Thread by @Claire_V0ltaire

Did you know Yemeni Jews from Mandatory Palestine fought Hitler and many fell captive and died by the Nazis in WWII?

Here is a thread telling a story you probably never heard of. 🧵

In September 1939, the Jewish community in Yisrael found itself in a complex situation. On one hand, the British implemented the the white papers policy, restricting the immigration & rescue of Jews. On the other hand, they were the ones who stood almost alone against the nazis.

The Jewish Agency wanted to establish Jewish units within the British army, but the British feared that this was a ploy to establish a Jewish military force that would be directed against them at the end of the battle.

Most of the Jewish volunteers ended up being placed in the Royal Excavation Corps - digging tunnels and road embankments, hard manual labor, but without weapons and hardly any training.

They were sent to battle zones in Libya with tools and no weapons. Digging trenches, building bunkers, dismantling ships, all while bombing was taking place. When they finished their mission in Libya - instead of returning to Israel, they were shipped to Greece for reinforcement.

This was a grave mistake. Between April 14-29 1941, the Germans crushed the British. After breaking the Thessaloniki line, the Germans sailed south towards the port of Kalamata. The British realized the battle was lost and evacuated their soldiers on ships, leaving Jews behind.

In Kalamata, the Germans captured 15,000 people.
1,500 were Jews from Israel, 185 of these men were Yemeni Jewish volunteers.
Out of 2,400 Jewish soldiers, almost 2,000 were taken prisoner or killed.

For 4 years, they were kept in forced labour camps in Stalag 8b.
They would dig ditches and trenches, moved from place to place to work. Most brutal one was Jaworzno, which was a subcamp of Auschwitz. They heard the trains, smelled the smoke, they understood what was happening.

Unsurprisingly some of them came back mentally ill and did not want to talk about it.
The Yemenis, who were religious, had a problem with kosher food, and work on Shabbat and holidays, including Yom Kippur.

The survivors felt great shame. They refused any interviews. The ethos of the State of Israel was a disinterest in engaging with ‘captivity’ in those years. The days of remembrance for IDF casualties & Holocaust victims, which began in the late 1950s, failed to tell their story.

One of the fighters was Menashe Durani. His brother Haim, said that in Thessaloniki they both fled from the Germans to a Greek village, joined the partisans, and continued to fight. Haim was captured by the Nazis, and after the captivity returned to Greece to find his brother.

He was told that Menashe had been killed in battle. Menashe Durani, like all those who were partisans, is the only Yemeni who is recognized by Yad Vashem as a holocaust victim.

Yemenis were full partners in the struggle for the establishment of the State of Israel. It is time to recognize their stories - unknown, battle-torn, prisoners, but most importantly - heroes.