The British Forces in the Second World War spawned many effective and daring "special" or unconventional units. Some were very well known, such as the Army Commandos, the SAS (Special Air Service), and the LRDG (Long Range Desert Group). But among the most ambitious and mysterious were the Jewish Commandos of the SIG. Charles Messenger (1) describes how Col Terence Airey - who ran G(R) Branch (formerly Military Intelligence Research at the War Office in London) wrote in March 1942 that part of the recently disbanded No 51 Middle East (Jewish) Commando - consisting of many German speaking Palestinian Jews - was to be formed into "a Special German Group as a sub-unit of M E Commando....... with the cover name 'Special Interrogation Group', to be used for infiltration behind the German lines in the Western Desert, under 8th Army....the strength of the Special Group would be approximately that of a platoon". The letter (2) continued, " The personnel are fluent German linguists...mainly Palestinian (Jews) of German origin. Many of them have had war experience with 51 Commando.....it is essential they be provided with transport; a) one German Staff car b) Two 15cwt. Trucks". A second letter added, "...this issue (of transport) is of high operational importance". The SIG were a sub-group of D Squadron 1st Special Service Regiment. Some were also recruited directly from the Palmach, the strike arm of the Jewish/Israeli underground army, Haganah (3) and "Etzel" (The Irgun), a semi-legal Jewish underground group, two of whose members included Dov Cohen, Bernard Lowenthal (3i) and Israel Carmi (who was later an officer in the Jewish Brigade and the Israeli Army (MT). Another comrade remembered by Tiffen was Karl Kahane/Cahanna (3a); all four survived the war. Two others were Dolph Zeintner and Philip Kogel, but neither saw action according to Tiffen. Read more here: THE ALLIED SPECIAL FORCES ASSOCIATION - UK is dedicated to creating the ALLIED SPECIAL FORCES MEMORIAL GROVE at the NATIONAL MEMORIAL ARBORETUM which will commemorate the men and women who sadly lost their lives whilst serving with ALLIED SPECIAL FOR
The SIG operated alongside the LRDG and the SAS in several raids deep into Nazi held Libya, one of them (the one I remember, that is) being a rather ambitious operation against Tobruk, which together with the land component, made up by the said units, involved an en-force amphibious landing, with covering RN ships and everything. It is all referred in the Special Forces site linked by DB.
The SIG get a fair mention in Virginia Cowles "The Phantom Major" about the SAS. There were also two non-jewish ex-Afrika Korp Germans involved with the cover names Bruckner and Esser. Bruckner, it turned out, was a spy and after alerting the German's to the SIGs existence and their plans was apparently flown to Berlin and awarded the Deutsch Kreuze in Gold. This leads me to the question; does anyone know what Bruckner's real name was?
