SIGNED Yiddish & English JEWISH ART BOOK Holocaust CAMPS Kovno STUTTHOF Leibitz

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SIGNED Yiddish & English JEWISH ART BOOK Holocaust CAMPS Kovno STUTTHOF Leibitz:
$145.00

DESCRIPTION : In her illustratedJEWISH-HEBREW ART BOOK named \" SKETCHES FROM A WOMEN\'S LABOUR CAMP\" ( \"JEWESSES in SLAVERY\" ) , TheJewish-Israeli artist ESTHER LURIE , Surviver of the KOVNO GHETTO as well asthe CONCENTRATION and the WORKING CAMPS of STUTTHOF and LEIBITZ has gatheredher IMPRESSIONS , Depicting through 15 FULL PAGE DRAWINGS ( Plus additional drawing on front cover ) , Images Jewish women inNAZI imprisonment . This much elrarged HEBREW & ENGLISH & YIDDISH edition is HAND SIGNED and INSCRIBED in English ( Autographed - Autograph - Autogramme ) by the ARTIST , PAINTER and WRITER ESTHER LURIE . A much smaller Hebrew edition was published in 1945right after the HOLOCAUST and WW2 in Eretz Israel ( Then also refered to asPalestine ) Half decade before Israel has gained its INDEPENDENCE . TheFIRST EDITION of this book , Also a much smaller Hebrew edition was published only a few months earlier in ROMEby the \"JEWISH SOLDIERS CLUB\" in Rome Italy in May 1945 , Right afterthe end of WW2 and the HOLOCAUST in a limited edition of only 200 copies. The\"Jewish Soldiers Club\" in Rome was a gathering place for the HebrewIsraeli Jewish Brigade soldiers who were engaged at the time in the activitiesof HA\'APALA - ALIYA BET and the BRICHA - EMIGRATION . The later Eretz Israeliedition, Limited in quantity yet not numbered , was published in EretzIsrael in 1945 later that year and it\'s also mostly sought after . The text in this later enlarged and HAND SIGNED edition is in HEBREW , YIDDISH and English . Thrilling historicalpersonal forward by Lurie. 15 delicate FULL PAGE drawings, Printedas issued on one face only of the leaf. The book is RAREanddifficult to find. ORIGINAL illustrated wrappers . 9.5\" x 7\". 34 text pp plus 15 illustrated sheets with tipped in illustrations.Very goodcondition. ( Pls look at scan foraccurate AS IS images ) Bookwill be sent inside a protective envelope . PAYMENTS : Payment method accepted : Paypal .SHIPPMENT : SHIPP worldwide via registered airmail is $16 .Book will be sent inside a protective envelope .Handling within 3-5 days after payment. Estimated Int\'l duration around 14 days. Lurie, Esther (1913–1998) The daughter of a religious Jewish family with five children, Esther Lurie was born in Liepaja, Latvia, which her family was forced to leave during World War I because the city served as a military port. In 1917 the family returned to Riga, where Esther Lurie graduated from the Ezra Gymnasium. She developed her artistic talent from the age of fifteen by studying with various teachers. In the years 1931–1934 she studied set design at the Institute of Decorative Arts (Institut des Arts Décoratifs) in Brussels and drawing at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (Académie Royal des Beaux-Arts) in Antwerp. In 1934 Lurie immigrated to Palestine with most of her family. She designed sets for the Hebrew Theater in Tel Aviv. When events limited theatrical activity in Palestine, she devoted herself to drawing, especially portraits. In 1938 she won the prestigious Dizengoff Prize for Drawing for her work The Erez Israel Orchestra, which was exhibited in the Tel Aviv Museum. In 1939 Lurie went to Europe to pursue her studies, visiting France and studying at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (Académie Royal des Beaux-Arts) in Antwerp. In Riga she exhibited her works in an exhibition that took place in the Painters’ Association House. In 1940 she had an exhibition in Kovno in the Royal Opera House. Her works were received with great acclaim and some of them were purchased by local Jewish institutions as well as by the Kovno State Museum. After the German occupation her works were confiscated, having been defined as Jewish art. World War II broke out while she was in Lithuania and during the German occupation she was imprisoned in the Kovno ghetto (1941–1944), where she at once began to sketch the scenes of the new reality. The members of the Council of Elders (Ältestenrat), who learned of her talent after seeing one of her paintings, asked her to document everything that was happening in the ghetto. Her works were displayed in an exhibition held in the ghetto. The Germans also showed interest in Lurie’s artistic talent and she painted pictures commissioned by the German commanders. Lurie, who drew everywhere in the ghetto, received special permission from the German commander to draw in the pottery workshop. While she was there she asked the potters to prepare a number of jars for her in which she could conceal her works if the situation worsened. After the deportation of March 26, 1943, the artist hid her collection of drawings—approximately two hundred drawings and watercolors of 25 x 35cm.—in the large jars prepared in advance. Some of the works were photographed for the ghetto’s clandestine archives. In July 1944, as the Red Army approached Lithuania, the ghetto was liquidated and those remaining in it were transferred to concentration camps and forced labor camps in Germany. Esther Lurie was deported and her hidden works were left behind. Later it was found that some of her drawings had survived along with the archives of the Council of Elders. Avraham Tory-Golob succeeded in rescuing and bringing to Israel eleven sketches and several watercolors, as well as twenty photographs of her works. She was unable to discover what happened to the rest of her works. Up to the end of July 1944, Lurie, along with the other women from the ghetto, was held in the Stutthof concentration camp, where she was separated from her sister, with whom she had been together through the whole ghetto period. Her sister and her young son were deported to Auschwitz, from which they never returned. In Stutthof Lurie continued to receive commissions and more than once her art served as barter for food. In August 1944 Lurie was transferred to Leibitz, where she painted portraits of several inmates. Esther Lurie was liberated by the Red Army on January 21, 1945. In March 1945 she reached a camp in Italy, where she met Jewish soldiers from Palestine who were serving in the British army. One of them, the artist Menahem Shemi, organized an exhibition of drawings from the camps and brought about the publication of the booklet Jewesses in Slavery, which contained drawings by Lurie from Stutthof and Leibitz. Lurie reached Palestine in July 1945. In 1946 she was awarded the Dizengoff Prize for her sketch Young Woman with Yellow Star, done in the Kovno ghetto. She married, raised a family and continued to paint and exhibit in group and solo exhibitions in Israel and abroad. During the Eichmann trial, which took place in Jerusalem in 1961, Lurie’s works from the time of World War II served as testimony, thereby gaining official approval by the Supreme Court for the documentary value of her sketches and watercolors. Lurie died in Tel Aviv in 1998. Part of her works from the period of the Holocaust are in the collection of the Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum, to which they were donated by the artist. Her works of art can also be found in the Yad Vashem collection in Jerusalem and in private collections. ******** Esther Lurie 1913-1998 Esther Lurie was born in Liepaja, Latvia, to a religious Jewish family with five children. Her family were forced to leave during World War I because the city\'s importance as a military port. In 1917 they shifted to Riga, where Lurie graduated from Ezra Gymnasium (high school). She already showed artistic talent in kindergarten and began to develop professionally from the age of fifteen, studying with various teachers. From 1931-1934 she learned theatrical set design at the Institut des Arts Décoratifs in Brussels, and afterwards studied drawing at the Académie Royal des Beaux-Arts in Antwerp. In 1934 Lurie migrated to Palestine with most of her family and worked at various artistic activities. She designed sets for the Hebrew Theatre, as well as works for the Adloyada in Tel Aviv, the Bialik exhibition and the Eastern Fair. When events limited theatrical activity in Palestine, she devoted herself to drawing - producing many portraits. Her favorite subjects were dancers and musicians. She also travelled to many kibbutzim, painting the landscapes of Palestine, and her works were exhibited in kibbutzim dining rooms. Her first exhibition took place in Kibbutz Geva in 1937. In 1938 she was accepted as a member of the Painters and Sculptors Association in Palestine. She held solo exhibitions in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa. In 1938 she won the Dizengoff Prize for Drawing - the most prestigious prize - for a work entitled \"The Palestine Orchestra\". This was shown at the general exhibition of Palestine artists in the Tel Aviv Museum. In 1939 she travelled to Europe to further her studies, visiting France and attending the the Académie Royal des Beaux-Arts in Antwerp. That summer she visited relatives in Latvia and Lithuania, exhibiting work at the Painters\' Association Building in Riga and also at Kovno (Kaunas) in Lithuania (both in 1939). The next year she held another exhibition at Kovno\'s Royal Opera House on the theme of \"The Ballet\". Her works received great acclaim and some of them were purchased by local Jewish institutions and by the Kovno State Museum. After the Nazi occupation they were confiscated, being defined as \"Jewish art\". World War II had begun while she was in Lithuania and during the Nazi occupation (1941-44) she was imprisoned in the Kovno ghetto along with the other Jews. As soon as she entered the ghetto, in mid-1941, Lurie began to sketch views of her new world. She has left behind a detailed written testimony of her life and work during World War II. This combination of literary and visual testimony make up a \"living witness\" (the name she would later give to one of her books). They enable us to enter deeply into her life as an artist during this period under these difficult conditions. She wrote: Everything that was happening all around was so strange, so different from all the ideas and practices of our lives hitherto. I felt that I must report on this new existence or at least make sketches. I must depict things as I saw them. Admittedly, it was only during periods of relative calm that I could devote myself to any such activity. But in the course of time I began to regard this work of mine as a duty.[1] Lurie has written about her sources of inspiration and about the extensive cooperation she received from the residents of the ghetto: The place where I first set out to sketch was the \"Reserverat\". The former school for handicrafts contained all the families who had been unable to obtain any other quarters. People lived in a big courtyard where they cooked on stones. There I found ample material: heaps and piles of furniture that had been transformed into queer barricades, and now served as residential quarters. Here were children, old folk, all sorts of Jewish types. Life was going on everywhere, in every corner; conversations and quarrels, some folk attending to various things while others just sat doing nothing or studied a book. When I sat down in a corner of the courtyard I was promptly surrounded. My work interested them very much, and each and every one was prepared to help. Somebody would stand sentinel to warn me if the Germans came. The people very much liked the idea that I should make a permanent record of \"how it was.\"[2] Later on, the members of the Ältestenrat (Council of Elders) were shown one of her works. Recognising the value of her work as historical documentation, they asked her to draw everything that was happening in the ghetto. Dr Elkes, President of the Committee, and his fellow members, welcomed this step of mine and asked me to go on collecting and recording material of this kind. Their attitude encouraged me. Henceforward I set out to sketch whatever seemed important to me; but this was not a simple or easy undertaking, for it was dangerous to do any sketching in the streets [...] strangers agreed to permit me to paint from the window of their home [...] The people of the house were friendly and concerned. \"What should be done to make sure that your pictures will survive?\" they used to ask.[3] The help that Lurie received from people - and their concern about how to preserve her art - shows the great importance that was attached to her work. In this period of destruction and annihilation, it seemed very likely that the subjects of the works would not survive, so it was all the more important that these documents and commemorations should last. This was why she was asked: \"What should we do to preserve your paintings?\" Despite her sense of responsibility and the cooperation of the ghetto inmates - both the ghetto administration and the other prisoners - Lurie did not have the strength to draw all the time. Her written account sheds light on the connection between the emotional distress of the artist and the creation of art works - a concern expressed by artists in other camps with similar conditions: For a long time I stopped my drawing. These were days of constant fear, of a harsh and coarsening struggle for existence. The German method was: action followed by a brief relaxation until the next action, which again came as a surprise. I was also conscripted for forced labour. Only occasionally, on some free day, did the painter Jacob Lifshitz and I sketch \"Ghetto Types\". Then once again I was invited to the Jewish Committee. There I was informed of a resolution to encourage all initiative in the Ghetto that could be connected with the collection of historical material. Secrecy had to be preserved. I was promised every assistance as long as I continued to paint the life of the Ghetto [...] A temporary release from forced labour was obtained on my behalf. It was not easy. I was placed on the list of \"Ghetto workers\", and received leave for two months.[4] In fact, this \"conscripted\" artist, for whom such a great effort had been made to enable her to concentrate on depicting ghetto life, drew extensively, covering every detail of the ghetto. She was assisted by both the residents and the local police. I went to sketch as much as was left of the Hospital of the Little Ghetto, which the Germans had destroyed [...] I sketched at the Communal Kitchen, where a little thin soup was distributed to old people and forsaken children. These people were quite indifferent to all that was going on around them, and paid no attention to me [...] I wished to make a record of the working people, the masses. Sometimes I was permitted to sit in the Jewish Police station and sketch from a window on the second floor, through which it was possible to see the main gate and the entire surroundings [...] There I sketched a number of people as they went out to work with big home-made gloves, carrying food containers and with knapsacks on their backs or at their sides. On several occasions I painted the Actions Square where, by the \"Little Blocks\" was the spot dividing the Jews who were sent \"right\" from those who were sent \"left\" on the day of the Big Action.[5] In addition to the characters and events, Lurie also depicted the landscapes, whose beauty was in direct contradiction to the terrors of life in the ghetto. A subject which I painted many times at all seasons was the road that led from the \"Ghetto Valley\" to the \"Ninth Fort\" on the hilltop [view one of these works]. A row of lofty trees at the wayside gave the road a singular character. The highway to the hilltop remains etched deep in my memory as a Via Dolorosa, taken by tens of thousands of Jews from Lithuania and Western Europe on the way to their deaths. There were days when the grey clouds gave this place a peculiarly tragic aspect which accorded with our feelings.[6] In the Kovno ghetto, as in other camps and ghettos, inmates attempted to preserve a semblance of normal life by sticking to normal routines and by maintaining cultural activities. These included an exhibition of Esther Lurie\'s works which Avraham Golub (Tory), the secretary of the Ältestenrat, wrote about in his ghetto diary. In these writings he offers his own views and those of Lurie on the roles of artist and documenter. The artist had to be, he wrote, the \"mouth\" of the single, lone person, to commemorate also the \"small\" details, from which the mosaic of experience was composed. He wrote: In the afternoon there was an exhibition of drawings by the artist Esther Lurie for a small group of people. This is an artist versed in international culture, rich in ideas. From the first days of the ghetto she made it her goal to commemorate the visions of the ghetto, by means of drawings and characters meaningful to Jewish history [...] Every artist in the ghetto must commemorate - in Esther Lurie\'s opinion - in accordance with his method and ability, everything that happens in the ghetto. The important occurrences and major events will remain in the memory of the people, but the suffering of the individual will be forgotten. This testament obliges us, first and foremost, to remember and to draw events and facts, people and characters, important pictures and moments. To commemorate everything. In the spoken word and in writing, in sketching and painting. In every possible artistic method. Esther Lurie responded to this call and she does it wholeheartedly [...]. Every drawing is a piece of the history of endless pain, an expression of emotional and physical martyrdom. [...] Today [...] the faces of the participants lit up for a minute in the presence of Esther Lurie\'s drawings of the ghetto. Additional proof of the non-capitulation of the Jewish spirit under all conditions at all times. Kovno Ghetto, July 25, 1943.[7] In addition to her \"conscripted\" work on behalf of the Judenrat (Jewish Council), the Nazis also showed interest in Lurie\'s artistic talent. As the ghetto emptied out, after the aktion (roundup) of the children and elderly on 27 March 1944, the SS men now lived among the Jews and interfered with everything, causing constant tension. At that time Lurie was working in the painting and drawing workshops, where the imprisoned artists were employed. They painted pictures to order for the German commanders, but this mostly consisted of large oil paintings based on color reproductions. The Germans also ordered artistic photographs, and for this they constructed a studio and brought in a Jewish photographer from a forced labor camp. Lurie drew everywhere in the ghetto, including the various workshops. Among the workshops she was permitted to visit was the pottery workshop. During her visits there, Lurie got the idea of asking the Jewish potters to prepare a number of jars for her. She would use these to conceal her art works if the situation worsened. The situation did grow worse. After the deportation of 26 October 1943, in which 3,000 ghetto inmates were removed to forced labor camps in Estonia, Lurie hid her art collection - approximately 200 drawings and watercolors of 25 x 35 cm - in the large jars she had prepared in advance. Some of her works were photographed beforehand for ghetto\'s hidden archive. In July 1944, as the Red Army approached Lithuania, the ghetto was liquidated and those remaining were transferred to concentration camps and forced labor camps in Germany. The ghetto was set on fire and the buildings were blown up and burnt to prevent those hiding from escaping. Some people were burned to death in their hiding places. Esther Lurie was sent to Germany, leaving her hidden works behind. After the war some of her drawings were recovered, surviving with the Ältestenrat\'s archive. Avraham Tory succeeded in rescuing 11 sketches and watercolors and 20 of the photographs of her works. He took these to Israel. Lurie was unable to discover what happened to the remainder of her works. Esther Lurie, along with the other women from the ghetto, was placed in Stutthof concentration camp, where she remained until the end of July 1944. She was separated from her sister, with whom she had lived during the whole ghetto period. Lurie\'s sister and young nephew were deported to Auschwitz and did not survive the war. As in the ghetto, Lurie continued to receive requests to draw and commemorate Stutthof inmates. More than once her art served her as barter for food: I managed to get hold of a pencil and some scraps of paper. I started to draw some of the various \"types\" among the women prisoners. Young girls, who had \"friends\" among the male inmates and who used to get gifts of food, asked me to draw their portrait. The payment - a piece of bread.[8] I also did some drawings of women wearing \"pyjamas\" [view example] at the Stutthof Concentration Camp. They were drawn in pencil on poor-quality paper which I received from a girl who worked at registering the prisoners. These drawings I hid in my clothes for the five months we spent in the labour camp.[9] In August 1944 Lurie was moved, along with another 1,200 prisoners, to forced labor camps in Germany. She was sent to Leibitz, where she depicted several of the prisoners (view example). She has written about this time: The following are the circumstances which made it possible for me to produce these drawings. Each of us was required to wear attached to the left sleeve her prisoner\'s number and the Shield of David printed on a strip of linen, which we received when our clothes were handed out to us at the Stutthof concentration camp. In the course of the time the linen was torn or numbers became blurred and had to be restored. This became my duty. When a certain quantity of number strips had been collected, I was excused from field work in order to attend to them. During our last month in the camp, when hundreds of women demanded the renewal of their numbers, I was attached to the \"Innendienst\" (Internal Service) of the camp and became \"Nummerschreiberin\" (Number Writer). I was permitted to stay in the sickroom. I was given ink and wrote with slivers of wood. Here at last I saw an opportunity to draw and sketch some of our women. To give me something to draw on, our doctor collected the white paper off the cottonwool. Once one of the guards saw me drawing and asked me to do a sketch of him. I did so and in return he brought me paper, pens and China ink. Naturally I had to be careful not to be seen or caught sketching by the Nazi guards. I could not spend much time at it. I succeeded in completing only a small number of sketches much as I longed to record on paper all that I saw. Yet the presence of the camp commandant, Oberscharführer OLK, nicknamed \"Schnabel\" (Beak), filled the soul with dread and fear [...] The hope of remaining alive was so faint. Still less could I hope that the drawings would be left in my possession, even if I were to succeed in evading death. Day by day we expected to be sent back from there to the concentration camp, where everything could be taken away from us. This I knew by experience. These sketches [done in the labour camp] were drawn after OLK had been replaced and a more human commandant came to our camp.[10] Lurie was liberated by the Red Army on 21 January 1945. In March 1945 she reached a camp in Italy, where she met Jewish soldiers from Palestine who were serving in the British army. One of them, the artist Menahem Shemi, organized an exhibition of drawings from the camps, which resulted in the publication of a booklet \"Jewesses in Slavery\". This contained drawings by Lurie from Stutthof and Leibitz and was published by the Jewish Soldiers\' Club of Rome in 1945. Lurie also created stage sets for the military song and dance group in the camp, which was founded by Eliahu Goldberg and Mordechai Zeira. Lurie reached Israel (Palestine) in July 1945 and was received with great excitement. Her stories were published in the press and her drawings were exhibited in exhibitions. In 1946 she was again awarded the Dizengoff Prize for a sketch Girl with Yellow Badge, which she had made in the Kovno ghetto. Lurie married and raised a family. She continued to create and exhibit in group and solo exhibitions in Israel and elsewhere. Although she lived in Tel Aviv throughout her life in Israel, Jerusalem became her focus after the Six Day War and its landscapes are found in many of her works. During the Eichmann trial, which took place in Jerusalem in 1961, Lurie\'s Second World War works were exhibited as part of the testimony - giving an \"official authorization\" from Israel\'s Supreme Court to the rich documentary value of her sketches and watercolors. This is in addition to their aesthetic value as objects of art. Esther Lurie passed away in Tel Aviv in 1998. Lurie donated her works from the Holocaust period to the collection of Beit Lohamei Haghetaot (Ghetto Fighters\' House Museum). Her works can also be found at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, and in a number of private collections. ******* The Jewish Infantry Brigade Group was a military formation of the British Army that served in Europe during the Second World War. Although the brigade was formed in 1944, some of its experienced personnel had been employed against the Axis powers in Greece, the Middle East and East Africa. More than 30,000 Palestinian Jews volunteered to serve in the British Armed Forces, 734 of whom died during the war. The brigade and its predecessors, the Palestine Regiment and the three infantry companies that had formed it, were composed primarily of Middle Eastern Jews. The brigade was nevertheless inclusive to all Jewish and non-Jewish soldiers so that by 1944 over 50 nationalities were represented. Many were refugees displaced from countries that had been occupied or controlled by the Axis powers in Europe and Ethiopia. Volunteers from the United Kingdom, its empire, the Commonwealth, and other \"western democracies\" also provided contingents.[1]The disintegration of the Ottoman Empire following the end of the First World War and its replacement as the pre-eminent power in the Middle East by the British and French empires brought much closer to realisation the Zionist movement\'s goal of creating a Jewish state or National Home in the region that became the British Mandate of Palestine (\"Eretz Yisrael\"). The \"Balfour Declaration\" of 1917 signified the first official approval of such a proposal, providing the impetus for a surge of Jewish emigration known as the \"Third Aliyah\".[2] Progressive emigration through the 1920s and 1930s followed the League of Nations sanctioning of Balfour\'s statement, expanding the Jewish population by over 400,000 before the beginning of the Second World War.[2On May 17, 1939, the British government under Neville Chamberlain issued the White Paper which abandoned the idea of establishing a Jewish Commonwealth or State in Palestine. After the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, the head of the Jewish Agency David Ben-Gurion declared: \"We will fight the White Paper as if there is no war, and fight the war as if there is no White Paper.\" [3]The President of the World Zionist Organization Chaim Weizmann offered the British government full cooperation of the Jewish community in the British Mandate of Palestine and tried to negotiate the establishment of identifiably Jewish fighting unit (under a Jewish Flag) under the auspices of British Army. His request was rejected, but many Palestinian Jews joined the British army, some in Jewish companies. Fifteen Palestinian Jewish battalions were incorporated into the British Army in September 1940 and fought in Greece in 1941.Palestine Regiment The then emigration policies that favoured the European Jews in prejudice of Arabic local population, the colonial behavior of many of these emigrants against the their new Palestinian neighboors and the design of the brigade\'s insignia did not helped the British\'s goal to enlist an equal number of Jews and Arabs into the Palestine Regiment, even so there were one Arab volunteer to each three Jews. As a result, on August 6, 1942, three Palestinian Jewish battalions and one Palestinian Arab battalion formed the Palestine\'s regiment. At this time, the Regiment was principally involved in guard duties in Egypt and North Africa. The British also wanted it to undermine efforts of Hajj Amin al-Husayni, who was struggling to obtain Arab support for the Axis Powers against the Allies. Formation of the Jewish Brigade After early reports of the Nazi atrocities of the Holocaust were made public by the Allied powers, the Prime Minister Winston Churchill sent a personal telegram to the US President Franklin D. Roosevelt suggesting that \"the Jews... of all races have the right to strike at the Germans as a recognizable body.\" The president replied five days later saying: \"I perceive no objection...\" After much hesitation, on July 3, 1944, the British government consented to the establishment of a Jewish Brigade with hand-picked Jewish and also non-Jewish senior officers. On September 20, 1944, an official communique by the War Office announced the formation of the Jewish Brigade Group of the British Army. The Zionist Flag was officially approved as its standard. It included more than 5,000 Jewish volunteers from Palestine organized into three infantry battalions of the Palestine Regiment and several supporting units. The contemporary newspapers dismissed it as a \"token\" (The New York Times on page 12) and \"five years late\" (The Manchester Guardian). Battles and Berihah 400 volunteers from the Brigade fought in Libya in the battle of Bir-el Harmat. From Palestine Regiment, two brigades, one Jewish, under the command of Brigadier Ernest Benjamin, and another Arab were sent to join allied forces on Italian Front having took part of final offensive there. As well as on a Papal audience for representatives of the liberating Allied units. The Jewish brigade then it was stationed in Tarvisio, near the border triangle of Italy, Yugoslavia, and Austria. There it played a key role in the Berihah\'s efforts to help Jews escape Europe for Palestine, a role many of its members would continue after the Brigade disbanded. Among its projects was the education and care of the Selvino children. In July 1945, the Brigade moved to Belgium and the Netherlands. After the war members of the Jewish Brigade formed assassination squads in order to execute former SS and Wehrmacht officers who had participated in atrocities against European Jews. Information regarding the whereabouts of these war criminals was either gathered by torturing imprisoned Nazis or by way of military connections.[4] The Jewish Brigade was disbanded in the summer of 1946. Legacy Out of some 30,000 Jewish volunteers from Palestine who served in the British Army during WWII, more than 700 were killed during active duty. Some of the Jewish Brigade members subsequently became key participants of the new State of Israel\'s Israel Defense Force. ********* Jewish Brigade Group (1944-1946) The only military unit to serve in World War II in the British Army — and, in fact — in all the Allied forces — as an independent, national Jewish military formation, the Jewish Brigade Group comprised mainly of Jews from Eretz Yisrael and had its own emblem. The establishment of the Brigade was the final outcome of prolonged efforts by the yishuv and the Zionist Movement to achieve recognized participation and representation of the Jewish people in the war against Nazi Germany. In 1940, the Jews of Palestine were permitted to enlist in Jewish companies attached to the East Kent Regiment (the “Buffs”). These companies were formed into three infantry battalions of a newly-established “Palestine Regiment.” The battalions were moved to Cyrenaica and Egypt, but there, too, as in Palestine, they continued to be engaged primarily in guard duties. The Jewish soldiers demanded to participate in the fighting and the right to display the Jewish Flag. In a letter to Chaim Weizmann in 1944, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill stated that his government was prepared “to discuss concrete proposals” in the matter of the formation of a Jewish Fighting Force. While Jews were dispersed throughout the British army, the Jewish Agency wished to concentrate them into one unit, flying the Jewish national Flag. Churchill was much more receptive to the idea than his predecessor, Neville Chamberlain. Chamberlain disapproved of an all-Jewish Brigade, fearing that it would give more legitimacy to the Jewish yearning for national independence. British policy since the White Paper of 1939 no longer favored partition, and therefore symbols of Jewish independence were not encouraged. As more and more information came to light over the tragedy in Europe, however, the British bowed to Zionist demands for a Jewish military unit. It was not until September 1944, after six years of prolonged negotiations, that the British government agreed to the establishment of a Jewish Brigade. It consisted of Jewish infantry, artillery, and service units. After a period of training in Egypt, the Jewish Brigade Group — approximately 5,000 soldiers — took part in the final battles of the war on the Italian front under the command of the Canadian-born Jew, Brigadier Ernest Benjamin. In May 1945, the Brigade was moved to North East Italy where, for the first time, it encountered survivors of the Holocaust. In the summer of 1946, the British authorities decided to disband the Brigade. Skills gained in the Jewish Brigade and in the British army in general was experience that would be put to use again during Israel\'s War of Independence. More than its military value, however, the Jewish Brigade served as a symbol of hope for renewed Jewish life in Eretz Israel. The soldiers of the Jewish Brigade met with survivors of the Holocaust in Displaced Persons camps, bringing them Jewish and Zionist culture. The Jewish Brigade was also instrumental in bringing many of the survivors to Palestine, by Bericha and “illegal immigration.” ********* Aliya Bet started in 1934, and continued even during the difficult period of WW-II. The organization in charge of Aliya Bet on behalf of the Jewish Agency was \'Ha\'mossad Le\'Aliyah Bet\' -- the organization responsible for illegal immigration of Jews to Palestine from 1938 to 1948 -- headed by Shaul Avigur (Meirov). Aliya Bet was conducted in two ways: by sea – from the European and North-African shores, and by land – through the northern border. The \"Golden Age\" of Aliya Bet was its post WW-II stage, during the three years between the end of WW-II in Europe in mid 1945 and the declaration of Israel as an independent state on May 14, 1948. During this stage of Aliya Bet, which is the focus of our website, over 70,000 ma\'apilim sailed to Eretz Israel in 66 organized voyages, including the most famous voyage by far of the ship \'Exodus 1947\'. There were no major disasters (only two ships sunk, 8 ma\'apilim drowned on one of them, the \'Rafiah\'), in contrast to some horrifying disasters in previous stages. The number of casualties from clashes with the British was also minimal (10 ma\'apilim). ****** Of great importance to the development of armed Jewish defense in Palestine were the more than 30,000 Palestinian Jews who enlisted in the British army in the course of World War II. In the last stages of the war, the Jewish Brigade Group was established and saw action against the Nazis in northern Italy. The Palestinian Jews in the British army and air force learned a broad range of military subjects - combat, administration, technology and logistics of a modern army - and transferred this knowledge to the Jewish defense forces in Palestine. This was to be of great use to the Israel Defence Forces, offspring of the Haganah, to be established during the War of Independence. Partial list of notable veterans of the Jewish Brigade Yehuda Amichai Ted Arison Hanoch Bartov David Ben-David Chaym Ben Zvi Ernest Benjamin Israel Carmi Oly Givon Dov Gruner Chaim Laskov Natanel Lorch Munya Mardor Yosi Peled Johanan Peltz Arieh Pinchuk Bernard Dov Protter Gad Rosenbaum (Rothem) Edmund Leopold de Rothschild Shlomo ShamirYosef Shoham Moshe Tavor Meir Zorea Israel Yemini Resources With the Jewish Brigade by Bernard M Casper (Edward Goldston, London 1947. No ISBN) Contains a foreword by Brig. E F Benjamin, CBE, former commander of the Jewish Brigade. Casper was Senior Chaplain to the Brigade. The Brigade. An Epic Story of Vengeance, Salvation, and WWII by Howard Blum (HarperCollins Publishers, New York, 2002) ISBN 0-06-019486-3 The Jewish Brigade: An Army With Two Masters, 1944-45 by Morris Beckman (Sarpedon Publishers, 1999) ISBN 1-885119-56-9 In Our Own Hands: The Hidden Story of the Jewish Brigade in World War II (1998 video) Film resource center ********* The Jewish Brigade represented the culmination of efforts by Jews in both Palestine and the United States to create an independent Jewish fighting force. In 1939, Jews in Palestine began to volunteer for military service, and after repeated pressure from the Jewish Agency and other Jewish organizations, in 1942 the British agreed to form a Palestine Regiment. The Palestine Regiment was sent to serve in the Middle East, although its responsibilities there were primarily restricted to guard duty. Finally, in September 1944, the British created the Jewish Brigade (in Hebrew, Ha-Hayil) out of the Palestine Regiment, a field artillery regiment, and other auxiliary service units. The men, numbering approximately 5,000, were placed under the command of a Canadian-born Jew, Brigadier Ernest Frank Benjamin of the Royal Engineers, and they continued their training with the Eighth Army in Italy. In early 1945, the soldiers of the Jewish Brigade saw their first fighting at Alfonsine, and in April 1945 they led the offensive across the Senio River. As they moved into northern Italy, the Jewish soldiers met Holocaust survivors for the first time; thereafter they provided them with food, clothing, and assistance immigrating to Palestine. They continued these activities in Belgium, Austria, Germany, and Holland and also assisted the Allied authorities in searching for Holocaust survivors. In 1946, the Jewish Brigade was disbanded, partly because of increasing tension between the Yishuv and the mandatory authorities. Bibliography Beckman, Morris. The Jewish Brigade: An Army with Two Masters,1944 - 1945. Staplehurst: Spellmount, 1998. Blum, Howard. The Brigade: An Epic Story of Vengeance, Salvation and World War II. New York: HarperCollins, 2001. Rabinowitz, Louis. Soldiers from Judaea, Palestinian Jewish Units in the Middle East, 1941 - 1943. New York: American Zionist Emergency Council, 1945. ******* Stutthof was the first concentration camp built by the Nazi Germany regime outside of Germany. Completed on September 2, 1939, it was located in a secluded, wet, and wooded area west of the small town of Sztutowo (German: Stutthof). The town is located in the former territory of the Free City of Danzig, 34 km east of Gdańsk, Poland. Stutthof was the last camp liberated by the Allies, on May 9, 1945. More than 85,000 victims[1] died in the camp out of as many as 110,000 people deported there History Camp The Nazi authorities of the Free City of Danzig were compiling material about known Jews and Polish intelligentsia as early as 1936 and were also reviewing suitable places to build concentration camps in their area. Originally, Stutthof was a civilian internment camp under the Danzig police chief. In November 1941, it became a \"labor education\" camp, administered by the German Security Police. Finally, in January 1942, Stutthof became a regular concentration camp. The original camp (known as the old camp) was surrounded by barbed-wire fence. It comprised eight barracks for the inmates and a \"kommandantur\" for the SS guards, totalling 120,000 m². In 1943, the camp was enlarged and a new camp was constructed alongside the earlier one. It was also surrounded by electrified barbed-wire fence and contained thirty new barracks, raising the total area to 1.2 km². The camp staff consisted of SS guards and after 1943, Ukrainian auxiliaries. In 1942 the first female prisoners and German guardesses arrived in Stutthof, including aufseherin Herta Bothe.[2][3] A total of over 130 women served in the Stutthof complex of camps. 34 female guards, including Gerda Steinhoff, Rosy Suess, Ewa Paradies and Jenny-Wanda Barkmann, have been identified later as having committed crimes against humanity at Stutthof. Starting in June 1944, the SS in Stutthof began conscripting women from Danzig and the surrounding cities to train as camp guardesses because of a severe guard shortage. In 1944 a female subcamp of Stutthof called Bromberg-Ost (Konzentrationslager Bromberg-Ost) was set up in the city of Bydgoszcz.[4] A crematory and gas chamber were added in 1943, just in time to start mass executions when Stutthof was included in the \"Final Solution\" in June 1944. Mobile gas wagons were also used to complement the maximum capacity of the gas chamber (150 people per execution) when needed. Stutthof sub camps Sub-camps of the German concentration camp Stutthof near Danzig during the Third Reich: Prisoners The first inmates imprisoned on 2 September 1939 were 150 Polish citizens, arrested on the streets of Danzig right after the outbreak of the war. The inmate population rose to 6,000 in the following two weeks, on 15 September 1939. Tens of thousands of people, perhaps as many as 110,000, were deported to the Stutthof camp. The prisoners were mainly non-Jewish Poles. There were also Polish Jews from Warsaw and Białystok, and Jews from forced-labor camps in the occupied Baltic states, which the Germans evacuated in 1944 as Soviet forces approached. These totals are thought to be conservative, as it is believed that inmates sent for immediate execution were not registered. When the Soviet army began its advance through Nazi-occupied Estonia in July and August 1944, the camp staff of Klooga concentration camp evacuated the majority of the inmates by sea to the Stutthof concentration camp. Conditions Conditions in the camp were brutal. Many prisoners died in typhus epidemics that swept the camp in the winter of 1942 and again in 1944. Those whom the SS guards judged too weak or sick to work were gassed in the camp\'s small gas chamber. Gassing with Zyklon B began in June 1944. Camp doctors also killed sick or injured prisoners in the infirmary with lethal injections. More than 60,000 people died in the camp. The Germans used Stutthof prisoners as forced laborers. Some prisoners worked in SS-owned businesses such as the German Equipment Works (DAW), located near the camp. Others labored in local brickyards, in private industrial enterprises, in agriculture, or in the camp\'s own workshops. In 1944, as forced labor by concentration camp prisoners became increasingly important in armaments production, a Focke-Wulf airplane factory was constructed at Stutthof. Eventually, the Stutthof camp system became a vast network of forced-labor camps; 105 Stutthof subcamps were established throughout northern and central Poland. The major subcamps were Thorn and Elbing. The Stutthof camp has been suggested as one of the possible sources for human remains that Dr. Rudolf Spanner used to make a limited quantity of soap from human fat. The former prisoner of Stutthoff and Lithuanian writer Balys Sruoga later wrote a novel Dievų miškas (The Forest of Gods) describing the everyday life of this camp. Soap production from the bodies of victims Some evidence exists of small-scale soap production of Soap made from human corpses in the Stutthof concentration camp. In his book \"Russia at War 1941 to 1945\", Alexander Werth reported that while visiting Gdansk/Danzig in 1945 shortly after its liberation by the Red Army, he saw an experimental factory outside the city for making soap from human corpses. According to Werth it had been run by \"a German professor called Spanner\" and \"was a nightmarish sight, with its vats full of human heads and torsoes pickled in some liquid, and its pails full of a flakey substance - human soap\".Death march The evacuation of prisoners from the Stutthof camp system in northern Poland began in January 1945. When the final evacuation began, there were nearly 50,000 prisoners, the majority of them Jews, in the Stutthof camp system. About 5,000 prisoners from Stutthof subcamps were marched to the Baltic Sea coast, forced into the water, and machine gunned. The rest of the prisoners were marched in the direction of Lauenburg in Eastern Germany. They were cut off by advancing Soviet forces. The Germans forced the surviving prisoners back to Stutthof. Marching in severe winter conditions and treated brutally by SS guards, thousands died during the march. In late April 1945, the remaining prisoners were removed from Stutthof by sea, since Stutthof was completely encircled by Soviet forces. Again, hundreds of prisoners were forced into the sea and shot. Over 4,000 were sent by small boat to Germany, some to the Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg, and some to camps along the Baltic coast. Many drowned along the way. A barge full of prisoners was washed ashore at Klintholm Havn in Denmark where 351 of the 370 on board were saved on 5 May 1945. Shortly before the German surrender, some prisoners were transferred to Malmö, Sweden, and released to the care of that neutral country. It has been estimated that over 25,000 prisoners, one in two, died during the evacuation from Stutthof and its subcamps. Liberation Soviet forces liberated Stutthof on May 9, 1945, and liberated about 100 prisoners who had managed to hide during the final evacuation of the camp.