Cover Story

`We Were
There'

Permanent exhibit at JCC

honors Jews who served

our country.

HARRY KIRS BAUM
Staff Writer

Mr

JWV Michigan Commander Robert Feldman and
Robert Slatkin, chairman of the JWV Michigan exhibit
committee, pose by the World War II exhibit panel.

',Tor

6/ 6
2003

12

people to pause and consider the Jewish
patriots who fought and died for
America's freedom.
"What more appropriate day to have
this," said Robert Slatkin, exhibit com-
mittee chairman and past president of
the United Jewish Foundation of
Metropolitan Detroit, during the
Memorial Day dedication. "This per-
manent exhibit is really a shining exam _ -
ple of a community coming together,
working out a solution to complete a
project that we can be proud of for
many, many years to come."
Slatkin and Robert Feldman, JWV

hen Harold Finegood
looks at the panels of the
exhibit, he sees through
a soldier's eyes.
Memories come flooding back. He
remembers a 1944 Passover seder he
celebrated in one of Hermann
Goering's abandoned castles, his failed
attempt to be the first soldier to fly an
American flag in Berlin and the worth
of two eggs shared with buddies
around him.
"I was offered 50 bucks
for two sunny-side up eggs
when I was in reserves,"
said Finegood, 77, of
Detroit. "I wouldn't take it.
That money was worth a
couple thousand bucks
today, but what good is
money if you might get
killed when you go back
into combat."
Finegood was among
some 250 people invited to
A plaque from the exhibit
the May 26 dedication of
"We Were There," the per-
manent Jewish War Veterans of
commander of Michigan, are the driv-
Michigan exhibit at the Jewish
ing forces behind the $100,000 effort.
Community Center in West
"We try to get our young people to
Bloomfield. Sporting a mop of gray
understand that Jews were one of the
tousled hair and clad in his old Private
victims of World War II, but we Were
First Class uniform top pinned with a
also the liberators," Feldman told the
Purple Star ribbon, he is one of about
crowd before the ribbon-cutting cere-
25 Jewish veterans who attended the
mony. "Don't let anyone ever tell you
dedication and hoped the memories
that the Jews did not fight for their
depicted in the exhibit will prompt
country. They did, and in large num-