A War Hero for Two Nations

A funeral in early April at Israel's the Mount of Olives – a sad but not unusual sight at the most ancient Jewish cemetery in the world.

Far less usual – two songs mourners hear as they say their final goodbyes: "Taps," the solemn bugle melody played at US servicemen's funerals, followed by the less-well-known strains of "Anonymous Soldiers," the anthem of the Irgun, a Jewish paramilitary organization in pre-state Palestine incorporated into the Israeli army during the 1948 War of Independence.

The poignant melodies are a fitting farewell to Lieutenant Moshe Brodetzky, decorated hero of two countries and two wars.

Moshe Brodetzky, 1944, Lieutenant Officer

Moshe was born in the US, but his family were Jewish-Palestinians; like thousands of other Jews, they'd been expelled from their homeland by the Ottoman Turks during World War I. Moshe joined the US Army dreaming of helping defeat the Axis armies that had attacked his country and were murdering his people in Europe—and dreaming, too, that someday he'd fight in a Jewish army in the land his family still longed for.

Both those dreams came true—and both almost cost Moshe his life.

March 1945. A German attack force was decimating the US Army's Second Battalion advance into enemy territory. Young Lieutenant Brodetzky's platoon was under heavy fire. Despite being seriously wounded, he led four of his men behind enemy lines, killing several of the enemy, capturing 19 German soldiers, destroying machine guns, and allowing the battalion to advance. In addition to his Purple Heart, Moshe was awarded the Silver Star for "courageous leadership, devotion to duty, and gallantry in action." After recovering from his wounds, he became a training officer for new soldiers.

When World War II ended, Moshe used his GI bill rights to return to the land of Israel. He studied agronomy at Hebrew University, hoping to join a kibbutz, but his people needed military experience more than agricultural skills. Joining the Irgun, headed by Menachem Begin, Moshe trained young recruits to defend Jewish settlements attacked by Arab guerilla fighters.

Fighting in 1948, Ramat Rachel

May 1948. The newly-declared State of Israel was attacked by five Arab countries. In the first days of the war, Egyptian and Jordanian soldiers joined local Arab forces, trying to capture Ramat Rachel, "Rachel's Heights," a kibbutz established in 1926. Its height made it a critical position in defense of southern Jerusalem.

Moshe turned from army trainer back to fighter and leader. With one smuggled machine gun that ended up jamming, his unit held off the Egyptian assault. But the armies surrounding the Irgun positions began shelling, and more than half his unit was wounded or killed.

Moshe with a grandson

Moshe refused to surrender the area, encouraging his soldiers to fight until the last man. Just when it looked like they all would be killed and the kibbutz—and perhaps southern Jerusalem—would be lost, a Palmach unit, the core of the nascent Israeli army, arrived. The battle for Ramat Rachel—and for much of Jerusalem—was won.

Over 30 years later, Moshe Brodetzky's role in saving Ramat Rachel and Jerusalem was recognized when he was handed the Jabotinsky Medal, an award given Americans for distinguished service to Israel and the Jews, by former Irgun leader and then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin.

After a lifetime living between the US and Israel, the two countries he'd fought for and had been willing to die for, Moshe Brodetzky passed away last month, just short of his 100^th birthday. From his burial place atop the Mount of Olives, you can glimpse Kibbutz Ramat Rachel, today a thriving recreational and agricultural area situated in the midst of a growing Jerusalem.

Moshe—Moey, as he was known in our family—was my husband's cousin. Just hours before Moshe passed away, my husband visited him. Moshe himself requested that "Taps" and "Anonymous Soldiers" be played at his funeral. The final lines of the Irgun anthem describe "the tears of bereaved mothers" and "the blood of pure babies" as the "mortar" that would build the edifice of the Jewish homeland: hard words to hear in our time of tears and war. The final lines of "Taps," though, give us comfort: "'Neath the sun/'Neath the stars,/'Neath the sky,/As we go,/this we know,/God is nigh…"

May the memory of Refael Moshe Chaim Brodetzky be a blessing.