Overview

Soldiers, Angels, and Avengers tells the compelling story of the Jewish Brigade Infantry Group (JBG), a five-thousand-strong military unit, recruited primarily from the Jewish population of Palestine, and the only exclusively Jewish military unit to fight under the British flag during the Second World War. Gianluca Fantoni reconstructs the military and human experience of the brigade in Italy and investigates its enduring and controversial place in memory and public debate. Formed in 1944, the JBG saw combat in the final stages of the Italian campaign, where its soldiers fought with distinction against German forces. After the war, many of its members – who often had little or no military training, and included artists, scientists, and farmers – engaged in clandestine efforts to smuggle Holocaust survivors and weapons into Palestine, laying the groundwork for the future Israeli state. Others sought retribution against Nazis and collaborators in acts that revealed both the trauma of genocide and the desire for justice. Far more than a conventional military history, Soldiers, Angels, and Avengers is both a critical study of the political uses of history and a vivid, passionate narrative that brings to life the men and women of the brigade. Accessible and engaging, this book offers readers a rare lens through which to understand the intersections of war, memory, and politics in twentieth-century Europe.

Full Product Details

9780228027874

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Reviews

“The Jewish Brigade, a small unit of the British army, made modest contributions to Italy’s liberation in 1945, but as Gianluca Fantoni’s compelling study shows, its story is a prism that casts vivid light on Zionism and Mandatory Palestine, on Jewish identity, and on struggles over memory and history that rage to this today.” - Robert S.C. Gordon, University of Cambridge

Author Information

Gianluca Fantoni is senior lecturer in modern history at Nottingham Trent University.

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