Focus on Israel

Laurie Cardoza-Moore: Throughout America’s history, Jewish people have served in the U.S. military and distinguished themselves on the battlefield, from the Revolutionary War to the Civil War to both world wars. During World War II, more than half a million Jewish Americans served in the U.S. Armed Forces and roughly 52,000 of these received U.S. military awards. As Americans and as Jews, they realized that they had to protect what they had in America: liberty, freedom of religion, and freedom of speech, ideals they believed in.

Hello, and thank you for joining me today on Focus on Israel. Like most Americans, I began to ask a lot of questions about what happened to our country following 9/11. As I read and talked to experts, the issues of radical Islam and the attacks on America and Israel became extremely personal to me. I realized that Israel is facing threats from nearly every corner, from Iran’s nuclear weapons program to terrorist groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah, Al-Qaeda, and ISIS. I also saw how much of the world comes against the Jewish state. The UN and the world continue to demand the creation of a Palestinian state, a terrorist state on Israel’s doorstep.

So if you’re a Christian, why should you care? Many Christians believe that as the Jews rejected Jesus, then God has rejected them. This replacement theology is growing as many Christians believe they have replaced the Jews in God’s prophetic plan. If you truly believe the Bible is the word of God, then you know that when he speaks of Israel, he is speaking about the land of Israel, Ephraim in the ten northern tribes, or the whole house of Israel, all twelve tribes. The mission of this series and PJTN is to educate and equip you so that you can share this truth with your family and friends.

The GI Jews of World War II were rich and poor, urban and rural, religious and secular. Most were the children of immigrants who had escaped persecution in Europe and were welcomed onto America’s shores. Now, they would return to battle the hatred that their parents had fled. Like all Americans, they fought against fascism, but they also fought a more personal fight to save their brethren in Europe. Hundreds of thousands of Jews returned to the United States and changed the people around them. It was a transformative moment in the history of the United States and the history of American Jews. Most went to war to save the world, and many returned to change it.

Guest (Male): We went to war to destroy the Nazis, and that was a mission for all of us. We went to war to save the world.

Guest (Male): In January 1933, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party rose to power in Germany. From the beginning, their ideology was steeped in racial hatred and antisemitism. German Jews were segregated from the rest of society, their businesses marked with a Jewish star.

Guest (Male): My father was a teacher. Hitler came to power and my father lost his position. My mother decided her children would have no future in Germany and we emigrated in 1938, just before the persecution turned deadly.

Guest (Male): On September 1st, 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland. In the next two years, Hitler seized most of Europe, marching relentlessly through the low countries into France, Denmark, and Norway and deep into the Soviet Union. There, the Nazis massacred hundreds of thousands of Jewish men, women, and children, the first mass killings of Jews in German-occupied territories.

Guest (Male): The rumors were in the Jewish community that Jews were being slaughtered and something had to be done about it.

Guest (Male): The day after Pearl Harbor, I got in line. There were two lines as far as you could see, people enlist. That is Texas. Texas is that way. A great feeling of patriotism. "Texas draft" is a bad word. You enlist, you draft in. You don't say that.

Guest (Male): Baseball star Hank Greenberg joined the service a few days after Pearl Harbor. A hero to Jews throughout the nation, he had endured antisemitic slurs his entire career and famously refused to play ball on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year.

Guest (Male): Greenberg later said, "I didn't pay too much attention to Hitler at first or any of the political goings-on at the time. But I came to feel that if I, as a Jew, hit a home run, I was hitting one against Hitler."

Guest (Male): While many Jewish men enlisted, in all, one-half of Jewish men old enough to serve would join the fight. 16 million Americans came to basic training. For eight weeks, ten hours a day, the Jewish servicemen prepared for combat, surrounded by men from every part of the country.

Guest (Male): My basic training was in Camp Crowder, Missouri. I remember this night we went to bed and across the barracks I hear this voice, "Rana, Rana." "Yes?" It was one of these antisemitic blondies from Louisiana. He said, "You a Jew? J-E-W?" I says, "Yes, as a matter of fact, why do you ask?" And then the strange thing he says, "I'm from Louisiana. You know a Jew named Goldfarb?" I says, "No, there are many Jews I don't know." "You don't know Goldfarb?" I said no. He says, "Well, he not a bad guy." That was the last thing he said, and that was it.

Guest (Male): In the early 1940s, many Americans who lived outside major cities had never seen a Jew before they met one in uniform. They had heard only the negative stereotypes that Jews were unpatriotic and shirked their military duty.

Guest (Male): They didn't think much of us. Actually, they didn't think there were any Jews in service. I'm seventh generation in my family to wear an American uniform. My great-great-grandfather served during the Civil War.

Guest (Male): I never had a cheeseburger until I got to basic training. Jews generally weren't allowed to mix milk and meat. So these kids were eating cheeseburgers and I ordered one, tasted it, and I said, "This is good. Why have the Jews denied me this wonderful thing called cheeseburgers?"

Guest (Male): To smooth over religious differences, the military launched a campaign promoting the three fighting faiths, reminding the men that they were all in this war together. From synagogues across the nation, more than half of America's 2,000 rabbis volunteered as chaplains; 311 received commissions.

David Max Eichhorn, a 36-year-old rabbi from Pennsylvania, arrived at Camp Croft in South Carolina in July 1942.

Guest (Male): My grandfather said it was his patriotic duty. He was an American first, then a soldier, and then a Jew. He really felt he had a place and a calling. All the chaplains administered any type of religious solace to anyone of any faith.

Guest (Male): In January 1942, when the first American troops arrived overseas, Hitler and the Axis powers, Italy and Japan, were winning the war. Jewish GIs landed in the midst of unimaginable violence and destruction.

Guest (Male): I learned it was just a matter of kill or be killed. So that's what you go into combat with. Either you kill the enemy or they're going to kill you.

Guest (Male): I became a bombardier. I saw many planes blow up in front of me. I don't care what they say, everybody had a religion when they fought in combat. When the flak came up and the fighters came in, I said, "If there's anybody up there, look over me."

Guest (Male): Being Jewish and Judaism was an important part of virtually every Jew's experience during World War II. It didn't matter if they were religious or not; they identified as Jews because they were fighting a people that were trying to destroy the Jewish people from the face of the earth.

Guest (Male): I went into the Air Corps to become a bombardier navigator. I flew 54 missions. I was the first-generation American, or maybe the last-generation Europe. I used to write on my bombs, "Hitler, here's a gift for you." War's a terrible thing, but when you're fighting an enemy that is so brutal and so inhuman, you have to do it.

Guest (Male): The German-Jewish GIs who had escaped the Nazis just a few years earlier were now American servicemen and they returned to Europe to fight. For them, the war against Hitler was profoundly personal. Most Jewish servicemen hoped to serve in the European Theater to do their part against Hitler, but some were assigned to the Pacific Theater instead.

Among them was Norman Mailer, the grandson of a rabbi and an aspiring novelist. He had been drafted just after his graduation from Harvard. In the Pacific, he would find plenty of material for his novel about the brutality of war.

Guest (Male): "It is not that the violence is horrible," he wrote. "It's all natural, so much a part of life that you are never surprised and never shocked. It is this which frightens me."

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From studying history, it's very clear that what starts with the Jews never ends only with the Jews. We must strongly stand against any antisemitic trends. For if not stopped, they'll cause harm to all of us and we'll witness the downfall of our Judeo-Christian Western culture. Today, many people say there's no longer a need for a Jewish state, that Jews around the world no longer need a place of refuge. But anyone who has heard recent statistics about the worldwide rise in antisemitism would never make such a claim.

The reality is that neo-Nazi groups and Nazi sympathizers are increasing around the world. Surveys show that over one billion people in the world harbor antisemitic attitudes. Close to 50 percent believe that Jews have too much power in the business world, and two-thirds of the world's population has never heard of the Holocaust or believe the historical accounts of it are inaccurate.

Don't let yourself be manipulated by evil people with a wicked agenda. When the self-serving villains are in control, good people from all religions suffer. Muslims, Christians, and all people of conscience should stand proudly and show respect for a country that gives so much to the world in so many ways. Do your part. Do your research and do what you can to make a difference because what happens in Israel does affect us all. This is not just a Jewish or just an Israeli problem. This is a problem for all humanity, for each and every one of us who believe in freedom and human rights. Learn more about what you can do at PJTN.org.

You've been watching a powerful documentary produced by PBS titled "GI Jews: Jewish Americans in World War II." We only have time to show you a portion of this film and hope you'll order a copy of the DVD on Amazon or watch the full version on Amazon Prime. We hope it will give you a new perspective and respect for American Jewry.

Guest (Male): Right before D-Day, I was in England training for the invasion. They told us, "Two out of three of you are not coming back." I decided to draw a huge Star of David on the back of my army field jacket. I wrote "Bronx, New York" around the Star of David. I had to let the Germans know where I was coming from.

We landed about 6:40 on Omaha Beach. Everybody in that boat was killed except for two of us. About 30 of our guys were hiding behind two tanks to survive. I decided, being Jewish, I'd better go straight in. I didn't want to look like a coward. I wanted the fellows to see that I didn't have the fear. I'm not going to take cover. There was my best buddy, dead.

I prayed the Shema during that day. "Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad." Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. That was the only prayer I said on the beach.

Guest (Male): Rabbi chaplains held services for the Jewish dead. The surviving men gathered together to honor the friends they had lost.

Guest (Male): Jews are not looked upon as fighting. Someone who was in the same tank as my brother said the men loved him. He was a terrific commander and they called him "the fighting Jew." He was proud of being a Jew fighting for his country.

Guest (Male): The first German city to fall to American forces was Aachen on Germany's western border. There, on October 29th, with Nazi artillery still exploding in the distance, a group of American Jewish GIs held a service that was broadcast around the world.

Guest (Male): The National Broadcasting Company, in cooperation with the American Jewish Committee, brings you now a special broadcast of historic significance, with the first Jewish religious service broadcast from Germany since the advent of Hitler.

Guest (Male): As the U.S. was beginning to occupy Germany in the middle of these tank barriers, they held a Jewish service and it was broadcast both over the air in Germany and was also broadcast by NBC. It's just an extraordinary statement about the defeat of the Nazis, about overturning the horrible policies of Germany against the Jews.

Guest (Male): When I looked out and I saw so many Jewish GIs, I wasn't the only one. There wasn't one GI there that didn't have an extended family in Europe somewhere lost. They all perished.

Guest (Male): As American forces marched through Hitler's Europe in the winter of 1944, rumors that the Nazis were murdering Jewish prisoners of war continued to spread. Hearing news that Jewish soldiers in the Soviet army had been singled out and shot, some American officers encouraged their men to destroy their dog tags.

Sergeant Lester Tanner and his unit were taken prisoner and, in late January, he and the other officers were moved to a prison camp called Stalag 9A.

Guest (Male): They announced that the Jews had to form up in front of the barracks the next morning and those who do not will be shot.

Guest (Male): Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds, a Protestant from Knoxville, Tennessee, was known for his strong leadership and deep moral conviction. He was the commanding officer in charge of the 1,275 American prisoners.

Guest (Male): Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds told his officers, "We will all be there in the morning in formation and I will be at the head." The next morning, we were all lined up. Major Siegman strides over. He says, "You can't all be Jews." Roddie said to him, "We're all Jews here."

You don't tell a Gestapo man that you're not going to listen to his order. The German takes out his Luger, points it at Roddie's forehead and he says, "You will order the Jewish American soldiers to step forward or I will shoot you right now." And he said to him, "Major, you can shoot me, but if you do, you're going to have to shoot all of us." And the major just spun around and went back to his barracks.

Guest (Male): Edmonds saved nearly 200 Jewish American men that day. They would never forget the extraordinary risk he took on their behalf. Rabbi Roland Gittelsohn was stationed in the Pacific, the only Jewish chaplain with the 5th Marine Division. A committed pacifist before the war, the fight against Hitler's evil had changed his mind. According to Jewish law, he wrote, "It was a war of obligation. In such a war, every Jew must fight."

Guest (Male): Here lie officers and men, black and white, together. Here are Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, together. Among these men, there is no discrimination, no prejudices, no hatred. Whoever of us lifts his hand in hate against a brother or who thinks himself superior to those who happen to be in the minority makes of this ceremony and the bloody sacrifice it commemorates an empty, hollow mockery. We here solemnly swear that this shall not be in vain. Out of this will come, we promise, the birth of a new freedom for the sons of men everywhere.

Guest (Male): On April 4, 1945, American troops on patrol south of Gotha, Germany, came upon Ohrdruf, a subcamp of Buchenwald.

Guest (Male): None of us were prepared for what we saw when we hit that camp. As a Jew, I'd heard stories, but we were not prepared. The prisoners, they worked them to death. They starved them, and when they died, they burned them. I was not the only one who threw up. I was not the only one who cried.

Guest (Male): I remember this elderly man. He came toward me and then he wrapped his arms around me. "Yude, Yude, Americana Yude, danke." You American Jewish soldier, thank you. And then I felt tears on my cheek as he came up. He was holding me tight and I started to cry and I'm not embarrassed to say that it was very emotional.

Guest (Male): Many more soldiers on patrol throughout Germany would also bear witness to the camps. Rabbi David Max Eichhorn arrived at Dachau on April 30th, the day after it was liberated. Combat-hardened soldiers, Gentile and Jew, black and white, cried tears of hate.

In the years after the war, the returning servicemen would challenge America to live up to the values they had fought for so fiercely: democracy, equality, and religious tolerance for all.

Guest (Male): In the 1950s, Judaism really becomes an American religion. You can't talk about a Christian country anymore; now you talk about a Judeo-Christian country. And discriminating against people who are Jews or who are blacks makes us like the very Nazis whom we defeated.

Guest (Male): The triumphs and horrors of World War II had changed the Jewish servicemen and women forever. Some would become the voices of their generation, describing the war they had lived through with a critical eye. Norman Mailer's novel "The Naked and the Dead," based on his service in the Pacific, would skyrocket its 25-year-old author to fame. J.D. Salinger would draw on the pain of his own experience in "The Catcher in the Rye," which would become a great classic of American literature. Other Jewish veterans of World War II, including Herman Wouk, Leon Uris, and Joseph Heller, would also write best-selling novels, bringing a Jewish perspective to the story of war.

Guest (Male): I didn't talk about my service for 50 years, but now I speak all over. I always repeat what Maya Angelou said, "That we're more alike than different." It doesn't matter whether you're Jewish or Catholic or black or white. I do the best I can to try to get rid of the hate. That's the only reason I talk about it. I'm just telling how it affected me as a young American GI because I want the young people to know the truth. I want to be sure that they have a better world.

Laurie Cardoza-Moore: Well, that's our program for today, and I want you to know we appreciate your support. The time to take a stand is now. Be a leader in your community and in your church. One person can make a difference. Get involved with and support pro-Israel organizations such as PJTN. Call your senators, congressmen, let your elected leaders hear from you. Visit our website to learn more, sign up to receive action alerts, and order our films to share with family and friends. Please encourage everyone you know to tune in and become informed. God bless you and thank you for all you do on behalf of our Jewish brethren and all Israel. We'll see you next time on Focus on Israel.

Antisemitism has reached epic proportions and Israel is now surrounded by nations who seek its destruction. For Israel to lose just one battle would mean losing everything. As Christians, it is our biblical responsibility to stand with our Jewish brethren and Israel. PJTN needs your help to reach more Christians with this urgent message. Please visit our website to become a member today and order our award-winning documentaries. You must decide that you won't be silenced. Sign up now at PJTN.org. God bless you and thank you for your support and prayers.