As the Remembrance tide nears, our community is once again reminded of what it means to be both Jewish and British. This community’s military history has always hugged the contours of Britain’s story and 2024 has provided many reminders of our contribution to the UK’s security and freedom.
In the last year, I have been privileged, as National Chair of AJEX, to attend and support a number of events organised by those outside of the Jewish community to recognise this.
In June, in Harlech, the town’s historical society unveiled a plaque to X-Troop, the commando unit of Jewish refugees from Nazism, who lived and trained there during WWII.
X-Troop operations proved crucial to the allied victory in the war and local dignitaries, residents, the commandos’ families, and the family of their (non-Jewish) OC, Maj Bryan Hilton-Jones (a Harlech native) were in attendance. Kaddish was said in the middle of the high street by Rabbi Captain Rabbi Nir Nadav, of HM Forces Chaplaincy, and the sons of two X-Troopers gave talks on how important their fathers’ Jewish identity had been to their service.
Three weeks later, on Canvey Island, the local community held a ceremony to mark the anniversary of the B-17 Air Collision in 1944. Two USAF crew were lost, returning from a bombing mission in France in support of the Battle of Normandy. The dead included 2Lt Fred Kauffman, a Jewish airman, and AJEX was invited to parade our Standard and say Kaddish.
At Lincoln’s International Bomber Command Centre (IBCC), in September, a replica of the Magdala Stone (uncovered in Israel in 2009 and depicting the Second Temple) was unveiled in commemoration of Jews massacred following the Little Hugh blood libel of 1255.
The stone had been commissioned and funded by a local quarry business and the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem. The IBCC, overlooking Lincoln, had enthusiastically welcomed its placing beneath its main memorial, due to the Jewish connection to the RAF.
AJEX National Chairman Dan Fox
Over 900 Jews were killed serving in the air in World War II. ACM Sir Michael Graydon, Chair of the IBCC Trustees, spoke of this Jewish contribution and I closed proceedings with the following words:
“After the defeat of the Philistines at Mizpeh, the prophet Samuel erected a huge rock on the site in thanks for the interventions he believed had secured victory: an eban ha’nezer. Humanity’s first memorial stone. Tonight, around the Lincoln Jewish Memorial Stone, we made that connection back through the millennia to a biblical battlefield, via the imperfect, yet rich and proud, history of this great nation and its Jews.”
On 6th November, in Glasgow, the Royal Tank Regiment (RTR) will hold a ceremony at the grave of Emil Stock, an Austrian Jewish refugee who crewed a tank on D-Day +1, eventually dying of injuries sustained two months later. The official invitation reads that the event will be “about Emil and his three families: the Stock family, his RTR family, and his Jewish family. All three will come together to pay their respects and to commemorate him.”
Because the antisemites on our streets are the loudest, and those in our media and politics are best known, it is easy to believe they are the majority. But amongst our fellow citizens across this land, Jews are met with nothing but great affection and admiration. Our friends are many. And I am extremely proud that AJEX is at the heart of that relationship. And that at the heart of AJEX is our Annual Parade. Last year, record numbers turned out to march or spectate and we hope that 2024 will be no different. On 17 November, on Horse Guards Parade, along Whitehall, and around the Cenotaph, it will be the place to stand tall and march together as Brits, as Jews, as one.
- Dan Fox, National Chair of AJEX, the Jewish Military Association
- Details of this year’s AJEX Annual Parade on Sunday 17th November, are here
