Jewish soldiers and officers of the Polish army

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Jewish soldiers and officers of the Polish army


General Anders salutes his fallen Polish Jewish soldiers of the 2nd Polish Corps at Monte Cassino

Approximately 1.5 million Jewish officers and soldiers in the ranks of the Allied regular armies, in Underground national resistance movements, and in Partisan units participated in all theatres of the war fighting the Nazi Foe and Axis Powers. They fought bravely, proved their heroism, showed courage and dedication in their struggle. Their valor made a significant and impressive contribution to the ultimate victory of the Allied Forces in World War II.

Nearly 200.000 Polish Jews fought against Nazi Germany in the ranks of the Polish Armies on Polish soil and in Exile. They defended Poland in September 1939 against the German aggression. They fought in the Polish Armies in exile; in the 1940 defense of France, in the Middle East, in North Africa in Italy and in the Netherlands at Market Garden in Arnhem. While serving in the Polish Tank Corps, Air Force and Navy they participated, together with the RAF and British Royal Navy, in the Normandy Landings. The Polish Forces, along with The Red Army, took part in the great offensive, eventually liberating Poland and conquering Germany.

In addition, many Polish Jews fought as part of the Polish, Russian, and French Underground movements. They were also a part of the Palestine Jewish Brigade. Polish Jews fought in the French Army, in the Red Army, and in the British Forces.


A group of Polish jewish soldiers

Despite the tremendous Jewish military contribution to the Polish war efforts, the official Polish historical bibliography of W.W.II ignores this Jewish phenomena.


A Polish jewish soldier in 1939 with his wife.

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Eng. Benjamin Meirtchak
Wloclawek Poland 2.7.1917 – Tel Aviv, Israel 25.3.2005


Benjamin Meirtchak was a Polish Officer during WWII

Eng. Benjamin Meirtchak who was born in Wloclawek, Poland was the President of the Association of Jewish War Veterans of Polish Armies in Israel, Chairman of the Central Committee of the Association of Disabled Veterans of Fight against Nazism in Israel and Secretary General of the Association of Polish Jews in Israel.

He was researching the historv of active Jewish participation in the fight against Nazi Germany in the ranks of the Allied Regular Forces and in particular in the Polish Armies in Poland and Polish Armies in exile during W.W.II.. He has published works on the subject in Polish, Hebrew, English and Russian.

His monumental work "Jewish Military Casualties in the Polih Armies in W.W.II" was translated in Poland in June 2001.

During WWII Mr. Meirtchak fought defending Warsaw in September 1939 and was imprisoned in Soviet concentration camps. In the ranks of the Polish Army in the U.S.S.R. the author participated in the bloody Lenino battle and was in command of a tank battalion in the Bautzen-Elba Campaign as a Captain. He was wounded in battle and decorated with Polish and Soviet Army awards and medals.

On September 1st, 1999, Mr. Meirtehak was awarded by the President of Poland with the "COMMANDERS CROSS ORDER OF MERIT OF THE POLISH REPUBLIC".

On April 5th, 2001 Mr. Meirtchak was promoted by the Minister of National Defence of Poland to Lieut. Colonel (Ret.) rank.


Benjamin Meirtchak at a Reception at the Polish Embassy, Tel Aviv, 1999

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Benjamin Meirtchak Farewell Words
Written in the end of the book: JEWS-OFFICERS IN THE POLISH ARMED FORCES 1939-1945, edited by ada Holtzman, revised edition, Avotaynu December 2004

About the Book

I am presenting you with the second edition of the study: "Jews – Officers in the Polish Armed Forces".
Altogether we set 4,976 Jews – Officers. It is the most authoritative and updated work on the subject on Jews – Officers defending and fighting for Poland's Independence.
It took me 3 years to complete this second edition. Even now, the volume is not comprehensive presentation of Jews - Officers in the Polish Armed Forces, but I am in doubt if somebody will be able to add names of Jews – Officers abandoned in our study, to the lists presented.
Dear friends... I am now 87 years old and it will probably be my last study on the subject of "Jews fighting against the Nazis in the ranks of the Polish Armed Forces".
I fulfilled my duty by immortalizing the heroic behavior of Jewish soldiers and officers, my brothers-in-arms, in fighting against the German foe, and I hope that this study will change the existing opinion that Jews were only victims of the Nazis. And if it happens, then I achieved my aim and I thank the Almighty for giving me the privilege, power and belief in doing the right thing – commemorating the Jewish fight against the Nazis in the ranks of the Polish Armed Forces.

September 2004
Eng. Benjamin Meirtchak, Lieut. Colonel (ret.)

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The “Anders Army”



The “Anders Army” refers to the Polish armed forces set up in the former Soviet Union in the period 1941-1942, named after its commander, General Władysław Anders. The army provided the bulk of the Second Corps of the Polish Armed Forces in the West which fought under British command in Italy.

At the outbreak of World War Two in September 1939 the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany dismembered Poland in a twin invasion agreed in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. About 200,000 soldiers of the Polish army who were in the newly occupied territory were taken prisoner by the Red Army. Among them were thousands of Jewish soldiers and officers. Two years later, in February 1940, hundreds of thousands of civilians – entire families and whole rural populations – were forcibly taken from these occupied territories, mostly on cattle trains, to various labour camps all over the Soviet Union.


Lt. General Wladyslaw Anders, commander of the II Polish Corps

Diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and Poland were re-established only when Nazi Germany reneged on its pact with its erstwhile ally, the Soviet Union, and attacked it on 22 June 1941 in Operation Barbarossa. An agreement between Stalin, Churchill, Eden and the Polish government-in-exile in London led by General Sikorski was signed on 30 July 1941 whereby all Poles held by the Soviet Union were to be freed so as to form an army to help the fight against Hitler. A military agreement of 14 August 1941 and the subsequent Sikorski-Mayski agreement of 17 August 1941, resulted in Stalin agreeing to declare all previous pacts with Nazi Germany to be null and void, invalidating the September 1939 Soviet-German partition of Poland and releasing tens of thousands of Polish citizens held in Soviet forced labour camps in a so-called "amnesty" (an unfortunate term which implied forgiveness of a crime). Stalin also agreed that this military force would be subordinate to the Polish government-in-exile based in London.


General Wladyslaw Sikorski


General Michał Tadeusz Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski

The Polish military leader in exile, General Sikorski, named General Władysław Anders as commander of the new army. Anders was at the time held at the infamous Lubyanka prison in Moscow and was accordingly released by Stalin on 4 August 1941 to organise the new army. The first commander on the ground, General Michał Tokarzewski, began the task of forming this army on 17 August in Soviet Central Asia, in the town of Totskoye (Orenburg Region), whilst awaiting the arrival of Anders, who issued his first orders as commander on 22 August 1941. Military formations began to be set up in the Buzuluk area of Orenburg Region. Recruitment of Polish citizens began in the labour camps run by the secret police (NKVD). By the end of 1941 about 25,000 soldiers (including 1,000 officers) had been recruited, forming three infantry divisions: the 5th, 6th and 7th. (Menachem Begin, a future Prime Minister of Israel, was among those who joined). The 8th Division was formed in spring 1942 when the formation was moved to Tashkent.

The recruitment process was hampered by significant numbers of missing Polish officers (presumed executed), disputes over whether non-ethnic Poles who had been citizens of the Second (interwar) Polish Republic were eligible for recruitment (i.e. specifically Jews, Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians), Soviet reluctance to provide transport, and Soviet refusal to allow volunteers to leave the USSR to join existing Polish armed forces in the west. Moreover, some Soviet labour camp administrators were unwilling to release Poles as they required their inmates to meet unchanged camp production quotas.

In the second half of 1942, during the big German offensive in the Caucasus, Stalin agreed that the Polish formation could be used on the Middle Eastern front in Persia (Iran). The “Anders Army” was transferred from Krasnovodsk across the Caspian Sea to the port of Pahlavi (today Bandar-e Anzali).

After their arrival in Persia, more men were added via the overland route from Ashkhabad in Uzbekistan to the railhead at Mashhad in Persia. The “Anders Army” thus passed from Soviet control to British control. It was renamed the Polish Second Corps and joined the Polish Armed Forces in the West.

About 41,000 combatants and 74,000 civilians - former Polish citizens – left the Soviet Union with the “Anders Army”, joining the British High Command in the Middle East, travelling through Persia, Iraq and Palestine.

When the “Anders Army” reached Palestine, most of the Jewish Poles left and joined Jewish veteran settlements there. It is said that Anders actually facilitated the release of Jewish soldiers from the Polish Army in Palestine, including Begin, because he did not particularly want them. (This mass release of Jewish soldiers was dubbed the "Anders Aliyah" and played an important role in the founding of the State of Israel in 1948.) In 2006 a memorial to the Anders' Army was erected on Mount Zion in Jerusalem.

Notes:
1. About 30,000 soldiers from the Polish Army were executed by the Soviets in 1940 and 1941 in the Katyn forest near Smolensk. The graves were discovered by the Nazis in 1943 and when news of this broke it caused Polish-Soviet relations to deteriorate even more. Initially, the Soviets blamed the executions on the Nazis and it was not until the 1990s that Russian President Boris Yeltsin finally admitted Soviet guilt.

2. General Sikorski died on 4 July 1943 in a plane crash in Gibraltar. There are theories that it was not an accident, because Sikorski had refused to accept Stalin's claim that the Katyn massacre had been carried out by the Nazis.

3. According to a note from Beria (head of the Soviet secret police) to Stalin dated 15 January 1943, over 389,000 Polish citizens were freed as a result of the 1941 "amnesty". They included 200,828 ethnic Poles, 90,662 Jews, 31,392 Ukrainians, 27,418 Belorusians, 3,421 Russians, and 2,291 persons of other nationalities. Tens of thousands died from hunger, cold, heat, disease and exhaustion on their long journeys south from the Arctic labour camps.

4. During the two evacuations of the “Anders Army” from Uzbekistan (24 March-2 April 1942; and 10 August-1 September 1942), from Krasnovodsk across the Caspian Sea to Pahlavi (Persia/Iran), and also the smaller overland evacuations from Ashkhabad to Mashhad (in March and September 1942), about 115,000 people (including some 37,000 civilians, of whom about 18,300 were children) left the Soviet Union. The soldiers of the “Anders Army” went on to fight in many battles, including the one at Monte Cassino; the civilians, because they could not be repatriated, were forced to remain in foreign lands for the remainder of the war.

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Polish army trained the rightwing Revisionist Zionists

More than three million Jews, concentrated mainly in the large towns, lived in Poland in the 1930s. In Warsaw, for example, Jews constituted one-third of the population. The Polish government, worried by the increase in Jewish influence in the country, not only did nothing to hinder the illegal immigration movement which the Revisionists organized in Poland, but actively assisted it.


Logo of the rightwing Irgun


Leader of the Revisionist Zionists Ze'ev Jabotinsky

In 1936, Jabotinsky met with the Foreign Minister, Josef Beck, and created the infrastructure for collaboration. The Polish government hoped that the establishment of a Jewish state would lead to mass emigration of Jews, thus solving the Jewish problem in Poland. In November 1937, Avraham Stern (Yair), then secretary of the Irgun General Headquarters, arrived in the Polish capital armed with a letter of recommendation from Jabotinsky. He met with senior government officials and laid the practical foundations for cooperation between the Polish army and the Irgun Zvai Le'umi. Within the framework of this cooperation, Polish army representatives handed over to Irgun representatives weapons and ammunition which had been kept in special ammunition depots. The weapons remained under Polish army supervision until they were despatched to Eretz Israel. Some of the weapons were concealed in the false bottoms of crates in which the furniture of prospective immigrants was transported, or in the drums of electrical machines. When the consignments reached Eretz Israel, they were taken to a safe place, and the weapons were removed from their hiding place.

When in Warsaw Avraham Stern was much helped by Dr. Henryk Strasman, a well known lawyer and an officer in the Polish Reserve force. His wife Alicja (Lilka) was also of great help. The Strasmans introduced Stern to the Polish intellectuals and high officials. It was in their home that the preparations for the publication of the Polish periodical "Jerozolima Wyzwolona" (Free Jerusalem) were begun. It was Lilka who designed the cover - A map of Eretz Israel with the background of an arm holding a gun and the words in Hebrew: "" (This Way Only). This became later the symbol of the Irgun.

In March 25,1939, senior Irgun commanders from Eretz Israel participated in a course held in the Carpathian mountains, instructed by Polish army officers. The course took place under conditions of great secrecy, and the instructors wore civilian clothing. The participants were not permitted to establish contact with local Jews, and the letters they wrote home were sent to Switzerland, inserted in new envelopes, re-addressed to France, and finally posted from there to Palestine. The trainees received military training and were taught tactics of guerilla warfare.
Yaakov Meridor
When the course ended, they returned to Eretz Israel, apart from three who remained in Poland: Yaakov Meridor, who was responsible for despatching the weapons received from the Polish army; Shlomo Ben Shlomo, who organized a commanders course for selected members of Irgun cells in Poland (Isaac Raviv was one of the participants), and Zvi Meltzer, who organized a similar course in Lithuania.

The organization of clandestine Irgun cells in Europe had begun a year previously, and was mainly conducted among members of Betar. The plan was to train a cadre of fighters, who would immigrate to Eretz Israel illegally, bringing arms with them, to become a kind of commando corps. Avraham Stern was involved in organizing the Polish cells, and was assisted by Nathan Friedman-Yellin (member of the Irgun commission in Poland) and Shmuel Merlin (General Secretary of the New Zionist Organization in Poland).

The first course for Irgun commanders in Poland was held in the fall of 1938 and was headed by Aharon Heichman (a member of the Irgun General Headquarters), who was sent specially from Palestine for this assignment. Twenty four members of Polish "cells" took part in the course, which was conducted in complete secrecy. The Polish police, whilst aware of what was going on, did not intervene nor did they ask questions about the gunfire heard in the area.

POST-WAR ACTIVITY IN EUROPE
The outbreak of the Second World War, on September 1, 1939, cut short the extensive activity of the Irgun in Poland and Lithuania. Most of the arms which the Irgun had received were returned to the Polish army and Irgun activity ceased.