An older URL, to be sure, but one worth posting nevertheless.  I intend to use the exhibit with the kids in my Religious School class this year for a multimedia project.

This online exhibit, hosted at Florida Atlantic University Library’s contains a PDF of Seymour “Sy” Brody’s Jews in America’s Military, accompanied by a curriculum guide.

http://www.fau.edu/library/brody_intro.htm

Members of Jewish War Veterans know that six of the first Medal of Honor winners, after the award was established, were Jewish members of the Union Army.  From Uriah Levy to astronaut Judy Resnick, this offers a comprehensive look at the heroic contributions of Jewish military members throughout the history of the U.S.

After the Global War on Terror reaches its end, may it be soon, more Jewish names will be (and in many cases, already are) associated with valor in the American military.

by Dr. Alex Grobman

Many Holocaust survivors did not know Rabbi Abraham Klausner, a Reform rabbi, who died last week, but he had a profound influence of those who lived in post-war Germany and Austria. Klausner, who was an American Jewish chaplain, arrived at Dachau during the third week of May 1945.

Convinced there would be nothing for him to do in Europe at the end of the war, he volunteered for duty in the Far East. After being assigned to Dachau, he began signing death certificates and burying the dead.

Just before his unit was ordered out of the camp on June 2, 1945, a man who was so ill that he was restricted to the barracks asked in a very distinctive voice if Klausner knew his brother. He did.  Chaplain Abraham Spiro had come to Europe with him on the same ship.

After reuniting the brothers, Klausner realized the need for the survivors to find their families. He also recognized that he could not abandon his fellow Jews, and left his unit. This was a very chaotic period, and chaplains and other officers helped him finesse his unorthodox and unauthorized mission after his return to the camp. 

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Dr. Alex Grobman provides this interesting article.

From the Allied invasion of Europe in June 1944 until the early 1950¹s, the surviving remnant of European Jewry received aid from various sources. The American Army, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), the International Relief Organization (IRO) and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) provided the majority of the assistance to these Displaced Persons (DPs) during this period. The Vaad Hatzala, representing most American Orthodox Jews, helped in establishing yeshivas and kosher kitchens and providing religious texts and ritual items. The Vaad, the JDC, HIAS (the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society), aided Jews in emigrating to Palestine and the United States. Since there was an ongoing need for additional supplies, many American Jewish chaplains and American Jewish soldiers stationed in the American zones of occupation in Germany and Austria offered their assistance. Most of the Jewish GIs who helped the survivors did so as individuals or in small groups. Their activities were rarely publicized. The major exception was the Frankfurt Jewish GI Council that was established in June 1946. 

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From the Jerusalem Post -

A Torah rescued from Lithuania has a home on the aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman.

The carrier is one of the few Navy vessels to have its own Torah. Few ships are large enough to need one, said Sam Werbel, an organizer of a dedication ceremony Sunday attended by 500 community members and dignitaries. The audience included Holocaust survivors.

“This is not a ceremony alone,” said Mark E. Talisman, founder and president of the Project Judaica Foundation. “It’s about humanity or a lack thereof. It’s about all of us understanding the dignity of human life.“‘

This dedication is significant for another reason:
On May 14, 1948, 11 minutes after the nation of Israel was created, President Truman recognized it diplomatically. Israel’s first president, Chaim Weizmann, thanked Truman with a Torah that now belongs to the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library.

Read the entire article here.

Did you ever feel like the Jewish version of the father from “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” gleefully relating how we invented the kimono?

Here’s a bit of Flag Day trivia…

Did you know that Flag Day is, in part, attributed to German-born Jew Benjamin Altheimer?

When a St. Louis minister complained about a foreign-born Jew coming up with a day to honor the flag, Altheimer is reported to have said, “I told that preacher that it wasn’t the first time a Jew had given a Christian an idea or something to think about.”

Memorial Day this year was especially somber, as it should be.  A new generation of names is sadly being added to the roll call on a daily basis.  The reminders that liberty comes at a cost are stark and uncompromising, and all too frequent thanks to the war on terror.

I had the honor of riding a float with American Legion and VFW members in a local parade on Monday.  Schmoozing with another former Screaming Eagle of another generation, trying to out-sing each other (Marines vs. Army) on our branch songs, it was a magnificent time.  The pride of sitting alongside the Greatest Generation and the bond between soldiers that transcends time left an impression that won’t fade anytime soon.

Reservist or active servicemember, our jobs are made easier by the efforts of our national veterans organizations.  When the story broke about the horrible conditions at Walter Reed, the American Legion and others went to work.  In the state of Pennsylvania, these organizations campaign to see that the Guard, used heavily abroad these days, have benefits appropriate to our service overseas.

What I saw on Memorial Day, sadly, is that older generations are carrying our burden, fighting our battle at home when they’ve long since fought their own.  Worse, their numbers are dwindling year by year.  It’s these organizations that give us a voice in Washington, and since a small percentage of the population serves in the military, it’s important to maintain that voice.

I’d like to encourage all who read to actively seek membership with one or more of these organizations.  Jews in Green readers should especially consider joining the Jewish War Veterans (http://www.jwv.org), which has an in-service membership option.

By Dr. Alex Grobman, author of Rekindling the Flame: American Jewish Chaplains and the Survivors of European Jewry, 1944-1948.

The American Jewish Historical Society’s exhibit “Particular Responsibility: The Making of the U.S. Army Talmud,” has brought a very important part of the history of the Jews in post-war Europe to the attention of the public. The chapter they cover, however, is incomplete.

After the war, observant Jewish survivors were in need of religious articles-- fringed garments (tzitzit) prayer shawls, phylacteries (tefillin), candles for candle lighting, holiday prayer books, daily prayer books, the Torah and religious texts.

There were very few of these items available. In the late 1930’s, the Nazis began confiscating Jewish books and artifacts in Germany. During the war, the Nazis extended the operation, using German military forces and other Nazi agencies and individuals to seize Jewish books, archives and ritual objects wherever they went--from “occupied Ukraine to the French-Spanish border, and from Greece to the British Isle of Man.”¹ Rabbinical and communal libraries from Italy, an Axis power, were also looted. ² Books were stolen from the Ecole Rabbinique, the Israelitische Gemeinde Bibliotek and the Verein fur Judische Geschicte und Literatur of Nurnberg, the Bibliotheca Polska, Alliance Israélite Universelle, and the Rothschild libraries.³

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I am a Sephardic Jew born in Baghdad, Iraq. I served in the U.S. Army, mostly in Korea, with the First Cavalry Division,15th Aviation Company.

I retired in 2003 and authored 2 books:

Full Circle: Escape from Baghdad And the Return
and
History of The Jews and Israel.

My life’s story can be found on my website: www.saulsilasfathi.com or you may call me at 631-232-1638

I would like to donate some books to the army, to reach other Jewish servicemen. Most importantly, I would like to reach the Iraqi people and exchange memories with them. I will mail my books free of charge to any chaplain or any address in Iraq.

Saul Silas Fathi

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Deerfield Beach residents recently gathered to honor Jewish service members who fought in WWII.  The simple, but heartfelt ceremony was covered by the Sun-Sentinel:

Abraham Rutman, 82, of Deerfield Beach, is among them. He served as a U.S. Army combat medic in World War II. He was itching for a fight and didn’t wait for a draft.

“I’m Jewish,” he explained. “Hitler was killing the Jews. We had to do our part.”

He bowed his head, and tears rolled past the seven medals hanging from his shirt and an American flag tucked in his left pocket. He was reliving the day troops liberated a slave labor camp, remembering the faces of the women who rushed to him and others.

Read the full article HERE.

By Dr. Alex Grobman, author of Rekindling the Flame: American Jewish Chaplains and the Survivors of European Jewry, 1944-1948.

Many Holocaust commemorators honor American soldiers who participated in the liberation of a concentration or slave labor camp. They often overlook the American Jewish chaplains who played a critical role in helping the Jewish Displaced Persons (DPs) in the American Zones of Germany and Austria at the end of WWII. Of the 311 Reform, Conservative and Orthodox chaplains selected to serve in the military, more than 90 had contact with the DPs from 1944-1948.

The DPs presented unique and difficult problems to the American military government who wanted to help, but failed to understand the specific dilemmas liberation posed for the Jews. The military government was responsible for re-establishing communication and transport behind frontlines, not administering and governing. They failed to recognize that the Jews, having been singled out for destruction, required psychological and spiritual assistance as well as material aid. Conditions in the camps were deplorable and the Jews lacked the freedom to choose their own destiny.

From the Army’s perspective, the logical solution was to repatriate the DPs as soon as possible. Of the more than 200,000 European Jews who were in Germany and Austria at the end of the war, many were reluctant to go back to their “homelands,” particularly the Jews from Poland and Lithuania, a large portion of the survivors. Some of them-the exact number is unknown-went back to search for family and friends. Then they returned to Germany.

Wherever they went in Eastern Europe, they were greeted with disdain and frequently harassed-false arrest, beatings and murder. On July 4, 1946, 47 Jews were murdered and more than 50 were wounded in Kielce, Poland. Many of them found themselves homeless; their homes confiscated by former friends and neighbors. Thus the majority of Jews from Eastern Europe understandably feared repatriation. Jews from Western Europe, Hungary, Romania, and Czechoslovakia were in a better position to reclaim their possessions and begin to rebuild their lives.

It fell to the relatively few American Jewish chaplains (approximately 30) who passed through Germany during the initial occupation period April-June 1945, right after liberation, to deal with the Jewish DPs problems. The chaplains were among the first Jews from the U.S. to meet survivors, so although their primary obligation was to American soldiers, some chose to help the DPs. They were not official representatives of the American rabbinate or any other organization. They made the people’s needs known to the army and tried to influence the military’s policies toward the survivors. If they failed, they took the initiative, which sometimes meant risking their own careers, by engaging in covert actions to ease some of the traumas and dilemmas confronting Jewish survivors in Germany.

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