In 1944, Lt. Bernard Montgomery Expresses His Support For a Memorial to His Chief Engineer in Operation Torch, a Jewish Brigadier Killed When a German Mine Exploded As He Was Directing Reconstruction of a Crucial Bridge

The memorial he was supporting was establishment of a new Jewish settlement in Palestine, which was contrary to the official British government position of discouraging Jewish immigration and settlements; Included also is Lt. Gen. Alan Cunningham’s letter of support

The Royal Engineers was one of the key units in the British Army in both the First and Second World Wars. The Engineers were responsible for keeping the supply routes to the armies open, by maintaining the railways, roads, water supply, bridges and transport. The Engineers also operated the railways and inland waterways, and secured communications by maintaining the telephones, radio and other signaling equipment. They designed and built front-line fortifications, developed responses to chemical and underground warfare, and maintained the guns and other weapons. Their are famously remembered in World War II for building Mulberry Harbor, an artificial harbor prefabricated in Britain and towed across the Channel on D-Day, to provide logistic support for the Allied invasion force.

In late 1942, the military forces of the United States and the British Commonwealth launched an amphibious operation against French North Africa. That landing, code-named ‘Operation Torch’, was the first such combined operation of the war. The plan called for clearing Axis military power from the shores of North Africa to open up the Mediterranean to the movement of Allied convoys, assist Lt. Gen. Bernard Montgomery’s forces fighting Rommel in Egypt, and open the way for an Allied attack on Sicily and then on the Italian mainland. Operation Torch was also important in that, although it meant that there would be no Allied invasion of France in 1943, it allowed the United States to complete mobilization of its immense industrial and manpower resources for the titanic air and ground battles that characterized the Allied campaigns of 1944.

The campaign began on November 8, when Commonwealth and American troops made a series of landings in Algeria and Morocco. The Germans responded immediately by sending a force from Sicily to northern Tunisia, which checked the Allied advance east in early December. Meanwhile, the Axis forces defeated in Egypt at El Alamein by Montgomery’s Eighth Army were withdrawing into Tunisia along the coast through Libya, pursued by Montgomery’s forces. By mid April 1943, the combined Axis force was hemmed into a small corner of north-eastern Tunisia, and the Allies were grouped for their final offensive. The Eighth Army attack on the position at Enfidaville on April 19 captured the village, but strong resistance stalled further progress at that point. Attacks further north, however, met with greater success, and Tunis fell on May 7, Bizerta on the 8th. German resistance ceased May 12.

On April 7, during these actions, Montgomery’s army found that a bridge at Wadi Akarit essential to its advance had been destroyed. Rebuilding it was a job for the Royal Engineers, and the Chief Engineer of the North Africa campaign, Brigadier Frederick Kisch, set about reconstructing it. Kisch was considered by many the outstanding Jewish officer in the British armed forces. After serving with distinction in World War I, and receiving the Distinguished Service Order, he was appointed a member of the British delegation to the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. Between the wars he was head of the Zionist Commission for the Jerusalem region (meaning he was political chief of the region). Recalled to service in 1939, he was soon awarded a Companion of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath in recognition of gallant and distinguished services in the Middle East. Kisch and his staff were killed by the explosion of a German land mine while organizing the reconstruction of the bridge.

After Kisch’s death, in late 1943, a 46-man committee was formed for the purpose of establishing a memorial for him in the form of a kibbutz for the settlement of British ex-servicemen in Palestine. The committee was a star-studded group; one of the patrons of the committee was former Prime Minister David Lloyd George, and another was Dr. Chaim Weizmann; its Honorary President was Montgomery himself; its Chairman for Britain was Herbert Viscount Samuel, former Home Secretary and later High Commissioner for Palestine, and its Chairman for the United States was Albert Einstein. Letters of support were received from Lt. Gen. Alan Cunningham, who had defeated the Italians in East Africa and commanded the Eighth Army before Montgomery. The support of Prime Minister Churchill was sought and obtained.

Typed letter signed, on his Headquarters 21 Army Group letterhead, London, 14 January, 1944, to Samuel. "Thank you very much for your letter of 12th January. I am afraid it will not be possible for me to be present at the luncheon you are going to hold at the Savoy Hotel on the 10th February. I am sure you will understand that I am very busy just at present, and actually, I will be away from London at that time. Brigadier Kisch was a very fine soldier and a great friend of mine, and I hope very much that the fund to raise a really good memorial for him will have every support. Your proposal to found a colony for ex-servicemen in Palestine as a memorial to Brigadier Kisch is a most excellent one.”

Included with this letter is Cunningham’s letter to Samuel supporting the memorial project. Typed letter signed, on his Headquarters Northern Ireland letterhead, 28 December 1943, to Samuel. “Thank you for your letter of December 14th, which has only just reached me. I will, of course, be only too glad to do anything I can to help in the matter of a memorial to Brigadier Kisch, for whom I had a great admiration and who did such splendid work for me. My only fear is that as a soldier still serving I may well be a bird of passage, and unable to take any very active part in the proceedings of the Committee. If, however, in your opinion this does not debar me, I shall be very glad to do anything I can.”

The Kisch committee’s Secretary was Dr. M. Altmann, who retained its correspondence. We obtained these letters directly from his heirs, and they have never before been offered for sale.

The appeal was successful, and the kibbutz Kfar Kisch was established in 1946 by Jewish soldiers demobilized from the British Army after the war. Named after Brigadier Kisch, it later absorbed Jewish immigrants from Poland, Hungary and the Soviet Union.

It is historically interesting that the memorial Montgomery and Cunningham were supporting was establishment of a new Jewish settlement in Palestine, which was contrary to the official British government position of discouraging Jewish immigration and settlements there.