agY
Saluting
Our Veterans
from your friends
at King Kold
In honor of Memorial Day, a roundup of several
books that look at those who have served in our
armed forces.
MORTON I. TEICHER
Special to the Jewish News
D
wring World War II, 550,000
Jewish men and women
served in the armed forces of
the United States. About 11,000 were
killed, more than 40,000 were wound-
ed and more than 52,000 received
medals for bravery. They belonged to
what Tom Brokaw called "the greatest
generation."
In GI Jews: How World War II
Changed a
Generation (Harvard
University Press;
$25.95), Deborah
Dash Moore, a
noted Jewish scholar
and professor of reli-
gion at Vassar, has
written a moving
tribute to these
American Jews.
The author, who
appeared at Detroit's
Jewish Book Fair last
November, traces
their experiences and
the impact on their
lives of military serv-
ice, examining what
happened to 15 of them.
Rather than tracing the participation
of each one individually, Moore has
organized her presentation chronologi-
cally from the beginning of the war to
its immediate aftermath. Accordingly,
most of the men appear briefly in each
of her eight chapters.
Moore begins with the period just
before Pearl Harbor plunged America
into the war that had been raging for
more than two years. She discusses
enlisting and being drafted into the
armed forces and the shock for many
of them as they encountered anti-
Semitism at the hands of their fellow-
soldiers.
She also describes their problem
with non-Jewish food, an issue that
arose even though the majority did
not restrict themselves to kosher food
before the war. Eating ham and pork
did not come easy to them.
Military training, going overseas,
religious observance and combat expe-
rience are all examined. She tells the
story of military chaplains, beginning
with the heroic deaths of the four
Dorchester chaplains who sacrificed
their lives so that some of the soldiers
on the sinking troopship could be
saved. An especially moving chapter
analyzes the reactions of American
Jewish soldiers to the concentration
camps, to the French, to Germans and
to the surviving
European Jews.
Finally, Moore con-
cludes with a chapter
on the return to civil-
ian life after the war
ended. Although there
is some mention of
the South Pacific and
of one Jewish soldier
in Calcutta, the bulk
of the book concen-
trates on what was
known as the
European Theater of
Operations.
Moore has done a
masterful job of
exploring how the war
changed the lives of American Jewish
servicemen with significant conse-
quences for American Jewry. Both
their Jewish and American identities
were refashioned by their military
service.
World War II veterans are now
dying at the rate of 1,100 each day
but, as Moore persuasively demon-
strates, they had a profound impact on
American life in general and on
American Jewish life in particular.
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Prisoners Of War
Most American Jews who were alive at
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VETERANS on page 40
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