When there is war in the Middle East, not a day passes without Israel dominating the headlines. The Jewish state does not want for attention. Yet one chapter of its history is little-known outside the diaspora: the story of Jews who fled Europe for British Mandatory Palestine, then returned to fight in World War II.
There’s a line of thinking that if Israel had existed during the Holocaust, things might have turned out differently. We’ll never know for sure. But in a sense, there already was an Israel. It had no state and no army—but it did have volunteers from the pre-state Jewish community who enlisted in the British forces. During the war, 37 of them parachuted into Europe to aid Allied forces—and to try to do something their still-theoretical country could not: save the Jews of Europe.
This is the story that the brilliant Matti Friedman takes on in his new book, Out of the Sky: Heroism and Rebirth in Nazi Europe, which hit shelves this week. The exclusive excerpt below follows one of the volunteers, Haim Hermesh, who would find himself among the first soldiers of a country not yet born. —The Editors
In 1944, when Haim climbs the ladder into the Royal Air Force bomber at Bari, on the Adriatic coast of Italy, he’s 25. He sits on the hard bench with the bulk of his parachute on his back, his body vibrating with the roar of four engines as the bomber lifts off and flies east into the night sky, out of Allied airspace.
His secret documents are in an asbestos pouch strapped to his left calf. The pouch has a fuse that can be pulled to ignite a cylinder of gunpowder that will incinerate the contents if necessary, a letter of introduction from the British officers of MI9, a key to the radio code, and forged documents identifying him as someone other than Haim Hermesh. His orders are the same ones given to the other parachutists who volunteered for the operation back in Palestine: Coordinate the rescue of downed Allied airmen and escaped prisoners of war behind enemy lines, and establish radio contact between resistance forces and British commanders. Like the others, he understands that his return from the mission is to be hoped for but not expected.
In a pocket he has a thin saw, the kind that can cut through prison bars, concealed in a strip of rubber. On his silk scarf is a printed map of Yugoslavia—a country that in 1944 is occupied by the Nazis and their allies, and that in our own times no longer exists.
