The story of the Jewish codebreakers who helped win the war

I was interested to learn that some Jewish scientists were fighting the war in the UK, in addition to the better-known ones who worked on the atomic bomb. Thanks for the suggestion on the documentary.

and because it is an article in the Jewish Chronicle

As the article says, many codebreakers were Jewish and many were Zionist, including Newman and Good and others who did so much to break the Lorenz cipher (codenamed Tunny at Bletchley).

The article mentions Churchill's letters published in The Jewish Cronicle, based on Ultra codebreaks, and mentions modern day cooperation with Israeli sigint in the Middle East.

There were lots of nationalities and ethnicities involved at Bletchley an the big effort. A lot has been written about the American contribution, the Polish contribution and so on. Why not also the Jewish contribution? It doesn't detract from the supreme effort and parts all played at Bletchley?

Well, it turns out that many of these supposedly inferior Jews were instrumental in defeating the allegedly superior Nazis, and whose achievements often equaled or exceeded those of the latter.

Elsewhere in this thread someone brought up the Jewish scientists that were key to the Manhattan Project, which helped to defeat another supposedly superior "race": the Japanese. But there were many other brilliant Jewish scientists -- perhaps most famously Albert Einstein -- but the history of science is replete with Jewish contributions.

The Nazis (and, incidentally, the Soviets) scorned what they called "Jewish Science", fired Jewish scientists, exiled them, outright killed them or otherwise made their work impossible, and ignored their contributions. What was the result? Well, it certainly didn't help the Nazis. Those Jews that managed to escape or went in to exile often went on to join the fight against the Nazis, and it was the enemies of the Nazis (who welcomed and embraced the Jews -- though, arguably not nearly enough) benefited from their discoveries and their help.

This might seem not worth mentioning, academic, or of historical interest only. You might think it's obvious that there were brilliant Jewish scientists, as there were brillian scientists of other ethnicities. But in fact if you follow the news today, there are still people who believe very strongly in Nazi propaganda and in racist rhetoric. They do actually believe that it is the "white race" that is superior and others are inferior. White nationalism, white supremacy, and other racist/nationalist ideologies are unfortunately alive and well, and have made a resurgence with the rise of the radical right not only in the United States, but in many other parts of the world.

One of the ways to counter such pernicious ideologies is to point out how they are wrong, and it's hard to imagine how that can be done without talking about the ethnicities which these ideologies claim to be inferior.

That doesn't mean that one must take up the position that it is the Jews that are superior. Every ethnicity has something special and valuable to contribute to humanity. None is superior and none is inferior. Each ethnicity should recognize, respect, and celebrate their own accomplishments as well as those of others. This is the way to counter exclusivism, discrimination, hatred, and bigotry, and is what multiculturalism is about.