon, Katya, Kalman Constantiner, Shimshon Halfi, Haim Sherl and Avraham Soroka.
The band worked for 11 months and produced a single program called "Benpol Masada," written by Moshe Breslaski, who was the literary editor, Mordechai Zeira the composer, Aryeh Aroch - scenery and Menachem Rudin - choreography.
In 1944, under the auspices of the ENSA Education Corps of the British army and the British authorities, the band "Maayan Sheh" was established by Eliyahu Goldenberg, who was artistic director and also served as an actor. The band's manager was the military rabbi Levi and the musical director was responsible for the composer Zvi Ben Yosef, the director was Walter Bloch Bach.
Her friends were: Hanna Meirchek (Maron), Yossi Sukenik (Yadin), Leah Sitin, Shlomo Drori, Yitzhak Itzhak, Asya Farchi, Dvora Matisis, Avraham Shklarsh, Avigdor Pogatchov and Yaakov Levine (Chipopo).
The band worked for 18 months and produced three programs: "From the Song of the Land" (from 12 April 1944), "Tower and Stockade" (August 12, 1944) and "Peace from Tel Aviv" (June 16, 1946). The structure of the program was permanent: songs and songs, sketches, musical passages and passage passed by a moderator.
The band's famous songs were "We Are Just This Kind" (the band's anthem) and "All Roads Lead to Rome," the famous duet of the band's stars, Hanna Meron and Yossi Yadin.
The Jewish Brigade, the "Jewish Brigade", established by the army's military chaplain, Yaakov Lifshitz, began operating in the summer of 1945. The band's purpose was to entertain the refugees in European cities and the survivors in the DP camps.
Among the band members were Rafael Balagor, Shimshon Limon, Zvi Ben Yosef and Avigdor Fujatchov.
The band produced two programs: "Sparks" and "Gola and Geula"
The most memorable of the group's performances was the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany.
This performance, on Chanukah in 1945, was engraved in the memory of the band's member Raphael Balaguer:
"The lighting of the candles in Bergen-Belsen was something that was not of this world, and you see all these miserable Jews, and here they see Jewish soldiers in the same place as the Nazis, with a golden Star of David on their sleeves, and here they sing in Hebrew, How we bless the candles in the terrible darkness and light after a candle is lit, and suddenly poetry breaks out and the people cry and you did not know whether it was out of pain or out of hope and hope that shines from afar. After the brigade's service ended, in the summer of 1946, the band broke up.
"Meain Ze"
The band was founded towards the end of World War II. The band was called "The Palestinians" and was under the jurisdiction of the ENSA, the National Service for Entertainment, which was intended to provide entertainment for British military forces during the war. The band's name, "This Kind," was a pun on the sound of the ENSA name. The founder of the band was the actor and director Eliahu Goldenberg, and it consisted of soldiers and female soldiers who volunteered for the Palestine units in the British Army, with an artistic background of poetry and acting. Among her friends were Hanna Maron, Yossi Yadin, Zvi Ben Yosef (who was its musical director), Yitzhak Yitzhak and Mordechai Zeira.Ben Yosef, Yitzhak, Zeira, Yaakov Orland and Natan Alterman wrote entertainment and songs for the band. She performed with great success before the brigade volunteers in Europe, where the soldiers trained and fought (in Amsterdam, Naples, Brussels and Paris, among others) and even in the military hospitals where the Jewish wounded were. In total, the band raised three programs: "Mizmeret Ha'Aretz", "Homa VeMigdal" and "Peace from Tel Aviv".