Resources for Visual Documentation of
Jewish Soldiers in Armies Around the World

Haim Ghuizeli

This talk will be accompanied by a rich visual presentation and will concern itself with exposing the many resources of the Diaspora Museum and especially of the Bernard H. and Miriam Oster Visual Documentation Center.  The lecture will present an array of visual documentation  that concern the Jewish soldiers in world armies (Austria, Italy, Algeria, Bulgaria, Great Britain, Germany, Hungary, Turkey, Poland, France, Roumania, Russia, and others) through emphasizing description of the Jewish way of life in the modern army, burial of Jewish fatalities, and documentation of tombstones, POWs and so forth.  The essence of the lecture will be the visual documentation in the period of World War I, during which hundreds of thousands of  Jews from all countries participated in the war. Also, an explanation will be given on the ways searches can be performed for specific documentation concerning Jewish soldiers.

North American and British Military Records –
Opening Doors to New Discoveries

 Michael Goldstein

 Our presentation will focus specifically on an overview of military records from the U.S.A., Canada and England, with explanations of how to access and analyze the data from each country. Beyond this, however, we will guide genealogists several steps further in pointing out and pursuing leads that military records might provide. From retrieving citizenship to census records to burial information, we will help researchers get the ultimate amount of information from clues found in the military record data.  We will also do the reverse and see how other data sources can lead to military histories and other discoveries. Chances are excellent that most Israelis have family members who've lived - and served in the armed forces-- in Canada, Britain or the United States. We will offer practical hands-on advice for the Israeli researcher, in particular in exploring western databases, government resources, and more, to acquire information on his family.

Sources for Researching Military Records of Sephardic Jews in the Balkans

Yitzchak Kerem

While for most Balkan countries where Sephardic Jews lived, there is no one military archive where readily available records can be requested and located regarding military service of an individual, information can be obtained through related archives and libraries, lists published by Jewish historical publications, research on military history, and in numerous Jewish museums in the Balkans.

Included in this discussion are locating military records of Jews from Greece, the former Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Turkey. For this, we delve into a wide geographically disperse area, including London, Paris, and Austria, as well as the countries of the Balkans just mentioned.

The "Shtetl" Way of Life in The Red Army Framework

Professor Dov Levin

 Supposedly there is no bigger contradiction than between the inflexible system in a fighting military unit and the way of family-social life typical of a Jewish village in Eastern Europe. But as will become clear later on, there existed a rapport between these two seeming extremes, regarding the generation which encountered World War II and the strange but known reality, that together with this also encompassed not a little warmth of home and heimishness which might seem today imaginary.

In question are more than 5,000 Jews (male and female) at the age of induction from the Baltic states who fled from there with the beginning of the Nazi conquest in  the Summer of 1941, and who found shelter within the USSR. There they volunteered and/or were recruited into the Lithuanian/Latvian/and Estonian division and fought on the front with heavy losses until the end of the war in 1945.

In the natural course of things, there began social contacts between the Jewish soldiers even in the first days before they were assigned to units and before they were sent to fight. These contacts were signs of looking for family, common friends and acquaintances and at the same time hearing from their own mouths how they arrived and what happened to others. There are known cases when a soldier discovered "his wife he lost en route" and had thought dead.   Also found there were sons and parents, brothers, uncles and school friends, youth movement friends, and fellow villagers, and the like. All of these became consolidated over time (over and above the formal military units) into informal frameworks that were known as "First Groups" which externally were conspicuous by their mutual help but also by their organizational tendencies, not necessarily appreciated by the Soviets.

Along with this, one can point also to the limitless solidarity between most of the Jewish soldiers, not necessarily because of prior acquaintanceship, but because of the fact that they were Jews, with everything that implies in this fateful period.

In addition to the above material that I describe in the framework of my talk in general I'll also outline and give details on different sorts of the "First Groups"  and on the rest of the happenings in the social-family-communistic areas. And of course I will try to be strict about the correct spelling regarding the Jewish names I will be recalling in my talk.

The Contribution of Machal to the Israeli War of Independence

Gordon Mandelzweig

 Machal is the acronym of Mitnadvei  Hutz La-Eretz, volunteers from outside the country. They were a body of men and women who assisted in Jewish Illegal immigration to Eretz Israel and those who came to serve in the Defense Forces of Israel both before and during the Israeli War of Independence in 1948. Most of them were World War II Veterans. They came from some 43 countries and included a number of non Jews.

Machal may have consisted of only about 10% of the total armed forces in Israel, but due to their specialized knowledge and experience, they contributed far in excess of 10% of the total war effort.

They served in virtually every branch of the armed forces. Reference is made to Aliya Bet and Pre-Independence, Air Force, Navy, Medical and Scientific Corp, Combat Engineers, Artillery, and various Armoured and Infantry Brigades. A Bibliography will be listed separately.

Just over 120 Machal soldiers lost their lives in the struggle, including four women. Nine of the soldiers were non-Jews. A Machal Memorial in the form of the Hebrew letters, "mem", "chet", "lamed",---- "Machal", listing the names of the fallen, has been erected off the Tel-Aviv Jerusalem Road at Shaar Hagai , and a portion of the Latrun Armoured Museum has been set aside as the Machal Museum.

 Military History 

Dr. Meir Pa'il 

We will concentrate on military history of the Zionist enterprise, after World War I. We will note the flowering of Zionist Army power as opposed to one major enemy: the Muslim Arab world which threatened to wipe out the Zionist enterprise, as well as facing the British ruler. This latter, however, supported Zionism (with reservations) but served us as an excellent source from which to learn many things in the military field and even more from administrative, political, economical and social aspects, and especially on democratic existence.

Military Sources found at the Central Zionist Archives

Rochelle Rubenstein

There are many genealogically relevant resources, such as the Jewish Brigades in the First World War, inductions and demobilisations in the Second World War, found in the Central Zionist Archives.

1. The Jewish Brigades in the First World War
One can view name lists of soldiers in the Jewish Brigades, and especially of the Jewish Mule Brigade.

2. Inductions into the British Army and the reserves in World War Two
Ample material on the induction of male and female soldiers into the British Army and reserves in the Second World War is found in the Archive. The national institutions - the Jewish Agency and the Jewish People's Council (Va'ad Leumi) - established draft boards for soldiers and reserves. The material created by the governing department of the Jewish Agency and the draft board are found at the CZA as are the contents of name lists, cards and questionnaires of the drafted soldiers and personal dossiers.

3. Treatment of released soldiers
Also the national institutions created a department to settle de-mobbed soldiers. The archive of this department is also found at the CZA and includes hundreds of personal dossiers of de-mobbed soldiers.

The lecture will present the material noted above through presentation of examples of cards, questionnaires, and other documents.

Gabriel Berkovitz - From Kvutzat Hulda to The Jewish Legion

Ze'ev Sharon

On the 30th of December 2003, we took a trip, a small group of friends from the IGS, to the old cemetery in Haifa. Among the tombstones was one that drew my attention. Engraved upon it was: "Gabriel son of Yechiel Zvi Berkovitz, 23 years old. An agricultural worker. In the tenth year of his work in the Land, he volunteered for the Eretz Israel Legion. He was killed on his watch. 9th of Adar Aleph in the year 1919."

At the bottom of the tombstone was engraved a picture of a Menorah with seven branches and at its base the word "Kadima" and on the edge was a bronze plaque and on it was engraved: G. Berkovitz J-4760. I began to investigate and I arrived at the essence of the story of this young man. Gabriel immigrated to Eretz Israel from Lyakhovich, Russia, with his brother and his sister when he was 13. They worked in Rehovot and afterwards they moved to Degania, which had just been started. Gabriel went to Bitaniya and there his brother Haim joined him after he completed his army duty to the Czar and immigrated to Eretz Israel. After a while, Gabriel appeared in Hulda. There he joined the Eretz Israeli Jewish Legion, battalion number 40 of the "Royal Fusiliers". During December 1918, the battalion arrived in Haifa and camped out at the foot of the Carmel. In February of 1919, Gabriel died. From all appearances, he committed suicide on the railroad tracks in Haifa and was buried in the Jewish Cemetery.

I looked in many archives: physical archives: Archives of Degania, Hulda, the Kibutz Meuhad, Beit HaGedudim, the IDF Archive and others. In the archives on the internet: the site Yizkor of the IDF, the British site of the Commonwealth Graves Commision and others. I visited the cemeteries, among them the the British War Cemetery in Haifa. In this talk, I will relate to Gabriel's story, as far as it is known to me up to the day of the talk and I will emphasize researching in military sources which I have used.

Learning to Use Multiple Military Resources Through a Specific Case Study

Dr. Aharon Shneer

Through studying a specific incident, we can test the various roads to research and collection of material on the fate of a Jewish soldier who was killed at the front during the Second World War. We will uncover and recommend a number of institutions, archives and organizations through which desired material can be found.

Name index cards at the Haganah Archives

Ilan Shtayer

The Haganah was active in Eretz Israel between 1920 and 1948 as the secret military arm of the Jewish Yishuv's leadership and its activities also spread abroad, bringing new immigrants from there to Eretz Israel.

As a secret organization, the Haganah did not leave after it an "archive" and an orderly registration of its activities. However, that said, there were various original registers and index cards from the period when it was active and many data were reconstructed over the years.

In the lecture we will cover a wide variety of files found in the collection of the Archive and in them inherent material on tens of thousands of people who served in the Haganah.

A Changing Episode or The Beginning of a Military Tradition?
A Military Look at Families of The World War I Brigades.

Rachel Silko

"Me too, I am the son of a father who served in the Jewish Brigades. I can say and bear personal witness to this spirit that prevailed in the Brigades that was inherited and enveloped this generation as we can see in their work. There is no doubt that the spirit continues and was passed on in full force right up to this very day, and on all this, Tzahal blesses you and is blessed by you." With these words Mordechai (Mota) Gur, the tenth chief of staff of Tzahal, greeted the troops that participated in the conference at the House of the Brigades on the 60th anniversary of the Jewish Brigades in the year 1977.

My lecture will deal with a number of observations connected to the "brigadiers" through the meaning of the question in the title of this talk.

• The relationships between the "brigadiers", the army and militarism

• The continuing activity of the "brigadiers" as a defensive force, volunteering in the British army during World War II and in Israel Defense Forces

• The history of the sons of the second generation in the defense force and in the Israel Defense Force. Basing ourselves on the sources, we will try to answer the question "how much the military message of the "brigadiers' has been bequeathed to their own sons and daughters?'". Examples of a number of families and even through chiefs of staff whose fathers served in the Brigades, will be brought.

Sources:
Albums from Beit haGedudim: Original biographical pages written by the "brigadiers"
Memoires of  Brigadiers, their sons and their daughters
Avihayil Book
Tombstones in Avihayil Cemetery
Names of the streets in the Moshav Avihayil

Military Genealogy: The Example of Algerian Jews
Who Served in The French Army

Mathilde Tagger

Algerian Jews are distinguished from Jews of Morocco, their western neighbors, and from Tunisian Jews, their eastern neighbors, by the vital fact that in the year 1870 the Algerians received French citizenship which included full civil rights. Thus, thousands of Algerian Jews served in the French army in World Wars I and II.

After a short historical survey of the history of the Jews of Algeria, we will present a number of sources which have great value to genealogical research. These can be divided into three groups: personal documents that were created during military service and were kept by the soldiers; lists and documents which were kept by the army; and those given by the State or by the local Jewish community after the wars.

Various documents will be shown. We will give the names and addresses of various archives to which one can turn for information, and, of course, we will point out a number of internet sites.