Jewish D-Day veterans recount liberating the Nazi death camp Bergen-Belsen

“It was very moving, and worrying to find out what we did. As a community we were panic-stricken, but we were all the more determined to stop Germany, and when I went in the army that was my objective.”

When he did get the chance, having been assigned to the Royal Army Ordnance Corps shortly after turning 18, he remembers a “very moving” journey as his company drove through towns and villages in southern England on the way to the coast, on the way to war.

“People would be lining these country lanes and streets when we went through,” he said. “People would be in tears, waving at us and saying to us, ‘God bless you’, or they would remain absolutely still and silent, which was even more moving.”

His unit was to land on sector Jig as part of the Gold Beach force four days after D-Day, known as D+4. Mervyn said: “We were kitted out with rations, given a self-heating tin of vegetable soup, a big bar of unbreakable white chocolate that was too hard to bite, a French phrase book, and a little pill to clean water, out of fear that the Germans would poison wells, streams and the like. With that, we set out.”

Mervyn volunteered to accompany a reconnaissance team that was crossing the channel a day earlier than the rest of his unit, with the next boat leaving in the middle of the night. They were told upon boarding that they should sleep if they can, as it may be the last they get for some time. Mervyn stayed on deck while everyone else went below, and there he lay, clinging to a coil of rope, in the silence, to France.

He arrived amid “grand scenes of organised chaos” as thousands of men and orders were flung about, and German forces were retreating inland.

He spent the first night sleeping under a lorry, and the second in a ditch with a tarp covered over him. He still clearly recalls carving out a bit of the soil to create a kind of shelf, as machine guns raged in the distance and planes flew overhead.

Amidst the war, Mervyn found out about Jewish service being performed a few miles from his camp by a senior chaplain with about 200 other Jewish soldiers, mostly British, some Americans and Canadians, taking part. “Services in the army were very much shorter and to the point instead of the rambling services seen sometimes in peace time,” he said.

The service was disturbed at the door by “two black-hatted gentlemen with black coats entering the room. Chasidim they were, and they just couldn’t believe their eyes when they walked in. They had heard from non-Jews that there was a Jewish service going on, and they had to see it for themselves. They thought they were the only Jewish people left in the world.

“They only spoke Yiddish and somebody translated for us… They had been together hiding. One had been in a loft for four years and hadn’t come out, and the other had been in a wardrobe, living silently so as to not be found and reported.”

Mervyn developed a liking for informing German prisoners “Ich bin Jude”, and “watching their face react, like they were most surprised to see Jews fighting, like they had been lied to.”

Daniel Ben-DavidMervyn Kersh, 99, Jewish veteran of the Normandy landings

In Holland, Mervyn witnessed a scene that has stayed with him forever, he said. “I saw these men marching stoically with Magen Davids on their shoulders, and I recognised them to be the Jewish Brigade. I saw civilians running out of their houses as they walked past to kiss the star on their uniforms, and I felt compelled to do the same. It was very, very moving.”

He had applied some months earlier to be a part of the Jewish Brigade himself, as was any serving Jewish person’s right, but he was turned away for being too young.

Eventually, Mervyn crossed into Germany. “It was a marvellous feeling. To me, that was what the whole war was about, going into Germany,” he said. While in the town of Celle, he realised that Bergen-Belsen, which had just been liberated a few days before his arrival, was only about three miles away. He began to walk to the camp every day for the fortnight he was in Celle.

Despite not being able to enter the camp itself due to diseases, Mervyn would wait outside and watch those camp occupants fit enough to do so, walk out. “I saw scores, dozens, perhaps hundreds of them walk out. They look emaciated, wraithlike. They were extremely thin, arms and legs just bone. It was a wonder they could stand up.”

They would notice Mervyn’s blue Star of David on a white background badge as he attempted to communicate with them and “guzzled down” the bits of chocolate he offered to them. It was only later that Mervyn learned chocolate was “one of the worst things you can give to someone who’s been starved. I hope I didn’t cause them more pain,”

Most of them, Mervyn said, wanted to go to Hanover, the main railway hub of north Germany, so they could “begin to find out what was left of their businesses, their families, what was left for them. It soon became clear that what was left was not much at all, and many of them became determined to go to Eretz Yisrael and build a state.”

Via car, on foot, and boat, Mervyn has in recent years unsuccessfully attempted to find the section of that infamous beach he landed on all those years ago, that place “that is burned” in his memory.

[Missing Credit]Mervyn Kersh returns to the infamous D-Day beach (Credit: Courtesy)

Like Mervyn, Stanley Fisher also saw the liberation of Bergen-Belsen in April 1945 after making a request to a commanding officer to go and see it, and like Mervyn he grew up in London with very little knowledge of the persecution of Jewish people in Europe.

He grew up somewhat removed from antisemitism in his early life. Both his grandfather, Hyam Fisher, and his father, Samuel Lee Fisher, established their own synagogues where he enjoyed his first memories. 

Very few members of the community “had any sort of knowledge about the real suffering that was going on against Jewish people just like us,” Stanley said. “We just thought Bergen-Belsen was a prisoner of war camp, until we got there and witnessed the horror,”

He spent a day and a half in the camp’s area and, shuffling behind barbed wire fences, Stanley saw “walking skeletons in stripes”. It remains his most vivid memory of the war.

“By the time we got there, they had cleared out most of the bodies, but those still standing were starved close to death, and trance-like. Disease, especially typhus, was rife,” he said.

[Missing Credit]Stanley Fisher as a young soldier (Credit: Courtesy)

The experience made Stanley “physically sick” and gave him nightmares for many years. It was only in the last 10 years that he began to speak openly about it. “I didn’t talk about it for so long because of the sheer horrific reality of it. It is hard to explain, but I didn’t want my family to know what I had seen and suffered,” he said.

Experiencing the liberation of Bergen-Belsen followed Stanleys arrival on the beaches of Normandy two days after Mervyn, on D+6, as part of Operation Neptune, and months of fighting through Europe as part of Operation Overlord, watching “men killed again and again by the side of me,”

[Missing Credit]Stanley Fisher, 99, Jewish veteran of the Normandy landings (Credit: Courtesy)

In the beginning, he said, “morale was good, there was a bit of excitement mixed with fear.

“We knew we would be going under fire and knew many of us may not be coming back. This is something you were forced to come to accept; you were in the army, you were given orders, and you obeyed those orders irrespective of what went on elsewhere.”

Reflecting on those days today, Stanley’s foremost memory is of “the sound; that terrific noise, everything was loud.” He recalls coming under fire for the first time and trying to seek cover in a hedge. “That first time being shot at we were all dead scared, but after that it slowly became part and parcel of the day,” he said.

The Jewish Brigade marched past Stanley too at one point, and noticing the Jewish insignia and sleeve patch on their uniform gave Stanley a “moment of pause and pride”.

[Missing Credit]Stanley Fisher as a young man, sitting on an arm of sofa, second from right (Credit: Courtesy)

Eventually, the war came to a close and Stanley remembers celebrating by “getting drunk in ten minutes, we all did,”

He returned to Britain and, like his father and grandfather before him, went on to establish his own synagogue, Solihull Hebrew & District Congregation in Birmingham.

Mervyn Kersh and Stanley Fisher are both set to become centenarians later this year, in December and August respectively. Stanley will mark the occasion surrounded by 28 immediate family members for a tea party, with the youngest being two years old. “These days, I can assure you, I sleep very well,” he said.

Meanwhile, Mervyn said: “I myself am aiming for 120. If it’s good enough for Moses, it’s good enough for me.”

Both men will this month be taking part in events in the UK and France commemorating the 80th anniversary of D-Day. In the UK, the 80th anniversary is being marked nationally with beacon lighting commemorations across Britain.

Mervyn and Stanley will be participating virtually on Thursday June 6, on the 80th anniversary, in the Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and Women’s (AJEX) beacon-lighting in honour of the Jewish Servicemen and Women who gave so much, 80 years ago. AJEX is an organisation of which Mervynn was formally the vice-president of and it means a lot to him to keep the memory of servicemen and women alive.

Dan Fox, national chair of AJEX, said: “For decades, the Jewish history of the Nazi era understandably focussed on the unbearable memories of the Shoah. More recently, the obvious corollary to the genocide has come to the fore: that Jews served in the allied forces in numbers far out of proportion to our global population at the time. At no time and in no place was that more starkly illustrated than D-Day.

"It is AJEX’s mission to ensure this is known and understood. From the Jewish SOE agents and Resistance members who sabotaged Reich transport and supply lines in the run-up. To the refugees-turned-commandos of X-Troop, some of the first boots on the beaches. From Free French pilots to US Rangers. Whether dropping out of the sky, spilling from landing craft, or fighting in the air, Operation Overlord has many Jewish stories to tell. This evening the 6th June we will raise a salute and a toast once more, to the men and women of the Allied Expeditionary Force. And, to life.”

A third Jewish D-Day veteran, David Teacher, 100, was also to speak with the JC about his experiences as a soldier, but passed away last week.