Seeking the WW2 heroines who paid the ultimate price
Israel is trying to identify the Jewish women who served - and fell - in the British army during combat on the Egyptian front.
Ahead of Memorial Day on Wednesday, the Defense Ministry's Families and Commemoration Department has asked for the public's help in gathering information about Jewish women from Mandatory Palestine who volunteered to serve in the British Army during World War II and were killed on the Egyptian front. Many remain buried in various locations throughout Egypt.
"Records at the time were inaccurate, and that's why we haven't been able to obtain the particulars of those women who were killed," says Edna Huna, a senior official at the Defense Ministry department. "We are missing biographical details of about 600 fallen soldiers, and we've decided to focus now on the women who volunteered to serve in the British Army."
As part of the struggle against the Nazis in World War II, tens of thousands of Jews living in Mandatory Palestine enlisted in the British Army. Approximately 3,500 were women volunteers who serve primarily in the Auxiliary Corps as nurses, drivers and in clerical positions.
"It's unusual for married women to enlist in the army; one of them was even killed along with her 14-year-old son in the War of Independence," says Dorit Perry, an advisor to the Defense Ministry project.
"We're not talking about 18-year-old girls. Some were women in their 40s who left their families, went to another country, served and were killed on the frontline, and weren't returned to Israel for burial. Some were Holocaust survivors. It's an extraordinary story."
Over the past few years, the Defense Ministry has made a concerted effort to track down the details of the women volunteers, with one official involved in the project noting: "We are going through every possible archive; we're visiting the kibbutzim where they once lived and we're trying to find anyone who may remember them; and we're going through all the documents of the ships that brought immigrants to Israel. We aren't letting go and we aren't resting; we're rummaging and sifting in an effort to obtain any snippet of information."
Among the volunteers whose details remain unknown is Sarah Rachela Blank, who joined the British Army in World War II and served as a driver at a base near Gaza. She was killed in an accident on December 20, 1944, and was buried in the military cemetery in Ramle.
Defense Ministry officials have found and published a photograph of Blank and are now seeking help from the public in an effort to obtain more information about her.
"It's heartbreaking to think of a fallen soldier who doesn't have anyone to stand next to his grave or about whom we don't have any information," Perry says. "We will turn every archive upside down and read every document until we find the details we are missing."
