On September 1, 1939, World War II broke out. We revisit the story of Jewish commandos who fought against Nazism.
By late summer 1942, the mood in Britain was grim. The Third Reich was holding strong on all fronts. The Allied landing operation at Dieppe was crushed by the Germans and ended in a massacre. The fate of Egypt hung in the balance. General Bernard Montgomery was trying to halt the advance of Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps but was so far unsuccessful. To make matters worse, the powerful ally in the East, in whom much hope was placed, was still in retreat. Wehrmacht forces had just reached Stalingrad and seemed poised to capture the strategic oil fields of the Caucasus.
Meanwhile, young men were sitting in trains leisurely moving through the idyllic landscapes of Wales, looking optimistically to the future despite everything. After difficult years – losing their homeland, sometimes their loved ones, and suffering humiliations from British authorities – they felt they were given a new lease on life, both literally and figuratively. This new life began in earnest when they disembarked at the station in Aberdyfi (also known as Aberdovey), a picturesque seaside village almost exactly halfway along the Welsh coastline, at the mouth of the River Dyfi. Here, they were to transform from well-mannered boys from good homes into elite soldiers.
The villagers had previously hosted several military training camps. Under their roofs, they had quartered Poles and Norwegians among others. But these new arrivals seemed highly suspicious to them. Almost every one of them wore uniforms with different unit patches. They rarely caused trouble, smoked little, and avoided alcohol. And finally – something particularly amusing to the locals – although each recruit bore an English name and surname, confirmed by authentic documents, and although the unit was commanded by a Welshman claiming the group was 100% British, when asked by curious locals where they came from, they always replied the same: "We are English" – with a heavy German accent, revealing themselves almost completely.
British military authorities hoped that the residents of Aberdovey would be discreet and that information about their super-secret unit would not reach the wrong ears. Ultimately, the secret was kept much longer than until the end of the war. We learned about it only a few months ago thanks to Leah Garrett, a professor at Hunter College in New York, and her book titled "X Troop: The Secret Jewish Commandos of World War II." Let's follow her detailed narrative.
The Enemy Alien
Klaus Ascher was born and raised in Frankfurt am Main. His mother was a Protestant, and his father, Kurt, came from an assimilated Jewish family and was a World War I veteran. He had shrapnel lodged in his head from being severely wounded during the Battle of the Somme.
One September afternoon in 1937, 15-year-old Klaus went with his father to a beer hall on the iconic Römerberg square. While they were enjoying their beer and sausages, Ascher Sr. got into an argument with two men at the next table. The dispute was about the ongoing Spanish Civil War. The men supported General Franco, and Ascher Sr. reacted angrily, shouting that "the nationalist forces are fighting against a democratically elected government, and the Nazis should not help him." This outburst caught the attention of a police informant.
A few minutes later, two officers arrived at the beer hall and took Ascher Sr. into custody. A week later, he was sent to the Dachau concentration camp. In mid-October, a Gestapo officer came to the Ascher home to inform them that the head of the family had died from "breathing problems."
Klaus's mother decided not to wait until the Nazis also killed her son for his "improper origin." After more than a year of efforts, a place was found for him on a transport organized by the Quakers to evacuate Jewish children from Germany to Britain. In February 1939, young Ascher escaped from the Third Reich, persecuted by SS men who for fun scattered the luggage of Klaus and his fellow passengers along the railway embankment.
Young Ascher was among tens of thousands of Jews from Germany and Austria who found refuge from Nazi persecution in Britain in the late 1930s. They could consider themselves lucky. The desperate efforts of thousands of others trying to escape the Nazi clutches were met with refusal by British authorities. The British, not wanting to provoke the Arabs, had also severely limited immigration quotas for Jews wanting to settle in Palestine. They clearly did not plan to accept a larger number of refugees.
When London declared war on Berlin on September 3, 1939, the situation of the 70,000 German and Austrian citizens in Britain deteriorated overnight. The British administration immediately classified them all as "enemy aliens." Despite the fact that 55,000 of these individuals were Jews, who could hardly be suspected of pro-Hitler sympathies, they were nevertheless considered potential Fifth Columnists of the Third Reich.
Soon, citizens of the Reich began to be arrested and sent to internment camps in Britain and the Commonwealth. Jews were crowded together with noisy Hitler supporters or Wehrmacht prisoners.
The "lucky ones" were those who ended up in camps set up in abandoned factories near Manchester or on the Isle of Man, where the main nuisances were dirt, rats, and overcrowding. Those who ended up in shabby barracks near Montreal suffered much worse – many froze to death during the harsh Canadian winter. Over 2,500 were also shipped on the "Dunera" to Australia. On the overcrowded ship, diseases and epidemics spread. The sadistic, anti-Semitic captain beat Jews daily and sometimes ordered them to walk on broken glass. When the exhausted passengers disembarked in Sydney, there was little to rejoice about. They were immediately taken to the primitive Hay internment camp in the remote Australian outback, where summer temperatures often exceeded 30 degrees Celsius.
Klaus Ascher did not experience this side of "British hospitality." The Quakers protected him from internment. He worked, helping caretakers in an orphanage. However, other young Jewish men, whose families remained in German-occupied Europe, suffered doubly. They were powerless against both the humiliation inflicted by the British and the Nazi killing machine threatening their loved ones. Many of these young men wanted to fight, like 20-year-old Manfred Gans, a devout Jew from Borken, Germany, or his peer Peter Arany, from an assimilated family belonging to the Viennese elite.
Eventually, their potential was harnessed by the army.
X Troop
Healthy and young men classified as "enemy aliens" were gradually incorporated into the war effort. From mid-1940, after verification, they could leave the camps to serve in the Pioneer Corps, auxiliary units of the British Army. Among the many Jews from the Third Reich were Ascher, Gans, and Arany. They had no access to weapons, only knives, shovels, and pickaxes. Their tasks included digging trenches, peeling potatoes, unloading wagons, and other physical labor. Despite hundreds of applications to transfer to combat units, they were automatically rejected.
The situation changed in early July 1942. At the initiative of Admiral Louis Mountbatten, head of the Combined Operations, an organization coordinating military actions in Nazi-occupied Europe, the No. 10 (Inter-Allied) Commando unit was established. Under its auspices, commando units were formed from selected national refugee groups in Britain. They were to be used in various missions in Europe, depending on their language skills.
Among the eight created units – including French, Dutch, and Polish – was one designated with the symbol "X." It was personally named by Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who explained: "These will be soldiers from nowhere, of unknown strength." The mysterious "warriors" were to be German-speaking Jews. Only a few people at the highest state levels knew about their origin. Officially, the unit consisted of British soldiers.
The command of X Troop was given to Captain Bryan Hilton-Jones. He came from a wealthy Welsh family, had the demeanor of a Hollywood dandy, and was a Cambridge graduate. Fluent in six languages, including German, he was assigned to this formation. Previously in intelligence, he grew bored with desk work and requested a transfer to the commandos in late 1941. He participated in several raids on the northern coast of France, harassing the Germans.
The selection of potential recruits for the new Mountbatten units began in the autumn of 1941. Special agents, infiltrating the Pioneer Corps, conducted the search for candidates for the "Jewish section." They checked if the "target" was reliable, had high morale, and could be trusted. If positive opinions were gathered about the candidate, Hilton-Jones invited him for an interview, thoroughly grilling him about his past and motivation for participating in dangerous missions. Then, he decided whether to invite the candidate for training. Overall, 350 people were interviewed by the end of the war, with only 87 making it into X Troop, including Ascher, Gans, and Arany. Many were eliminated during basic training.
Before recruits started training, they had to adopt new British identities to avoid immediate execution or deportation to concentration camps if captured by the Germans. Thus, Klaus Ascher became Colin Anson, Peter Arany became Peter Masters, and Manfred Gans became Fred Gray. They were given identification numbers and documents indicating service in regular units, such as the Royal Sussex Regiment. Consequently, almost everyone had different patches on their uniforms. As training progressed, their false backgrounds were also enriched.
Naturally, this masquerade required the disposal of all personal items related to their past, such as photos or letters. Volunteers could not even correspond under their real names. They had to explain their "Teutonic" English by saying it was a "Welsh accent." They began new lives.
Basic training for groups of X Troop commandos took place in the West Welsh town of Aberdovey from the summer of 1942 and was similar to that undergone by the Polish Cichociemni. The young men's bodies were hardened by long runs and sometimes mountain hikes on the nearby Snowdon massif. They were trained in using various types of grenades and firearms, with an emphasis on both British and German weaponry, such as Thompson submachine guns and MP40s. They learned navigation, communication with various codes, and interrogation techniques. Naturally, they were also introduced to the basics of explosives.
Subsequent training phases occurred in different parts of the country. In Scotland, they trained in climbing and operating in difficult conditions – Hilton-Jones ordered them to sleep during the day and operate at night for a month. Parachute training, for selected individuals, took place in Ringway near Manchester. A significant part of their training included mock operations, where X Troop members infiltrated airfields or "mined" bridges guarded by unaware soldiers from other formations or civil defense volunteers. They sometimes had mishaps but usually succeeded.
From Dieppe to Corfu
X Troop never fought as a cohesive formation. Soldiers or groups from the unit entered action at different times, assigned to various British units as per command decisions. Wherever they found themselves, they knew they were racing against time to save their relatives from the Germans.
For those interested in all the war exploits of the Jewish commandos from X Troop, I refer to Leah Garrett's book. However, a few facts from their history are worth mentioning here.
The first five soldiers in X Troop – two Jews and three Sudeten Germans – participated in the failed Allied operation at Dieppe on August 19, 1942. Garrett confirms the theory among historians that the operation aimed to capture the new version of the German Enigma cipher machine and the codebook housed in the port buildings. Her research indicates that they were tasked with obtaining these crucial wartime materials. This mission failed.
Colin Anson and a group of X Troop comrades participated in Operation Husky, the Allied invasion of Sicily in July 1943. They fought on the front lines, led reconnaissance missions, and interrogated prisoners.
The largest operation involving X Troop members was the famous Overlord, which began on June 6, 1944. Forty-three of them were dispersed among eight commando units attacking the Normandy coast. They were at the forefront of the 6th Airborne Division, which captured the strategic Pegasus Bridge in Bénouville. They conducted operations behind enemy lines: blowing up radar stations and setting up ambushes. Primarily, they did what was particularly required of them – interrogating captured Germans. In the fighting in France, X Troop suffered heavy losses. Twenty-seven men were killed, wounded, or captured.
While Anson's comrades fought in the north, he operated in the Adriatic, supporting Yugoslav and Albanian partisans. In October 1944, he achieved the greatest success of his military career. He arrived on Corfu, calmly convincing the local German garrison commander to surrender because "thousands of British soldiers would soon be here." The bluff worked, and Anson captured the island without a single shot.
Leah Garrett provides ample evidence that X Troop members were merciful to captured Germans, even SS men and known war criminals from their hometowns. They did not beat, maim, or kill them – unlike the fictional commandos in Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds" – but handed them over to the appropriate authorities. If there were exceptions, the documents remain silent.
Miracle at Theresienstadt
The most famous member of X Troop was undoubtedly Manfred Gans. This was due to an extraordinary journey he undertook just after the war ended. He received a tip on where his parents, arrested years earlier while hiding in the Netherlands, might be. Accompanied only by a brave driver known simply as Bob from London, Gans ventured through the dangerous Soviet occupation zone to the Theresienstadt camp in northern Czechoslovakia. He had little hope of finding his parents alive. Yet, when he found them, they were in relatively good shape – considering their age and years in the camp. He transported his parents to the Netherlands, and their heartwarming family story made headlines worldwide.
Klaus Ascher also found his mother, in Frankfurt. Unfortunately, many X Troop members were not as lucky. For example, Peter Levy's mother, known in X Troop as Fred Jackson, perished in Auschwitz. We can only imagine how this soldier felt when he was assigned to interrogate Rudolf Höss, the commandant of the extermination camp, after the war.
The story of X Troop ended in the summer of 1945 when it was disbanded. Some of its veterans lived under their false British names until their deaths, carefully hiding their past from their closest ones. It was too painful to remember.
