Jewish soldiers
World War I (1914–1918) marked the end of the old European monarchical order. With its end, great empires collapsed, including Austria-Hungary. One of the fiercest battlefields of the war was the Isonzo(Soča)Front, which stretched from the high mountains of the Soča Valley through the Goriška region and the Karst to the Adriatic Sea between 1915 and 1917. Austro-Hungarian and Italian units clashed in 12 battles along the Soča, and the area along the Soča River became one of the bloodiest battlefields of World War I.
Soldiers of various nationalities, languages, and religions served on the Isonzo Front. Among them were many Jews. More than 300,000 Jewish soldiers served in the Austro-Hungarian Army between 1914 and 1918, and more than 12,000 of them fought on the Isonzo Front. They were soldiers, reserve officers, doctors, lawyers, students, merchants, and craftsmen; they were part of the multinational Habsburg army, in which soldiers of the Jewish faith served alongside Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox Christians, and Muslims.
Jewish soldiers fought under extremely difficult conditions: in trenches, caves, high mountains, on karst rock, and in a landscape where the front lines shifted by only a few meters, often at the cost of thousands of lives. The Doberdob Plateau was particularly bloody, a symbol of the suffering of soldiers of various nationalities. It was there that one of the most famous improvised wooden synagogues on the Soča Front was erected in 1915. Its existence testifies to the fact that even in the immediate vicinity of the battlefield, soldiers sought to maintain prayer, ritual, and a sense of community.
Military rabbis provided spiritual care for Jewish soldiers. Until the end of the war, there were seventy-sixof them serving in the Austro-Hungarian Army. They cared for soldiers at the front, in the rear, in military hospitals, in prisoner-of-war camps, and during the burial of the fallen. They led prayers, observed holidays, comforted the wounded, kept records, and assisted with grave maintenance. Their work was demanding, as Jewish soldiers were scattered across numerous units and battlefields. Among their duties was also the review of letters written in Hebrew or Yiddish.
The presence of Jewish soldiers was also visible in the rear areas of what is now Slovenia. Maribor, Novo Mesto, Ljubljana, and other cities played an important role as rear centreswith military hospitals, institutions, camps, and religious services. Jewish soldiers, the wounded, and prisoners of war came into contact with the local population, the Jewish communities living there, and individuals in these places.
In 1915, the command of the 5th Army issued instructions for the uniform design of Jewish military graves. As a result, headstones bearing the Star of David, Hebrew inscriptions, or Jewish symbols are today among the few physical reminders of the presence of Jewish soldiers on the Isonzo Front. These graves are scattered across former Austro-Hungarian military cemeteries in the Goriška region, the Karst, and the hinterland.
Today, military cemeteries in Rožna Dolina, Brje, Črniče, Gorjansko, Nabrežina, Nemci, Komno, Renče, Štanjel, and elsewhere commemorate the fallen Jewish soldiers. The Isonzo Front is thus also a Jewish space of remembrance: a space of war, prayer, mortal victims, and the rare preserved traces of communities that were nearly erased in the Holocaust a few decades later.
Jewish soldiers of the Austro-Hungarian empire of the isonzo front
The First World War 1914-1918. It was the first global conflict in human history, affecting millions of people. By the end of the war, 28 countries had been involved in the fighting, and directly or indirectly, the turmoil of war had engulfed one and a half billion, or three quarters of the world's population, with battlefields on three continents: Europe, Asia and Africa. Sixty million soldiers fought in the First World War, of whom around ten million died. Less than half of them have never been identified or we do not know where they fell. The end of the First World War also marked the end of an era, as four world empires passed into history: the Russian, the Austro-Hungarian, the German and the Ottoman empires. In the first post-war period, however, the peace treaties established a completely new order in Europe. In the long term, they signalled international relations in a world in which Europe had lost its primacy. At the same time, the seeds of a new conflict were sown, or a kind of twenty-year truce until the start of the Second World War.
The bloody battles along the Soča river (1915-1917) thus bore a multinational as well as a multi-religious mark. Jews were among the many soldiers of the Austro-Hungarian and Italian armies. Jewish officers also took part in this war, which, if we recall the Dreyfus affair, was not a given. But Emperor Franz Joseph I considered Jews to be his most loyal subjects, and the Austro-Hungarian Jews themselves repeatedly referred to the Emperor as a "fortress of tolerance". The heavy losses among officers in the first year of the war led to a large increase in the number of Jewish officers, who joined from the reserve, where the above-average Jewish presence was mainly a reflection of their higher education. This was because educated Jews could serve as reserve officers in the Austro-Hungarian army.
Jewish soldiers on the battlefield
According to previous estimates, more than 300,000 Jewish soldiers, including around 25,000 officers, fought in the Imperial Royal Army between 1914 and 1918. According to military statistics and estimates, around 40,000 Jewish soldiers, including more than 1,000 officers, died during the First World War. Otherwise, 455,000 Jews were mobilised by the Central Powers during the First World War. Jewish soldiers were present in greater or lesser numbers in most of the regiments of the Austro-Hungarian army that fought on the front, most of them coming from the central and north-eastern part of the monarchy.
Spiritual care for soldiers
At the end of the fighting on the Isonzo front in autumn 1917, some 12,000 Jewish soldiers of the Austro-Hungarian army were fighting on the front, and 16 army rabbis were providing spiritual care for them. Eleven of them served directly at the front with the soldiers.
Dr. Meier Tauber, the very decent and hard-working head of the Military Rabbinical Office of the Isonzo Army (German: Israelitische Militärseelsorge der Isonzo-Armee), succeeded in organising an efficient network of military rabbis. Their main concern on the battlefield at the Soča river were officers and soldiers of the Jewish faith at the front, in the rear, in the military hospitals and also among the prisoners of war. Synagogues were built by Jewish soldiers both on the front line and in the home front, including an emergency synagogue in Maribor in 1917 and an improvised synagogue in Novo mesto.
In 1918, 76 military rabbis served in the Austro-Hungarian army. Among other things, their duties also included censoring letters written in Hebrew from the front.
Military cemeteries with buried Jewish soldiers
In 1915, the command of the 5th Army of the Soča issued special regulations for the burial of fallen soldiers, including rules for fallen Jewish soldiers. The military Jewish graves had to be arranged in a uniform manner. The Jewish tombstone made of stone was to be replaced by a wooden plaque about 20 cm wide and 70 cm high, rounded at the top. It was to have a Star of David on the top and, below, the Ten Commandments (I-V and VI-X) written in Roman numerals in two sections. The tombstone was also to bear an inscription with the name, rank, military unit and date of death. At the bottom was added the inscription 'may he rest in peace' or the appropriate saying in Hebrew script.
The fallen Jewish soldiers of the Austro-Hungarian army on the Isonzo Front are still commemorated by preserved graves in a number of former Austro-Hungarian military cemeteries in Rožna Dolina, Brje, Črniče, Gorjansko, Nabrežina, Nemci, Komen, Renče and Štanjel.
Prenosi
Jewish soldiers on the Isonzo front (PDF)
Predsodki o Judih med prvo svetovno vojno (PDF)
