“Victory” proclaimed the main headline on the front page of the Jewish Chronicle on May 11, 1945 but amid the joy reflected in its pages was an acute awareness of terrible loss.
“Throughout the country on Sunday Thanksgiving Services will be held in the synagogues to offer gratitude for the victory of the Allies,” read the main story, with instructions from the Chief Rabbi to include the “Gomel” blessing, accompanied by the translation: “Blessed art though universe, who doeth good unto the undeserving and who has Dealt kindly with me.”
Also on the front page was a report of the royal family’s visit to the East End. They visited Hughes Mansions in Stepney where just a few weeks before the last German V2 bomb had fallen, killing 130, most of them Jewish. Despite this, the crowd was full of excitement, clustering round the royal family, who “smiled sympathetically and spoke to them”. The JC’s reporter wrote: “I have never seen a more spontaneous and affectionate display of the people’s feeling for their King and Queen.”
The JC reported news of tank officer Eric Philips of Cardiff awarded the Military Cross for conspicuous gallantry in north-west Europe. His father, Mr G Philips had been awarded the Military Medal in “the last war”. And the Distinguished Flying Cross was awarded to Flying Officer Isaac Segal, who “had some difficulty being accepted by the RAF at first because of the Polish parentage of his parents”.
Flags and bunting were on display among the Jewish community in British Mandate Palestine to celebrate the end of the war, where “most of the Yishuv are wondering what is going to happen with regard to the Jewish Brigade, which in the short period of its active service at the front gave such a good account of itself”. There was “a tone of solemnity in all the celebrations, as the people remembered the millions of Jewish dead, men, women, and children, who had been mercilessly exterminated by the Nazis, but who could have been alive and happy and rejoicing with their families in Eretz Yisroel at that moment, had not their entry into Palestine not been barred by the infamous White Paper”. That referred to the government policy document of 1939 that limited Jewish immigration to 75,000 for five years and ruled that further immigration would then be determined by the Arab majority. In Tel Aviv on VE day Jewish crowds chanted “Open the gates of Palestine!”
The horrors of the Holocaust were still unfolding. A report about the liberation of Dachau contained details of survivors, and their relatives in England. “According to camp inmates one million people died in Dachau. In addition to deaths from starvation and clubbings, there were mass executions in a special killing area which contains a square chamber with a low ceiling in which there are rows with shower-like nozzles from which the gas flowed.”
The JC’s leader column, headlined “Moral victory” admitted “it is certain that most of us, standing so near to these gigantic events have not yet grasped the full significance of our great deliverance. Time alone, perhaps, will unfold it to us as the secrets of these years are laid bare.”
It added: “It cannot be too insistently stressed that until justice is done to the people of Israel in the Land of Israel, one more query, perhaps the most serious of them all, will be marked against the deliberations on security and the efforts for a brave new world now being laboriously pursued.”
The leader sat alongside a poem by Gunner 1765994, Royal Artillery, which concluded:
You heard our prayers, O God of Love,
And spared once more Thy frail Mankind;
Teach us, O God, Thy Law of love
That we may see, who have been blind…
That we may make the peace to be
Worthy of this . . . Thy Victory.
