British museum celebrates Jewish contribution in WWI

Britanski muzej  slavi doprinos Židova I. Svjetskom ratu

European Jews fought on both sides in WWI with Stars of David equally present among the German, French and British war graves in northern France and elsewhere.

 The Guardian reports on a new exhibition at a London museum detailing the contribution of British Jews in the Great War. 

"The Guardian" donosi vijest o novoj izložbi u londonskom muzeju koji detaljno opisuje dpšrinos britanskih Židova "velikom" ratu.

O Florence Oppenheimer , 1916

In 1916,Florence Oppenheimer was working as a nurse in a military hospital in Cairo and feeling lonely. She had previously suffered the "little hell" of a hot, windowless room in a hospital ship in which to treat nearly 2,000 injured men of Gallipoli with "no clean shirts, no bed coverings … no bowls, no soap or flannels". .

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O slikaru Isaacu Rosenbergu u 12. Suffolk regimenti

At the same time, the poet and painter, Isaac Rosenberg, of the 12th Suffolk Regiment....– he  has been part of the Zion Mule Corps, a labour battalion of Jewish refugees who had supplied the frontlines at Gallipoli and later formed the basis of the Jewish Legion, three battalions of Jewish soldiers from Britain and America who helped defeat the Ottoman empire in Palestine.

Poet and painter Isaac Rosenberg. Courtesy of the Isaac Rosenberg Literary Estate

Te i druge priče koje se nalaze u Židovskom muzeju  predstavljaju novu izložbu " For King and Country" - (za kralja i domovinu) koja je sakupila objekte i slike  kako bi prikazala iskustvo britanskih Židova koj su služili u I. svjetskom ratu.

...Na početku su zbog anti-njemačkih osjećaja u Londonu dućani na East Endu,  koji su imali "njemačka" imena i koji su govorili  Yidsish (  jezik istočno europskih Židova )  su bili  napadani . To su bili  Židovi ruskog porijekla,  izbjeglice pogroma . Njih su u početku   optuživali zbog nedostatka patriotizma itd. No to se promijenilo kada je počela mobilizacija i kada su se to Židovi počeli boriti  zajedno s drugim dobrovoljncima. Konačno se može kazati da je učešće britanskih Židova  bilo veoma veliko ,  oko 41.000  ( židovska populacija je imala  280.000). Nakon rata je stvorena Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen, koja je traćžila ostonjuu o doprinosu Židova.

Jewish World Recruitment poster. Courtesy of the British Library

Dalje čitajte u originalnom članku

In 1916, conscription was instituted and with it calls for the creation of a specifically Jewish legion intensified. These were led by two Zionists, Chaim Weizmann and Ze'ev Jabotinsky,who rebelled against the officially neutral position of the World Zionist Congress...  . Weizmann was born in Belarus. By the outbreak of the war, he was a British citizen and senior lecturer in chemistry at the University of Manchester and a leader of the British Zionist movement. It was his scientific work that brought him into a position of influence.He invented a method of industrial fermentation that could create large quantities of acetone, an essential ingredient in the production of cordite for explosives.... . As a result, Weizmann's contribution to the allied war effort was enormous ......

Out of this, in part, came the Balfour Declarationin 1917, the letter written by foreign secretary Arthur Balfour that stated the British empire's support for the creation of a homeland for Jews in Palestine.... What did immediately affect Jewish lives was the creation of the Jewish Legion, the only specifically Jewish fighting force among all the armies of the first world war. In charge was Lieutenant Colonel J H Patterson,a philosemite of the kind produced by devout protestantism's absorption in the Old Testament ....