Health, my great grandfather and g grandmother, two of my great aunts/uncles – those who survived, their kids, all came to Israel at the same time as the Teimanim. They had nothing left after the war, and came to Israel with a bit more than the teimanim, but not much. My G grandparents maintained their level of frumkeit, but 1/2 of their children in Israel much less so. Some of THEIR grandchildren are frum, and have even become more frum, but others have not. Bottom line, They came, lived, worked and did their best in a very trying time. No one forced them to work on shabbes, no one forced them to eat treif. When my cousins were in the army, there was no such thing as a netzach yehuda battalion, but no one forced them to be mechallel shabbes (with the exception of wartime, where the heter is clear. I recall the head of the Gerer community in the city where I live telling me about the radio they brought in to the shul/shteeble on Yom Kippur 1973, to let people know about call ups, including the army’s chevra kadisha). “Forced” is the word you used, and in the context of a state that means policy or law.
And Health, I don’t need excuses. You want to be the Tzedoki insistent on ignoring “vechai bohem”, go right ahead. You know what they ended up as, despite having pure intentions. I’ll stick with the way of the perushim.