INTRODUCTION

Unexpected Encounters

Norman Mailer wrote his best-selling war novel The Naked and the Dead after serving in the Philippines during World War II. Published three years after the end of the war, his fiction paints a vivid portrait of anti-Jewish prejudice in the army. Mailer compassionately portrays the pain of Private Goldstein, one of his Jewish characters, on hearing a truck driver “with a round red face” curse “the goddam Jewboys.” The young author describes how the character “felt an awful depression: that kind of face was behind all the pogroms against Jews.”¹

Along with the fear, discomfort, and longing for home that all American soldiers experienced during the war, Jewish service members often confronted prejudice in the American military both on the home front and overseas. One of the aims of this book, however, is to challenge the notion that being Jewish was mainly a burden for servicemen and servicewomen. The rich testimonies that veterans provided in the immediate aftermath of the war, or some years later, form the basis of this study. Through their accounts, this volume explores how Jewishness was a significant asset for soldiers adjusting to army life overseas.²

Of the sixteen million American men and women who served in the military in World War II, more than half a million were Jews. They served in every branch of the military and every theater of the war, from Europe to the South Pacific to North Africa and the China-Burma-India theater. Encounters with Jewish communities and Jews overseas played a central role in strengthening American Jewish identities during World War II.³

Drawing on personal narratives, interviews, and memoirs, the book offers an intimate account of the soul-searching of young men and women leaving home—and their Jewish neighborhoods—for the first time. Jewish GIs’ encounters encouraged them to fight antisemitism both among fellow members of the armed forces and in the war against Nazi Germany and its allies. While some branches of the American military forbade keeping a diary for security reasons, most soldiers remembered signs of anti-Jewish hostility of varying degrees. In his memoir Leaving Home, famous American humorist Art Buchwald, who served in the Marines in the Pacific, recalled: “I often found myself in fistfights over my Jewish persuasion. A few of the men in our squadron had problems with Jews, either because they had never met any or because there were not many Jews in the Marine Corps. Once you were called a dirty Jew, or even just a Jew, you had no choice but to fight or risk being considered a Jewish coward.”⁴

Buchwald clearly described the additional mental pressure felt by Jewish service members in World War II. This emotional aspect was crucial to the social behavior of Jews in the military. Their stress was even more pronounced when they were estranged from Jewish observance: “I wasn’t big and I wasn’t strong, and I wasn’t even bar mitzvahed, but when someone challenged me for being Jewish, adrenaline surged through my body, and I just kept swinging with tears in my eyes.”⁵

The columnist analyzed various manifestations of anti-Jewish prejudice, including accusations of being a Christ killer, not being good at anything, or not being “military material.” While denouncing the constant psychological stress that antisemitism generated for Jewish soldiers, he also noted that some Jewish soldiers were inclined to interpret any negative remark as antisemitic: “Like most Jews, I always assumed that the only reason anyone picked on me was that they were antisemitic.”⁶ That remark helps explain why mental stress might have been pervasive for Jewish soldiers. When they saw that fighting antisemitism led nowhere and could even be detrimental, some soldiers gave up on constantly defending their self-respect. Such an attitude may have been wrongly interpreted as passivity. Yet humor and derision apparently helped Buchwald overcome the stings and slurs of anti-Jewish hostility: “I can’t tell you how exhausting it is to continually defend all the Chosen People. The antisemitism I experienced was mild, if you don’t include the time Fedlock broke my thumb because he said I had killed Christ.”⁷

Such confrontations consumed energy needed to survive everyday fighting in hostile environments. Buchwald’s witty remarks point to another consequence of anti-Jewish attitudes: creating solidarity. Many Jews felt responsible for fighting in the name of Jewish peoplehood. The humorist offered two main conclusions from his wartime experiences. First, he fought for “the honor of a being a Jew in the Pacific,” and second, he succeeded in becoming integrated into the Marine Corps through a fistfight.

Antisemitism is a leitmotif in most of the GI memoirs collected by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in 1946. This theme raises a number of questions: Did the expression of anti-Jewish feelings or stereotypes in the armed forces foster anxiety, anger, fear, passivity, or aggressiveness in Jewish soldiers? If so, how did these emotions weaken or perhaps reinforce the soldiers’ Jewish identities, whether religious or secular? To what extent did encounters with welcoming Jewish communities in French North Africa and India strengthen Jewish identities and empower these young men and women? An analysis of the concept of feeling at home in distant countries is crucial here. This phenomenon occurred in Jewish communities in the arid landscape of North Africa whose customs, both familiar and different, instilled a sense of belonging to a larger Jewish diaspora.

This book builds on the research of previous scholars in the field. Deborah Dash Moore argues, based on rich vignettes of fifteen Jewish soldiers, that the war was a transformative period for servicemen who had to cope with antisemitism.⁸ Military service empowered these soldiers as Jewish men and as Americans. My volume adds the stories of women to this narrative through documentation of the adventurous and sometimes tragic experiences of Jewish servicewomen in different theaters of the war. Hasia Diner and Beryl Lieff Bendersky offer a historical panorama of Jewish women who played important roles in shaping American culture.⁹ I adopt a similar perspective here by detailing the wartime involvement of many intrepid young women serving their country.

Approximately ten thousand Jewish women enlisted in the US Armed Forces during World War II. For the first time in American history, thousands of women volunteered to take administrative or technical jobs in the military to “free the men” to fight in the infantry. Women also brought Jewish values to their patriotic enlistment, serving in the Women’s Army Corps (WAC), the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES) of the American Navy Corps, and as nurses overseas. Countless Jewish women served courageously both stateside and overseas. As members of the armed services in the war effort, they also joined the SPARS (Semper Paratus—Always Ready), an arm of the US Coast Guard established by the United States Congress and signed into law by President Roosevelt in November 1942.¹⁰

Many of the women who volunteered in various branches of the military did not reveal their Jewish background until much later in their lives. This was the case for Juliette Jenner Stege, a former Broadway dancer and member of the Ziegfield Follies cast who enlisted and became an aircraft pilot in the Women Air Force Service Pilots (WASP) program.

Women risked their lives in dangerous assignments. In the South Pacific, First Lieutenant Yetta Moskowitz wore a thirty-eight-caliber revolver in case her plane was shot down and the crew had to bail out in enemy territory. Servicewomen, like their male counterparts, faced challenges such as surviving in difficult jungle terrain. After rigorous basic training, many underwent a significant transformation, acquiring courage and mental and physical strength. Their war experiences in the American military empowered them as Americans, as Jews, and as women. In turn, these daring servicewomen inspired and emboldened generations of American women—Jews and gentiles alike.

Selma Kantor Cronan was among the striking women who challenged the social order of the 1940s. Cronan participated in various postwar flying competitions, including the three high-ranking All Women’s Transcontinental Air Races held across the United States, known as the Powder Puff Derbies. The WASP pilots’ relentless efforts to obtain recognition as World War II veterans only bore fruit in 1977. Bernice Falk Haydu led the struggle, backed by other women pilots whose war experiences had toughened them. Jewish servicewomen had firsthand knowledge and experience with Jews not being welcome in the workplace—even if they had broken the glass ceiling as women fliers during and after the war. Like Haydu and other WASP pilots, Betty Haas Pfister received the Congressional Gold Medal in the Oval Office in 2009. Like the more than one thousand women who had qualified for employment as noncombat pilots of aircraft in the US Army Air Forces during the war, these women pilots had ferried military planes and tested them after repairs. Why did recognition come so late? Perhaps one reason for the long delay is these women’s defiance of the social and symbolic order of the 1940s. Unlike the flying nurses, who symbolized tenderness, pilots may have been viewed as a threat as they competed for jobs toward the end of the war.

This volume offers new archival materials that shed light on the servicewomen and servicemen’s diverse and sometimes colorful personalities and their evolving Jewish identities. This broad examination of Jewish service in the European and Pacific theaters documents little-known interactions with local Jewish populations in French North Africa and analyzes their long-lasting impact. It includes unpublished sources and personal interviews with French Jews residing in French North Africa during World War II. Focusing on the encounters between service members and Jewish communities or Jewish families fills a gap in the historiography. These interactions not only strengthened GIs’ Jewish identities but also bridged a cultural gap. Ashkenazi American Jews who had never been exposed to Sephardic traditions became aware of the similarities and differences between the cultures. They understood that being Jewish does not only mean belonging to an all-Jewish American neighborhood. For the first time, they identified with the Jewish diaspora abroad despite varying community traditions.

These interactions instilled in them a sense of Jewish peoplehood, which helped them face antisemitic slurs within the military. Being the “adopted GI” of a North African Jewish family brought comforting feelings of home. The archival material also reveals the impact that Jew-hatred had on American soldiers in North Africa; young Jewish soldiers who fought heroically in Oran (Algeria) were impacted by witnessing anti-Jewish insults inscribed in French in the streets. They learned that discriminatory measures were applied more severely there than in France. This experience reinforced their determination to defeat the Nazis. It shaped their understanding of what it means to be an American, at home and abroad: to safeguard freedom and democracy and fight discrimination wherever it rears its ugly head. In that respect, my approach provides a Jewish perspective to Atkinson’s book An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942–1943, the narrative of which begins in November 1942, on the eve of Operation Torch. Jewish GIs also discovered, to their amazement, that Jews who fled Nazism and found refuge in Tunisia ran the risk of being arrested. A few refugees from Germany and Austria who worked as interpreters in Tunisia were deported by the SS when their identities were discovered—a lesser-known historical point.

While historian Martin Sugarman has admirably detailed the ordeal of Jewish prisoners of war (POWs) and internees from Commonwealth and Dutch forces in the Far East, the experiences of American Jewish POWs of the Japanese have not been fully documented.¹¹ Diaries and testimonies from soldiers in Germany, sent to me by the GIs’ families, enrich and broaden the discussion of issues often raised in memoirs. Based on archival material, I examine the ordeal of captivity at the hands of the Japanese and compare the fate of Jewish POWs when captured by the Nazis. In particular, I analyze how American Jewish prisoners’ use of improvised religious rites to express their Jewish identity sustained their morale in the Pacific. These intimate accounts provide a new lens to view religious observance and challenge the widespread perception of a singular form of Jewish identification in the military. My discussion of what it meant to be an American citizen and a Jew in the military during World War II expands on Jessica Cooperman’s analysis of Jewish engagement in the American armed forces during World War I.¹²

My volume also builds on Derek Penslar’s deconstruction of the myth of Jewish draft dodging. Jews and the Military evinces that Jews have frequently been willing to do military service.¹³ In World War II, Penslar emphasizes, Jews sought to prove themselves as soldiers and to fight Amalek, or evil.¹⁴ My analysis of the letters and testimonies of American servicemen and servicewomen in WWII provides the basis for an emotional history that charts their responses to antisemitic slurs. Through first-person accounts, this book deepens understanding of the Jewish military experience from the perspective of service members themselves, complementing Joseph Bendersky’s analysis of anti-Jewish hostility in the US Army’s higher ranks.¹⁵

More specifically, servicemen and servicewomen’s encounters with anti-Jewish prejudice changed their perceptions of what it meant to be American citizens and Jews. Jewish service members translated the words “fighting for democracy” into fighting Hitler. In this way, many reclaimed their Jewish identity and place in American society. Their selflessness and excellence in combat would help them gain acceptance—or so they thought.

Finally, this work adds to the larger cultural history of twentieth-century American Jewish life. It chronicles the experiences of American Jewish service members during a period when Jewish culture was beginning to take its place within the cultural mainstream. Tracing the effects of Judaism on society in the postwar era, Jonathan Sarna has pointed out that books by Jewish authors, including those by Jewish veterans, “broke into the mainstream book market, bringing fame to their authors and introducing the American reading public to Jewish themes and characters.”¹⁶ Irwin Shaw’s The Young Lions and Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead were both published in 1948. A year earlier, the film Gentleman’s Agreement, based on Laura Z. Hobson’s best-selling novel of the same name, courageously gave voice to the pervasiveness of anti-Jewish discrimination in the United States. The film won an Academy Award for best picture. Sarna observes that “in different ways, all of these works condemned antisemitism as Un-American, presented Jews in a new and more sympathetic light and promoted intergroup understanding and tolerance.”¹⁷

After finishing their basic training at other camps, a group of recent immigrant soldiers completed intensive training at Camp Ritchie, Maryland, and became known as “Ritchie Boys.” They made significant contributions to the intelligence services—during and after the war—with their knowledge of languages, specifically the German language and culture. These GIs could deftly extract crucial tactical information from German POWs. The Jewish refugees’ fierce motivation to fight the Nazis who persecuted their families made them the best soldiers in every frontline unit. Their paths, however, were strewn with hurdles. Alexander Breuer, for example, was born in Austria in 1926 and fled Nazism, crossing the Atlantic in 1938. Called “Fritz” by his schoolmates because of his heavy accent, he found it difficult to be associated with the Germans as a Jewish refugee. When he tried to enlist at the beginning of the war, he was automatically rejected on the grounds that he was an “enemy alien.” Mistrusted refugees suffered humiliating rebuffs. The US Army eventually drafted Breuer at the age of eighteen and sent him overseas as an infantry replacement.¹⁸ Veteran testimonies bring these poignant stories to light.

Harrowing personal narratives describe how service members’ attitudes toward Jewish issues and their identification as Jews shaped their experiences. David Macarov’s wartime encounters were especially formative. Eager to fight Hitler, Macarov volunteered to serve after the attack on Pearl Harbor. He was sent to the Pacific front and spent two years as a weather forecaster observer in the China-Burma-India theater, often “mortared and bombed.” There he met members of the Jewish community in Calcutta. The relationships he developed with them strengthened Macarov’s Jewish identity and influenced his Zionist views.¹⁹

Who is a Jew? That question has always been difficult to answer—and even more so during World War II. On December 29, 1942, the US Army ruled that every soldier was to wear identification tags (so-called dog tags) when on the battlefield or garrison duty. GIs could decide to wear a dog tag that bore the letter H for “Hebrew,” revealing their identity as Jews and allowing them to be identified for Jewish burial. However, that decision could be life-threatening if captured by the Nazis. They could be tortured, sent to a concentration camp, or put to death immediately. Adding the H made the dog tag doubly emotional, confronting the soldier with his own potentially imminent death. The Committee on Army and Navy Religious Activities (CANRA) of the National Jewish Welfare Board (JWB) notes that chaplains made every effort to inform bereaved families whether their loved ones had received a Jewish burial. Yet a report indicates that “a large percentage of the Jewish casualties were not buried under the Star of David.”²⁰

Along with their Christian counterparts, Jewish chaplains dodged bombs and shared soldiers’ cramped conditions and canned rations. More than half of the rabbis in the United States volunteered for the chaplaincy; only 311 were accepted to serve in all branches of the armed forces, a small number often deplored in letters by military personnel in North Africa and even more so in the Pacific Islands.²¹

One of the numerous tasks of rabbis in uniform was to raise troop morale—for Jews and non-Jews alike, as chaplains performed interdenominational services for all faiths. Chaplain Earl Stone, who served in the early days of the North African campaign, remained in a trench under constant fire for some fifty days until the unit whose fate he shared was relieved. Chaplain Irving Tepper boosted the morale of an infantry unit that was the first to enter Bizerte, Tunisia. He was later killed in action in France by a Nazi fragmentation bomb. These rabbis in uniform were the first representatives of American Jewry to make contact with local Jewish communities. In Morocco and Algeria, Jewish soldiers could not all be put up with well-to-do French-speaking members of the Jewish community for the Sabbath and Jewish holidays. Some were sent to the narrow streets of the Kasbah, the poor Jewish quarter, which GIs referred to as “ghettos” in their personal accounts. They often experienced a joyous, colorful, warm welcome as men, women, and children kissed their sleeves. Some locals would shout “me Jew too,” seeking a shared empathy to which many soldiers responded with a “spontaneous understanding,” movingly expressed in their written testimonies. Other locals would venture the well-known Hebrew phrase “Shalom Aleichem!” In a letter, Chaplain Earl Stone wrote that he rejoiced to find in Oran a “very fine Jewish community with a most gorgeous synagogue.” Most Jewish soldiers were deeply moved by the warmth of encounters with local Jews.²² In turn, they impressed a generation of Jews from French North Africa, eventually recognized as Holocaust survivors by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany. The author vividly remembers hearing her parents, then young teenagers, elaborate tales describing the meaningful interactions they had with American soldiers.

The landing of American and British troops in Casablanca, Oran, and Algiers on November 8, 1942—known as Operation Torch—thwarted the Vichy Regime’s plan for the deportation of Jews from French North Africa and uplifted the mood of the local Jewish population. As a chaplain, Louis Werfel observed that “it was an inspiring sight to watch those French-speaking, Sephardic-familied youngsters, about 200 of them, singing the same Palestinian songs that our youngsters sing back in the US.” On a foggy day in December 1943, Werfel was killed in an airplane crash as he was flying to conduct a service in a remote place.²³

My examination of chaplains’ multifaceted role demonstrates how these rabbis at war rekindled the flame of Judaism and helped the American military understand the unique needs of Jewish service members.²⁴ Organizing Jewish holiday observance was easier in Europe, North Africa, or India, where Jewish communities existed, than in the Pacific. The JWB planned Passover observance for most places overseas where Jews were serving. General Eisenhower himself oversaw the delivery of one thousand packages of kosher Passover food to bedridden patients in the European theater of operations. As we will discover, the Pacific Islands’ hot climate and hostile environment did not deter service members from celebrating the Jewish New Year and Passover in 1943.

This picture would not be complete without “the story the figures tell,” as Isidore Kaufman, a distinguished war reporter aptly put it. Interpreting the findings of the National Jewish Welfare Board’s War Records Bureau, he emphasized the contributions of the Jewish men and women in the American armed forces during World War II. Overall, the Jewish casualties among American forces—the dead, wounded, captured, and missing in action—authenticated up to July 1, 1946, amounted to more than 35,000. Of the 10,500 Jews who died in service, 8,000 fell in combat. As with their non-Jewish fellow GIs, the loss was cruelly felt within the family unit. More than fifty Jewish families lost two sons—and one family lost three. Medals awarded posthumously were of little comfort. Patriotism was so intense in some Jewish families that four families contributed eight members each to the military, while nineteen numbered six members in the armed forces. Some 36,000 Jews in uniform received awards for valor and merit. These figures somehow indicate their love for their country and willingness to sacrifice for the United States.²⁵

Throughout history and in various countries, Jews have fulfilled their obligations to serve in the military—whether in times of peace or war. Both in France and French North Africa, Jews defended French soil. In the British Empire and the Soviet Union, a common enemy united Jewish servicemen and servicewomen: Nazi Germany, whose goal was to annihilate Jews worldwide. Derek Penslar points out an important difference between the two world wars. During World War I, Jews fought other Jews. During World War II, over one and a half million Jews joined the Allied forces; a third fought in the US Armed Forces and another third served in the Russian army. The rest were mostly from Europe, the largest group of which comprised about one hundred thousand Polish Jewish soldiers. They fought (in vain) in defense of their country against the massive German invasion that began on September 1, 1939.²⁶

One of the questions this study raises concerns Jewish self-identification and its implications. The book’s thematic chapters variously address this question for Jewish service members based on letters and personal narratives. Scholars who have focused on Russian Jews in the military often emphasize that Russian servicemen and women considered themselves fervent patriots. The example of the twenty-one-year-old fighter pilot and heroine Lidiya Vladimirovna Litvyak is revealing. Litvyak was posthumously awarded the “Hero of the Soviet Union” decoration in 1990 by President Mikhail Gorbachev. Russian female fighter pilots were the only women who engaged in combat during World War II. The Germans nicknamed them “The Night Witches,” as they dropped bombs on enemy territory through the veil of darkness. Born in Moscow to Russian Jewish parents, Litvyak seemed to have internalized from her school years the essence of “motherland.” Russia became her allegorical mother, inherent in the perception of her identity. Yet her Jewishness may have strengthened her relentless determination to shoot down German planes.²⁷

Letters from Soviet Jews serving in the military reveal that Jews felt compelled to prove their use to the motherland by being intrepid combatants. The state viewed them as Jews—even if they did not identify with Jewish culture and religion.²⁸ Since Jews like Lidiya Litvyak felt more vulnerable than other citizens, they were eager to prove that they were capable of heroic feats during World War II. Therefore, they volunteered for dangerous missions, as did Jewish soldiers in all the Allied armies. The significant participation of Jews in the Red Army and the great number of decorations and promotions they received confirm that stance. During World War II, 154 Jews received the award of Hero of the Soviet Union, the highest military honor.²⁹ Jews’ patriotic duty to the Red Army was heightened by news of the Nazi annihilation of European Jewry, which gave rise to the formation of a Jewish division in February 1943, led by Abram Margolis, commissar of the Thirty-Second Infantry Division.³⁰

Several testimonies show that assimilated French Jews in the Free French Forces volunteered first and foremost out of patriotism. This was the case of André Zirnheld, a Jew of Alsatian origin born in Paris in 1913 who served as a member of the Free French Air Force in the French Squadron, Special Air Service (SAS). At the outbreak of the war in 1939, Zirnheld, then working as a philosophy professor, was sent to Lebanon, where he joined an antiaircraft unit. After the French surrender, he joined the Free French Forces in British Mandatory Palestine. He was assigned to the First Colonial Infantry Battalion and served as a private in the battle of Sidi Barrani (December 10–11, 1940), the first British attack of the western desert campaign. Sent to the French Congo for officer training, he finished the course with the rank of lieutenant. After training as a paratrooper, he fought behind enemy lines with the Third French SAS. He died in combat in 1942 in Benghazi, Libya, during the North African campaign. On his last mission to destroy enemy planes, he and his team successfully planted explosives on six German bombers. He is remembered for his poem “The Prayer,” which became known as “The Prayer of the Paratrooper.” It was found in a notebook on his body, buried in a sand dune in the desert. In collective memory, Lieutenant Zirnheld remains the first French paratrooper officer killed in action. His Jewish identity (duly kept in the private sphere in secular France) has largely been ignored or rendered invisible. The prayer he addressed to God has been adopted by French paratroopers and the Foreign Legion. It is either recited or sung by heart. Other French Jewish paratroopers included Commanding Officer Maurice Rheims, born in 1910 and miraculously released from the French detention camp of Drancy, later known as the “antechamber of death” for Jews deported from France. The son of a French general in World War I, he distinguished himself as a member of the Free French Forces with the Allied troops in Algiers. Of the four hundred paratroopers serving there, about one hundred were Jews, including fifteen officers. French Jews accounted for 10 percent of the Allied Intelligence Service, whereas they only represented 1 percent of the French population. The highest military honors were accorded to these French patriots and heroes, such as the Médaille Militaire, Croix de Guerre, and Médaille de la Résistance.³¹

Conflicting feelings arose among British Jewish soldiers in the immediate postwar period. For instance, Woolf Marmot, a patriotic serviceman in the British army, refused to intercept a ship of Holocaust survivors bound for the Jewish homeland in Palestine. He commented on his dilemma with an understatement: “Being a Jewish British soldier sent to Palestine was not a pleasant job.” Fortunately, his commanding officer was understanding and transferred him. He knew that Woolf had been among the first soldiers to fight at Anzio, Italy, in 1943, where he was wounded.³² This brief comparison between countries helps understand how Jewish service members coped with issues linked with the hyphenation of American Jewish identity.

Chapter 1 concentrates on what motivated Jewish men and women to enlist. While fighting the Nazis was meaningful for most American Jews, service members also had to wage a battle against the negative portrayal of Jews as draft dodgers, cowards, and poor military material. Besides patriotism, some Jewish youth were motivated to enlist to suppress self-doubts about their capabilities as soldiers. This desire may be one reason why a significant number volunteered for frontline duty or dangerous missions. The refugees who fled Nazism displayed the greatest motivation to defeat Hitler. Their determination added to the patriotism they felt for their new country.

Chapter 2 focuses on servicemen and servicewomen’s choice to be identified as Jews. This decision impacted whether they would be buried according to Jewish law. It also affected the accuracy of the registered number of Jewish casualties and Jewish participation in World War II. In October 1944, a group of fifty Jewish soldiers, GIs among them, expressed a vital urge to pray together—on German soil. The first broadcast of Jewish religious service from Nazi Germany, near Aachen and under enemy artillery fire, testifies to the need to affirm the Jewish faith, the essence of which lies in its perpetual reaffirmation.

Chapter 3 describes the experiences and hardships of Jewish servicewomen, who were among the nearly 350,000 American women serving in uniform in World War II. WACs were sent throughout North Africa, Europe, and the Philippines, serving on bases or close to the front. Although they were not sent overseas, WASP members were the first women in history to fly military aircraft. The chapter appraises the capabilities and selflessness of women pilots, mechanics, and flight nurses and the dangerous missions they undertook. Through letters, interviews, and narratives, Jewish servicewomen highlighted the nontraditional roles they played in these positions and the hurdles they had to overcome.

Chapter 4 discusses anti-Jewish attitudes in the military, shedding light on various ways in which soldiers responded to slurs they perceived as antisemitic and on the impact of this hostility on their Jewish identity. Instead of encouraging the suppression of identification as Jewish, anti-Jewish attitudes may have led to the reawakening or appearance of feelings of religiosity. The chapter also examines what the concept of heroism meant for American Jewish soldiers. Heroism as a response to prejudice appears throughout the artworks of celebrated artist Arthur Szyk, exhibited at over five hundred recreation centers intended for GIs.

Chapter 5 analyzes soldiers’ diverse encounters with Jewish communities in North Africa during and after Operation Torch in November 1942. It articulates how meeting Jews abroad not only broadened soldiers’ horizons but also helped them fight homesickness. Whether in the home of French Jews in Algeria for Sabbath meals and Jewish festivals or in Morocco or Tunisia, these encounters played an important role in encouraging soldiers to engage in the war.

The Pacific theater is the setting for chapter 6. Even in hostile territory, the Jewish New Year was observed and endowed with deep, cathartic meaning. A glimpse into the Jewish community of Manila in the Philippines is provided through three in-depth accounts of American soldiers, while testimonies of two former GIs transport us to India—Bombay and Calcutta—during the war in the Pacific. The chapter also unveils how, in 1946, the ceremony of the New Year of the Trees became part of the rehabilitation program for the devastated island of Okinawa. Chaplain Moshe Sachs and the American Jewish servicemen on the island took the unusual initiative to plant trees with the participation of local Japanese high school children.

What gave Jewish POWs of the Japanese the strength to survive in horrific conditions? Were their encounters with chaplains (both Jewish and non-Jewish) of any help? In what ways did Jewish POW experiences of captivity in the Pacific differ from those of POWs of Jewish origin in Germany? These questions are addressed in chapter 7, which details how Jewishness provided POWs with a form of spiritual resilience.

Chapter 8 examines how camaraderie helped service members overcome the stress of war, anguish, and hunger. Through various examples, I explore the bonds of GIs (among them infantrymen and flying crews) who shared the experience of battle and captivity. Jewish servicewomen, too, suffered the ordeal of internment under the Japanese. In these exceptional circumstances, wartime contacts among Jews and Christians broke through barriers of prejudice. In a significant case study, the postwar impact of camaraderie between Jews and non-Jews was found to extend even to the families of sympathetic Japanese guards in POW camps. This camaraderie also involved Japanese Americans—Nisei—who helped secure crucial intelligence and, like the Ritchie Boys, save American lives.

Fig. Intro.1 World War II Europe, 1943. Courtesy of The United States Military Academy Department of History. Public domain.