A Jewish Chaplain in France

by Lee J. Levinger

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 examples many 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 at G. 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 a J. 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 local committee 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 sort of 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 the G. 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 England Y. 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 the J. 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 and saying 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 everything possible 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.