Online Store Contact us About us
Yad Vashem logo

804 - South Africans Volunteer in Israel's War of Independence

Movies
A documentary about the South African volunteers who fought in Israel's War of Independence in 1948. Told mostly through interviews with the surviving South African Machalniks, this is a unique firsthand account of a widely overlooked group's essential contribution to Israel's early survival. Many of the stories conveyed here have never before been printed, recorded or circulated. These intimate personal testimonies feature within a broader historical narrative of the time, incorporating interviews withe leading scholars of Jewish history such as professor Milton Shain and Sir Martin Gilbert.