I was born on 25 October 1936, three weeks after the Battle of Cable Street, and therefore have no recollections of it. I have prepared an account of it from contemporary documents, the newspapers of the time, and the recollections of some of those who took part in it for…
Photo: Jack Brauns, Martin, Avraham Tory, in Israel, 1980s (Jack Brauns, a survivor of Kovno, was the son of Dr Moshe Brauns, Director of the Jewish Hospital and Head of Infectious Diseases in the Ghetto) Like all the captive peoples – Poles, Czechs, Serbs, Greeks, Dutch, Danes, and many more…
A vital part of the success of the RAF was played by Bomber Command. Sir Martin was involved in an attempt to see those who took part in Bomber Command awarded with a campaign medal, an honour that has still sadly eluded them. In 2008 he wrote this dedication: My…
On Armistice Day, November 11, 1918, Winston Churchill was Minister of Munitions. As Big Ben struck 11, and the guns fell silent on the Western Front, he was looking out of his ministerial window over Northumberland Avenue. The broad street was deserted. Suddenly, as he wrote, he saw “the slight…
Photo: Winston Churchill with his son Randolph and daughter Mary at an American military cemetery near Namur, 15th July 1946, from Churchill, A Life. 6 June 1968 found Sir Martin on the beach in Portugal where he received word that his former boss Randolph Churchill, Sir Winston’s son, had died. Martin…
At five o’clock on the afternoon of 14 May 1948, in the main hall of the Tel Aviv Museum, a ceremony took place that inaugurated the State of Israel. The ceremony began with the singing of the Jewish anthem “Hatikvah”. A few moments later David Ben-Gurion, as Prime Minister and…
Photo: Theodor Herzl Just over 120 years ago, a Viennese Jewish journalist and visionary, Theodor Herzl, launched the modern Zionist movement at a meeting in Basle of Jews from all over the world. They called for a Jewish State in their ancestral land, Palestine, a land then ruled by the Turks.…
Photo: Winston Churchill and A.J.Balfour, 1920, photo courtesy of the late Sybil, Dowager Marchioness of Cholmondeley The keynote speaker at the Churchill Fellows Weekend will be His Excellency Ron Dermer, the Israeli Ambassador to the United States who will be delivering the Enid and R. Crosby Kemper Lecture on “Churchill…
Above Germany, British bombers, carrying out the Casablanca directive of Roosevelt and Churchill, attacked Berlin during the daylight hours of January 30 and Hamburg that same night. The raid on Berlin had been timed to coincide with radio broadcasts by both Goering and Goebbels declared: “A thousand years hence, every…
The film Darkest Hour depicts a scene in a London Tube Station. In Sir Martin’s piece Churchill in 1940, High Points and Low Points, he describes a similar “vote of confidence”: … on the afternoon of 26 May 1940, at a meeting of the War Cabinet in Churchill’s room in the House of Commons,…
Photo: Churchill addressing Congress , 26th December 1941 On December 5, however, Churchill learned from another Enigma decrypt that a German air corps had been ordered from Russia to the Mediterranean, to give Rommel the extra air support he had so strongly requested. Britain’s battle in the Western Desert had…
In the autumn of 1917, the British War Cabinet, desperate to persuade the Jews of Russia to urge their government to renew Russia’s flagging war effort, saw a future Jewish Palestine as an inducement and stimulus to the patriotic zeal of Russia’s Jews. To this end, Britain encouraged the possibility…
Photo caption: Gus Goldberger chanting a prayer in the Great Synagogue in Copenhagen, March 2009, photo taken from the upstairs women’s gallery. … growing Danish resistance to the German occupations slowly undermined any chance of continued co-operation, and on 28 August 1943 the Germans declared martial law. The SS hoped…
Photo: Churchill at Chartwell, taken on 25 February 1939 and published in the New York Times magazine on 13 August 1939. “Somebody has to state the truth” One of Churchill’s main fears during the 1930s was that the British Government was not putting sufficient resources into anti-aircraft defence. … On…
Photo : Adam Czerniakow, Chairman of the Warsaw Ghetto Jewish Council. 1942: On July 21 the Germans seized sixty Jews in the Warsaw ghetto, among them three members of the Jewish Council. At the same time, a number of Jews were shot in the streets, or in their homes. On…
Photo: Ben Helfgott and Sir Martin at an annual ’45 Aid Society dinner celebrating Liberation. More than half a century after liberation, Ben Helfgott reflected: “On the one hand we have recovered. On the other hand we have been damaged, a damage that is not outwardly visible. We have integrated…
The largest amphibious landing yet carried out in war took place on 6 June 1944, when American, British and Canadian troops fought their way ashore, as the first stage of the planned liberation of German-occupied western Europe. Of the 150,000 men who came in from the air by parachute and…
Photo: Moshe Dayan and Yitzhak Rabin, June 1967 In the immediate aftermath of the Six Day War, a debate began inside Israel that was to continue for the next three decades: how to rule, and for how long to rule, the Palestinian Arabs. The Cabinet position was that for “full…
From the moment of Israel’s declaration of independence on 14 May 1948, Jerusalem – the capital city of the new nation – was besieged, as Arab forces, determined to crush the Jewish state at birth, cut off its main city from the remainder of the country. The only link between…
On 8 May 1945 the war in Europe came to an end. Six million Jews had been murdered; hundreds of thousands of pitiful survivors craved to be allowed to go at once to Palestine, and to rebuild their shattered lives in the Jewish National Home – a refuge which had…