My wife and I always observe Remembrance Day. Most years, especially during the pandemic, we watched the broadcast of the service at the National War Memorial. This year we attended a special event at the Toronto Holocaust Museum. The event combined three key mitzvot (obligations): study, remembrance, and prayer.

The prayer component was at the eleventh hour and included the key elements of a secular Remembrance Day service: the singing of O Canada, two minutes of silence preceded by the Last Post and followed by Reveille, and the Act of Remembrance (“they shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old/Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn/At the going down of the sun and in the morning/We will remember them.”) Then the service organizers added something we had never heard before on Remembrance Day, the El Malei Rachamim (“God abundant in compassion”) prayer that is part of any Jewish funeral or memorial service and that, unlike Kaddish, names the departed individual or group – in this case those who served in the Canadian Armed Forces.

A full hour, before and after the service, was devoted to study. We heard a presentation by Aron Heller based on his new book Zaidy’s Band: The Untold Stories of a Jewish Band of Brothers in World War II. Heller is an Israeli freelance journalist, formerly a correspondent for the Associated Press based in Jerusalem. Heller’s family of origin is from Toronto, and his father Mark made Aliyah in the mid-Seventies. (It turns out – small world! – that Mark was at Harvard at the same time as me and contributed to the Jewish student newspaper I edited.)

The Band of Brothers

Aron Heller’s zaidy, or grandfather, Mervin enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) as a navigator in Bomber Command, and his band of brothers consisted of other Jews who served in the RCAF. He met some before the war at Harbord Collegiate, a downtown Toronto high school with a large Jewish population, and he met others during the war. Despite rampant Canadian antisemitism at the time, 40 percent of Jewish Canadian men of military age volunteered (there wasn’t conscription). The RCAF was the service most Jews preferred; it was less antisemitic than the others, particularly the Navy. As the newest branch, it didn’t have time to develop a tradition of antisemitism. In addition, the RCAF brass considered Jews to have the quantitative aptitude to serve as navigators or ground crew.

Heller draws portraits of three groups of Jewish men who served, most bona fide war heroes. The first were veterans who went to Israel in 1948 to enlist in its fledgling air force in the War of Liberation. They were all part of a tragedy, dying in the crash of a DC-3 Dakota, not due to enemy fire, but due to shoddy maintenance. The second were other Jews who served in the RCAF and the Merchant Marine. The third were veterans who were instrumental in founding the Chaim Herzog Museum of the Jewish Warrior in World War II in Latrun, Israel. This museum honours the 1.5 million Jews who served in the Allied Forces, including those of the Soviet Union, and the Resistance. It presents a counter-narrative of Jewish resistance that contrasts with the narrative of Jewish victimhood told at Yad Vashem and other holocaust museums.

No Spoilers Here

Heller’s grandfather Mervin lived a long life and told him about the heroism of the band of Jewish soldiers. But Mervin, not a loquacious man, was surprisingly reticent about his own service. Aron used his close relationship with his grandfather and then his journalist skills to try to pry open Mervin’s secrets. Aron’s quest for enlightenment about his grandfather’s service in the RCAF is the structuring narrative of the book.

In my narrative research, I discuss works that first appeared some time ago, so I am not reluctant to include spoilers. In this case, because the book was published very recently and because Aron’s quest for information about his father’s military service is central to the book, I will not include any spoilers. T.S. Eliot’s lines from Little Gidding: “We shall not cease from exploration/And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started/and know the place for the first time” are particularly appropriate to this book, because Aron’s quest is ultimately rewarded with a deeper understand of the role of military service in his grandfather’s life and in his own. Whether or not you have ever served in the military, I strongly encourage you to read about Aron Heller’s quest.