Ahead of a state ceremony honoring Ze'ev Jabotinsky to be held on Jerusalem's Mount Herzl, Wednesday, the Jabotinsky Institute has released rare letters written by the Zionist visionary in June 1940, around one month before his death.
In the letters, addressed to Britain's then-Prime Minister Winston Churchill and France's ambassador to the US, Jabotinsky attempts to establish a Jewish military force to assist the allied forces in World War II, much in the way he and fellow Zionist leader Joseph Trumpeldor established the British Army's Jewish Infantry Brigade Group in World War I.
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In a letter to Churchill written on June 28, Jabotinsky wrote, "The new Zionist organization, having developed and committed itself in the American continent and elsewhere for the creation of a Jewish military force raised mainly in non-empire countries to fight on [the] side of allies feel[s] opportunity should be afforded to representatives of [the] new Zionist organization to meet [the] prime minister for immediate and frank discussion."
In an appeal to France's US envoy on June 5, Jabotinsky wrote, "We aspire to promote a plan for the establishment of a Jewish military of a similar status to the Polish army in exile; as many people will be recruited into this army as we can find. It will be trained in Canada, in the Land of Israel or somewhere else, and it will fight on all the allies' fronts."
According to Jabotinsky Institute Director General Gideon Mitchnik, "These two letters, some of the last letters Jabotinsky wrote before his death on Aug. 4, 1940, were written during a very difficult and dramatic time, both for the Jewish people and in Jabotinsky's life, as a leader fighting singlehandedly in an attempt to save the Jewish people, as a husband separated from his wife, as a father to a son … imprisoned in Israel by the Brits, as a sick man carrying an illness in his heart he hid from everyone, including his wife and son. These letters were never before translated and are expected to be published only in a few months' time. This is a period that for Jabotinsky, against the background of international developments, combines great desperation with very few moments of hope."
Mitchnik noted that in the letters, "Jabotinsky shows signs of optimism, but his repeated calls to establish a Jewish army encountered a wall of resistance, and not just among the British leadership: A majority of the Zionist leaders and US Jewish leaders were not partners to his struggle."
