CONCLUSION

Bridging Worlds Apart

“What is America to me? A name, a map or a flag, a certain word: democracy . . . Especially the people, that’s America to me.” In November 1945, Frank Sinatra sang these words to a popular melody from the short film The House I Live In, which both Jewish and non-Jewish American children would later sing cheerfully in class. Beyond its light tone, the film heralded a change of perception of American Jews in the eyes of Gentiles.¹ This transformation was mostly due to Jews’ participation in World War II. Spread throughout every branch of the armed forces and over all fighting fronts, over half a million Jewish men and women contributed to the American military effort in defeating the Nazis, the fascists, and the Japanese Empire. Ironically, while fighting against persecution abroad, Jews faced anti-Jewish hostility in their military ranks. Their interactions with Jews and religious communities in French North Africa, India, and the Philippines reinforced their Jewish identities and empowered them. In 1942, thousands of American troops arrived in Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane to fight the Pacific war. In the heart of Australia, GIs invited local residents to join them for Passover celebrations: the sight of several hundred strong soldiers reassured locals about Jewish continuity.² In Manila, Jewish service members initiated a fundraising campaign to rebuild the synagogue, which the Japanese had destroyed in February 1945. They dedicated it as a memorial to all GIs who perished there. On December 7, 1945, the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Lieutenant General William Styer, commanding general of army forces in the western Pacific, presented it as a gift to the Manila Jewish community. This gesture represented one of many interactions that had an impact on reshaping American Jewish identities.

Servicewomen, too, reinterpreted their sense of Jewishness. They responded to the national emergency by displaying moral and heroic dimensions on the home front and overseas, including the dangerous islands of the Pacific. This book’s emphasis on the voices of the young women and men who served sheds light on their soul searching, decision-making processes, and challenges. Its narrative deepens our understanding of the American Jewish military experience. This volume has addressed issues of belonging, drawing on the testimonies, letters, and oral histories of over a hundred service members. Rather than motivate suppression of service members’ identification as Jews, anti-Jewish hostility may have led to a reawakening or appearance of religious feelings. The use of testimonies has evinced diverse forms of Jewish identification. As American patriots, young Jews were eager to belong, although they were often made to feel that, as Jews, they did not belong. Nineteen-year-old Harry Zaslow from Philadelphia did not identify himself as a Jew in the military but nevertheless suffered from anti-Jewish hostility during his service in Europe with the 283rd Field Artillery Battalion. Ironically, the most painful instance of this hostility was on the day he and a few American troops stumbled on the gates of the concentration camp at Dachau. Facing railroad boxcars “filled with a mass of dead bodies,” one of his fellow soldiers told him, “Zaslow, if you’re not careful you’re going to be in that boxcar too.” Shocked by the Nazi atrocities, the Jewish soldier let it go because he “had a job to do.”³ Despite the strong resolve of enlisted Jewish personnel, anti-Jewish slurs and discriminatory promotion practices occurred frequently. Veterans’ memoirs from 1946 reveal that the shock of rejection was more significant among those whose Jewishness was not a meaningful aspect of their lives. Jewish servicemen who yearned to be officers often changed their names or indicated P for Protestant on their dog tags.

In Europe, close to the battleground, the decision to remain identified as a Jew was personal. At the height of heavy bombing during the Battle of the Bulge, when GIs’ feet were frozen in snow, it was clear that the Allied soldiers would be captured. Jewish soldiers knew that the situation of European Jews was bad, but the extent of the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis was not fully grasped until the liberation of Hitler’s concentration and extermination camps. American soldiers had nevertheless heard rumors that the Nazis shot unlucky Jewish prisoners on the spot. For this reason, many Jewish soldiers threw away their dog tags—some reluctantly—as their religion was noted on the piece of metal that hung from their necks. Captain Ralph Tomases decided otherwise, like many others, although he considered doing the same. He was captured while serving in the Medical Detachment in the 423rd Regiment of the 106th Infantry Division, deployed to the German-Belgium border. Along with him, thousands were made prisoners in the fierce Battle of the Bulge on December 19, 1944. Tomases was imprisoned in Stalag IV-B, one of the largest German prisoner of war (POW) camps near the Elbe River. What could have motivated such a risky decision? His reasoning was that if he died, his family would want him to be identified and to have a Jewish burial.⁴

Why are there so few Jewish Stars of David in the military cemeteries, particularly the D-Day cemeteries? In his 1945 report, Chaplain Bernstein found after examination of sample studies of War Department files “that nearly 45% of the authenticated Jewish dead were not so recorded in the official records.” This finding may have led him to estimate that over six hundred thousand Jewish Americans served in World War II. There are several explanations for the relatively small number of Jewish burials. Burial practices may have been careless, and in many cases, the soldiers’ dog tags were completely destroyed in plane crashes and combat.⁵

FIGHTING TOE TO TOE WITH THE NAZIS

The large number of decorations awarded, often posthumously, suggest that Jews were more numerous in the infantry than in any other branch of the army, from privates to high-ranking officers like General Rose.⁶ Many German-speaking soldiers who immigrated to the United States as young refugees in the late 1930s were eventually drafted into various units of the armed forces, and their naturalization was rapidly handled.⁷ In the US military, recent immigrants saw action mainly in Europe and in North Africa. Ironically, toward the end of the war in Europe, GIs from Germany and Austria were sent to serve in their countries of origin. Through their skillful interrogation of German POWs, the soldiers known as “Ritchie Boys” provided intelligence to help defeat the forces of Rommel’s Afrika Korps. The information they gathered in intelligence units was crucial and saved thousands of American lives. In the postwar period, they contributed to efforts of denazification—as did Werner T. Angress, who parachuted into France with the Eighty-Second Airborne Division on D-Day. The refugees had experienced years of humiliation in Nazi Germany that continued even after their immigration to the United States. Meeting the challenge of infantry training boosted their self-confidence. This transformation occurred for many Jewish soldiers, immigrants or not—including some two thousand Ritchie Boys. However, the American military encouraged them to hide their Jewish identity for protection when interrogating German POWs. This might explain why some of their graves have no Jewish marking. General Rose’s grave does not bear a Jewish Star either, but for different reasons. As an infantry combat soldier in World War I and an officer during World War II, he hid his Jewish identity to avoid anti-Jewish discrimination, as did many other infantrymen. His dog tags were marked with a P for Protestant, and therefore, the American military buried him as such and honored him as an American hero.

Women also met their responsibilities as American citizens. Jewish servicewomen were eager to contribute to the war effort and be fully accepted in the military. This gendered perspective enriches our understanding of the American Jewish experience.

GENDER AND ANTI-JEWISH DISCRIMINATION

Unlike women pilots in the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP), flight nurses were immediately inducted as military personnel. The need for nurses and flight nurses was indisputable. Some servicewomen encroached on male territory even though they were meant to free up male soldiers for the front lines. They strove to be accepted in a military framework. Consequently, their identity was first and foremost shaped by their military roles: an American woman pilot in the WASP, an American aircraft mechanic, an American nurse, or an American woman in the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) or Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service (WAVES).⁸ Like their Christian counterparts, they crossed gender and social boundaries, especially those who took to the skies. The fact that airfields rarely had women’s restrooms remains significant. Air evacuation nurses (who carried a weapon) and airplane mechanics like Miranda Bloch—one of the few female Marines authorized to inspect and repair radio gear midflight—strongly challenged traditional roles. Bloch, whose courage and patriotism led her to defy her parents to enlist, challenged prejudice in the family unit, in civil society, and in the military. In his memoirs, General Eisenhower confessed to his own reluctance to recognize women’s contributions in the military at first and described the skeptical attitudes of many officers. He noted that most commanders failed to realize “the changing requirements of the war,” which implied a drastic change of attitude toward women. The WACs’ efficiency in Algiers during Operation Torch on November 8, 1942, made an impact on him. By the end of the war, General Eisenhower noted that even the “stubborn die-hards had become convinced and demanded them [women] in increasing numbers.”⁹ Hilda Lehman De Vadetsky, the daughter of Herbert H. Lehman, governor of New York from 1933 to 1942, was on duty in Algiers as a member of the WAC in French North Africa. She lost her pilot brother in 1944.¹⁰ Maneuvers and training flights took a toll among servicemen and servicewomen who took to the skies.

American Jewish women pilots expressed their frustration at being “expendable” as WASP members. To explain the meaning of the adjective they used, Bernice Falk Haydu and Elizabeth Haas Pfister stated in their respective interviews that they were not given military status during the war years despite the remarkable contribution of women pilots to the war effort. General of the air force Henry H. Arnold had made it clear that he intended to officially militarize these women pilots. Some even had the opportunity to fly and test the latest military aircrafts, Superfortress B-29 bombers, in front of the incredulous eyes of male servicemen and envious airplane mechanics. Yet the militarization of WASP members only took place some thirty years after the WASP disbanded. On Capitol Hill, in testimony before the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, Colonel Bruce Arnold, the son of General Hap Arnold, along with women veterans demonstrated that the WASP was not a civilian unit. Their drills, uniforms, secret missions, relentless and arduous training, and flying hours from sunup to sundown attested to the military nature of the unit.

Disbanding the WASP without military status deprived women pilots of military benefits available to their male counterparts. They were not eligible for the support provided by the GI Bill, for example, which funded university tuition. Nevertheless, the discrimination they faced did not tarnish the idea of the America they cherished. The American values of liberty and justice, together with Jewish values of empathy and charity, continued to inspire them. They continued to make the world a better place.

Doubly victims of prejudice, some servicewomen had to confront anti-Jewish hostility as well as sexist attitudes. Selma Kantor Cronan candidly highlighted an important point about the nature of anti-Jewish hostility and prejudice in an in-depth interview conducted by the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York. She realized that she may have been “excluded” from “some things”: “attempts to push me off the base, particularly because I was unidentifiable as Jewish.” When Selma’s Jewishness was discovered, “it came out as an insult” since she was “very open” about her Jewish origins.¹¹ It is interesting to point out that some of these attitudes may have stemmed from mythical yet pervasive representations of Jews as conspirators, traitors, and infiltrators. Such accusations against Jews had been made relentlessly throughout the 1940s, culminating in the Sunday night radio broadcasts of Father Coughlin, a Roman Catholic Priest who pictured evil Jews financially “crucifying the whole world.” Anti-Jewish propaganda included the publications of the Silver Shirts, which featured “the Jewish minority influence” and blamed Jews for all the ills of the United States.

It is not surprising that many Jewish GIs reacted to insulting remarks with their fists, which often brought results. From interviews, memoirs, and letters, four main strategies for confronting anti-Jewish prejudice emerge: being “three times as good just to be even,” as fighter pilot Jerry Yellin observed; setting an example of extreme bravery, as did Colonel David Daniel Marcus; inspiring esteem through physical force, like boxing champion Barney Ross; and fostering respect for Jewishness, as Jewish chaplains and laymen did when conducting religious services. As a reaction to social exclusion, some Jewish GIs sought the company of coreligionists, which was likely to awaken or reinforce their Jewish identification and religious feelings. The examples of excellence or extreme bravery recorded in this book indicate that excelling was not only congruent with the American ethos; it was also a way to achieve recognition in the military. One of the lessons that service in the American military taught many GIs was best expressed by infantryman and German refugee Ernest Stock: “to hide one’s being Jewish in a Gentile world was the wrong course. [I] had learned to speak up as a Jew and to be proud of it.”¹² The pride that service members took in their Jewishness was reinforced by meeting members of Jewish communities in the different theaters of the war.

MUTUAL IMPACT OF ENCOUNTERS IN NORTH AFRICA

With the simultaneous landing of Allied troops on November 8, 1942, in Oran, Algiers, and Casablanca, a sudden optimism descended on the Jews of North Africa. The daring amphibious invasion of this part of North Africa prevented local Jews from being deported to concentration or extermination camps in Europe. This book’s scholarly outlining of meaningful interactions of service members with Jewish families and communities in French North Africa fills a gap in the historiography. A comparison between the testimonies of Jewish American GIs and Jews from French Algeria reveals that a transnational encounter took place during Passover seders. Enacting the story of the Exodus from Egypt, where Jews were enslaved, appeared to some as a harbinger of the restoration of world moral order by Allied forces. American troops met British and Scottish soldiers, together with French-speaking Jews. These encounters had various effects. Jewish GIs became aware of the existence of a Jewish diaspora in French Algeria and in other parts of North Africa. Furthermore, encounters boosted the morale of both Jews in North Africa and American Jewish GIs, which provided great psychological support on both sides for the rest of the war. Far from being a burden, the GIs’ Jewishness helped build bridges with the Jewish diaspora around the world. It became an asset for soldiers, airmen, and sailors, whose nostalgia was alleviated by families eager to receive American liberators in their homes, Jewish or not. For some American GIs, finding a host family to join during furloughs satisfied their longing for home. Even for some nonobservant GIs, going to synagogue reawakened nostalgic feelings associated with home. Often, these feelings were intensified as a result of anti-Jewish hostility experienced in the ranks of the American army, an issue that has been overlooked. Attending services in a local synagogue provided refuge and summoned memories from a real or imagined home. Jewish service members also coped with feelings of exclusion within the military by seeking the company of coreligionists—both in the army and with members of the Jewish diaspora. Contrary to widespread belief, many GIs fighting the Pacific experienced war not only as Americans but also as Jews.

AFFIRMATION OF FAITH IN THE PACIFIC AND INDIA

When the guns and cannons fell silent, Jewish service members attended improvised religious services. Servicewomen took part in those services. They were also subjected to deadly diseases like malaria or to random attacks by the Japanese. Belle Goldman, who was awarded an Asiatic-Pacific Theater Ribbon, Bronze Battle Star, and Overseas Ribbon, attended a Yom Kippur service in New Guinea, one of the most remote Pacific islands, in September 1944. Like the members of the WAC, she viewed herself as “a conscientious soldier.” Other women who did what they were assigned by the military sacrificed their lives. This was the case of Sergeant Belle G. Naimer, who died in an army transport plane crash in a far-flung part of Papua, New Guinea in May 1945 and was awarded the Army Good Conduct Medal. They, too, were empowered as Americans, female soldiers, and Jews.

In the Pacific, many religious services were led by laymen inspired by a sense of impending death. Improvisations of this kind in hostile territories was a new phenomenon during World War II. Fighting men and military personnel regained moral strength with the prayer to be inscribed in the Book of Life for Rosh Hashanah, the New Year, in 1943. A few striking instances illustrate this Jewish spirit in the military. Captain Benjamin Fenichel was photographed leading a service on Guadalcanal, and Marine Captain Sidney Altman from Brooklyn conducted a service in a chapel on that same island. Captain Fenichel sounded the shofar with a prayer shawl over his head in another photograph. Published in the American Hebrew in November 1943, this snapshot not only boosted soldiers’ morale but also lifted the spirits of Jewish Americans at home. Religious services released tension before a battle or filled a void afterward. Reflecting on the nature of faith, a noted rabbi has argued that faith does not assume certainty, as it is often thought. On the contrary, he contended that “faith is the courage to live with uncertainty.”¹³ We may infer that different forms of Jewish observance in the various theaters of the war instilled courage in the fighters. During the celebration of the High Holy Days, faith prompted many Jewish GIs to rejoice as they reconnected with the spiritual or ritual heritage of their ancestors.

Sidney J. Altman, the commanding officer of Company E, Twenty-First Regiment, Third Marine Division, was an inspiring figure. He relentlessly repelled Japanese troops in Guam despite being wounded by a hand grenade. The citation for his Silver Star proves that his devotion to God equaled his “devotion to duty” as he “contributed to the success of his company’s mission and upheld the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.”¹⁴

Other examples evince both the efforts of servicemen to conduct services in makeshift chapels in the Pacific and those of Christian chaplains to encourage these efforts. Captain Elliot Davis of the Eighty-Ninth Field Artillery fought in the Battle of Munda Point, on the island of New Georgia, in July and August 1943. He mustered the strength to organize religious services for the Jewish New Year on September 29, 1943, after a Baptist chaplain informed him that the National Jewish Welfare Board (JWB) had sent prayer shawls and prayer books. The spiritual overtones of Jewish ritual objects could trigger a sense of bonding that some soldiers had not experienced for years. The services were neither Orthodox nor Reform—for soldiers living with insecurity, they still celebrated life. For some GIs, the prayers bridged material and spiritual worlds. Public observance of religious services renewed their Jewish sense of purpose together with their American values.

Could religiosity be expressed in a POW camp in the Philippines? Unexpectedly, religious transcendence could occur during improvised services. The observance of the Day of Atonement, or Yom Kippur, while in captivity provided a double framework for the examination of questions of life and death. Against all odds, the observance of Yom Kippur in the camp of Cabanatuan turned out to be regenerative for some servicemen held by the Japanese.

The triumph of faith is perhaps best sensed in the moving service that took place in Aachen on October 29, 1944, with the sound of artillery in the background. A correspondent for NBC radio introduced the Sabbath prayer service on the battlefield with these powerful words: “The first Jewish religious service broadcast since the advent of Hitler.”¹⁵

Thousands of miles away from home, in the Jewish communities of Bombay and Calcutta, GIs were not received as liberators and heroes as they were by Jews from Algeria or Europe. Indian families perceived them as American Jews in uniform, and members of these communities extended their hospitality. A strong sense of Jewish solidarity emerged from these interactions, which led some to question their own perception of people of color, as did David Macarov from Atlanta, Georgia, who rejected ingrained southern prejudice. He, too, conducted religious services, assisted the chaplain, and met with Zionist Jews in India. Many a service member who had no Zionist inclinations before the war changed his opinions as a result of encounters with Jewish survivors of concentration camps American troops had liberated. This switch also happened after GIs became acquainted with the ordeal of destitute Jewish displaced persons—unwanted in most countries. These wartime experiences were etched in GIs’ memory and often silenced for fear the experiences would surge again. Like a number of Holocaust survivors, some World War II veterans chose silence as a way of coping with traumatic memories.¹⁶

WARTIME LESSONS

After World War II, former Jewish servicemen and servicewomen used their wartime experiences to help their fellow Americans. Such contributions were also a way to start a healing process. Aircraft pilot Betty Haas Pfister lost her pilot brother in a maneuver in the Pacific. Her work to improve safety measures for medical helicopters landing at the hospital in Aspen, Colorado, may have helped her cope with her trauma. Army nurses like Gertrude Shapiro took care of Japanese survivors in Hiroshima in an amazing and selfless fashion with the first medical landing group of Americans, which was sent to treat the injured, about a month after the atomic blast.¹⁷ Captain Alfred Weinstein, a surgeon and former Japanese POW, provided support to poor families of deceased Japanese guards who had been good-hearted. His social impact in Atlanta after the war may be read as a response to the discrimination he experienced during the war. Dr. Weinstein was president emeritus of the Spalding Hospital in Atlanta, which served the African American community. It provided training for African American doctors and nurses. Waging a war against segregation, he established the first integrated waiting room in his private practice in Atlanta. He also founded an award program for African American nurses at Emory University’s Henry Grady Hospital, where he was a member of the faculty.¹⁸

Former fighter pilot Jerry Yellin, who flew in the last bombing mission over Japan, managed to create a viable brotherhood after the war with a Japanese pilot. Other examples of unexpected feelings of brotherhood emerge from firsthand accounts.

In interviews, Nisei veterans—Americans of Japanese descent who were declared enemy aliens and not entitled to serve their country after the Pearl Harbor attack—expressed a feeling of being expendable once drafted. Captain Milton Zaslow, who learned Japanese to feel useful in the war and decipher enemy messages, encountered these second-generation Japanese American soldiers in his military duties. His riveting story reveals the empathy of a Jewish serviceman for these young men who felt unwanted and yet were eager to serve their new country. They risked their lives in Hawaii, the Mariana Islands, and Okinawa with their captain. The Jewish officer expressed admiration for their courage, as they could have been shot by friendly fire if mistaken for the Japanese enemy. His identification with the underdog may have stemmed from a personal experience of discrimination. In the postwar period, Milton Zaslow participated in meetings of the Japanese American Veterans Association (JAVA).

An unexpected encounter between GIs and Japanese natives occurred in 1946 on the bombed-out island of Okinawa. There, Chaplain Moshe Sachs reinterpreted the religious observance of the New Year of the Trees in the universalistic sense of improving the world (tikkun olam). Together with his fellow servicemen, he planted trees to rehabilitate the island. High school children from the island took part in this initiative, which the American military enthusiastically approved.

Another cathartic experience stemming from the war can be observed in the life story of boxing champion and decorated war hero Barney Ross. Ross suffered from addiction to morphine, and later heroin, administered to soothe the pain from his wartime wounds. After the war, he took on the responsibility of educating high school students about the dangers of drug addiction. The examples of brotherhood, helpfulness, and patriotism in this book make the case for the symbiosis between Jewish and American values, which have a common aspiration to improve the world. When families release more letters and notebooks of American service members to Jewish historical societies, researchers will be able to expand on the insights discussed in the present volume related to the role of gender, anti-Jewish attitudes, and patriotism during World War II.

Anti-fascist artist Arthur Szyk suggested that a transformation of American Jewish self-representation took place during World War II; Jewish service members—wherever they served—had gained new self-confidence. In 1943, several of Arthur Szyk’s illustrations of Jewish heroes were exhibited in United Service Organizations (USO) venues for recreational activities put on by the USO for the men and women in the American military. The artist’s works capture the wartime transformation that gradually changed servicemen’s ideas of themselves as Jews. A lithograph made in New York in 1943 is entitled If We Don’t Destroy That Team We Are Doomed. The title accounts for the perspective of Joseph Goebels, the German propaganda minister, who is seen sweating at the prospect of facing the combined forces of the Irish and the Jews. The artist dedicated this work “to the immortal team of Kelly’s and Levin’s, the very might of the nation,” epitomizing the powerful and popular story of partnership between the Presbyterian pilot Colin Kelly and the Jewish bombardier Meyer (Mike) Levin.¹⁹

Significantly, the 1945 film The House I Live In—referred to earlier—also made use of the feat of these crewmembers. By telling a wartime story to a group of boys who bullied a schoolmate on account of his Jewish origin, Frank Sinatra conveyed the message that “religion makes no difference.” Kelly, the bomber’s pilot, and Levin, his Jewish bombardier, were part of the aircraft crew that bombed a Japanese vessel. An American hero, Captain Colin Kelly died while trying to save his crew. Levin became the first American to bomb a Japanese ship, three days after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Sergeant Meyer Levin lost his life after completing sixty combat missions and sinking an enemy ship in the Battle of the Coral Sea. He, too, sacrificed his life to save crewmembers.²⁰ In The House I Live In, the airmen’s story remains emblematic of the selflessness and spirit of camaraderie that empowered American Jewish service members. It is significant that the film received a special award for Tolerance Short Subject at the 1945 Oscars and a Golden Globe for Promoting International Tolerance.

Fig. Concl.1 Arthur Szyk, If We Don’t Destroy That Team We Are Doomed, New York, 1943. Chromolithographic reproduction. This work may have been sponsored by the Jewish War Veterans (JWV). Reproduced with the cooperation of Historicana, Burlingame, CA.

In the dense jungle of the island of Munda, the attendance of high-ranking officers like Admiral Kinkaid, a navy legend, at a Passover celebration on April 8, 1944, proved that Judaism was respected as an American religion.²¹ A wartime memoir later captured this mood. The time was Rosh Hashana 1945, the Jewish New Year. A Jewish soldier was on a troopship with over two thousand GIs returning to the United States after the war’s end in Europe. Aboard the crowded SS Sea Robin, a Protestant chaplain wanted to conduct a Jewish religious service. Once he had found two boys conversant with Jewish rituals, he grabbed the loudspeaker to announce the Jewish services and located a room where service members could observe the High Holy Day with a minimum of disturbance. The non-Jewish soldiers who had to pass through the room made sure they tiptoed their way out. The Protestant chaplain, “wearing a skull cap,” delivered a short sermon and read a poem he thought fit for a New Year service. This “thoroughly inspiring religious experience,” the serviceman commented, conveyed a “spirit of religious brotherhood.” The US military had become a laboratory of religious and social experiments.²²

Like their male counterparts, young American Jewish women diligently served in the military and earned their place in history. They, too, reclaimed who they already were: Americans at heart. Their accomplishments and sacrifices, both as American service members and as Jews, will remain a source of inspiration for generations to come. War experiences left in their wake the seeds of a brighter new era.