Discovery Channel - War Stories (1999) Part 6 The Jewish Brigade

These are the men and women who saw it all. Extraordinary, powerful first-hand accounts of the Second World War. Tales from Auschwitz, Special Operations, war correspondents, resistance fighters and the Jewish Brigade reveal personal experiences of war that shatter all illusions. A British prisoner who survived Auschwitz and describes his life there. An undercover agent captured by the Nazis, whose prison camp experiences were used to indict war criminals. A British soldier tortured by the Gestapo who lived to become a dedicated Nazi hunter. A war correspondent who inadvertently stumbled on preparations for the invasion of Poland. A fighter with the Jewish Brigade, torn between humanity and army regulations. An undercover resistance fighter who time and again braved the Germans face to face. Featuring rare archival footage and photographs, these stories and others provide an intense and valuable human document of the war, unlike any seen or heard before.

Part 6 The Jewish Brigade

Winston Churchill recognized that in the Jewish population he had a hard core of potential soldiers both driven and dedicated to bringing down the Nazi regime. The Jewish Brigade would fight under its own flag making an enormous contribution to the war effort. Edmund de Rothschild joined as Captain of a Battery that comprised Jewish soldiers from 50 different countries. Mark Hyatt recounts how captured German soldiers faced the humiliation of surrendering to relatives of those they had in turn humiliated and murdered. Some of those captured would never make it home. At the end of the war, the Brigade found itself torn between humanity and army regulations as supplies and transport were put to use aiding the torrent of Jewish refugees throughout Europe. With growing support for the development of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, these British Jews would soon find their weapons turned against their fellow countrymen in the struggle to establish the State of Israel.

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