To me, the D-Day landing sites seemed like the most tangible expression of wartime bravery and sacrifice. Published in The Canadian Jewish Jews.
As a lifelong Second World War buff, I’ve always dreamed of visiting the beaches of Normandy. To me, the D-Day landing sites seemed like the most tangible expression of wartime bravery and sacrifice.
It was a desire that only grew as I dove ever deeper into the stories of those who took part in it while researching and writing my 2025 book Zaidy’s Band, The Untold Stories of a Jewish Band of Brothers in World War II.
The book chronicled my extensive journey to learn about my grandfather’s hidden Second World War past and to discover the stories of his fellow Jewish Canadian soldiers.
So, it was extra special to find myself finally making this long-awaited pilgrimage toward Normandy last Tuesday, Nov. 3, on what would have been my grandfather’s 105th birthday. To be doing it with his eldest son, Mark, a fellow Second World War enthusiast – also known as my father – only added significance.
I’d meticulously planned our visit. An intense few days of walking the iconic beaches named Utah, Omaha, Gold and Juno awaited. But first we had to navigate from Paris to our base in the town of Bayeux, the first to be liberated in mainland France and the only one in the region to avoid massive destruction. We were 15 minutes away when, by chance (or was it fate?), a small Google Maps icon caught my attention. Just off the highway was something titled “Canadian Memorial.”
This little detour to the town of Putot-en-Bessin was to be an emotional introduction to our four-day visit. Alongside a shuttered church, we found a modest monument to the soldiers of the Royal Winnipeg Rifles and the Canadian Scottish Regimen who liberated the town from the German 12th SS Panzer Division after storming the nearby beaches. Three fierce days of battle there claimed the lives of 105 Canadians. Flanked by French and Canadian flags, and with a Maple Leaf emblem in front of us, my father, my book and I posed for our first photo.
Similar roadside memorials were scattered across the Calvados region, commemorating the thousands of Allied soldiers who died for the liberation of France. We stopped by many on our way to various cemeteries, museums and towns. Places I had heard so much about – Sainte-Mere-Église, Carentan, Dead Man’s Corner, Pointe du Hoc, Arromanches-les-Bains and more – suddenly made sense geographically and provided a physical manifestation to what I previously could only imagine.
It was the beaches themselves, though, that offered the most visceral experience. At Utah and Omaha, I thought about the Americans I had met over the years who had landed there. People like Brooklyn-born officer Dan Nadel, who told me in 2015 that of the 55 men who hit the beach under his command only 12 made it through alive. He credited his own miraculous survival to a Jewish amulet attached to his dog tags.
His primary motivation? The same one my grandfather once offered as his for volunteering for the Royal Canadian Air Force.
“What Hitler was doing to the Jews, I knew he had to be killed and stopped,” said Nadal.
At Gold Beach, I thought about the Brits I had met like Norman Cohen, a radio operator with the 2nd Army who disembarked into about six inches of water along the coast of the fishing village of Ver-sur-Mer.
“The first 48 hours, we were hanging on by our fingertips,” he told me. “I had this silly grin on my face, and I said to myself, ‘you’ve done it now, there is no going back.’”
Naturally, it was the Canadian story that resonated most strongly. At the Bény-sur-Mer Canadian War Cemetery, it was incredibly moving to see Star of David-adorned gravestones nestled among a sea of crosses. The Jewish graves were easily identified by the engraved Hebrew letters and the collection of stones placed upon them. I added several of my own.
Most notable was perhaps that of George Meltz, whose tombstone read: “He died so Jewry shall suffer no more.”
About 17,000 Canadian Jews served in the Second World War and nearly 450 died. Overall, 1.5 million Jewish soldiers fought for the Allies and 250,000 died in battle. Yet, in the shadow of the Holocaust, this is a legacy that has remained strikingly absent from our collective consciousness and one that I have sought to rectify in my writing.
At the Juno Beach Centre, I recognized several characters from my book, including a small exhibit about Canada’s top Second World War ace, George “Buzz” Beurling. He was a non-Jewish pilot known as “The Falcon of Malta” who later perished on his way to helping Israel in its 1948 War of Independence. Someone who happened to be touring the museum even recognized me from a previous interview I had with a colleague of his.
Down on the beach itself, my father and I took it all in, remembering my grandfather and all his friends.
On the way home to Israel, I made one final stop in Paris at the Mémorial de la Shoah. It offered a poignant reminder of why my grandfather and his Jewish band of brothers fought.
Upon my return, I capped this extraordinary week with a talk at the Canadian Embassy in Tel Aviv. Alongside Canada’s military attaché, I spoke virtually to members of the Jewish Employees Network at Global Affairs Canada stationed around the world about Jewish service and sacrifice.
It all added up to an even deeper appreciation of the world my Zaidy and his generation inhabited, the lives they lived and the importance of keeping their stories alive, especially today on Remembrance Day and especially now when nearly all of them are gone.
Aron Heller is a Canadian/American/Israeli journalist, a former longtime AP correspondent and author of Zaidy’s Band, The Untold Stories of a Jewish Band of Brothers in World War II. You can follow him on X/Twitter or Instagram, and read a selection of his work at aronheller.com