Why remember only the victims?

The memory of the six million Jewish victims of the Nazis is, of course, sacred. But what about the Jews who fought against genocidal murderers? Have we forgotten their heroic achievements?

Listen to your preconceptions shrugging off this challenge, saying “Heroic? Really? How many Jews actually took up arms in the second world war? Maybe a handful of partisans here and there. No big deal.”

The Chaim Herzog Museum of the Jewish Soldier in WWII opened last year at Latrun near Jerusalem to remind you – and the rest of the world – of the true scale of that forgotten heroism: 1,500,000 fighters.

Yes, you read that number right. Let’s put that figure in context. Before 1939, the world’s Jewish population was 18 million. The Nazis cut that number to 12 million. This means that a very significant proportion of all those Jews who were neither too young nor too old (or uprooted, destitute, ill, trapped or traumatised) to be fit for active service did in fact serve in the allied armies and other forces.

How have we failed until now to commemorate such a significant contribution to the defeat of fascism? Why have we never expressed our due appreciation for the sacrifice of 250,000 Jews who did not return from those battlefields?

We all recall the image of a Jewish boy forced out of the Warsaw Ghetto bunker with his hands above his head. The boy’s captor, pointing a submachine gun at him, was SS-Rottenführer Josef Blösche, subsequently convicted of the murder of over 2,000 people. Unforgettable.

The “lachrymose conception” of Jewish history, as historian Salo Baron described it in 1963, has been so dominated by the tragedy of the Shoah that the parallel but contrasting story has been lost: the critical contribution made by Jewish soldiers to the defeat of the Nazis and their collaborators.

Ignorance and neglect led to something arguably even worse: the insult levelled at Holocaust survivors by many Israelis in the early years of the state when survivors were often regarded as losers who stood passively in line to await their fate. They were accused of having internalised and adopted the antisemite’s image of the Ghetto Jew, the victim, the cowardly and powerless untermensch. Survivors of the shoah were commonly condemned for having gone “like lambs to the slaughter.”

The macho scorn animating this libel was a force-multiplier for a new self-image that developed in the young nation, a revised relationship with arms and uniforms, where respect for its emergent army and the cultivation of a noble ideal of national service led to the birth of the conception of the “new Jew.” A real man, a fighter, a damning contrast to his weak diaspora precursor.

That proud Israeli self-image was actually based on self-deception, on a failure to give credit to the Jewish soldiers of World War II. Jews were not just survivors or refugee bystanders, but were determined volunteers and conscripts in global armies—Polish, British, Canadian, Free French, Soviet, American—engaging actively in pivotal theatres from Normandy to North Africa. Self-defence was not new for Jews, nor was heroism exclusively a male preserve. Both male and female Jews served in many different roles at the front, as soldiers, medics and nurses, in intelligence work, or as commanders – including more than 300 Jewish Russian generals. They joined the battle, were exposed to mortal risk and trauma, and many were injured or killed in the course of their missions. Meanwhile, some kept kosher, or observed Yom Kippur in foxholes. Many faced the challenge of rampant antisemitism even in the allied armies.

Since it was established in 1953 Yad Vashem has been rightly regarded as an essential destination for visitors to Jerusalem. It is the second most-visited site in Israel, after the Western Wall. While Yad Vashem was originally intended to be dedicated to the remembrance of both martyrs and heroes, primarily it tells the story of the victims of mass murder. A corrective was required to set the historical record straight.

The contrast is clear and salutary: a group of Holocaust survivors who visited both Yad Vashem and the new museum at Latrun said that the latter let them experience for the first time a sense of pride they never knew was theirs to feel.

The new museum is named after Chaim Herzog (1918-97), the sixth President of the State of Israel, and the father of our current President, Isaac Herzog. He was an intelligence officer in the British Army during World War II. He later fought in the Battle of Latrun and many other operations in the War of Independence. Chaim Herzog had many careers, including lawyer, historian, author, ambassador and member of Knesset but he always regarded his role as a soldier as the very core of his identity. He represents all the generations of Israelis, going back to the very first defenders of the pre-state Yishuv, who were compelled to be fighters alongside –and almost always at the expense of – their other careers and aspirations.

The interactive and high-tech Herzog museum was over 20 years in the planning and building. It is located within Yad La‑Shiryon, Latrun’s large and long-established tank museum. The facilities are designed to host various kinds and generations of visitors: veterans stepping down memory lane, some carrying canes, some wearing medals awarded to them after the most challenging and formative periods of their lives; some looking up the documentary records of fallen comrades or family members; scholars undertaking research in the library and study centre. Among the youngest visitors are IDF recruits, still in the course of training, for whom the history of fighting Jews serves as an inspiration.

The Herzog museum is arranged in sections, called wings: the first deals with the Early Years – 1939 – 1941, covering Jewish soldiers in Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, France, Britain, Greece, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and South Africa. In the next wing, covering Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, the ambient temperature of the hall has been deliberately reduced to remind visitors of the harsh conditions and challenges faced by soldiers of the Soviet Union and other armies under the command of the Red Army. You step into a chilling diorama of Stalingrad or Kursk. Snow swirls around you. The immersive tech doesn’t just show history, it allows you to feel it. Battle sounds, flickering gunfire, and first-person testimonies connect you emotionally to Jewish Red Army soldiers on the front line.

Audiovisual screens are devoted to each of the campaigns: the invasion of the Soviet Union, Moscow, Stalingrad, Leningrad, Kursk, the liberation of Belarus, the liberation of the death camps, Eastern Europe and the occupation of Berlin.

After Pearl Harbour, the United States joined the war and it became truly global, including campaigns in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, France and Normandy. Exhibits in this wing cover the liberation of Western Europe, the Eastern Front and the Pacific Ocean. A further wing is devoted to the partisan fighters, the underground, the ghetto and concentration camp resistance fighters.

There is an important historical connection between WWII and Israel’s 1948 War of Independence, partly because Jewish volunteers from pre-state Israel joined the allied armies in various capacities, and partly because some of the same Jews who fought against genocide in WWII later also fought for the survival of Israel. For example, South African-born Harold “Smoky” Simon, who fought at El-Alamein, later joined Israel’s Air Force in 1948. His journey —from desert battles to pioneering bombardments over Damascus — illustrates the continuum from WWII to Israel’s founding. The military experience and training gained in the world war helped to build the structure – and the values – of the IDF, the first challenge of which was to protect the new state against the onslaught of the armies of seven Arab nations.

Jewish pilots in the American air force in WWII were among those entitled after the war to buy a plane – stripped of its armaments – because the US found itself with many more warplanes than it required during peacetime. Some of those aircraft were dismantled and crated and covertly shipped across the world – in defiance of several national arms embargos – to provide some of the very first planes in the fledgling Israeli air force. There are many such extraordinary and unforgettable stories. Come and hear them.

Do visit the Chaim Herzog Museum of the Jewish Soldier in WWII. It is a wonderful achievement, an overdue tribute to the past and a reclamation of a fascinating and inspiring part of our people’s history. You will emerge with a full heart and an enriched understanding of Jewish heroism and agency and the values and sacrifices that shaped the modern Jewish world. As one visitor — an Israeli grandmother — summed it up: “I came here expecting sadness, but I left feeling proud — and hopeful for our future.”

Open: Sunday–Thursday, 09:00–15:00 (advance booking required)
Online: https://yadchaimherzog.org.il/en/the-museum-of-the-jewish-warrior-in-world-war-ii/
Located: on the main Latrun plateau, easily reached from Jerusalem or Tel Aviv
Guided tours available: bring headphones for multilingual audio
Highly recommended: can be combined with a visit to the tank museum Yad La‑Shiryon for a full day of history, memory, and inspiration