After school Martin went to Israel and served as an artillery officer in the Israeli Army. He is now the archivist of the Jewish Military Museum in London.
Fighting Back details the considerable contribution that the British Jewish community, including the many Jews who lived in the Palestinian Mandate, made to the British war effort.
The motivation for the book was, in part, a response to the myth that British Jewry lacked a fighting spirit and did not play their full part in the Second World War. Martin's carefully constructed case shows that Jews easily contributed well out of proportion to the rest of the population.
The book was written just in time to get verbal recollections from those who served. It is humbling to read the stories of ordinary people doing extra-ordinary things.
Many British Jews fought in the same units as everyone else. There were Jews in the Battle of Britain, the North African desert and all other theatres of war.
Some of the most fascinating sections of Martin's book cover the contribution British and Palestinian Jews made to various special operations. Their language skills were particularly useful at places like Bletchley Park - I was astonished to find that one of my near neighbours in Hackney had worked there carefully interpreting German signals.
Many Jewish men and women were parachuted into occupied Europe. Several were shot or eventually executed in concentration camps including the women.
The contribution becomes mind blowing when Martin describes "SIG" a special unit composed of German speaking Jews who spoke, trained, drilled, ate, and dressed as Nazis in order to penetrate German lines for reconnaissance and sabotage. They even recruited German NCO POWs to run a special German speaking camp in the desert. This would make a brilliant film.
From a contemporary point of view Martin's description of the fighting around Palestine reminds us that inter-communal violence against Palestinian Jews was incited by the pro-Nazi Mufti of Jerusalem. It was sad to read that a British officer refused to intervene to prevent the massacre of Baghdad's historic Jewish community. It is easy to gloss over the events before Israel emerged as a fully fledged sovereign state recognised by the United Nations.
One of the saddest themes throughout the book seems to be the casual Antisemitism which littered British attitudes at the time.However when Jews joined up it soon evaporated after basic training as units pulled together, reminding us that the war was a great period of social change.
At a time when Antisemitism is again rearing its ugly head in these islands, often in unexpected places, this book is a stark reminder of the strong bonds amongst the British people - Jew and non-Jew.
Fighting Back: British Jewry's Contribution in the Second World War; Martin Sugarman, Valletine Mitchell, 2010 ISBN 978 0 85303 910 5.
