David Marcus

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David Marcus during the Israeli War of Independence, 1948
Commemorative plaque of David Marcus in the Union Temple of Brooklyn
David Marcus Monument near Abu Gosh

David Daniel Marcus OBE ( Hebrew דוד מרכוס, Nickname Mickey ; born on February 22, 1901 in New York , NY , USA ; died June 10, 1948 in Abu Gosh near Jerusalem ) was an American-Israeli lawyer and officer. After participating in World War II as a colonel in the US Army, he went to the Haganah as an instructor in 1948 and became the first officer in the general rank of the Israeli army .

Life

education and profession

Marcus was born the fifth of six children to a Romanian immigrant couple in the Lower East Side . The father Mordechai, a traveling greengrocer, died in 1909. David's three older brothers took over the livelihoods for the family, who had to move from Brooklyn to the poorer district of Brownsville .

After high school and college , David attended West Point Military Academy , which he graduated in 1924. While serving in the United States Army , he studied law in evening classes at Brooklyn Law School . He graduated from there in 1927/28 and ended his active career as an officer to work first as a public prosecutor , then later as head of the New York penitentiary service.

Second World War

After the USA entered the Second World War , he served again in the US Army. In 1943 he was given command of their ranger school, in 1944 he jumped over Normandy with the 101st US Paratrooper Division without any training . As a lawyer, he played a key role in drafting the terms of surrender in Germany and Italy. He saw the liberation of Dachau concentration camp . After the overthrow of National Socialism, Marcus was responsible for the supply and repatriation of refugees in the military government in Berlin , and he also prepared the Nuremberg trials . For his services he received the Distinguished Service Cross , the Bronze Star , the Army Commendation Medal , and the Officer of the Order of the British Empire, and held the rank of Colonel in the US Army.

Israeli War of Independence

When the Israeli War of Independence loomed in 1947 , he was contacted by the Haganah with a request from David Ben Gurion to help build the Israeli armed forces. In January 1948 he traveled to Israel under an assumed name as Michael Stone to avoid difficulties with the British Mandate . At his urging, Ben Gurion united the very different Jewish paramilitary groups to form the Israel Defense Forces .

At first, Marcus was only supposed to act as an instructor and advisor, and so he wrote the first instruction book for the young Israeli army. However, it soon became apparent that they needed an experienced officer as a commander, and so Marcus took command in the Jerusalem area . Jerusalem was largely enclosed by numerically clearly superior Arab forces and could only be supplied via an unsafe road through a narrow valley ( Bab el Wad ). This was controlled by the Arab Legion at the fortified former police station Latrun . To bypass Latrun, Marcus had a makeshift road built, called Burma Road , which was completed in record time with the help of old Bedouin trails and the use of numerous volunteers, thus ensuring the supply of West Jerusalem, which was essential for the city to stand firm. For this logistical and technical masterpiece, among other things, Marcus was appointed first Brigadier General ( Tat-Aluf ) by Ben Gurion and was thus the first officer in the general rank of the Israeli armed forces.

On June 10, 1948, a few hours before the armistice came into force, Marcus inspected his own positions again. Due to communication difficulties (he could hardly speak Hebrew), he was accidentally shot by a guard. He was one of 119 foreign soldiers who lost their lives in the War of Independence for Israel. His body was transferred to the United States and buried in West Point cemetery. He is the only dead man there who fell under a foreign flag.

souvenir

In Israel, the Kibbutz Mischmar David and the Neve David district in Tel Aviv and several streets were named after Marcus. A memorial was erected for him near Abu Gosh and his name was immortalized on the Machal memorial, inaugurated in 1993 . A playground and school in Brooklyn also bear his name.

1966 turned Melville Shavelsons star-studded film Cast A Giant Shadow ( Cast a Giant Shadow ), the life story was inspired by Marcus'. He was portrayed by Kirk Douglas in it , and other roles include Senta Berger , Frank Sinatra , Yul Brynner and John Wayne .

Individual evidence

  1. Ted Berkman, Cast a Giant Shadow: The Story of Mickey Marcus who died to save Jerusalem , Manifest Publications, Carpinteria, CA, ISBN 1-929354-00-2 , p. 124

literature

  • John F. Oppenheimer (Red.) And a .: Lexicon of Judaism. 2nd Edition. Bertelsmann Lexikon Verlag, Gütersloh u. a. 1971, ISBN 3-570-05964-2 , col. 466.
  • Ted Berkman, Cast a Giant Shadow: The Story of Mickey Marcus who died to save Jerusalem , Doubleday, New York 1962.

Web links

Commons : David Marcus  - Collection of images, videos and audio files