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Captain Alan Bright (USAFR), a rabbi from a Montreal congregation, was recently called up to active duty to serve as the Jewish chaplain at Ramstein Air Base in Germany.

For those that don’t know, Ramstein is the main spot for medevacs from Iraq that need critical care as well as the first stop for most bodies before their return to the States.  While not the most pleasant duty, serving as the sole Jewish chaplain at the hospital is certainly an important role to fill.

You can read more about Rabbi Bright in the Canadian Jewish News.

The following are excerpts of an article by Jennifer Kavanaugh from the Metro Daily West News*

Life sometimes forces choices that are too awful to be considered real choices, and William Feinberg weighed his fate as a 19-year-old Army soldier in a World War II prison camp.

“It was dangerous, no matter which way you go,” Feinberg said. “If I said I was Jewish, the Germans were going to treat me badly. If I threw away my dog tags, possibly I could have been executed for being a spy. So I finally decided to step forward and admit my religion.”

Feinberg’s choice led to a three-month ordeal of starvation, slave labor and exposure to the German winter, as well as painful memories and a horrible front-row view of inhumanity. But it also may very well have saved his life.

Feinberg served in the 423rd Infantry Regiment of the 106th Infantry Division, and he and thousands of his fellow soldiers became surrounded and captured by Germans a few days into the Battle of the Bulge.

The Germans marched the prisoners for days, refusing to give them gloves. Feinberg remembers going that entire winter without gloves.

“They wouldn’t let us put our hands in our pockets,” Feinberg said. “They were sadistic.”

Feinberg said the Germans packed the prisoners into freight cars, where they rode for days without bathroom facilities, and were fed cabbage soup and roughly sliced pieces of bread. They arrived in the German prison camp Bad Orb on Christmas Day 1944.

After Feinberg revealed his Jewish ancestry, his captors sent him to Berga Am Elster, an offshoot of one of the death camps. There, he and about 350 other people were forced into manual labor, digging tunnels into the side of a mountain for a munitions factory.

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We’ve reached a milestone here on Jews in Green.  We just had our first official news story about the site.  An interview I did with Dan Sieradski is on the front page of Jewsweek! 

You can read the specific Jewsweek article HERE.

A special thanks to Dan and Jewsweek for such a great article!

UPDATE: Dan’s article was bought by Hillel and is now on thier website too.  See it HERE

UPDATE 2: We’re now on the Hillel Homepage!

The following are excerpts of an article by Andrew Lightman from the Newton Tab*

Sixty years after his assault on Omaha Beach in Normandy, France, Melvin Bloom remembers the noise and smell most vividly.

The dunes were steep and high, like a wall, said Bloom, an 81-year-old Navy veteran. The Germans had dug in and were blasting the beach with a cannon, machine gunners littering the water and sand with a slew of bullets.

The night before the invasion, as the ship crossed the English Channel towards Normandy, the water was so rough from the wind and the rain that nobody slept.

And as the coast, D-Day and H-Hour drew nearer, Bloom’s boat was at the front of the line and hit the waters at Omaha Beach more than an hour before the invasion was set to begin.

Aboard his ship was Wallace Maske, an enormous man of German descent, with hands twice the size of Bloom’s.

“I was Jewish and we were going to fight the Germans and another kid on the boat was German and were the closest friends, to this day,” he said. “It shows that a German and a Jew could be friends through the war.”

“Wherever I went, he went with me. He wanted to make sure I was taken care of.”

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While browsing Amazon.com the other day, I happened to come across this readers list of books of interest to Jews in the military.

The list is simply titled, Jews in the Military and was complied by jmpersons, “A Jew in the Military.” I haven’t read many of the books myself, but it does seem like a pretty comprehensive list.

Nate Bloom of the Jewish World Review recently wrote a story honoring the Jewish service members who have died in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

In addition to describing the lives (and deaths) of the soldiers, marines, and sailors, Bloom talks about the challenge of distinguishing Jewish casualties from non-Jews.  Mainly because, “the Defense Department no longer keeps statistics on the religion of their personnel. Moreover, Jewish chaplains observe a policy of strict confidentiality regarding the faith of service personnel and will neither confirm nor deny whether a war casualty was Jewish.” This is complicated by the fact that some Jews hide their religion because of fear of discovery by the enemy.

While some may see the difficulty of tracking Jewish personnel as a good thing, it can make the work of organizations like the Jewish War Veterans very difficult.  If you have a thought on the topic, leave a comment below. 

Abe Plotkin, of Scranton, PA, will be one of 100 World War II veterans who will receive France’s prestigious Legion of Honor award in ceremonies in that country marking the 60th anniversary of the massive D-Day invasion of Normandy’s beaches.  Mr. Plotkin enlisted in the Army in 1942 and served with the 284th Field Artillery, 3rd Army, in France and Germany.

You can read the full story here.

It may not be a Jewish camp, but it is FREE!

The National Military Family Association and Sears, Roebuck and Co. are partnering to send military kids to camp this summer.

The program is called Operation Purple and gives military children in 11 states and the U.S. territory of Guam a chance to attend summer camp for free.  It is open to all active duty, reserve, and national guard families, but preference is given to those children with a deployed or recently redeployed parent.  Some of the camps offer travel reimbursement and other incentives as well.

The specifics vary from location to location, so look up the camp in your area for details.  For more information, visit the Operation Purple website.

Yesterday, more than 140,000 people attended the dedication of the National World War II Memorial in Washington D.C..  President Bush was one of many distinguished guests who spoke at the dedication ceremony.  For full coverage of the event, check out CNN.com’s story.  You can also learn more about the memorial itself at the National WWII Memorial official website.

As the number of living veterans of the war dwindles, I was tremendously happy to see so many of them out there to finally see a memorial worthy of their sacrifice.  It is unfortunate that so many others (like my grandfather) never got to see it.

Some interesting facts about Jews in World War II:

At a time when Jews made up only 3.33% of the population of the U.S., the approximately 550,000 Jews who served in the military made up 4.23% of the military.

About 60% of all Jewish physicians in the United States under 45 years of age were in the Service.

*source: Jewish War Veterans of the United States of America

photo by Rick Latoff