A Jewish Chaplain in France

by Lee J. Levinger

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 forty per 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 Infantry constituted 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 but the 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."