The historic Bevis Marks Synagogue was the setting for a moving VE Day 80th anniversary service of commemoration and thanksgiving on Sunday, honouring the Jewish men and women who served in His Majesty’s Armed Forces during the Second World War.
The event was a joint initiative between the S&P Sephardi Community, AJEX The Jewish Military Association and The Royal Army Chaplains’ Department Jewish Chaplaincy.
More than 400 attendees took part in the service, including a strong AJEX contingent, veterans, their families, and members of the wider community.
The service featured tributes and reflections from distinguished military and religious leaders including, Rabbi Joseph Dweck, (senior Rabbi of the S&P Sephardi Community), Rabbi Nir Nadav CF, (regimental chaplain to 156 Regiment Royal Logistics Corps), Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis, Rabbi Shalom Morris, (Rabbi of Bevis Marks Synagogue) and Dan Fox, AJEX national chair.
Dan Fox said: “With the mass of story-telling, both fictional and documentary, that has arisen out of World War Two, it is easy to think of the eventual allied victory as somehow inevitable, as the happy ending that we expect our heroes to get, whatever obstacles are thrown up against them.
“But there was nothing inevitable about it. Hitler’s Reich may not have lasted a thousand years, but a decades-long one was foreseeable as allied troops sought to dominate the lands of, seas around and skies above Europe between 1939 and 1945. That, in hindsight, there need never have been any doubt, is why they have our gratitude and admiration, then today and always and is why AJEX continues to tell their stories and ensure their service is never forgotten”.
One of the day’s most moving moments came with the attendance of Ruth Brook Klauber, aged 101, a WWII veteran who recently received long-overdue service medals with the assistance of AJEX, D Day and Bergen Belsen liberator, veteran Mervyn Kersh, 100, and Holocaust survivor and Jewish Care Holocaust Survivor Centre member Henny Franks 101.
Standard Bearers stood proudly, Cadets from JFS and JCOSS attended and a bugler from JLGB played The Last Post and Reveille.
