INTERVIEW WITH MERVYN KERSH
The British Jewish veteran shares his experiences from D-day to Bergen-belsen
Bergen-belsen concentration camp was one of the most horrendous discoveries made by British armed forces during WWII. Approximately 60,000 people, the majority of them Jews, were found in starving and mortally ill conditions while thousands more bodies lay unburied around the camp. It was an event that horrified the world as one of the most appalling symbols of Nazi brutality.
Belsen’s liberators were profoundly moved, and for one British soldier meeting the survivors had particular resonance. Private Mervyn Kersh was a 21-year-old Jewish Londoner who had been advancing across Western Europe ever since he landed in Normandy in June 1944. A member of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps (RAOC), he had been liberating occupied towns and cities for months, but Belsen was a different proposition.
Over 75 years since his service, Kersh is a tireless volunteer who has been nationally recognised for raising awareness of the horrors of WWII. He describes how he survived the Normandy Campaign, tended to the survivors of Belsen and how he coped with antisemitism in his own army.
“Hard times”
Born in December 1923, Kersh grew up in a household where current affairs were regularly discussed. “We knew war was coming and I used to listen to conversations between my father and uncle,” he says. “From the time of the Spanish Civil War they argued about Germany and Italy’s intentions. I remember Czechoslovakia being handed over and then there was Austria. When Poland was invaded we were completely unprepared and when war broke out I was still at school.”
Kersh knew about the growing threat of antisemitism in Nazi Germany: “We were aware of the ill-treatment of minority groups but not the scale of it. I didn’t know the true extent until 1942 when somebody escaped from the Nazis. The message was brought to Britain and reported in a newspaper, which I’ve still got a copy of.”
Kersh was evacuated several times during the Blitz. “I kept a record of every single air raid and they were hard times because we were in the thick of it,” he says. “I was evacuated with a school because my uncle was a teacher there, although I learned nothing apart from perhaps about girls! I came back but then my mother had an operation and I had to leave and go to Exeter. My education dropped and by the time I went to college I was called up in 1943.”
Conscripted into the British Army, Kersh was a keen recruit. “It was almost inevitable, although there were ways you could get around it. You could get a reserved occupation but I wanted to be in the army,” he says. “My big brother had already been in the RAF from the beginning of the war and my sister was a nurse, so as the baby of the family I was now doing my bit.”
Sent to Scotland for training with the Black Watch, Kersh already knew some rudimentary soldiering skills. “I had had some military training in the Jewish Lads’ Brigade, although we used sticks instead of rifles. However, I knew about marching, map reading, field craft, Morse code, being obedient and things like that. They were happy days, despite the hardship. I’d left London in the hot sunshine of June and arrived in Scotland in deep snow! It was a bit of shock.”
During training, Kersh underwent various interviews and tests to define his particular role but he accidentally found himself being placed in the RAOC. “I was given to understand that I might go in the Royal Engineers because I liked map drawing. I was following the Eastern Front on a huge map that I’d drawn but when it came to it 1,000 of us were called out on a square and told to go to points A, B, C and D. When
I got to the point I was told to go to, it turned out it was something called the RAOC. I’d been listed from the Ordnance Survey in the Royal Engineers to the ordnance stores. By then, it was too late to do anything about it.”
Kersh could also have been promoted but he declined the offer. “After initial training
I had been put forward for promotion but out of political correctness I chose to stay with my comrades – something I’ve regretted ever since! I reached the giddy heights of private but I did become an acting sergeant much later during my last days in the army.”
Apart from training, Kersh also had to contend with institutional antisemitism in the army. During his evacuation to Devon, he had earned a reputation as a talented schoolboy boxer and used this to prevent physical assaults. “When I went in the army, the first thing I did – and wherever I went – was let them know I was a champion boxer and nobody ever laid a finger on me. I was verbally abused and also had problems with officers and NCOS at times but nobody beat me up, like they did with other people.”
Despite escaping violent attacks, Kersh could not avoid subtler forms of discrimination. “Antisemitism wasn’t everywhere but it certainly existed and I had it from time to time,” he says. “In Lancashire we were with another unit commanded by a sergeant major at a depot where they were teaching us. I found I was on duty – including fire pickets – wandering around the camp keeping an eye open. I did this night after night, weekend after weekend, and really had no time off.
“I challenged the sergeant major one time and asked why it was always me doing the duties but he just said, ‘I have to count the 30th, 20th or 15th soldier out of the door for duty and it always seems to be you.’ That obviously wasn’t a coincidence but I couldn’t argue and call him a liar because he was the sergeant major. I was very demoralised at that stage and really in a bad state. Because of the war, I decided not to desert and so I carried on and put up with it.”