Fighting, Rescuing, and Building: The Jewish Palestinian Soldiers in Eretz Israel and Italy

The contribution of Jewish volunteers from Mandate Palestine who fought in the Jewish Brigade in Italy during and after World War II was threefold. First, they served militarily as members of the Allied Forces fighting Nazi Germany. Second, they rescued thousands of Jewish refugees. Third, they helped Italian Jews reconstruct their communities and Jewish life, which had been destroyed during the war. However, as this article aims to show, the contribution of these soldiers extended also to Eretz Israel. After returning from Europe, they contributed enormously to the founding of the Israeli Armed Forces, which played a crucial role in the birth and survival of the new State of Israel. This article investigates the manifold contributions of Jewish Palestinian soldiers of the Jewish Brigade in both Italy and Eretz Israel, analyzing new sources that have recently come to light. These sources include private correspondence and memoirs of several soldiers, as well as documents from Israeli and Italian archives, including those from the Italian Military Intelligence (SIM) in the Historical Archive of the Italian Army General Staff (SME) in Rome.