Mervyn Kersh, a Jewish Londoner and D-Day veteran who turned 100 on Dec. 20, has lived through some of modern history’s most tumultuous chapters.
But the events of recent months have stirred fears in Kersh unlike anything that he has felt since he stormed the Normandy beaches 80 years ago, Kersh told JNS in several interviews in the last few months.
Fears for the destruction of Israel—a place this British patriot also calls home—and about antisemitism on display in his native England.
Kersh, who fought with the British Army during the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France, now fears both for the safety of the Jewish state and for that of Jews in the United Kingdom. (He celebrated his 100th birthday with family in London.)
Looking back on his role in helping liberate Western Europe, Kersh has mixed feelings, not about the bravery of his comrades or the necessity of the war but about whether the sacrifices he and others made still hold the value they intended.
“I thought what we did was worth it,” he told JNS. “I have my doubts now.”
The Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which Kersh calls his “first home” even though he has never lived there, and the resurgence of Jew-hatred in Europe and beyond have left him questioning whether his generation’s hard-fought victories have been eroded.
“Our politicians are repeating the same cowardly lack of military action as those politicians did in the mid-1930s,” Kersh said about the British position on Israel’s fight against its enemies. “All words but no action while the enemy was still relatively weak.”
The recent decision by French officials to honor Gaza Strip journalist Motaz Azaiza during the D-Day anniversary events, which Kersh attended in France in June, added to Kersh’s disappointment.
Azaiza, who has accused the Jewish state of “genocide” and justified Hamas’s actions, received Normandy’s Prize of Liberty. That included a $27,000 award, but it was mostly the symbolic weight of the recognition that angered Kersh.
“I see the president of Normandy himself has invited a Hamas spokesman, giving him an honor, a medal,” Kersh told JNS. “I want to tell them how wrong they are and how disgusting it is to those who liberated France.”
‘We became occupiers, victors’
This frustration is just part of Kersh’s broader unease. Rising Jew-hatred, both in Europe and internationally, has cast a shadow over his belief in the progress made since World War II.
“I thought life in the U.K. and Europe was pretty good for a long time,” Kersh said. “But since October, it’s really changed. The way so many have jumped to attack Israel—verbally, physically or financially—has me deeply worried.”
Kersh’s connection to Israel and his Jewish identity runs deep, dating back to his youth. Born to “British, British, British Jews,” Kersh grew up in London during a time of rising antisemitism.
Bullied for being Jewish, he learned to box to defend himself. By the time he joined the British Army, he was unflinchingly open about his faith, even wearing a dog tag identifying him as Jewish despite the risk if the Nazis had captured him.
Kersh told JNS that he knew “plenty” of Jewish young men who wrote “CofE,” for Church of England, on their dog tags.
“I kept mine as ‘Jew,’” he said.
During the Normandy campaign, Kersh took pride in his dual identity. “I was a British soldier but more importantly, I said I was a Jewish soldier,” he said.
When his unit entered Germany, one of his first stops was Bergen-Belsen, the concentration camp where tens of thousands of Jews, including Anne Frank, perished.
He could not enter the camp due to a typhus outbreak, but Kersh met survivors who reinforced his connection to the Jewish homeland. “Every one of them, except one, wanted to get to Eretz Yisrael,” he said, using the Hebrew for the “Land of Israel.”
Kersh’s visits to pre-state Israel in 1946, while still in the British army, cemented this bond. His pride in his Jewish identity has been a constant throughout his life, even during moments of danger, he told JNS.
“I enjoyed telling German prisoners of war that I was Jewish,” he said, of his encounters during the war.
Reflecting on his wartime experience, Kersh spoke of a shift in perspective as the Allies advanced. In France, Belgium and the Netherlands, he felt solidarity with the people he helped liberate. But crossing into Germany brought a sense of justice.
“We became occupiers, victors. That made a big difference,” he said. “Liberating the French, Belgians and Dutch felt good. But defeating Germany—that had to be done.”
Nearly eight decades later, Kersh fears the world is losing sight of the lessons of history. As antisemitic rhetoric and violence surge, he sees parallels to the threats his generation fought to overcome.
“Israel is again facing a Nazi enemy, only this time by another name,” Kersh said, of jihadist terrorists.
Kersh’s perspective is informed by decades of covering Jewish community and general current affairs as a journalist.
Before his retirement, Kersh had worked as news editor for the now-defunct South African Jewish Herald and as the writer of Kersh’s Corner, a column in a regional paper in Manchester and Liverpool. He also ran a small printing shop business and wrote a study of the events of the Torah and early Prophets, until the death of King Saul.
Despite his current concerns about Jew-hatred, Kersh draws hope from the Jewish people’s resilience.
“We’ve been through so much, all the way back to Abraham, the fighting Jew,” he told JNS.