kK's*:55 \

Community
Calendar

4,\AtN„

t4NI,

Aging vets
seek photos
slain buddies
for JWV
memorial.

al

tZ
*NOY'

The JWV is appealing to
the public for pictures of
100 Jewish servicemen
killed in action.

Eunice Michelson looks at photographs in the Memory Room.

DAVID SACHS
Editorial Assistant

E

unite Michelson looked
from face to face, from
young man to young
man, at the 222
Michigan Jews whose photographs
line the walls of the Memorial Room
where she works.
"He was so handsome — and this
one looks like he could have been a
movie star," said Michelson, execu-
tive secretary at the Memorial Home
of the Jewish War
Veterans/Department of Michigan,
which houses the Memorial Room
in its Southfield building.
The 222 clean-cut servicemen,
attired in crisp uniforms, dressy suits
or high school graduation caps and
gowns, could be poster boys for their

generation — the one NBC news
anchor Tom Brokaw lauded in his
book The Greatest Generation — the
generation that defeated fascism,
won the struggle against commu-
nism and built American prosperity.
And the men at whose sides these
222 died — the fighters who lived
on to fulfill the destiny of that great
generation — don't want their fallen
comrades to be forgotten.
"You can forget the rest of us
who survived, thank God. Nobody
owes us a damn thing," said
Manny Rotenberg, 76, of
Farmington Hills, a bomber pilot
in Europe during World War II.
"But none of us should forget
those who died. There were so many
Jews who died from this city and
nobody knows. This community
should be so proud of them."

The pictures of the men killed
in action during World War II and
the Korean War, however, tell only
part of the story.
Photos are being sought now of
some 100 other Michigan Jewish
servicemen, all killed in World War
II, the Korean War or the Vietnam
War. The war veterans here want to
insure that their gallery of Jewish
heroes is complete for posterity
"We'll take any photograph we
can get," said Rotenberg. Also need-
ed by the veterans is information on
how to make contact with the ser-
vicemen's families.
Fellow vet Mel Weingarden, 76,
of West Bloomfield, a medical aide
with an infantry company in the
U.S. invasions of the Japanese-held
Philippines and Okinawa, brought
Rotenberg into the cause along

with Willie Stone, 75, of
Bloomfield Township. He was a
captain in the Army Corps of
Engineers in the European
Theater.
Right off the bat, by questioning
friends and acquaintances,
Rotenberg obtained photos of sev-
eral soldiers. "I found four with my
big mouth;" he said. "Can you
imagine if everybody was aware of
it and the meaning of it?"
Rotenberg was overcome with
emotion when he first viewed the
exhibit in 1995, when it temporarily
traveled to the Jewish Community
Center in West Bloomfield. For him,
seeing a photograph of a friend's face
was much more powerful than view-
ing the serviceman's tombstone.
"When I first saw the hundreds
of photographs of these fellows 50

12/17
1999

45