Half a million US Jews helped beat the Nazis – it transformed a generation

For two long years American Jews watched as war overtook Europe. First, the Hitler-Stalin pact that preceded the invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939; then the following spring the swift attack on the Low Countries and the defeat of France in June 1940. By the end of the first year of war, only Great Britain was still fighting the Axis powers.

Although American Jews were divided in their views on the war, in November 1940 the vast majority voted for an unprecedented third term for President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Then in June 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, breaking the pact. The war took on increasing brutality with Jewish civilians rounded up and murdered en masse in forests and fields.

On December 7 World War II reached across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour. The United States declared war against Japan. Germany declared war on the United States. And American Jews – immigrant and native-born – rushed to enlist in the Armed Forces.

A Passover Seder service held for Jewish soldiers returning from the Aleutians campaign, organized by the American Jewish Historical Society and National Jewish Welfare Board.Alamy Stock Photo

They joined the Army and the Army Air Corps, the Navy and the Marines, the WACs and the WAVEs. They could be found in all branches of the service and in all types of units from the infantry to elite flying groups. By the time the war ended in August 1945, well over half a million Jewish men and women had donned a uniform. Jewish GIs accounted for 50 per cent of those American Jews eligible for the draft, an extraordinarily high percentage.

Their experiences in military service changed them. Unlike black Americans, Jews were integrated into the military. This meant that they often had to explain to their fellow white GIs how they felt as Jews, what made them the same and what made them different.

The Armed Forces recognised Judaism as a religion, one of the three fighting faiths of democracy alongside Protestantism and Catholicism. It enlisted Jewish chaplains (over 300 of them) and it fashioned inter-religious tri-faith services for such key moments as funerals. Despite this acceptance of Judaism, the military stamped Jewish soldiers’ dog tags with an H for “Hebrew” (a “racial” designation) and not a J for “Jew”.

Pervasive antisemitism among the ranks and in the officer corps accompanied integration. Many Americans had never met a Jew because of Jewish residential concentration in large cities. Many Americans held stereotypes of Jews, assuming their lack of manliness, fear of combat, untrustworthiness.

Jewish GIs had to decide how to confront such stereotypes and how to prove themselves to their fellow soldiers. There was no manual guiding them on how to deal with antisemitism. They were on their own.

Jews also discovered that their politics often differed from other American GIs. Jews signed up to fight the Nazis; many Americans saw the Japanese as the main enemy. When Jewish GIs shipped overseas to Europe, they knew that enemy soldiers targeted them not just as Americans but also as Jews.

Yet Jews did win the trust of their fellow GIs. Together they learned how to fight to defeat the enemy. Close-knit camaraderie emerged among crew members on the fighter planes where Jews tended to be navigators or bombardiers.

When infantry troops were captured by Germans, often all members of a unit threw away their dog tags to protect the Jews among them. And when the opportunity came in the fall of 1944 to welcome in the Jewish New Year on German soil, Christian soldiers joined the religious services held in damaged synagogues in a gesture of solidarity.

Liberation of concentration and death camps elicited equal outrage among Jewish and Christian GIs. The shocks reverberated even among hardened soldiers. And Jewish GIs welcomed the understanding although they recognised their different and more intimate connection to the victims as fellow Jews.

These experiences of fighting together transformed a generation of American Jews. They saw parts of the United States that they had never imagined, not to mention a whole world overseas. When they returned home after the war, they were not willing to settle for the restrictions that had characterised their lives before their service. Having been taught how to fight, they took those skills into the arena of American society, working to dismantle the discrimination that pervaded the US.

The words of Chaplain Rabbi Roland Gittlesohn at the dedication of the Marine cemetery at Iwo Jima resonated. “Among these men there is no discrimination. No prejudice. No hatred,” he intoned. “Theirs is the highest and purest democracy.” Jewish GIs shared his conviction. “Anyone among us the living who fails to understand that, will thereby betray those who lie here.”

These Jewish American soldiers left a powerful legacy to future generations. We need to recall and preserve their accomplishments.

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Deborah Dash Moore is the Jonathan Freedman Distinguished University Professor of History and Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan