jews in the d

COURTESY OF THE RABBI LEO M. FRANKLIN ARCHIVES OF TEMPLE BETH EL, BLOOMFIELD HILLS, MI.

Looking Back

Mrs. Lee Waldbott at the League of Jewish Women’s Organizations, in front of the Sinai Hospital Women’s Guild display, February 1964.

From the DJN Foundation Davidson Digital Archive of Jewish Detroit History

W

Mike Smith

Detroit Jewish
News Foundation
Archivist

74

hen cruising through the Davidson Digital
Archive of Jewish Detroit History, a reader
can find the unexpected, something beyond
a written record of Jews in Detroit and Michigan, or in
America and the world at-large. And, sometimes the
report you find will really illustrate the changing tide of
history. Case in-point: This week, I found a story from
the Aug. 4, 1916, issue of the Detroit Jewish Chronicle
that praised the adventures of Paul Koenig, captain of the
German submarine Deutschland in World War I.
About now, you might be thinking: “What the heck??”
A Jewish publication praising a German submarine cap-
tain?” Didn’t we go “over there” to fight the Germans?
We know that the United States was allied with France
and Great Britain against Germany in both world wars.
And, we think of what the Nazis did to Jews and other
Europeans — millions dying in the fight against the
Germans, millions of families devastated and displaced
and, of course, the Nazi death camps resulting in the
Holocaust.

October 25 • 2018

jn

However, in 1916, there were no Nazis, and America
had not yet entered the war. There were still many in the
U.S. who wished to remain neutral and, strange as it may
seem, many Americans were undecided as to whether the
U.S. should support Great Britain and France or support
Germany and Austria-Hungary. Moreover, there were
thousands of loyal German Jews in the Kaiser’s Army and
Navy in World War I. This is why in World War II, many
German Jewish veterans could not understand why, after
fighting in the trenches in the Great War, that the Nazis
didn’t care about their sacrifices for Germany.
In the Chronicle in 1916, the story of Koenig was sim-
ply a story of a Jewish warrior, someone to be admired
for his courage and skill, proof that “Jewish courage
and heroism is as alive today as it was in the days of the
Maccabees.” It was a different world 100 years ago. ■

Want to learn more? Go to the DJN Foundation archives, available
for free at www.djnfoundation.org.