Dr. Tamar Katko is a historian and educator specializing in the World War II period. She heads the Secondary Humanities Teaching Track at Kibbutzim College and serves as curator of the Jewish Fighter in World War II Museum named after President Chaim Herzog.
Dr. Tamar Katko believes Victory Day over Nazi Germany, which falls on May 9, is an appropriate time to discuss the approximately one and a half million Jews who fought in World War II. Their names don't make headlines, but their magnificent history often reaches you at the Jewish Fighter Museum in Latrun, which you helped found and where you serve as chief curator. The story of Corporal Samuel Elyakim (Sam) Schwartz, for instance, is beyond comprehension.
"Schwartz came from an Orthodox Jewish family that immigrated from Hungary to the US in 1939. He didn't fit in at the yeshiva due to behavioral issues, so he found himself wandering the streets without knowing a word of English. When World War II broke out, friends from the neighborhood suggested he enlist with them."
"He volunteered for the 82nd Airborne Division and served as a paratrooper in the headquarters company of the 504th Regiment. He was trained in special forces and emerged as a brave paratrooper and commander who carried out operations in enemy territory under constant life-threatening conditions. Among other missions, he participated in battles in North Africa, the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes, and in Germany. With his unit comrades, he rescued several Holocaust survivors at Dachau camp and brought them to the US for treatment after the war. For his actions, he received dozens of medals for bravery, and he is even buried with his wife in Jerusalem."
What happened to him after the war ended?
"He returned home and informed his family of his return. They looked at him, with all his uniforms and medals, and his father announced they were willing to consider taking him back into the family – only if he removed all the 'costumes' he was wearing and returned to study at the yeshiva, without hearing a word about what he went through during the war. Schwartz agreed, returned to the yeshiva, became a rabbi, and locked away all his uniforms and medals in a sealed safe. Eventually, he had four daughters, none of whom knew or heard about their father's heroism during the war."
When was his story revealed?
"When Schwartz's daughters arrived to pay condolence calls to one of the people Schwartz had rescued during the war. In the living room were photo albums, and on one of the pages, those present told about the picture of that American hero who saved Jews, a brave hero discussed even at military academies and the White House."
"One of Schwartz's daughters, Drey Chaya Hochstein, said the man in the picture looked familiar, and when she asked his name – she nearly fainted. She said it couldn't be possible because her father was also named Samuel Elyakim Schwartz, but he hadn't participated in any war. They told her to check again. Eventually, she found the safe containing his will and uniforms."
And the story branches out, because then she called you.
"She told me she tried to interest the Yad Vashem Museum in the will, but they weren't interested. That's how the uniforms and medals came to our museum. She flew to Israel and bought a separate seat for her father's uniform so it wouldn't get wrinkled. The museum in Washington offered her a legendary sum for this jacket, but she decided to bring it to us. We built an entire display case around Schwartz's uniform and story. In the end, Dale Hochstein made aliyah following her father, who is buried here, and today we're even neighbors. When people from the US military visit our museum, they're amazed – because they study his tactics, but his own family barely knew who he was."
Galloping toward death
About Polina Gelman, the Jewish woman, some have heard a bit more, but she, too, is not really a well-known figure.
"Despite her physical unsuitability due to her short height – less than 4.9 feet – and after her tireless persistence, she was accepted to a flight and navigation course and recruited to the women's regiment in the Soviet Red Army Air Force. Because of her small hands, her flight gloves slipped off every time she launched a bomb. Despite these seemingly problematic physical attributes, in 1942, she was assigned to an operational flight unit and began missions bombing German targets. She bombed force concentrations, fuel depots, anti-aircraft batteries, searchlights, bridges, vehicles, and caused significant damage to the Germans. In total, she completed 857 missions, logged 1,300 flight hours, and dropped 113 tons of bombs, earning her the Hero of the Soviet Union award."
There's also Colonel Mordechai Frizis, a Jewish fighter who became a national hero of Greece.
"At the outbreak of World War II, as a Lieutenant Colonel, he commanded a Greek battalion against the Italian attack in northern Greece, on the Albanian front. His soldiers truly admired him, and in the Kalama sector, he managed to break the Italian attack and force the Italian troops to retreat, leaving behind hundreds of dead and about 700 prisoners. Some saw this as the first victory for the Allies in World War II."
"The next day, on December 5, 1940, his unit was attacked by Italian aircraft. Although he ordered everyone else in his unit to take cover to avoid being targeted by the aircraft, he continued to command from horseback and refused to dismount while galloping and encouraging his men with the battle cry 'Aeras' (courage). During this attack, he was killed by aircraft fire. For his bravery and courage, he was awarded the Gold Medal. He became one of Greece's national heroes, with his statue erected in the main square of his hometown, Chalkis, and in the courtyard of the military museum in Kalpaki, in northwestern Greece. Twenty-five streets in various cities across Greece, including the capital Athens, bear his name."
And there are no streets named after him in Israel. The name Haviva Reik is also less well-known to the general public. Hannah Szenes, on the other hand, is known to all of us. Why is that?
"That's a wonderful question. To create memory consciousness, you need to work at it. You need to write about the subject of memory, work on embedding the memory, and promote it. But the Reik family, to answer your question, mostly from Kibbutz Ma'anit, members of Hashomer Hatzair, were modest people who didn't come from an aristocratic background like the Szenes family – and they didn't succeed in promoting the memory consciousness of Haviva Reik. Hannah Szenes's father, on the other hand, was Bela Szenes – a publicist, writer, and author. That apparently filtered through."
It's easier to promote memory consciousness that way.
"Add to that the fact that Szenes came to Nahalal and abandoned her bourgeois image. She became a country girl from Nahalal who worked in the chicken coop and cowshed, yet still wrote in hiding, because writing was perceived as a bourgeois act. Although Haviva Reik also rode Vespas in Slovakia, cut her hair, and dressed like a pioneer, her family didn't engage in promoting her memory."
"For Hannah Szenes, they held a funeral that passed through all the cities in the country, and her honor remains intact, but it's also worth remembering Haviva's activities: she organized Jewish refugees in Slovakia, created an underground network with partisans, and smuggled them to the mountains. In the end, she was caught during a struggle and paid with her life. She was fire and brimstone, yet almost nothing is known about her. That's the shaping of memory consciousness. It depends on who invests in it, and who has the desire to preserve a certain figure that serves cultural and social needs, a figure that will be remembered and become an icon."
Nordau's DNA
And here are more figures whose past we've forgotten: most of us don't really remember that Ezer Weizman or Haim Laskov also fought in World War II.
"Laskov was in the Brigade along with Meir Zorea and Israel Tal. Ezer Weizman was a driver in North Africa. You haven't heard much about it because it doesn't fit our national ethos. After Weizman heard in a telegram that his cousin, pilot Michael Weizman, the son of Chaim Weizman, was killed over the Bay of Biscay in the North Atlantic Ocean, he decided that he too wanted to be a pilot. He persisted until they transferred him to flight training."
"The first 12 generals in the IDF were from the Brigade, three IDF Chiefs of Staff came from the British Army, along with two presidents – Ezer Weizman and Chaim Herzog. Most of the commanders who shaped the IDF were World War II veterans, but this conflicts with the narrative of the Palmach, Irgun, and Lehi, whose stories are remembered by most of us."
These were more grassroots, Hebrew, nationalist organizations.
"And World War II is associated with the diaspora. It's impossible to build a national ethos of beautiful blondes and fine figures based on a diaspora story with fighters who received medals from the British Army. We needed here the image of the new Jew, the pioneer, the buddy. Rabin, for example."
What else doesn't fit the narrative?
"That in World War II, we had 1,700 people from the Jewish settlement who enlisted in the British Army and were prisoners in Greece, in German captivity. They were tortured, starved, some escaped, and some returned in waves. Among them, for instance, was Shimon Peres' father, Yitzhak Perski. What happened to all those liberated prisoners? We didn't hear about it because it didn't fit the narrative. What image does a prisoner or captive have, when our desire was to establish a state that would represent the image of the strong Jew, the sabra, the one who doesn't surrender? There are things that weren't displayed in our showcase. The Holocaust, on the other hand, was portrayed on a different scale, inconceivable, and alongside victims and crimes against humanity, there were also quite a few heroic elements of Jewish heroes."
But your claim is that we mainly remember the victims, not the male and female fighters.
"We adopted the image that a Jew is a good merchant, a good banker, scientist, writer, poet, wonderful musician, philosopher. But a fighter? That's not in the Jewish DNA."
Max Nordau and Ze'ev Jabotinsky, for example, would not agree with you.
"Nordau's 'Muscular Judaism' tried to change that perception – that is, we are not the limp Jew. And indeed, many fighters adopted this new DNA. When Jewish fighters from various armies arrived in Europe, they understood that Holocaust victims could easily have been them or their parents. It hit them hard and also shook their integration in the countries they came from, because they didn't want to be Jews in antisemitic countries. However, most of them didn't immigrate to Israel, they weren't Zionists, and therefore most of them aren't mentioned in our history."
"Nails in the Nazis' throats"
How would you characterize the nature of Jewish fighters in World War II?
"They had an urge to prove that 'we are not like you think we are.' They tried to prove it in school sports classes and outside school hours as well. This means that Jews showed they don't avoid danger, don't avoid responsibility, they're the first to charge, to take responsibility. My father, for instance, who was among the leaders of the Sonderkommando revolt, eliminated Nazis and skewered them with nails in their throats."
"Jews proved they would fulfill any mission as army soldiers. When Jewish fighters saw the sights at Auschwitz, and were subsequently the first to rush toward Berlin and conquer it, with that energy from Auschwitz, they simply wrecked Berlin, destroyed every evidence of Nazism. This doesn't necessarily characterize Jews, but it was important for them to show Jewish power, and that's how they would want us to remember it."
This raises questions for me about October 7 – how will they remember and teach the events of this terrible massacre? How will they present the hostages, the military's failure?
"The Jewish people don't like to learn from the past. We tend to skip over our history, consciously or unconsciously. We have uncracked layers regarding our relationship with the past, with our history. I hope that the memory of October 7 will be meaningful. This is an event that must enter our memory consciousness, even if it doesn't make us feel good. Fighters must understand their history to understand why they charge forward. Citizens must understand what happened here to understand why they choose to live here. And if they don't have an answer – that's a fundamental problem."
"I also deal with this in a new course I built at Kibbutzim College – 'Ceremonial Rituals: Their Place in Education and Shaping Memory Consciousness.' The course brings up the raw and unedited past, and its purpose is to look at the history of ceremonies, rituals of worship, and what they address from a community and human perspective.
"I believe that this raw completeness, the exposure to the difficult raw materials from the current war and those that preceded it, is essential to create a complete memory consciousness. To truly understand where we came from and where we're going, we must not discard anything. The antithesis to this is sweeping under the carpet, which could harm us. We will grow from this great fire that happened to us on October 7. My father always said that the soot from a burned forest is the best fertilizer. The greenest leaves grow from the most burned forests. But for that, we must not forget."
