By Rick Kardonne — Tribune Correspondent
Sir Winston Churchill, arguably the friendliest of the big three allied leaders toward Jewish interests, had a Jewish paternal grandfather who regularly entertained Jewish guests at the family home.
Such a significant but little-known fact was revealed by Churchill’s official biographer, Sir Martin Gilbert, one of the leading historians of the 20th century, who recently addressed a capacity audience at Shaar Shalom Synagogue on Churchill and the Little-Known Jewish Contribution to World War II.
Deeply versed in the Old Testament, Churchill said in 1921, when he was Colonial Secretary: “The world owes to the Jews a system of ethics, which is the greatest contribution to mankind.”
Gilbert said that “in May 1940, when he became Prime Minister (after the fall of the great appeaser Neville Chamberlain, author of both the Munich pact and the White Paper, which, cowtowing to Arab interests, severely barred Jewish immigration to Eretz Israel), Churchill struggled with every cabinet minister to establish an alliance with the Jews. In the fall of 1940, he wanted the Jews to form their own military unit. Every 3 or 4 months he was told it was impossible. One senior civil servant said: ‘Churchill is too fond of Jews.’ But Churchill persisted. He said: ‘I like the idea of the Jews getting back at the murderers of their countrymen.’ A Jewish unit was finally established in 1944, where it distinguished itself through heroic actions against the Germans in Italy.”
Even before the establishment of this unit, Churchill instituted various military and political means to convey his support of Jewish interests. For example: when the pro-Nazi Rashid Ali seized power in Iraq in 1941, Churchill formed a group of Palestinian Jews, headed by the Irgun’s David Raziel (who ironically had been serving time in British jails), which successfully destroyed Ali’s bases and prevented Hitler from forming a Mideast beachhead. Raziel was killed in the process.
Another Churchill initiative was his Special Intelligence Group (SIG), consisting of German-Jewish refugees in England, who were disguised as German soldiers and then sent behind German lines in North Africa. Led by another Irgun member, Dov Cohen, the SIG raided a German airfield in North Africa and blew up many German planes. It’s possible that this raid against Nazi air power facilitated Montgomery’s defeat of Rommel in the battle of El Alamein in October 1942 — one of the two main turning points in the war (the other being Stalingrad). Under Churchill, the British parachuted many Palestinian Jewish volunteers behind enemy lines in occupied Europe, including the heroines Denise Bloch (in France) and Hannah Senesh (in Hungary).Most did not come back. One who did, Chaika Grossman, became a feisty Member of Knesset after the war. Churchill also aided in the creation of British-backed Jewish units in the Serb-Yugoslav partisan resistance units headed by Josip Broz Tito and the general Polish uprising of August 1944 in which Jewish survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising 15 months earlier played a key role. He helped to create the Polish army in exile, of which its most famous veteran was Menachem Begin. Churchill did play a role in the belated bombing of the rail lines leading to Auschwitz in the summer of 1944, overcoming resistance from the Roosevelt administration (in the person of John McCloy whom Gilbert felt to be prejudiced against Jews), which was in charge of European air operations.
He opposed the Chamberlain White Paper. While he was unable to directly contravene it due to the fact that it had been passed in Parliament, Churchill allowed Jews who had managed to reach Istanbul during the war to immigrate to Eretz Israel without restrictions. He favoured the peaceful creation of Jewish Israel, but his postwar defeat to his anti-Zionist Labour Party rival, Clement Atlee, prevented his vision from peacefully occurring. While leader of the Opposition during the Atlee years, Churchill said: “Britain has betrayed its promise to the Jews. I would beg that both sides of this House not be moved by the antisemitic frame of mind. Gilbert concluded by mentioning Jewish contributions to all of the Allied armies, especially the Red Army, in which there were many Jewish generals. After the war, 15 British Jewish war vets came to Israel in 1948 to establish the Israeli intelligence service. Recently, Ehud Barak invited Gilbert to Israel to speak at a reunion of these intelligence vets, who reminded everyone of Churchill’s contribution to the foundation of modern-day Israeli intelligence.
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