Today’s Book Review and Recommendation is "The Brigade: An Epic Story of Vengeance, Salvation, and WWII" by Howard Blum.
I had bought a copy of The Brigade a couple of years ago,
and there it was on the shelf, sleeping away while others came into the house
and jumped ahead of it in the queue. Between purchasing and reading the book, I
had read one of Blum’s other works, The Floor of Heaven, a nonfiction story
that occurred during the Yukon Gold Rush, (which was outstanding, btw) without
realizing that it was written by the same author. As these things happen, the
other day I was looking for a new book to start and I noticed The Brigade. Something
that rates books very high for me is learning about events I was not already
aware of. This book was a pleasant surprise. I wish I had read it sooner.
The end of the nineteenth
century brought the rise of the Zionist movement that inspired Jews from Europe
to immigrate to Palestine. This did not sit well with the Ottoman Turks who
controlled the area, but it was supported by Great Britain, who would push the
Ottoman Empire out of Palestine during the First World War. After WWI, the
League of Nations awarded Britain a formal mandate to administer the region.
This “British Mandate” was in effect from 1922 until the state of Israel
declared independence in 1948.
Due to a lot of political pressure and a measure of military
necessity, Great Britain formed the Jewish Infantry Brigade Group during the last year
of WWII, most of the members of which were from Palestine. The unit trained and
was deployed to northern Italy where they were in combat from March to May of
1945. After the war, the Jewish Brigade was kept in Italy, and later in Belgium
to serve as part of the Army of Occupation. One suspected reason for
maintaining the Brigade in Europe was that the British government did not want
to add fuel to the fire in the volatile Middle East by returning several
thousand trained Jewish soldiers to Palestine. However, a number of the Brigade’s
soldiers were members of the Haganah and had an agenda of their own. The
Haganah was the main underground Jewish militia in Palestine who defended Jewish
communities against violent Arab incursions, and fought a campaign for
independence against the British Mandate. First, members of the Brigade formed assassination
squads that scoured post war Europe terminating former low level war criminals.
Later, with coordination and guidance from superiors in Jewish Palestine, the
Brigade systematically helped thousands of displaced Jewish refugees,
the majority concentration camp survivors, illegally immigrate to Palestine.
They also worked at smuggling weapons to Palestine to prepare for their war of
independence they all knew was coming. Finally, unable to control their activities,
the British government disbanded the Jewish Brigade and sent the soldiers home.
These Jewish soldiers became the foundation of the Israeli Defense Forces.
In The Brigade, author Howard Blum tells the story of the
Jewish Brigade through the narrative of three soldiers who were involved with both the
termination of Nazi war criminals and the smuggling of people and weapons to
Palestine. This not only a story of fighting unit during World War II, but also
a story of the Holocaust and its aftermath. While one of the soldiers searches
for his sister left behind in Poland, Blum tells of the sisters struggles for
survival. At times the narrative takes on the pace and excitement of a spy
story, while the reader is on the edge of their seat hoping that the soldiers
do not get caught on their clandestine missions.
I cannot imagine what it would be like to have been a member
of this Brigade. With Arabs trying to kill you at home, going to war to fight
Germans, and then dodging the British and Russian military forces to help your
people reach freedom, knowing that if you are caught you will be treated like a
criminal and a traitor. It must have seemed like they were fighting a war that
would never end. Their sense of duty was incredible. We’ll never know what it
was like to be them, but their story does provide insight to what they were
fighting for and the impetus for the modern state of Israel. The Brigade is
fast paced and an entertaining read. I highly recommend it, not just for
military history buffs.
