Published in The Canadian Jewish News.
The official name of Israel’s annual Holocaust Remembrance Day is Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day. It’s a nod toward not only the victims of the genocide but also the resistance fighters who valiantly fought against the Nazis.
The name matched the sentiment of Israel’s early days, when Holocaust survivors were often ignored, even ridiculed, for their perceived lack of defiance. Instead, Israel chose to champion people like Warsaw Ghetto Uprising commander Mordechai Anielewicz who better fit the country’s scrappy pioneering spirit. In fact, the Israeli Knesset decided that beginning in 1953 the day itself would be marked on the anniversary of the Hebrew date of the famed ghetto uprising ten years earlier.
But as Israel matured and began to process the full scope and magnitude of a Holocaust that had decimated a third of world Jewry, a shift in public perception began. The “heroism” was set aside, and the day began to morph into a more somber recognition of the victims, and an acknowledgement of the experiences of the survivors living in Israel. So much so that the day itself became commonly known simply by its shorthand of Yom ha-Shoah – Holocaust Day.
Completely lost along this storyline was another side to the Jewish experience in the Second World War – that of the 1.5 million Jewish soldiers who fought for the Allies, including 250,000 who died in battle.
After spending much of my lengthy journalism career developing a specialized beat that focused on the Holocaust and prioritizing interviewing its survivors, I have devoted the last several years to exploring the story of those Jews for whom the Second World War was more a tale of victory than victimhood.
One of them was my grandfather, Mickey Heller, who served four years in the Royal Canadian Air Force, including two years in Europe as a navigator in Bomber Command.
Like so many other veterans, he kept quiet for decades, stubbornly refusing to share any of his wartime experiences. It was only in 2011, with my grandfather closing in on his 90th birthday, that I finally embarked upon unpacking his untold story and that of his fellow Jewish warriors.
This is how my more than decade-long quest to learn more about him began, evolving into four magazine articles that I published over the following years. The journey culminated this past November, when the University of Toronto Press published my debut book: Zaidy’s Band, The Untold Stories of a Jewish Band of Brothers in World War II.
It is these men and women that I will be remembering on this Yom ha-Shoah V’Hagvura. They played a key role in the Allied victory, and in the establishment of Israel, yet their legacy remains jarringly absent in our collective consciousness.
Like their respective countrymen, these fighters were motivated by patriotism and allegiance to their home nations. But they had an extra driving force that contributed to their outsized mobilization: to save their defenseless Jewish brethren in Europe from a Nazi regime bent on their destruction.
In some cases, these soldiers were among the first to liberate the Nazi death camps, offering an encouraging word of Yiddish to the dazed, emaciated prisoners.
Those who became prisoners of war, like my grandfather’s good friend Wilfred Canter, had to conceal their Jewish identity since it could have proven fatal if it was discovered by Gestapo interrogators.
And it wasn’t just the Nazis they had to worry about. Antisemitism was rife among the Allied soldiers, ranging from racist talk to bloody fistfights.
In Canada, it was especially acute in the navy. One of my grandfather’s acquaintances, Gerald Rosenberg, said he endured constant harassment that only ended after he confronted a certain agitator and “hit him as hard as I could and threw him across the room.”
To avoid the risks, many Jews kept their faith a secret and were eventually buried in European cemeteries under crosses rather than Stars of David. It took decades for some of these errors to be corrected.
Unbeknownst to most, there were Jewish soldiers on every front and in every battle against the Nazis in the Second World War. For those who survived, it was a life-altering experience that spurred many to channel their military skills toward the fight for Israel’s independence, to guarantee a Jewish homeland as a bulwark against another Holocaust.
As I quickly discovered, my grandfather’s individual story was not the only one that had remained untold. There was also that of the Jews in Bomber Command, which had the highest casualty rate among the Allies. There was that of the Canadian Jewish role in the Second World War, which was often overlooked in favour of a more American and British-centric angle. There was that of the disproportionate Jewish contribution to the war effort overall and ultimately their crucial contributions as foreign volunteers to Israel’s establishment.
Exploring these various themes, and accompanying the turbulent efforts to establish a museum in their honour, highlighted a broader perspective to the Jewish war experience.
It also sparked a deeper reflection upon how commemoration has evolved over the years, particularly in Israel. Only after the mass immigration of Soviet Jews in the 1990s did the term “veteran” make its way into everyday Hebrew vernacular.
But when these Russian-speaking veterans would strut out on Victory Day parades with medals pinned on old uniforms, they were generally regarded as a curiosity rather than as icons of bravery. Sabra Israelis remained ignorant about the wider contribution of these Jewish Second World War soldiers.
Today, many remaining Holocaust survivors are either too old and frail to access their memories or were too young during the war to have had any significant memories of their own. There are very few with actual life-lived stories to convey, and this is even truer for the veterans who, by definition, must now already be at least 100 years old.
While their stories may seem no more than an ode to history, I have come to see them as remarkably relevant in a post-Oct. 7, 2023 reality. They speak to us today as we endure perhaps the most dangerous wave of antisemitism worldwide since then and the most perilous period for Israel as well.
Each one of their choices influenced the paths their lives would take, and these same dilemmas of faith, values, belonging, courage and sacrifice still define the Jewish experience today. This is no mere exercise in nostalgia. There is still much we can learn from them.
As I have navigated through the modern challenges of what it means to be an Israeli and a Jew, I’ve often looked back at these stories in search of guidance and inspiration.
They are among the last remaining voices from that historic era, and hearing them enriches our understanding of their time and ours. Perhaps now, by recognizing this perspective, we can finally tell the full story of the Jewish people – and fully commemorate Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day.
Zaidy’s Band: The Untold Stories of a Jewish Band of Brothers in World War II is available for purchase at utpublishing.com and major book retailers. Learn more about Aron Heller at www.aronheller.com