My experiences, which were fairly typical throughout, showed clearly the great need for Jewish chaplains in the army overseas. Even my trip on leave to the Riviera was typical, showing the effect of release from discipline combined with a pleasure trip on thousands of our soldiers, most of whom needed it far more than I; for the privileges of a chaplain, just a little greater than those of most officers, certainly had prevented my morale falling as low as that of many of the enlisted men. The Jewish chaplain was not only a concession to the very considerable body of Jewish citizens who felt that they should be represented in the military organization as well as men of other faiths; he had a definite contribution to make to the moral and spiritual welfare of the forces. We had to conduct Jewish religious services for both holydays and ordinary seasons, to assist the dying Jew, and to pray for him at his grave. We had to defend the Jewish boys in the rare cases of prejudice against them, or, what was just as important, to clear up such accusations when they were unfounded. We had to serve the special needs of the Jewish soldier, whatever they might be, at the same time that we did the chaplain's duty toward all soldiers with whom we might be thrown.
The American Expeditionary Forces never had sufficient chaplains at any time for the work that was planned for them. The proportion desired by the G. H. Q. Chaplains' Office and approved by the war department was one chaplain to every thousand men, or one to an infantry battalion, besides those assigned to administrative work as senior chaplains of divisions and areas, and the very large number detailed to hospitals. The total number of chaplains who went to France was 1285, just half the number needed by this program, and from this total we must subtract a considerable group of deaths, wounds and other casualties. The chaplains' corps was undermanned at all times,—we Jews were simply the most conspicuous example. Compared to the general proportion of one chaplain to every two thousand men, and the ideal one of a chaplain to every thousand, we had one chaplain to every eight thousand men, and those tremendous numbers were not even concentrated in a few units but scattered through every company, every battery, and every hospital ward in the army.
The British forces contained one Jewish chaplain for every army headquarters, or nine in all. I had the pleasure of meeting Rabbi Barnett, the chief Jewish chaplain in the B. E. F., although I never met his predecessor, Major Adler. Through their long experience and the coöperation of the Chief Rabbi of England, the English chaplains were well equipped with suitable prayerbooks and other material, which I obtained from one of them for the use of our men while I was on the British front. Still, even with their larger proportion of chaplains to the Jews in service, the lack of transportationfacilities and the tremendous rush of war-time, especially at the front and in the hospitals, made their actual duties impossible of complete fulfillment.
To cover the enormous field before us was plainly impossible. The chaplain could only work day by day, clearing a little pathway ahead of him but never making an impression on the great jungle about. When I first reached France, I grew accustomed to the greeting: "Why, you're the first Jewish chaplain I've met in France!" That was hard enough then, but it grew harder when the same words were addressed me in Brest just before sailing and on shipboard on the way home. And yet it was inevitable that twelve chaplains could not meet personally the hundred thousand Jewish soldiers scattered through the two millions in the American uniform through the length and breadth of France. Under these circumstances we all feel a natural pride at the work accomplished against adverse conditions. I for one feel that we did all that twelve men similarly situated could possibly have done, and I gladly bring my personal tribute to those others, chaplains, welfare workers, officers, and enlisted men, whose coöperation doubled and trebled the actual extent and effectiveness of our work. This includes especially the Christian chaplains and welfare workers; their own field was great enough to take all their time and energy, but they were always ready to turn aside for a moment to lend a hand to us, in order that the labors of twelve men serving their faith in the great American army might not be quite futile.
The first of the Jewish chaplains to reach Francewas Rabbi Elkan C. Voorsanger, who gave up his pulpit in St. Louis in April, 1917, to join the St. Louis Base Hospital as a private in the medical corps. As his hospital unit was the third to reach France in May, 1917, Rabbi Voorsanger was one of the first five hundred American soldiers in the American Expeditionary Forces. In the medical corps he rose from private to sergeant, gaining at the same time an intimate first-hand knowledge of the problems of the man in the ranks. When the bill was passed by Congress in November, 1917, ordering the appointment of chaplains of sects not at that time represented in the army, Rabbi Voorsanger was the first Jew commissioned under its provisions. He was examined by a special board appointed overseas by General Pershing at the direction of the Secretary of War; his commission was dated November 24th, 1917. In January 1918 he was assigned to the 41st Division and in March to Base Hospital 101 at St. Nazaire. While posted there he conducted his first important service overseas in Passover 1918, the first official Jewish service held in the A. E. F. He was assigned to the 77th Division in May 1918 on their arrival in France where he served with a most enviable record, receiving the Croix de Guerre and being recommended for the D. S. M. for exceptional courage and devotion to duty in time of danger. The midnight patrol on the banks of the Meuse, by which he won these honors, was both a courageous and a useful exploit. He was promoted to Senior Chaplain of his division with the rank of Captain, the only Jew so distinguished. Finally in April 1919, instead of accompanying his division home he resigned his commission to becomethe head of the overseas work of the Jewish Welfare Board. He returned to the United States in September 1919, after two and a half years with the American Expeditionary Forces. Since that time he has continued his self-sacrifice and his devotion to his people in the service of the Joint Distribution Committee for the Relief of Jews in eastern Europe. In 1920 and 1921 he conducted two relief units to Poland and carried on their life-saving work.
When I arrived in France, Chaplain Voorsanger was stationed at Chaumont for the time being, to take charge of the arrangements for the Jewish holydays of 1918. I have already described how these were carried out, by designating central points for services, getting in touch with the French rabbis and synagogue authorities and assigning the few American rabbis at hand to fill in the deficiencies.
I was the fifth Jewish chaplain to reach France. Those who preceded me were first Voorsanger and then Chaplains David Tannenbaum of the 82nd Division, Harry S. Davidowitz of the 78th and Louis I. Egelson of the 91st. All these men served at the front, as did also Chaplain Benjamin Friedman of the 77th Division, who took up the Jewish work of that unit when Chaplain Voorsanger was promoted to the Senior Chaplaincy. Chaplain Davidowitz was the only Jewish chaplain to be wounded, receiving severe injuries from shrapnel; these put him in the hospital for several months and occasioned his being sent back home, invalided, the first of us all. The others, in order of their arrival, were Chaplains Jacob Krohngold, of the 87th Division; Israel Bettan of the 26th Division; Harry Richmond, at the port of Bordeaux; Elias N. Rabinowitz, at Blois; SolomonB. Freehof, at First Army Headquarters; and James G. Heller, at Le Mans. The last two left New York on the day following the armistice, so that on November eleventh, 1918, the Jews of America were represented overseas by just ten chaplains and two representatives of the Jewish Welfare Board, Rev. Dr. Hyman G. Enelow and Mr. John Goldhaar.
The twelve of us represented all three Jewish seminaries in this country, although the majority were naturally from the oldest, the Hebrew Union College at Cincinnati, where Rabbi Freehof was even a member of the faculty. We came from every section of the country, east, west and south, including Krohngold and myself from little towns in Kentucky and Richmond from Trinidad, Colorado. Rabbi Richmond had the unusual distinction of not claiming exemption in the draft as a minister. He therefore entered the service as a private and was promoted to the chaplaincy just before his division went overseas.
The chaplains who were commissioned before the armistice and served in the United States were thirteen in number; Rabbis Nathan E. Barasch, Harry W. Etteleson, Max Felshin, Samuel Friedman, Raphael Goldenstein, Abram Hirschberg, Morris S. Lazaron, Emil W. Leipziger, Julius A. Liebert, Abraham Nowak, Jerome Rosen, Leonard W. Rothstein, Israel J. Sarasohn. Three of them, Rabbis Rothstein, Felshin and Barasch, soon after resigned their commissions and came overseas as representatives of the Jewish Welfare Board. When the great need for morale agencies was realized after the armistice, the War Department refused to relax its prohibition against the transportation of more chaplainsor other special branches of the service, but favored the passage of large numbers of welfare workers instead. Rabbi David Goldberg was the only Jewish chaplain in the navy, with the rank of Lieutenant, junior grade; he served at sea on the transport, President Grant.
We were almost all reassigned as our divisions left for home and as the need grew in various areas, especially in the base posts and the Army of Occupation. Chaplain Davidowitz was sent home wounded, and Friedman accompanied his own division back. Krohngold, Bettan, Heller and Freehof joined the Army of Occupation in the order named, although for a long time Rabbi Krohngold was the only Jewish chaplain there. Rabbi Egelson left his division for the port of St. Nazaire, Rabinowitz was transferred from Blois to St. Aignan, and I was left behind at Le Mans together with Heller, who shortly after was transferred to the Third Army in Germany. Tannenbaum while stationed at Bordeaux was also, by special arrangement, appointed as supervisor of the Jewish Welfare Board for that area; and Voorsanger was mustered out of service to become executive director of their overseas work. Rabbi Richmond alone held the same post to the very end of his overseas service.
As I have mentioned repeatedly in my personal narrative, so long as a man was assigned to one division he had some chance of establishing personal contacts with his men and doing effective work among them; as soon as he was assigned to an area, he had to spread himself thin over a wide expanse of territory and could cover it in only the most cursory fashion. The problem was larger than thematter of transportation, although that was serious enough. The larger aspect lay in the number of men, the number of companies, the infinite possibility of individual service if one were only able to know all these soldiers personally, to understand their needs, and to minister to them. Every hospital ward with its forty beds presented forty distinct individual problems,—often, indeed, more than forty. Sometimes the same man would need pay, mail, home allotment, reading matter, and contact with his original unit and comrades. With the constant shifting to other hospitals further from the front and then to convalescent camps, the ward would always contain a new forty men and the work was always beginning over again. This situation was not in the least unique. The hospital simply represents the extreme case of what was true in a less degree in every branch of the service and every unit.
During the post-armistice period I had several very agreeable reunions with my fellow chaplains, which were at the same time valuable for our common information and coöperation. At my very first visit to Le Mans, on December 6th, I quite unexpectedly met Chaplains Freehof, Bettan, and Heller, as well as Rabbi Enelow, who had just come to the city for the dedication of the J. W. B. headquarters. I devoured their comparatively fresh news from home as eagerly as Voorsanger had absorbed mine several months before, when he was already entering his second year in France. The second time was on the last day of the year, when I met Rabbis Friedman, Egelson and Rabinowitz in Paris, all coming there as I did for the cars whichthe J. W. B. had ready for us. At the same time Rabbis Martin Meyer of San Francisco and Abram Simon of Washington were in the city, both captains in the American Red Cross. Their six months of duty in France had just expired and they were then making ready for their return home. We all had dinner together at one of the famous Parisian restaurants and discussed war and peace, France, America and Israel, until the early closing laws of war-time sent us all out on the boulevards and home. Chaplain Egelson and I saw the New Year in together, first hearing "Romeo and Juliet" at the Opéra and then watching the mad crowds on the streets, headed always by American or Australian soldiers, the maddest of them all.
The most important meeting, however, was the one called by Chaplain Voorsanger for February 24th at the Paris headquarters of the Jewish Welfare Board. Six chaplains were present, Voorsanger, Tannenbaum, Richmond, Heller, Bettan and I, together with Mr. John Goldhaar of the J. W. B. Our chief object was to work out a program of coöperation with the J. W. B., our second, to discuss our personal methods for the benefit of our own work. Voorsanger was chairman; we decided to form a Jewish Chaplains' Association, which never developed afterward; and planned to hold another meeting soon, which owing to military exigencies, we never did. But we did adopt a program of coöperation with the J. W. B., which indicates the mutual dependency and the closeness of contact which were almost uniformly the case. Our program provided that the J. W. B. should submit to the chaplain the weekly report of the area in whichhe was stationed and should have relations with the military authorities through him. The chaplain, on the other hand, was to make suggestions to the worker in his area, and in exceptional cases to the Paris office and was to be in complete charge of all Jewish religious work in his area, although religious workers were personally responsible to their superior in the J. W. B. Finally, provision was made for frequent conferences between the chaplain and the J. W. B. worker in the same organization. This program was approved, not only nominally but also in spirit by all the Jewish chaplains and welfare workers throughout the A. E. F. I know that in Le Mans our contact was so close that Mr. Rivitz instructed his religious workers to report directly to me for assignment of services and other division of labor, and I included their work with mine in my weekly reports to my senior chaplain.
On my final visit to Paris at the end of April I found a host of Jewish celebrities gathered together in the interests of the Jewish Welfare Board, the Joint Distribution Committee for the relief of Jews in Eastern Europe, the American Jewish Committee, and the American Jewish Congress. At the office of the J. W. B., I had a farewell conference with Rabbi Voorsanger and Colonel Harry Cutler, giving them a summary of the latest situation in my area. Colonel Cutler was busy as chairman of the J. W. B., one of the American Jewish Congress delegates to the Peace Conference, and a member of the Joint Distribution Committee. I met my old friend, Rabbi Isaac Landman, who was reporting the Peace Conference for his paper, the American Hebrew, and he introduced me in turn to Miss Harriet Lowenstein,at that time the Paris purchasing agent of the Joint Distribution Committee, especially in the important work of buying supplies originally sent to Europe for the use of the American forces. I encountered also three of the active workers of American Jewry, sent to represent us before the Peace Conference in such matters as might concern the Jews; Judge Julian Mack, representing the American Jewish Congress; Dr. Cyrus Adler, for the American Jewish Committee; and Mr. Louis Marshall, a representative of both organizations. The two last were also active in the Jewish Welfare Board, and Dr. Adler, vice-chairman of the Board, took charge as the representative of the Board after Colonel Cutler's departure for the States. Even on the ship going home I met two Jewish workers, Rabbi B. Levinthal of the American Jewish Congress delegation and Mr. Morris Engelman, returning from his work in Holland for the Joint Distribution Committee. By that time world Jewry was fully aroused and its delegates were busy, both at the seat of the Peace Conference and in the lands of eastern Europe, where Jewish suffering was becoming daily more intense.
The Jewish Welfare Board in the United States Army and Navy was the great authorized welfare agency to represent the Jews of America, as the Young Men's Christian Association represented the Protestants and the Knights of Columbus the Catholics. It was organized on April 9, 1917, just three days after the declaration of war, and was acknowledged by the Department of War as the official welfare body of the Jews in September, 1917. It was not so much a new organization as a new activity of a number of the leading Jewish organizations of the United States: the United Synagogue of America, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations, the Agudath ha-Rabbonim, the Jewish Publication Society of America, the council of Y. M. H. and Kindred Associations, the Council of Jewish Women, the Independent Order B'nai B'rith, the Jewish Chautauqua Society, the Order Brith Abraham, the National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods, the New York Board of Jewish Ministers, the Independent Order Brith Sholom, the Independent Order Brith Abraham, and the Women's League of the United Synagogue. In the camps and cantonments at home it did a large and important piece of work, establishing490 representatives at 200 different posts and putting up 48 buildings for its work at various important points. This great field, however, is outside the scope of the present study, which can take up only the overseas activities of the J. W. B.
One home organization must be mentioned in this place, the Chaplains' Committee which made recommendations to the War Department for the appointment of Jewish chaplains. This was composed of representatives of the leading religious bodies of the country: for the Central Conference of American Rabbis, Dr. William Rosenau and Dr. Louis Grossman; the United Synagogue of America, Dr. Elias L. Solomon; Eastern Council of Reform Rabbis, Dr. Maurice H. Harris; the New York Board of Jewish Ministers, Dr. David de Sola Pool; the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations, Dr. Bernard Drachman; the Agudath ha-Rabbonim, Rabbi M. S. Margolies. Dr. Cyrus Adler, the Acting President of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, was chairman of this committee. They had the task of reviewing the applications of one hundred and forty-nine rabbis, of whom thirty-four were recommended to the War Department and twenty-five were commissioned by the time the armistice put an end to more appointments. I have already given in some detail the story of the twelve of us who served in the A. E. F., while the other thirteen did their service in cantonments in the United States.
The Jewish Welfare Board began to take up the overseas problem as early as August, 1917, when Rabbi Voorsanger, then Sergeant in the Army Medical Corps, received a letter from Colonel Harry Cutler, asking for such information as he had at commandand also how far he might be able to coöperate personally with the Jewish work. Some months later, after Voorsanger had been appointed chaplain he was again asked for information. This time he was in a position to give a great deal together with recommendations. A certain amount of supplies was furnished him at once, but no welfare workers were sent until the overseas commission had made its investigation and report.
The overseas commission of the Jewish Welfare Board, consisting of Congressman Isaac N. Siegel, chairman, Rabbi H. G. Enelow, Rabbi Jacob Kohn, and Mr. John Goldhaar, secretary, went to France in July, 1918, and were the first friends I met when I reached Paris. Their general work was to study the nature and scope of the overseas field so as to make recommendations on their return; incidentally to this, they were to establish contact with kindred organizations and with the army, open headquarters, and coöperate with the chaplains in the field in the holyday services. They made their surveys during the summer by constant traveling and numerous interviews with officers and welfare workers as well as with Jews in the service. Congressman Siegel made a trip to General Pershing's headquarters and to the sector then occupied by the 77th Division, where Chaplain Voorsanger was taken into consultation regarding the problems ahead. The Congressman then returned to America, while Mr. Goldhaar was left as executive secretary pro tem of the Paris office and Rabbis Kohn and Enelow conducted holyday services at different points. Afterward Dr. Kohn also returned home, and Dr. Enelow devoted himself to field work, establishing welfare centersat various points. Later on, when the army educational program was undertaken, he became the J. W. B. representative on the faculty of the Army University at Beaune. Dr. Enelow was recommended for a chaplaincy by the J. W. B. Chaplains' Committee, but was among those prevented by the armistice from receiving the rank. Meanwhile he labored in any capacity at hand, for he was determined not to return to America while work remained to be done among the soldiers in France.
All this was entirely inadequate for the task at hand, as we all realized at the time. At that time the J. W. B. was functioning in the overseas forces, not as a separate entity, but through the Y. M. C. A. This naturally prevented the full expansion of its independent viewpoint or the direct contact with the army officials which alone could give it standing. The arrival of the overseas commission made some difference in this respect, but the J. W. B. was not fully recognized as one of the responsible overseas welfare organizations until Colonel Harry Cutler, its national chairman, had come to France and presented his case at General Pershing's headquarters. There were more than the usual difficulties with passports and visés, owing to the German or Austrian ancestry of some of the most desirable workers; this was finally overcome by the chairman of the Board vouching personally for the loyalty of every individual recommended. The selection was limited, as with all welfare organizations, to men not subject to draft. With these obstacles the difficulties proved for the time insuperable.
This situation made it impossible for the J. W. B. to undertake any independent work before the armistice.It could only support and assist the work already being done by chaplains and by the dozens of ready volunteers among the officers and enlisted men themselves. The early history of Jewish welfare work abroad is that of a scattered band of eager, self-sacrificing workers who gave up their own time to labor incessantly for the welfare of the Jewish men in the service. The first task was to acquaint the soldiers with the fact that there was a Jewish Welfare Board, even though its Paris staff consisted only of Mr. Goldhaar, one stenographer and one office boy. Advertisements in theStars and Stripesand the Paris editions of American newspapers and correspondence with Jewish and non-Jewish chaplains, American, French and British, did the work. Letters began to pour in for supplies, advice, information, and a great correspondence school of welfare work began.
The center of this work was naturally the Paris club rooms, in connection with the office at 41 Boulevarde Haussman. Mr. John Goldhaar was in immediate charge of both, with a mountain of mail on his desk from every part of the A. E. F. and a constant crowd of doughboys outside in the club rooms. His indefatigable labors and his profound sympathy for the boys in the service won him thousands of friends through the length and breadth of the forces. He continued in this position, with its constantly growing duties, until Captain Voorsanger was appointed Overseas Director of the J. W. B., when Mr. Goldhaar was made Overseas Field Director and put in charge of the field work. His Medaille d'Honneur from the French government was earned by the hardest and most valuable kind of war work. Mr.Goldhaar gathered about him in the Paris club rooms a group of American Jewesses and a few of their French coreligionists as an entertainment committee to make the boys feel at home. Every afternoon they served tea—a little thing in itself, but a big one to lonesome boys without a friend nearby. It meant much effort, too, on the part of the ladies themselves, especially their leaders, Mrs. Ralph Stern, Mrs. Zacharie Eudlitz, Mrs. Engelman and Mrs. Hertz. Some of them came from the suburbs every afternoon, rain or shine, to render this devoted service. Monsieur and Madame Henri Bodenheimer opened their hearts and their homes, both in Paris and Tours, to receive the Americans; every Friday evening saw their table crowded with lonesome "buck" privates, especially the ones whom other people would overlook. With the assistance of these same people hospital visitation was begun. A registration book in the office began to fill up with the names of Jewish soldiers and officers, and letters sent home recorded the fact of their visits and often established an important connection for the welfare of the men themselves.
At the same time, among the hundreds of letter-writers and visitors eager to do something, anything, for their fellow-soldiers, a few began to stand out here and there as effective and central workers. The soldiers were always ready to coöperate; I found that out from my first service at Nevers to my last at Le Mans. So it was only natural that far more of them volunteered for this work than I can possibly mention. I shall simply have to speak of a few outstanding names, and leave it to the imagination of the reader to multiply these examplesmany times. In Chaumont there was Field Clerk A. S. Weisberger, formerly of Scranton, Pa. "Sandy" Weisberger mimeographed a little newspaper, the "Junior Argus," for his fellow-soldiers from Scranton; organized the Jewish soldiers atG. H. Q.for services and sociability; and referred any number of men to the Jewish Welfare Board for such advice or assistance as it could give. He was later mustered out of service to become aJ. W. B.worker and met his death most tragically by an accident in the Paris headquarters, during the festivities of Passover week, 1919.
In Dijon there was a group, Major Jacob Jablons, Medical Corps; Miss Bessie Spanner, a regular army nurse; and Sergeant J. Howard Lichtenstein, of Baker Co. 339. They organized hospital visiting in the many hospital centers in that area, celebration of the high holydays, Simchath Torah parties, and group gatherings of all kinds. This work was spontaneous and needed only supplies of stationery, prayerbooks and the like to make it completely effective, furnishing a fertile field for the welfare workers when they opened their community center there. By that time the two last were also in the service of the Welfare Board, Miss Spanner in the unique position of head of the women workers overseas. In Tours the outstanding figure was Colonel Max B. Wainer, at that time a Major. He gathered a group of active workers among the soldiers, used the local synagogue as a center, and organized a full welfare program, including Friday evening services and round table discussions, hospital visiting, and distribution of stationery and prayerbooks. I dropped in at Tours for a day to arrange for the holyday services; the localcommittee of soldiers saw that special meals were provided for the Jewish men; and the bills were paid by the Jewish Welfare Board.
In the Le Mans area, which before the armistice was used as a classification camp from which soldiers were sent as replacements to units in the field, the first Jewish work was started by Sergeant Charles S. Rivitz of Army Post Office 762 through the aid and assistance of his commanding officer, Lieutenant Willing of Cleveland. Lieutenant (later Captain) Willing, though a non-Jew, had taken a deep interest in the Jewish men in his unit while still in camp in the States and continued this interest to France. With the approval of Gen. Glenn, in command of the area, Rivitz was detailed to the Jewish Welfare Board under the supervision of the senior chaplain of the area and Capt. Willing. Sergeant Rivitz was not a social worker at all, but had one source of strength which made his good will effective. He was a soldier, had attained his sergeancy through force of personality; he knew what the soldiers wanted and insisted on giving it to them. He rented a château as a club house largely on his own responsibility, and the Jewish Welfare Board soon found that both the structure and his method of conducting it were excellent. His chief assistant was Corporal George Rooby, who after his discharge from the service volunteered for the first unit of the Joint Distribution Committee in Poland, and continued serving Jewry there.
In fighting units also the Jewish officers and enlisted men were early active in welfare work. Two officers occur to me whose work I saw personally; undoubtedly there were many others with the same sortof interest. Captain Leon Schwartz of the 123rd Infantry, 31st Division, was active from the outset in his own division and the Le Mans area. Later, during the time when the army was trying every means to keep up the morale of the troops, and the temporary organization of "Comrades in Service" was being pushed through theG. H. Q.Chaplains' Office, Captain Schwartz was assigned to this work as the Jewish representative, and addressed hundreds of gatherings of soldiers, together with the Catholic and Protestant spokesmen for morale and comradeship. In the 26th Division, the "Yankee Division," Captain Bernard I. Gorfinkle of the Judge Advocate's office was one of the first and most effective Jewish workers in France. Captain Gorfinkle organized an overseas branch of the New EnglandY. M. H. A., deriving his first funds from the Young Men's Hebrew Associations of New England. Later, when the Jewish Welfare Board arrived, he joined forces with its Paris office for the benefit of his men. Mr. Goldhaar tells how surprised he was after the battle of Château Thierry to be highly complimented for the work of theJ. W. B.in marking the Jewish graves. Of course, at that time no such work had yet been undertaken. On investigation he found that the graves of Jews of the 26th Division who fell in action had been marked with a crude Magen David by their comrades under the initiative of Captain Gorfinkle.
Wherever a Jewish chaplain existed the Welfare Board had a means of contact with the men. And here and there throughout the A. E. F., volunteers sprang up, establishing their little groups and doing their own work, large or small. In the 42nd Division,to cite only one more example, some of the boys came together and held holyday services during the actual campaign, and afterward instituted their own hospital visiting. But then came the armistice, and at the same time the passport difficulty was disposed of. Workers began to come; new plans were being issued daily by the army authorities; the whole viewpoint of the work was revolutionized and the facilities suddenly enlarged.
The determining factor was that troops were no longer being scattered for training and fighting but concentrated for their return home. Hence the J. W. B. centered its work on the American Embarkation Center and the base ports, established a line of centers in the chief points of the Service of Supply, and went with the Army of Occupation to Germany. The last to be supplied with workers were some of the combat divisions not in the organized areas. Thus the work grew. The club-house at Le Mans was dedicated on November 28, 1918, in the presence of Major General Glenn, with speeches by Dr. Enelow and the prefect of the Department of the Sarthe, and a vaudeville show and refreshments to wind up the evening. Buildings were rented in the ports of Brest, St. Nazaire, Bordeaux and Marseilles, and a line of centers established across France, from Le Mans on through Tours, St. Aignan, Gievres, Bourges, Beaune, Is-sur-Tille, Dijon and Chaumont. The headquarters for the Army of Occupation were at Coblenz, where the B'nai B'rith Building was employed and seven huts established through the area. Finally as workers continued coming, they were assigned to seven of the combat divisions, staying with them in their movements through France andsaying farewell only after the troops were embarked for home. These divisions were the 5th, 6th, 7th, 29th, 33rd, 79th, and 81st. When Antwerp became an important port for army supplies a center was established there as well.
Altogether the Jewish Welfare Board employed 102 men and 76 women in 57 different centers in the American Expeditionary Forces. Of this personnel, 24 men and one woman, Miss Spanner, were mustered out of the service for this purpose, while the others were transported from the States. Of the buildings, 23 were located in towns and were rented; the other 34 were provided by coöperation of other organizations, 28 by the U. S. Army, two by the Knights of Columbus, two by the Red Cross, one by the Y. M. C. A. and one by the Belgian Government. In camps rough barracks or tents were usually the thing; in cities the equipment varied, and in some places was complete with kitchen, dance hall, writing room, and offices.
I can speak of the large work in the Le Mans area through personal acquaintance. There the personality of Mr. Rivitz was the decisive factor. With his unerring knowledge of the soldier, he established at once the policy of everything free, which was soon adopted by the J. W. B. throughout its overseas work. Religious services were provided, hot chocolate and cigarettes served, contact established with thousands of soldiers for the personal needs which they brought to the welfare worker. As the needs of the area grew, other centers were established. When the 77th Division, with its thousands of Jews, was in the area, five huts were established in its various regiments and the men provided with everythingpossible right at home. In other units where the Jews were more scattered, the centers were at the Division Headquarters. In cases where units stopped in our area for only a few days or a week, an automobile load of supplies with two workers was sent out on an extensive trip, meeting the boys and giving them as much personal cheer and physical sustenance as possible under the circumstances.
I have described this type of activity several times in connection with my own personal story. Here and there, however, special personalities or incidents stand out in the constant, exhausting labor to which the workers subjected themselves in the terrific rush of the morale agencies during that period of waiting to go home. In Germany at the head of the work was Mr. Leo Mielziner, son of the late Professor Moses Mielziner of the Hebrew Union College, a man of high reputation as an artist and of commanding personality. Mr. Mielziner, who had two sons in the service, conducted the work in the Army of Occupation with the finest spirit of fellow-feeling for the enlisted man. Under his direction the Jewish Welfare Board maintained such a high standard that when the Red Cross closed its railroad canteens in the occupied territory the J. W. B. was requested by the army to take them over.
At Gievres, where the great bakeries of the A. E. F. were located, the J. W. B. was the center for the bakery units. So when Purim came both Jews and non-Jews coöperated in baking a gigantic cake for the celebration. The cake, which had to be baked in sections, occupied not only the stage but also an addition made for the purpose. It was cut into 10,000 portions and every man in that camp received a slice.As the crowning achievement of the A. E. F. bakeries, that Purim cake received a reputation of its own.
The Paris office, and still later the club rooms on Rue Clement Marot, were the entertainment center for the Paris district and all its many visitors. After its formal opening on Simchath Torah, every Sunday afternoon an entertainment was provided, with vaudeville, speeches or dancing, concluding with the famous chocolate layer cake made by volunteer workers among the American women living in Paris. The wounded were visited in the nearby hospitals and usually a group of convalescents was present in the front seats at the entertainment. The registrations in the big book served to unite many friends and brothers who had lost track of each other in the constantly moving wilderness of the A. E. F. A family wrote in from Kansas City that their son was complaining at not hearing from home; when the J. W. B. wrote him, it was his first news from home in his six months as a "casual" in France. Through the Paris office and the workers in the field the whole immense field of personal service and entertainment had to be covered, including much of the same work which was being done by the chaplains and in addition the furnishing of immense amounts of supplies which we and others could use up but could not provide.
During the high holydays the Paris clubrooms presented a remarkable mingling of Jewish soldiers of all the allied armies. Mixed with the olive drab and the navy blue of the United States were the Australians with their hats rakishly turned up on the side, the gray capes of the Italian, the French troops fromMorocco, the Russian in Cossack uniform, and a few Belgians. During Chanuka, which coincided with Thanksgiving in 1918, special services were held at the synagogue in the Rue de la Victoire, the largest in France. The synagogue was crowded with French men and women, all at a high pitch of enthusiasm, and with 350 American soldiers, the heroes of the occasion. The impressive service of the French rabbi was followed by a brilliant Thanksgiving sermon by Chaplain Voorsanger, who had been invited to come to Paris for the occasion. After services turkey and pumpkin pie were served at the club rooms, and while I was not there that day, I can testify that the pumpkin pie served at the Jewish Welfare Board on New Year's day, 1919, was one of the most poignant reminders of the United States during my stay abroad.
Due to the intense pressure of the situation, the actual volume of work done by the J. W. B. was surprisingly large. The entertainments and dances conducted at every center numbered fully 5,000, with an aggregate attendance of 2,750,000. Among the conspicuous units which toured the A. E. F. under Welfare Board auspices, was "Who Can Tell?" the Second Army show, which was underwritten by request of the Welfare Officer and was one of the most elaborate of the army musical comedies, with a full complement of chorus girls acted by husky doughboys; this production toured for five weeks and while in Paris was seen by President and Mrs. Wilson. There was the "Dovetail Troupe," a vaudeville unit which likewise went on tour. And there was the "Tuneful Trio," led by Mr. and Mrs. Henry Gideon of Boston, which cameto France under the Y. M. C. A., and gave many excellent concerts under J. W. B. auspices; I heard one of their programs in Le Mans and felt not only the musical excellence of their work, but also the special appeal of their program of Yiddish folk songs to the Jewish men; this troupe delivered 81 concerts to fully 60,000 men. The army educational work received much support in the various huts, and two of the best equipped men in the J. W. B. service were assigned to it, Dr. H. G. Enelow for the University of Beaune, and Professor David Blondheim of Johns Hopkins, for a time executive director of the overseas work, for the Sorbonne in Paris. The bulk of the daily work in the huts throughout France appears from the fact that 2,500,000 letterheads were distributed and refreshments served without charge to a total of 3,000,000 men.
The records of religious work are equally imposing, as 1,740 services were held, with a total attendance of 180,000 men. The constant coöperation with the chaplains meant that far more than these were indirectly influenced and aided. Eighteen thousand prayer books were distributed and ten thousand Bibles. On Passover of 1919 the J. W. B. provided unleavened bread (matzoth), which had been furnished through the Quartermaster Corps, for the Jewish soldiers in the American forces, as well as for French and Russian soldiers. The J. W. B. even provided matzoth for six thousand Russian prisoners in Germany during Passover of 1919. At the request of the military officials, the Jewish Welfare Board took charge of welfare work for the sixty thousand Russian troops in France, who had come originally as fighting units, but after thewithdrawal of Russia from the war had been transferred to agricultural labor. No other welfare agency had provided for them and so they were assigned to the J. W. B. which had a few workers who could speak Russian. It was rather ironical that these men in Cossack uniform, most of whom were non-Jews, received their only friendly service in France at the hands of the despised Jew.
The whole work of the J. W. B. abroad culminated in the Passover of 1919. The most intense moment for us chaplains had come during the high holydays when feeling was most profound and suspense at its deepest and when, in addition, we had to carry the burden almost unaided. By Passover the feeling had changed, the war was safely over, the men were rejoicing at their imminent return home, and we had the Jewish Welfare Board to arrange our celebration for us. Fully 30,000 of the Jews in the A. E. F. ate the Seder dinners furnished by the Welfare Board. I have already described our celebration at Le Mans, with its many features in which the J. W. B. and I worked together. A similar program was carried out everywhere. At Dijon Rabbi Schumacher of the local French synagogue, who had been most active throughout in the interest of the American soldiers, led a great congregation of 2,000 men through the rain to the synagogue for worship and afterward to the Seder tables. In Germany, the city of Coblenz became the leave area for soldiers of Jewish faith and was closed for all other furloughs during the three days. The Y. M. C. A. and the K. of C. assisted in giving proper honor to the Jewish festival and proper pleasures to the Jewish men, andwith their aid boat rides on the Rhine, entertainments in the Festhalle, and all the features of a full amusement program were provided.
Most striking of all was the great Seder at Paris, with its crowd of American, Australian, English, French and Italian soldiers, some of them former prisoners in Germany, all of them united in the great occasion of their faith. Among the speakers and the guests of honor were some of the great leaders of Jewry, as well as personal representatives of Marshall Foch and General Pershing. Colonel Harry Cutler, Mr. Louis Marshall, Judge Julian Mack, Dr. Cyrus Adler, and Dr. Chaim Weitzmann were there, as well as many other celebrities. At that time and in that place the highest honor for any man was to worship and eat side by side with the soldiers, who had carried love of their country and loyalty to their faith to the last extreme of service and of sacrifice.
Decoration Day of 1919, which was observed by all France together with its American visitors, was another important ceremony for the Jewish Welfare Board, together with its French hosts at the great synagogue on the Rue de la Victoire. The sermon was delivered by Rabbi Voorsanger, the service read by Rabbi Lévy of Paris; and again the great throng of Americans in uniform and their French friends joined in the common worship of their faith and the common exaltation of their patriotism.
In addition to the overseas commission and the men in the field, several of the prominent officers of the Jewish Welfare Board went to France at various times and took personal part in the work. The first was Mr. Mortimer L. Schiff, who spent the monthsof December 1918 and January 1919 in France as a member of the commission of eleven of the United War Work Organization, which had just completed its great financial drive. In that capacity Mr. Schiff was equally interested in all the welfare agencies; naturally, he gave the full benefit of his advice to the J. W. B. In February 1919 Colonel Harry Cutler, chairman of the Jewish Welfare Board, came to France. Although burdened with duties for other organizations as well, he accomplished wonders for the work of the J. W. B. during his four months in France. His enthusiasm and vigor showed at once, as in any matter he ever undertook. He traveled throughout the A. E. F., observed conditions for himself, and then accomplished two important pieces of work. First he obtained an order from the General Headquarters releasing the J. W. B. from its former dependence on the Y. M. C. A. and allowing it to work directly in coöperation with the military authorities; this was certainly advisable under post-armistice conditions, and many others felt with me that it would have been the preferable system at all times. Second, he persuaded Chaplain Elkan C. Voorsanger, then completing his second year overseas, to allow his division to return home without him, while he stayed on from April to September as Overseas Director of the J. W. B. Together with Chaplain Voorsanger, Colonel Cutler administered the J. W. B. during the period of growth, and then left him to carry it on successfully during the time of retrenchment, until finally he also returned home with the Paris Staff, and the only representatives left in France were those working in coöperation with the Graves Registration Service.
Another important worker for the J. W. B. was Dr. Cyrus Adler, vice-chairman of the national organization, who reached France in March, 1919 as a representative of the American Jewish Committee. On Colonel Cutler's return in May, Dr. Adler took over his duties for the Welfare Board, and worked with Chaplain Voorsanger until the end of his mission, in July 1919.
One necessary part of the work of the Jewish Welfare Board, after all its efforts on behalf of the men in the service had been accomplished, was to care for the graves of those Jews who gave their all in the service of America. The Graves Registration Service, later called the Cemeterial Division of the War Department, had a great and necessary work. The Jewish Welfare Board obtained in February, 1918 a War Department order that all graves of Jews should be marked with the Magen David, the double triangle.
This order was confirmed by a response from General Pershing on July 29, 1918. Temporary Jewish headboards were supplied overseas, together with the temporary crosses, and whenever we knew definitely that a particular soldier had been a Jew they were used. Unfortunately, that information was not always available. Most units had no religious census, certainly none was up to date including the replacements. The order for marking the identification tag with an additional letter—"P" for Protestant, "C" for Catholic, and "H" for Hebrew—was issued after most of us were overseas, and hardly any of the tags had it; I know I never had the "H" put on mine. Often a man would carry a prayerbook in his pocket, but if thebodies were searched by one detail and buried by another that did not help. I know that it took me three months to verify my list of Jewish dead in the 27th Division, so that one can imagine the task for the entire A. E. F.
In May, 1919, the J. W. B. undertook this duty of identifying the Jewish graves, so that the War Department could mark them all properly. They have thus identified 1,500 altogether and where a cross had already been put up the headboard was changed. In this connection, a peculiar situation arose through the efforts of the Red Cross to photograph all graves in France for the benefit of the families at home. Such graves as had not been identified as Jewish still had the cross, and some families had their religious sensibilities shocked by the photographs. Hence the photographs in all such cases were detained until the changes had been carried out, and the Jewish Welfare Board had the graves photographed for the benefit of the families. Naturally, this work is being continued in the funerals of such soldiers as are being returned and in the care of such graves as shall remain permanently where our heroes fought and fell.
The sad death of Colonel Cutler occurred in England during the summer of 1920, on a trip which he undertook in the interest of the Graves Registration work, against the advice of his physicians and solely through his profound interest in the cause. His life was a sacrifice to his duty, to the tremendous efforts he had made for the Jewish Welfare Board and the other great national movements of Jewry. He gave, as so many others gave, another sacrifice for Judaism and America.
On the whole, the field workers of the Jewish Welfare Board made an enviable record in France. In this respect a minor organization had the advantage in being able to choose its representatives so much more carefully than in the enormous machine of the Y. M. C. A. The women workers were especially conspicuous for their steady, uncomplaining service. Their work was anything but romantic; it was driving, wearing labor. They tended canteen all day and danced almost every evening, a régime that was hard physically and exhausting mentally. Only those in the larger cities could enjoy the luxuries which are so commonplace in America—electric lights, a bath tub, and the other conveniences of civilization. I have marveled to see them living for months in tiny French villages or in army camps, giving devoted service to the men in uniform, without distinction of rank or creed.
Through these workers the Jewish Welfare Board was able to render the personal touch which was missing in much of the war work overseas. This applied especially to the Jewish man, who felt overjoyed to meet a Jewish girl from America, to attend a Seder, to write home on the J. W. B. letterhead. He had found a touch of home in a foreign land; his personal needs could be understood and satisfied so much more easily and directly now. But many men of many creeds found themselves at home in the J. W. B. huts. Men learned to know Jews, to respect Judaism in the army who had been ignorant of both at home. They often attended a Jewish service, met a Jewish chaplain, or simply preferred the home-like atmosphere to that of other welfare organizations. For one thing, the J. W. B. was runaccording to the tastes of the soldiers; there was no charge for anything, even a nominal one; there was no condescension and no dictation, none of the things which the soldiers hated. In the Le Mans area, which was typical, from 56 to 60 per cent of the men patronizing the J. W. B. building were non-Jews. This constituted a return for the thousands of Jews who patronized Y. M. C. A. and K. of C. huts, as well as our contribution to the morale of the forces.
In some areas the Jewish Welfare Board was the most popular of all the welfare agencies; in all, it was very popular with the men of all faiths. The high caliber of the women workers, the personal touch and home-like spirit of the work, gave it a hold on the affections of the men. For a long time the Jewish soldiers had felt neglected by their own, not knowing the obstacles which had to be overcome. Then they found their own huts, suddenly springing up in all the central points, crowded and popular with all the groups of soldiers in America's composite army. The Jewish soldier became proud and the Christian soldier became appreciative. The excellence of the work brought forgiveness for everything, even though the soldier was not used to listening to reasons but formed his opinions quickly from the facts nearest at hand. The contribution through happiness and unity to the morale of the American Expeditionary Forces was one that did full justice to the eagerness and good will of the Jews of America.
The Jewish soldier demands no defense and needs no tribute. His deeds are written large in the history of every unit in the A. E. F.; they are preserved in the memory of his comrades of other races and other faiths. He was one with all American soldiers, for in the service men of every type and of every previous standpoint were much alike, under the same orders, holding the same ideals, with similar responses and similar accomplishments. The Jew was an American soldier—that really covers the story. For historical purposes, however, a further statement of numbers, honors, personalities, may be worth while. The Jew was in the American army, as in all the allied armies, because he exists among the population of every land. The studies made in various lands show that over 900,000 Jews fought in the World War altogether, of whom over 80,000 were killed in action or died of wounds. In the British forces casualties included the names of 8,600 Jews, and in the French forces, out of less than a hundred thousand Jewish population in the nation, 2,200 were killed in the service. These figures, picked practically at random from enormous masses of similar material, tend to show the participation of Jews in every army, just as they participate everywhere in the national life.
In the American forces the Jewish soldier ranked with the best; he was an American soldier, and there is no higher praise than that. With all the panegyrics on the American doughboy during and since the war, not enough has been said or can ever be said about him. His good humor, his self sacrifice, his heroism, won the affection and the admiration of every one. His officers loved him; his enemies respected him; his allies regarded him with mingled enthusiasm and patronage. They loved his youthful dash and were amused at his youthful unsophistication; at the same time they were profoundly grateful for his forgetfulness of self when the time for action came. I have mentioned some of the incidents in my own experience, illustrating the magnificent courage and abandon of Americans at the front—the youngster who came to the aid post seriously gassed but proud that he had stayed on duty the longest of any man in his company; the weary boys on the brow of a hill, digging in for the fourth time in a day of advances and fighting; the little Italian who stood on the edge of the shell hole that his comrades might advance—but the number and the variety of them was endless. Reading a list of the dry, official citations for decorations is like opening a mediæval romance of the deeds of knightly heroes. There was Captain Ireland who came to our aid post to have his wounds dressed and then started out without waiting for the ambulance. "Where are you going, Captain?" I asked. "Oh, back to the boys," was the answer, "I'm the only officer left in the battalion, and I don't want to leave them." There was the chaplain's orderly, himself a student for the ministry, who voluntarily organizeda stretcher party to bring in some wounded men out beyond the barbed wire. Every type of heroism and self sacrifice existed, all carried off with the good humored bravado of school boys at a football game.
Among these heroes the Jewish soldiers were equal to the best, as their comrades and commanders were quick to recognize. A typical attitude toward them was that of a lieutenant colonel, telling me a story of his first battle, when we were on shipboard coming back home. "I was rather nervous about that first time under fire," he told me, "because I had a number of foreign boys in one company and didn't know how they might behave. Among them was a little Jew who was medical man of the company, carrying bandages instead of weapons, but going over the top with the others, a restless fellow, always breaking orders and getting into trouble of some kind or another. And when I came to that company on the front line the first thing I saw was that little Jew jumping out of a shell hole and starting for the rear as fast as he could run. I pulled my revolver, ready to shoot him rather than have an example of cowardice set for the rest. But I was surprised to see him turn aside suddenly and jump into another shell hole, and when I went over there I found him hard at work bandaging up another wounded soldier. He was simply doing his duty under fire, absolutely without sign of fear as he tended the boys who were hurt. I was sorry I had misjudged him so badly and watched his work after that, with the result that I was later able to recommend him for a decoration."
Ignorance, suspicion, ripening with knowledgeinto understanding and admiration—that was the usual course of events. I quote Colonel Whittlesey, commander of the famous "Lost Battalion" of the 308th Infantry, a New York unit with a very large proportion of Jews: "As to the Jewish boys in the Battalion, I cannot recall many of them by name, but certain figures stand out simply because they are so unexpected. The ordinary run of soldiers, whether Jews, Irish, or Americans—the big, husky chaps who simply do what they are expected to do—naturally pass from our memory. It is the odd figures who stick in your mind. There was one chap for example (Herschkovitz was his name) who seemed the worst possible material from which to make soldier-stuff. He was thick-set, stupid looking, extremely foreign, thoroughly East Side, and yet, one day when we were holding the bank of the Vesle, and it became necessary to send runners to communicate with our commands, Herschkovitz was theonly manwho volunteered for the job. It was a nasty physical job. It would have been a difficult thing if it had not been under fire, because it meant cutting through under-brush, up hill and down hill. Under fire this became almost impossible, and the boys knew it, so none of them cared for the job, but Herschkovitz made the trip four times that day. What was it? Well, just plain pluck, that's all. There were a great many fellows of this type—East Siders of whom the regular army men expected nothing at all—but the 77th Division just seemed equal to anything...."
In the same unit was Private Abraham Krotoshinsky, who was awarded the D. S. C. for bearing the message which informed the division of the exact location of the unit, and was instrumental in releasingthem. Krotoshinsky was an immigrant boy, not yet a citizen, a barber by trade. His own words give the story simply enough: "We began to be afraid the division had forgotten us or that they had given us up for dead. We had to get a messenger through. It meant almost certain death, we were all sure, because over a hundred and fifty men had gone away and never come back. But it had to be done. The morning of the fifth day they called for volunteers for courier. I volunteered and was accepted. I went because I thought I ought to. First of all I was lucky enough not to be wounded. Second, after five days of starving, I was stronger than many of my friends who were twice my size. You know a Jew finds strength to suffer. Third, because I would just as soon die trying to help the others as in the 'pocket' of hunger and thirst.
"I got my orders and started. I had to run about thirty feet in plain view of the Germans before I got into the forest. They saw me when I got up and fired everything they had at me. Then I had to crawl right through their lines. They were looking for me everywhere. I just moved along on my stomach, in the direction I was told, keeping my eyes open for them.... It was almost six o'clock that night when I saw the American lines. All that day I had been crawling or running doubled up after five days and nights without food and practically nothing to drink. Then my real trouble began. I was coming from the direction of the German lines and my English is none too good. I was afraid they would shoot me for a German before I could explain who I was.... Then the Captain asked me who I was. I told him I was from the Lost Battalion.Then he asked me whether I could lead him back to the battalion. I said, 'Yes.' They gave me a bite to eat and something to drink and after a little rest I started back again with the command. I will never forget the scene when the relief came. The men were like crazy with joy."
In high position and in low the same kind of service came from the American Jew. This is the official citation of a Colonel, who is in civil life one of the prominent Jews of Chicago, Illinois:
"Colonel Abel Davis, 132nd Infantry. For extraordinary heroism in action near Consenvoye, France, October 9, 1918. Upon reaching its objective, after a difficult advance, involving two changes of directions, Colonel Davis's regiment was subjected to a determined enemy counterattack. Disregarding the heavy shell and machine-gun fire, Colonel Davis personally assumed command and by his fearless leadership and courage the enemy was driven back."
Judge Robert S. Marx of Cincinnati, Ohio, is now national president of the Disabled Veterans of the World War and a member of the national committee on hospitalization and vocational education of the American Legion. But in 1917 and '18 he was Captain Marx of the 90th Division, operations officer of his regiment during the St. Mihiel and Argonne offensives, and reported dead on the day before the armistice, when he was struck on the head and wounded severely. And on the other extreme, I notice the case of First Sergeant Sam Dreben of the 141st Infantry, a soldier of fortune in many revolutions and a member of the Regular Army in the Philippines several years ago. Discovering a party of Germans coming to the support of a dangerousmachine-gun nest, Sergeant Dreben with thirty men charged the German position, killed forty of the enemy, took several prisoners, and captured five machine guns, returning to his own lines without losing a man. For this daring and important act he was awarded the D. S. C.
Of the various types of distinction emphasized during the war, all were as true of Jews as of any other group. Numerous cases exist where four or more members of a single family were in the service. There was the Fleshner family, of Springfield, Mass., from which four sons of an immigrant father and mother entered the service, the oldest of them only twenty-three. The oldest of these boys lost an arm and an eye while carrying ammunition through a barrage, but exclaimed later in the hospital: "I'm the luckiest Jew in the army. Any other man in my place would have been killed."
The New York Herald during the war described an indefatigable Red Cross worker, Mrs. Louis Rosenberg of North Bergen, N. J. This old Jewish mother had six sons in the service; the two oldest, each the father of two children, when summoned for the draft refused to claim exemption, and having invested their savings in two small notion stores, they left their wives in charge of them and accepted the call to military service. Mrs. Liba Goldstein, of Cambridge Springs, Pa., a woman of eighty-four, born in Russia, had twenty grandsons in the allied armies, ten as officers in the British army, eight in the American forces, and two with the Jewish Legion in Palestine. And so one might bring out one example after another, if one desired, all showing the eagerness of loyal Jews to serve their country.
The Office of Jewish War Records of the American Jewish Committee has made a remarkably interesting preliminary study of the number of Jews in the American forces. The office possesses 150,000 individual records, gathered by extensive coöperation with national and local Jewish organizations. The success of certain local efforts at intensive covering of the field indicate that the total number of American Jews in service during the War may amount to as much as 200,000. Of these about 40,000 came from New York City, 8,000 from Philadelphia and 5,000 from Chicago. Instead of their quota of three per cent., according to the proportion of Jews throughout the nation, the Jews in service actually constituted fully four per cent. of the men in the army and navy. The causes of this excess are not easy to establish. The draft may have been more fully enforced in cities than in many rural districts, and the bulk of the Jews are city dwellers. The proportion of young men among the various groups of our population would apply only if the Jews have more than their quota of young men, and we possess no facts to confirm that. But certainly the number of volunteers was an element in causing this large number of Jews in the service. The records show 40,000 volunteers among the Jewish men, practically one-fourth of the total Jewish contingent and a far higher record than that of the army as a whole.
In certain outstanding cases this record is even more conspicuous. The little colony of immigrant Jewish farmers at Woodbine, N. J., not over three hundred families altogether, contributed forty-three men to the service, of whom seventeen men, or fortyper cent., were volunteers. Of the students at the rabbinical seminaries, who were all exempt by law, a conspicuously large number volunteered for service in the line, in addition to the chaplains among the graduates and the large number of both students and graduates who acted as representatives of the Jewish Welfare Board, lecturers in the training camps and similar capacities. In fact, the seminaries were almost empty for a year. Eleven students of the Hebrew Union College and four of the Jewish Theological Seminary waived exemption for regular service in the army and navy, including a number of men with very exceptional records. Jacob Marcus, now Rabbi and Instructor at the Hebrew Union College, volunteered in the Ohio National Guard and won his lieutenancy by brilliant work in the ranks. Three of the students there entered the Marine Corps during the first weeks of the war and served for over two years in that branch. One, Michael Aaronson, serving in the 31st Division overseas, was completely blinded while helping a wounded comrade in No Man's Land; now he is finishing his studies at the College with the same spirit which he showed in entering the service and in his work as a soldier.
The Jewish boys went into the army to fight. That appears in their proportion in the combatant branches of the American Expeditionary Forces. While these branches—Infantry, Artillery, Cavalry, Engineers, and Signal-Aviation—constituted 60 per cent. of the total, among the 114,000 records of Jewish soldiers in the hands of the War Records Office the distribution among these combatant branches is fully 75 per cent. The Infantryconstituted 26.6 per cent. of the entire army, while among the Jewish records it constituted 48 per cent. Artillery was 14 per cent. of the United States army, 8 per cent. of the Jewish total. In cavalry the rate for the entire army was 2 per cent., for the Jews only 1.3 per cent. The engineer corps contributed 11 per cent. of the army strength, and but 3 per cent. among the Jewish records. The signal and aviation corps represented 7 per cent. of the United States total, and 15 per cent. of the Jewish total. The medical corps was 8 per cent. of the army total, 9 per cent. of the Jewish total. Ordnance was 1.7 per cent. of the army total, and 1.5 of the Jewish total. The quartermaster corps was 6.2 per cent. of the army total and 5.9 per cent. of the Jewish total.
The Army, Navy and Marine Corps altogether had nearly 10,000 Jews as commissioned officers, and a really tremendous number of non-commissioned officers. The Army records show more than a hundred colonels and lieutenant colonels of Jewish faith, including such distinguished officers as Colonel Abel Davis, whom I have already mentioned in connection with his D. S. C. for heroism displayed on October 9, 1918; Colonel Nathan Horowitz, of Boston, Mass. who spent 27 months in France in the heavy artillery; Colonel Samuel Frankenberger, of Charleston, W. Va., who commanded the 78th Field Artillery; Colonel Samuel J. Kopetzky, Medical Corps, of New York City, who commanded Sanitary Train 396, in the A. E. F.; and Colonel Max Robert Wainer, Quartermaster Corps, formerly of Delaware City, Del., who was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal and appointed a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor by the French government. These honors were butthe climax to a military career that began with enlistment as a private in 1905, and promotion to the rank of Second Lieutenant in 1912. In the war every one of the four battles in which he took part was the occasion of a further promotion, so that he concluded the war as a Colonel. I have already mentioned Colonel Wainer in another connection, as the first active Jewish worker at Tours; as a matter of fact, he organized a Seder in his own unit in 1918, where 500 men celebrated the Passover at the same time that Chaplain Voorsanger was holding his Seder at St. Nazaire, and when practically no other Jewish work was being conducted in the entire overseas forces.
There were over 500 majors, 1,500 captains, and more than 6,000 lieutenants in the American army, with a full share of each in the A. E. F. Over 900 Jews were officers in the navy, the most conspicuous of them being Rear Admiral Joseph Strauss, in command of the mine laying work in the North Sea during the war. In addition there were one captain, five commanders and twelve lieutenant commanders. The marine corps included among its personnel over a hundred Jews as officers, among them three majors, one colonel, and Brigadier-General Charles Henry Laucheimer of Baltimore, Md., who died in January 1920.
The latest estimates of casualties run from 13,000 to 14,000, including about 2,800 who died in the service of America. This can be inferred easily from the branches of the service in which our Jewish boys were found, as well as from the number of honors they received. After all, for every brave man whose acts were noted and rewarded, many others just as heroic fought and bled unseen.
The number of Jews decorated for conspicuous courage is attested, not only by the Office of War Records, but also by the Jewish Valor Legion, an organization of American Jews who received such awards during the World War. Fully 1,100 citations for valor are on record. Of these, 723 were conferred by the American command, 287 by the French, 33 by the British, and 46 by other allied commands. The Distinguished Service Cross is worn by 150 American Jews, the French Medaille Militaire by four, and the Croix de Guerre by 174. The Congressional Medal of Honor, the rarest award in the American or any other service, which was conferred on only 78 men in the entire service, is worn by three American Jews, one of them killed in the act for which he was rewarded. I add their official citations, not only for their personal interest, but as an added tribute to these three heroes, a glory both to Jewry and to America.
"Sydney G. Gumpertz, first sergeant, Company E, 132nd Infantry. Congressional Medal of Honor for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty in action with the enemy in the Bois de Forges, France, September 26, 1918. When the advancing line was held up by machine-gun fire, Sergeant Gumpertz left the platoon of which he was in command and started with two other soldiers through a heavy barrage toward the machine-gun nest. His two companions soon became casualties from a bursting shell, but Sergeant Gumpertz continued on alone in the face of direct fire from the machine-gun, jumped into the nest and silenced the gun, capturing nine of the crew. Awarded January 22, 1919."
"First Sergeant Benjamin Kaufman, Company K, 308th Infantry, Congressional Medal of Honor for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty in action with the enemy in the Forest of Argonne, France, October 4, 1918. Sergeant Kaufman took out a patrol for the purpose of attacking an enemy machine-gun which had checked the advance of his company. Before reaching the gun he became separated from his patrol, and a machine-gun bullet shattered his right arm. Without hesitation he advanced on the gun alone, throwing grenades with his left hand and charging with an empty pistol, taking one prisoner and scattering the crew, bringing the gun and prisoner back to the first aid station. Awarded April 8, 1919."