The Jewish Experience of the First World War

349 Pages·2019·4.785 MB·English

by  Edward Madigan, Gideon Reuveni

THE JEWISH
EXPERIENCE OF THE
FIRST WORLD WAR
EDITED BY EDWARD MADIGAN 
AND GIDEON REUVENI
The Jewish Experience of the First World War
Edward Madigan · Gideon Reuveni
Editors
The Jewish Experience
of the First World War
Editors
Edward Madigan Gideon Reuveni
Department of History Department of History
Royal Holloway, University of London University of Sussex
Egham, UK Falmer, UK
ISBN 978-1-137-54895-5 ISBN 978-1-137-54896-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54896-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018951052
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019
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Cover illustration: Soldiers of the Jewish Legion celebrate Passover with women and
children, Jerusalem, 1918. © Central Zionist Archive
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A
cknowledgements
This book was inspired by a conference that took place in London in
June 2014 in anticipation of the centenary of the outbreak of the First
World War. The conference was a joint venture between several organi-
zations, and a product of the hard work of a number of individuals. At
the beginning of 2014, Elizabeth Selby of the Jewish Museum London
informed us about the forthcoming ‘For King and Country’ exhibition
designed to mark the centenary. Around the same time, Ben Berkow and
Toby Simpson of the Wiener Library also expressed interest in the topic.
This led to the idea of holding the conference in London in conjunc-
tion with the exhibitions on the Jewish experience of the First World War
being staged by these leading guardians of Jewish memory. We would
very much like to thank Elizabeth and Toby for all their patience and
hard work in helping us to organize the conference, and for the institu-
tional support provided by the Jewish Museum London and the Wiener
Library for this event. We would also like to express our gratitude to the
Austrian Cultural Forum, to the Institute for German Jewish history in
Hamburg, and to the Jewish Military Museum in London, all of whom
helped to sponsor the event.
On behalf of the Centre for German Jewish Studies at the University
of Sussex, we would like to thank Diana Franklin, the manager of the
centre, for her invaluable assistance. Unfortunately, not all participants
at the conference were able to contribute to the volume, but their com-
ments and input were very helpful in shaping the intellectual param-
eters of the book. We are also very grateful to Carmel Kennedy and
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Emily Russell of Palgrave Macmillan for their support and patience in
helping us bring an occasionally quite challenging project to fruition.
Finally, we would like to extend our sincere gratitude to each of the indi-
vidual authors whose work has been included in the pages that follow.
Their collective insights have greatly enriched the fields of Jewish history
and First World War studies and we are very much in their debt.
Edward Madigan
Gideon Reuveni
c
ontents
The First World War and the Jews 1
Gideon Reuveni and Edward Madigan
Part I Eastern Fronts
Between Light and Darkness: Jewish Education
in Time of War 19
Björn Siegel
Eastern Promises: Jewish Germans in the German
Administration of Eastern Europe During the Great War 43
Philipp Nielsen
Bread, Butter and Education: The Yiddishist Movements
in Poland, 1914–1916 67
Emma Zohar
War and Nationalism in Palestine: The Jewish Migration
Committee in the Galilee During the First World War 85
Esther Yankelevitch
vii
viii CONTENTS
Towards a Consolidation of Zionist National
Consciousness in Palestine During the First World War:
A Local Urban Perspective 111
Anat Kidron
Part II Western Fronts
A Mixed Bag of Loyalties: Jewish Soldiers, Ethnic
Minorities, and State-Based Contingents in the German
Army, 1914–1918 137
Gavin Wiens
Between Inclusion and Exclusion: The Experiences
of Jewish Soldiers in Europe and the USA, 1914–1918 159
Sarah Panter
Between Faith and Nation: Italian Jewish Soldiers
in the Great War 183
Vanda Wilcox
‘The March of the Judeans’: The London Recruits of the
Jewish Battalion in the First World War 207
Christopher Smith
Part III Post-war Memory and Commemoration
The Female Side of War: The Experience and Memory
of the Great War in Italian-Jewish Women’s Ego-Documents 233
Ruth Nattermann
Once ‘the Only True Austrians’: Mobilising Jewish Memory
of the First World War for Belonging in the New Austrian
Nation, 1929–1938 255
Tim Corbett
CONTENTS ix
The Iron Shield of David: The First World War
and the Creation of German-Jewish Markers of
Patriotism and Memory 277
Michal Friedlander
‘Thou Hast Given Us Home and Freedom, Mother England’:
Anglo-Jewish Gratitude, Patriotism, and Service During and
After the First World War 307
Edward Madigan
Index 335
n c
otes on ontributors
Tim Corbett is a historian, editor, and translator specialising in the
modern cultural history of Jews in Austria. He completed his Ph.D. at
Lancaster University in 2015 and is currently preparing his first mon-
ograph, a history of Vienna’s Jewish cemeteries. He has published and
translated numerous articles on Central European Jewish history, trans-
lated a book by Arndt Engelhardt, and been the recipient of numerous
international fellowships and awards. He currently holds the inaugu-
ral Prins Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Museum of Jewish
Heritage in New York.
Michal Friedlander is Head of the Judaica department at the Jewish
Museum Berlin. She is the author of numerous articles on differ-
ent aspects of Jewish material culture and the co-editor of 10 + 5
=
Gott—Die Macht der Zeichen (2004), and Kosher & Co.—Über Essen
und Religion (2010). In 2013, she co-curated ‘The Whole Truth—
Everything you always wanted to know about Jews’, an exhibition which
sparked international debate. Friedlander’s current research focuses on
the concept of the Jewish object.
Anat Kidron is senior lecturer, head of the Land of Israel Department
and dean of the Faculty of Humanities at Ohalo Academic College of
Education and Sport. She also lectures in the departments of Jewish
History and Israel Studies at the University of Haifa and acts as aca-
demic coordinator of the Schumacher Institute for the Study of Christian
Activity in Palestine in the modern era. She has written a number of
xi