A Hero’s Rest, 
At Last

WWII POW from Detroit, buried 
under a cross in the Philippines, 
fi
 nally has a Jewish grave.

ALAN MUSKOVITZ CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Jews in the D

J

ust two family members were 
able to attend a recent grave-
side ceremony for Arthur 
Waldman of Detroit. He was only 
27. 
The small family gathering on 
Feb. 12 wasn’
t a result of social 
distancing. Arthur wasn’
t a victim 
of the coronavirus. This wasn’
t 
even Arthur’
s funeral. It was a long 
overdue rededication ceremony. 
Pvt. Arthur Waldman, of the 
200th Coast Artillery Regiment, 
took his last breath in a Japanese 
prisoner of war (POW) camp 
in Tokyo on Jan. 17, 1944. After 
enduring the infamously brutal 
Bataan Death March, he suffered 
unspeakable conditions as a slave 
laborer for nearly two years. 
Subject to unmerciful beatings, 
he would eventually succumb to 
beriberi heart failure, attributed to 
severe vitamin deficiency. Another 
way of saying Arthur most likely 
starved to death.
Arthur would be interred at sev-

eral locations overseas, one time 
in a storage unit until the U.S. gov-
ernment acquired enough land to 
lay him to rest for the final time in 
the Manila American Cemetery in 
the Philippines. We don’
t know the 
date; those records were destroyed 
in a 1973 fire at a St. Louis center 
housing official military person-
nel files. His final interment was 
absent of any family members. 
While Arthur could finally 
rest in peace, this was not the 
final chapter of his journey. That 
remained to be written when 
it was discovered that Arthur 
Waldman, the beloved son of 
Jewish immigrants Rudolph 
Waldman and Irma Weiner, had 
been buried under a Latin cross.
Turns out the mistaken grave 
marker, like many now being 
investigated and corrected, was a 
result of insufficient information 
at the time of the burial, rather 
than an injustice. It was common 
practice in WWII for Jewish ser-

12 | APRIL 16 • 2020 

TOP: Rich and Vicki Katz 
place a stone on the new 
Star of David grave marker 
of Pvt. Arthur Waldman 
during the Feb. 12, 2020, 
rededication ceremony 
at the Manila American 
Cemetery in the Philippines.

Pvt. Arthur Waldman at Fort 
Bliss Army Base in Fort Bliss, 
Texas, April 30, 1941

COURTESY OF VICKI KATZ

ABMC

on the cover

