The Jews of Central Europe – June, 1938 The Fate of Six Million – July, 1938 Jews in Baltic Lands – August, 1938 In Fascist Rumania – September, 1938 Terror in Polish Universities – April, 1939
Though he could draw no definitive conclusions about the future, Lestschinsky was entirely realistic in his appraisal, whether explicit or implied, about the paired impacts of Communism and Stalinism upon the Jews of the Soviet Union, whether individually or collectively.
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The Jewish children of the USSR are brought up with no knowledge whatever of their people’s history, and acquire through their education no personal bond with its collective destiny.
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…the reader is amazed to see how the Yiddish language has been turned into an implement for estranging Jews from their past, from Jews elsewhere in the world, and from all hope of a Jewish future. The vocabulary of these productions is dry, wooden, destitute of any values or conceptions that might convey overtones out of Jewish history and Jewish destiny. Nowhere does one encounter such words as Exile, Redemption, Messiah, Destruction, the prophet Elijah, the prophets generally, Moses, the Temple, Jerusalem, Eretz Israel, the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Bible, Talmud, Shulkhan Arukh, Kabbalah, Sabbath, the festivals, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Tishah B’Av, Simkhas Torah, or any of the myriad expressions that lend color to the Yiddish language, awakening time-honored memories and stirring up immemorial hopes.
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… there is not a single piece about either of the two epochal events that have dominated Jewish writing elsewhere, in all tongues, and in all forms of literature and journalism: nothing about the catastrophe of European Jewry, and nothing about the fight for the State of Israel.
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… a poet like David Hofstein, who once wrote with such poignant feeling, in his own way, about the Holy Spirit in Exile, joining in the chorus of muteness, and saying not a word about the Jewish tragedy, though he writes about everything else under the sun – not excluding the panergyrics to Stalin.
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“The sun itself might have been quenched, Chocked by blood and ash and loam, Had not the blooming of my home The brilliant orb with radiance drenched. For Stalin’s strength and Stalin’s will Mine earth irradiate to its heart.”
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Jewish Expressions in the USSR December, 1948
THE CULTURE which sustains nationality among most peoples has almost the power of natural necessity. Without taking any special pains, a Frenchman from the day of his birth is imbued with potent influences of his national tradition and contemporary environment. Jews are not in the fortunate position. The traditions and environment of other nationalities affect the Jews with almost the force of natural necessity; and to sustain his own cultural heritage and his sentiment of ethnic “belongingness,” he must apply himself deliberately to the maintenance of the Jewish language, schools, and literature.
What is the situation of Soviet Jewry in this respect? There are hardly any Jewish schools. Even those in Biro-Bidjan cannot pretend to constitute a school system in which all Jewish children would be educated in the Yiddish language. The Jewish children of the USSR are brought up with no knowledge whatever of their people’s history, and acquire through their education no personal bond with its collective destiny. Thus, is there is any element of culture cementing the Jewish group in the USSR today and holding out hope for their future as a Soviet nationality, it can only be the literature produced there in the Yiddish language. It is appropriate, therefore, to ask ourselves whether Yiddish literature, of the type that is being created in the USSR, makes for continuity, or if it makes precisely for the disintegration of Jewish ethnic existence.
I HAVE before me six Yiddish volumes recently issued in the USSR – five issues of the review Heimland, published in Moscow, and one volume of the review Der Shtern, published in Kiev. The latter book – 121 pages of stories, essays, and poetry – one approaches with the highest anticipation. Kiev, the capital of the Ukraine, had in pre-way days a deeply-rooted Jewish community with strong traditions, one that had developed unique institutions, and today, according to Soviet sources, Kiev is the center of a region in which there should be a resettled Jewish population of around a million.
Turning to this review first, the reader is amazed to see how the Yiddish language has been turned into an implement for estranging Jews from their past, from Jews elsewhere in the world, and from all hope of a Jewish future. The vocabulary of these productions is dry, wooden, destitute of any values or conceptions that might convey overtones out of Jewish history and Jewish destiny. Nowhere does one encounter such words as Exile, Redemption, Messiah, Destruction, the prophet Elijah, the prophets generally, Moses, the Temple, Jerusalem, Eretz Israel, the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Bible, Talmud, Shulkhan Arukh, Kabbalah, Sabbath, the festivals, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Tishah B’Av, Simkhas Torah, or any of the myriad expressions that lend color to the Yiddish language, awakening time-honored memories and stirring up immemorial hopes.
The content of these writings is equally strange: not a single picture from specifically Jewish life. One might conclude that there is no specifically identifiable context of Jewish life to become the subject of literature. But even among the protagonists of these stories there is none who shows any trace of an individual Jewish quality, of specific Jewish concerns or experiences.
TAKING all six volumes together, there is not a single piece about either of the two epochal events that have dominated Jewish writing elsewhere, in all tongues, and in all forms of literature and journalism: nothing about the catastrophe of European Jewry, and nothing about the fight for the State of Israel. There is an occasional reference, to be sure, to one or another Jewish protagonist’s having lost his father or mother, but these facts are mentioned in such a markedly dry and off-hand manner that the impression created is of a purely individual misfortune, a mere incident. That this extraordinary silence is concerted, not accidental, becomes obvious enough when one sees a poet like David Hofstein, who once wrote with such poignant feeling, in his own way, about the Holy Spirit in Exile, joining in the chorus of muteness, and saying not a word about the Jewish tragedy, though he writes about everything else under the sun – not excluding the panergyrics to Stalin.
But if the slaughter of the Jews is occasionally referred to, in individual cases, there is utter blankness about Israel – verboten! Material about this new state, with its 700,000 Jews through whom Soviet policy may hope to score some points in its conduct of international affairs – this is an export commodity for the back pages of Einikeit, and occasionally for the front pages, when it can serve to embarrass England and the United States among Jews abroad. But, in poetry, criticism, or belles lettres – not a word. Israel is prohibited from entering the hearts of Soviet Jewry – at least through the medium of Yiddish literature.
Well, then, can one find anywhere in the reviews a piece about the Jews in any other country of the world? Not that, either. Even the Jews of Poland, Rumania, and Hungary – all countries with Communist governments – do not exist! No discussion in a Yiddish review of the very interesting Yiddish literature and Yiddish press that has arisen in neighboring, Communist Poland! The Soviet Jew must be purely and strictly Soviet, hermetically protected against any contact with Jewish culture beyond the border.
Let us overlook this idiosyncrasy and ask – What about Jewish culture in the Soviet Union itself? Nowhere any article on Jewish education, or any specific Jewish problem in the USSR! No cursory or incidental mention by any character in a story of the existence of matters of specifically Jewish interest.
Most revealing is the way these reviews portray the Jew in his contact with his non-Jewish neighbors. In the Ukraine, the local non-Jewish population was responsible for the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Jews. In Byelo-Russia the number was smaller because fewer Jews lived there, but in proportion the crime was non smaller. Did this orgy of murder by the neighbors of the Ukrainian and Byelo-Russian Jews leave any traces in the relations between Jew and non-Jew? Not a trace; current Soviet Yiddish literature is silent on this point. Rather, it is far from silent: it paints such an idyllic picture of love between Jew and non-Jew, that we should all celebrate the arrival of Messianic times – lambs lying down with lions, swords forged into ploughshares. At least, in Yiddish belles lettres in the Soviet Union all these prophecies have been realized. It is painful to read in Yiddish, in one’s own tongue, such a sycophantically aggressive wooing of those who so recently stepped their hands in Jewish blood. The harmony portrayed between Jew and Gentile in the Ukraine and Byelo-Russia is not a mere cooperation in common projects; it is intimate and personal – not only no difference of opinion, but no difference of feeling. Before such an overweening, offensive of love, the other party must certainly yield – until the next wave of pogroms…
According to this literature, there can hardly be a dozen guilty men in all Ukraine and Byelo-Russia. Even the though the life portrayed is largely, even mainly, lived in contact with Gentiles, rarely does one come across an anti-Semite, let alone a Jew-killer. All saints! The chauvinists and reactionaries who murdered the Jews – all gone. Are Soviet Jews compiling documentary materials on those distant events of 1941 to 1944 when certain obscure ruffians, strangers to the spirit of the Soviet Ukraine and Byelo-Russia, destroyed a matter of a million Jews or so in such remote places as Kiev and Berditchev, Odessa and Kharkov, Minsk and Gomel? We do not know. About three years ago, there were some references to such a project, but they quickly died down. Now, one hears no more about it. But the Yiddish belles letters of 1948 have quite other concerns than to evoke melancholy feelings among Jews because of a few exceptional Ukrainians and Byelo-Russians who, long, long ago, in 1941-1944, were misled by the Germans and took a small part in the extermination of the Jews. The theory of this literature is that all the Ukranians and Byelo-Russians whom Jews meet in kolkhoz and factory, in offices and in institutions, are too kind and pure to harm a hair on a Jew’s head; most of them, indeed, saved Jews from death in those old, unhappy days.
TO BE more specific, let us begin with no less a writer than the novelist David Bergelson, the author of Nokh Alemen and and Avrum Vokzal, in which Jewish nostalgia and Jewish individuality, the decay of ancient values and traditions, and anxiety over the clouded future of Jewishness achieve so fine an expression. That David Bergelson is no longer recognizable in the Soviet author writing on “Jewish” themes in Yiddish today. The fabula of his new novel, which is being printed serially in Heimland, concerns an American Jewish professor of Russian origin who journeys to Biro-Bidjan to seek out the sweetheart of his youth. Meanwhile, he observes the marvelous development of the new region, and the new types of Jews who live there. And they are indeed new types, particularly for the old Bergelson nothing identifiable as Jewish, beyond the name, but each one a true copy of the standard Soviet citizen. Their achievements are not celebrated as Jewish triumphs nor their setbacks grieved at as Jewish defeats, but in all respects their project is presented as one of the great USSR, directly.
What sort of poetry is printed in the Ukranian Yiddish review? Here certainly, in this most personal form of expression and in the journal of one of the densest Jewish populations, one might hope for a more intimate Jewishness. The first poem in the review, by Khanne Levin, is entitled “Our Sun,” and includes lines which read roughly as follows:
“The sun itself might have been quenched, Chocked by blood and ash and loam, Had not the blooming of my home The brilliant orb with radiance drenched. For Stalin’s strength and Stalin’s will Mine earth irradiate to its heart.”
For the rest, the poem is a bouquet of curses for England and America and a shower of praises upon the sole savior of a world menaced by fascism – that is, Stalin’s Russia. The opening lines and some additional verses are sufficiently illustrative:
“You there, choking on the venom Of hatred for my land, ‘Gainst whom do you now raise a hand?” “For all that turns unto the light Must go with us, does go with us.”
The same poetess contributes a poem on practically the same theme, entitled “For Human Joy”. Its joyous refrain runs as follows:
“O, blossom forth with joy and glee For the happy dream of humanity! And a bullet for him who first lets fly In all the world a battle-cry!”
After this political poetry, we find a long story, the major item in the review, laying down, so to speak, its economic program. The story contains a romantic tale which we may ignore, because it is a minor and unilluminating element. The hero of the story is Ephraim, a Jew who had come back after five years of war to find his wife and children lost (how lost, is not explained), and, without taking even a few days to rest from the war effort, went back at once to find his old job in the tractor station, throwing himself into the work with unbounded energy. An older version of Ephraim is Kovel Gedalya, one other Jewish worker in the station. When a Ukrainian worker, Danilo, comes to work late once, because he is tired, Kovel Gedalya speaks as follows: “Well, Danilo, do you think Comrade Stalin doesn’t work day and night? To carry through such a war, a trifle. He was at all the fronts! Everywhere, he had to see things personally. He even came to us in the Urals, a mere trifle! And don’t forget, that he’s not so young anymore; but for him nothing is too hard – work is work. Now then, Danilo, get behind that hammer!” (p. 27) These two figures exemplify the function of the Jew in the Soviet economy, as portrayed by Soviet Yiddish letters – to stimulate effort, to be tireless, to labor unremittingly who brain and brawn, and to urge on others to do likewise. The heroes are two Jews among many non-Jews who set the dominant tone of their lives. But even when the two meet alone, or speak to the two Jewish women in the story, both of them from Ephraim’s hone-town, (the older one lost her husband and child, and the other, Malkah, whom Ephraim later marries, had not both her parents) they never speak as Jews, never mentioned that their personal tragedies might have something to do with their being Jews, or that there might be some among their non-Jewish fellow-workers who participated in the slaughter. In the climatic love scene between Ephraim and Malkah, they talk about “ordering new machines, shops, setting up workers’ clubs as light and airy as palaces.” (p. 49)
Other items in the review are “Spring 1948” by Moshe Pinchevsky, which hopes in verse for “thirty hundredweight” of grain her hectare and P. Kritichansky sings about “axes roaming the mighty woods,” and girls preparing “dams to cut in the forest.” This poet is also represented by two other poems, “By the River” and “In the Village,” in the latter of which “a cow stands thoughtfully still.”
We come, thus, to a story by a well-known Soviet author, H. Blaustein, bearing the intriguing title “His Dream.” What is the “dream” of a Jewish scientist in the Soviet Union? He dreams of success in breeding experiments with rabbits. The “resolute laborer of science,” David Vitkin, is afflicted momentarily with doubts concerning an experiment going on in a Soviet institute, but he summons up he reserves of resolution and labors on doggedly until he achieves his goal! There is a complication concerning a manuscript by an outstanding Soviet scientist who had been killed by the Germans, attempting to steal his discoveries. David finds the manuscript and completes the experiment, realizing the dream of the martyred Soviet genius.
THIS selection is representative of the Jewish quality of all the other stories and poems in the collection. But one additional piece deserves special attention. The author, Itzik Kipnis, is exceptional in that he was charged a while ago with chauvinism, and this story evidently represents an attempt at self-rehabilitation. He tells of Herschel Mechanik and his wife, Idda, who decide to adopt an orphan – “The government will not neglect them, but aren’t we also under an obligation?” says Herschel. In the orphanage, their enthusiasm rises and the childless couple return with two children. As to the little girl, it is not certain whether she is Jewish or Christian – her name is Zoya – but the boy’s name is Kostya, and his father was called Konstantin Pavlovitch Netchiporuk. And the director of the orphanage who entrusted these children to the Jewish couple is named Anna Antonovna. It is no doubt praiseworthy that a Jewish couple should extend its parental care to Soviet orphans without discrimination as to religion or nationality, but should not one of the parties involved be concerned as to the education of the children? Obviously not. They will be educated in an international spirit – to put it more concretely, in a Russian or even Ukrainian milieu. Herschel Mechanik’s house preserves none of the atmosphere of Jewish tradition, has no trace of Jewish individuality, no sign that it is not a Russian or Ukrainian home. Thus, Anna Antonovna, whose sentiments and loyalties are surely, if not those of Christian religion, at least those of Russian nationality, doesn’t even think it necessary to raise the question how Kostya, the son of Konstantin Pavlovitch Netchiporuk, will be brought up in the home of Herschel Mechanik.
The light this story casts on the depletion and lifelessness of Jewish culture in the USSR needs no further commentary. It is worth pointing, however, that Netchiporuk is very closely related indeed to the bloody Bogdan Khmelnitsky of seventeenth century fame, and the posterity of that notorious ancestor demonstrated very plainly only a few years ago how true they remain to the traditions of their national hero.
As noted in Thoughts from The Frontier: Jacob Lestschinsky, Demographer and Scholar, this essay – “Terror in Polish Universities”, from April of 1939 – is the last of Lestschinsky’s five pre-war writings published in the Jewish Frontier during the late 1930s. Here, Lestschinsky revisits Polish Jewry through the experiences of Jewish students in Polish academic institutions. Alas, the point all-too-soon became moot: The Second World War began in Europe five months after the publication of this article.
The previous essays are:
The Jews of Central Europe – June, 1938 The Fate of Six Million – July, 1938 Jews in Baltic Lands – August, 1938 In Fascist Rumania – September, 1938
Lestschinsky’s final Jewish Frontier essay, published three years after the Second World War’s end, is:
Jewish Expressions in the U.S.S.R. – December, 1948
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The Jewish students are determined not to yield any of the positions. The decrease in their number is due not only to the limitations on enrollment but also to the fact that some left the Polish universities to attend those in foreign countries and others gave up their studies altogether. The majority, however, remain in the universities, attend the lectures and refuse the hoodlums the pleasure of having driven them out. They remain standing for five and six hours during lectures; they are often humiliated and beaten, but they do not yield.
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Terror in Polish Universities April, 1939
“ATTACKS FROM the rear and ganging up against individuals have become normal occurrences among Polish students. The academic authorities and officials are being terrorized… Conscious deception is employed together with clubs, stink bombs, tear gas and iron weapons. Let those who originated this method of struggle not try to persuade us that the “holy war” against the Jews justifies even such means. A war of one people against another is also subject to laws of moral honor. No self-respecting army will dishonor the military name by designating as a soldier one who uses weapons to attack an unarmed person.
“Only a few years ago none would have believed that armed criminals would be free to attack defenseless persons in the institutions of higher learning.”
Who was the author of this speech? Who was it that dared to characterize the Polish students, the future leaders and lawmakers of Poland, in such terms?
The speech was not made by a Jew or a Socialist, nor even by a democrat. It was delivered by none other than the vice-minister of education, Professor Cornel Ojeski on April 5, 1937 and it was broadcast over the Polish radio.
But despite this one and similar speeches, recent years have witnessed the murder of many Jewish students and the wounding of hundreds in Polish universities. Ghetto benches were instituted in the class rooms and the Polish universities were transformed into such a purgatory for Jewish students that attending lectures is now fraught with mortal danger, in the literal meaning of the word.
The tragi-comedy in the Polish universities began soon after the jubilation over the newly found independence. In the very first years of Polish sovereignty, the “Nardowo” democrats, a pre-war anti-Semitic party, sponsored the demand for limitation on the number of Jews in the universities. The demand for legislation by the Sejm they supported by organized attacks on Jewish students in the schools. But Poland was at that time dependent on France and Poincare intervened to prevent the liberated country from taking the shameful step. Those were golden days for Polish Jewry and they are now forgotten. As the years went by, the attacks increased, but until 1933 they were still of a sporadic nature. But since that year the attacks became more clearly organized and consistent and also more murderous and dangerous in scope. No less than twenty-five Jewish students were killed during the past 5-6 years; several hundred were seriously wounded; two students became insane after being subjected to several attacks and hundreds of students voluntarily left the universities. But the 4,000 still remaining, are conducting a heroic struggle against the shameful segregation and the ghetto benches that were instituted in their “alma maters,” and against the return of medievalism in schools where only 25 years ago Jewish students offered their lives in the fight against the Czarist regime and for the liberation of Poland.
The first demand of the anti-Semites for a “numerus clausus” has long ago been fulfilled. The following figures illustrate how subserviently the government carries out the commands of the “armed criminals” in the universities of free Poland. In 1933 there were 51,770 students in the Polish universities. Of this number, 9,694, or 18.7% were Jews. Since 91% of all the students came from urban families and the Jews constitute 27% of the urban population, it is obvious that the Jews were entitled to a much higher percentage. That would be true even if we were to abandon the natural and healthy principle of free and unhampered choice of professions by the citizens and substitute in its stead the dangerous and abnormal point of view that people should enter professional life on a national basis and not on the basis of individual abilities.
In 1935, only 7,114 Jewish students remained and in 1938 their number still further decreased to 4,791 or 9.9% of the entire student body. The demands of the “armed criminals” on the Polish campus were thus completely fulfilled.
But appetite increases with the eating and anti-Semites are never satisfied. During the last semester a new program was embarked on – the complete elimination of Jewish students. The following documents testify to the progress that has been made in the direction of the ideals of those whose hands are smeared with the blood of murdered and wounded colleagues. The dean of the Warsaw Polytechnicum issued the following declaration at the beginning of the last semester:
“In view of various false rumors, I wish to inform that in 1937 6.3% of the students enrolled were Jews; in 1938, 5.6% and this year only 4.7%. On the basis of the order of the dean during the previous year, those who do not wish to sit together with Jewish students, will be enabled to do so. That order clearly indicated what is to be done in case one does not adjust himself to it.”
Such are the words of a teacher to the hooligans. He calms them with the assurance that their program is gradually being carried out. By now there are certainly no more than 4,000 Jewish students, but since the number admitted grows smaller each year, the “ideal” state will soon be attained. However, this concession seems to be inadequate and the dean hints that there are additional ways of getting rid of Jews – ejecting them if they refuse to occupy the ghetto benches. Since the dean knows very well that the Jews refuse to occupy these benches, his remark must be interpreted as a direct incitement against his own students.
But the fact that there still remain 4,000 Jewish students, does not sufficiently clarify the situation. It is also essential to know into what colleges they are admitted. Now Jew may become a professor or high school teacher in Poland. Of the 1,672 professors and instructors in Poland in 1936, only 36 were Jews. Some of these died since that time. The ones that remain, have kept their positions from pre-way days when these institutions were Austrian universities. No new Jewish instructors were engaged since that time. The older ones die of heart attacks and the day is not far off when Polish universities will be entirely free of Jews. It is no exaggeration when we say that many Jews in Poland die of heart attacks, professors included. Thus it is well known that the world famous Jewish brain specialist, Professor Rosen of the Vilna University, died of a heart attack when he saw his own daughter standing during a lecture of her father together with the other Jewish students who refused to occupy the ghetto benches. This professor, who had been entrusted with the examination of the brain of Pilsudski, was a one hundred percent assimilationist who never even hinted that he belonged to the oppressed and persecuted Jewish group. His heart failed when he was forced to taste of ghetto segregation.
The few Jews that are allowed to register are admitted to courses in philology and philosophy, courses which offer nothing practical. From medicine and law, professions in which individual ability and efforts are very important, Jews are almost entirely excluded. During last semester’s registration at the University of Cracow, no Jews were admitted to medical and pharmacy courses; 20 were registered in the school of philosophy; 3 in chemistry. In the University of Lemberg 3 were accepted into the medical school (out of 130 who applied), none were admitted to pharmacy courses, four were registered in the law school (out of 400 students enrolled) and 17 in the humanities courses (out of 150 enrolled).
In order to give a clearer picture of everyday life on a Polish campus, I will quote at length from an interpellation introduced in the Polish Sejm by the Jewish deputy, Dr. Sommerstein:
“On Friday, November 18 (1938), drawings of bridge designs were made in the main building of the Polytechnicum of Lemberg. The exercises ended at five P.M. A group of five Jewish students were the first to reach the door but Polish students barred their way and did not allow them to leave through the main gate. They finally succeeded in breaking their way through. The other Jewish students could not leave through the gate which was occupied by a larger number of Poles. The Jewish student, Berthold Meister, went up to the second floor and warned his colleagues not to go to the gate. A large group of Polish students meanwhile gathered in the office of the dean. Two Jewish students, Deutscher and Kloper, hid in the office of Professor Brotry where they remained until 9 P.M. The remaining seven Jews persuaded the assistant to give them shelter in the office of Instructor Chmilewitch. They were warned to maintain perfect silence and to put out the lights so that none might suspect their presence. But the door of the office was suddenly broken open by a large group of Polish students. The attack did not last long. When the light was turned on it was found that of the Jewish students Proweler was lying unconscious from his wounds; Lehrer was bleeding profusely from wounds in the abdomen and head; Meister was severely beaten about the head; Sheftler was beaten about the head and had a wounded on his arm; Ruf was bruised as a result of being kicked; Roichbergen was lightly wounded. Proweler died of his wounds a few hours later.
This interpellation in the Sejm also established the fact that the university authorities were aware of the impending attack but provided no defense. The event described was the second one of this sort during the same month. Two weeks earlier the Jewish student Carl Zelermeier was killed and three others were seriously wounded. It is true that this murder evoked the anger of a large number of Christians. At the funeral there were delegations from labor organizations and also from democratic non-Jewish groups.
The events described above are typical of all Polish universities during the past 5-6 years. Fortunately, they do not always culminate in death, but the order of the occurrences, attacks by hundreds on small groups, isolating the Jewish students in remote rooms, clubbing, stabbing with knives, beating with iron instruments – these have become normal events on Polish campuses. As soon as a lecture is over, the Jewish students hasten to the exit, but they are not always successful. Jews go about in groups, for numbers facilitate breaking through and self-defense. However, being a minority, they are beaten and murdered nevertheless.
What is the attitude of the professors?
The following is an illustration of their attitude. A professor of mathematics delivered a lecture. A Jewish student arrived after the lecture commenced and remained standing on the side. The Polish students demanded that he take his place on the special benches assigned to Jews. This he refused to do. The professor then interrupted his lecture and left the auditorium. The Poles ejected the Jewish student and also beat him. Then the professor returned and resumed his discourse. The attitude is typical of the majority of Polish professors. There exists a minority of about one hundred professors who protest against the attacks and the ghetto benches. Among the latter the professors Michalewitch, Kotorbinski and the ex Prime Minister Bartel, distinguished themselves. In a sharp denunciation of the student hooligans which he delivered to the Polish Senate, Bartel related that a questionnaire revealed that 48% of the students had never heard of Richard Wagner and 58% did not know who Poincare was. He also told that during the last semester he could not deliver 36% of his lectures because of rioting in the class room. Because of this speech Bartel was threatened with death. Within the university a movement of protest was organized against him which necessitated closing all the high schools in Lemberg.
A small group of Polish Socialists courageously fight the hoodlums and there have also been sacrifices of life on their part. One Polish student died of his wounds and several were wounded. The majority of the Polish students remain indifferent and participate neither in the attacks nor in the struggle against them. A large minority is actively, and almost exclusively, engaged in the attacks. But this minority commands a body of students far exceeding the number of Jews.
The Jewish students are determined not to yield any of the positions. The decrease in their number is due not only to the limitations on enrollment but also to the fact that some left the Polish universities to attend those in foreign countries and others gave up their studies altogether. The majority, however, remain in the universities, attend the lectures and refuse the hoodlums the pleasure of having driven them out. They remain standing for five and six hours during lectures; they are often humiliated and beaten, but they do not yield.
During recent weeks the Jewish Socialist and democratic parties organized a campaign of protest against the ghetto benches. This protest is actively supported by the Polish Socialist party and also by small groups of Polish liberals. We must note with regret, however, that liberals are becoming ever more rare in Poland.
We have now reached the most important aspect of this tragic situation – the attitude of the government. The Polish government can honestly boast of more hypocrisy than any other government in the world. It has so far not passed even a single law against Jewish students. The order concerning ghetto benches in the schools was issued by the authorities of the universities which are autonomous. The government has not organized any attacks on Jewish students but it also does nothing to defend them because it cannot send its policemen into the universities. The universities enjoy self government and Poland strictly observes the constitution. If the universities refuse to admit Jewish students – the government may not intervene – because of the constitution. We could cite tens of speeches, like the one quoted in the begging of this article, which are offered as proof that the government is innocent. What can it do? It is powerless against the written word of the constitution. It does not know how to infringe even on the least letter of the constitution; it has no experience in this field.
It is true that Poland has experience in changing entire constitutions, but that is different from encroaching on the autonomy of the universities and sending a few policemen to deprive the student hooligans of their knives. An entire constitution may be discarded – as was already done in rejuvenated Poland – and a new one may be written. But it would be too much to ask that the government transgress against a single paragraph of the law of the land. Of course, if a Communist is to distribute a few leaflets on the eve of the first of May, the government will find ways and justifications to break a hundred paragraphs of constitutional rights. But that would mean defending the entire state including the constitution. It is clear that that would be a different matter. But the Polish government stands in no danger of collapse as a result of twenty-five Jewish students being murdered; the state will not be affected as a result of hundreds being wounded. How then should one expect it to infringe on the constitution in such insignificant cases?
The Polish government therefore remains calm. From time to time it sends one of its two-faced representatives to deliver a fiery speech. After that happens, the university authorities know that they can proceed against the Jews and the armed “heroes” feel that they can continue to beat and to kill their Jewish colleagues for an entire year without any intervention.
A few weeks after the minister of education delivered the speech cited in the beginning, in which he declared that he considered it impossible to issue any order concerning ghetto benches, the university authorities promulgated such a decree and the “armed criminals” began a simultaneous campaign in all the schools, with clubs and iron bars for the total elimination of Jewish students.
The Polish government remains true to the written constitution.*
*The figures concerning the number of students and professors are taken from the official publication of the statistical bureau – Statistyka Szkolnictwa; 1936-38.
The Jews of Central Europe – June, 1938 The Fate of Six Million – July, 1938 Jews in Baltic Lands – August, 1938
The subsequent two essays are:
Terror in Polish Universities – April, 1939 Jewish Expressions in the U.S.S.R. – December, 1948
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In suggesting that anti-Jewish animosity was increasing in Rumania due to positive economic changes, Jacob Lestschinsky’s essay anticipates ideas expressed in Mihail Sebastian’s (Mendel Hechter’s) 1934 novel For Two Thousand Years, as described by Dr. Ruth Wisse in her 2017 Mosaic book review and essay of A Romanian Jew’s Private Judgment of a World Bent on Condemning Him, which she states, “…brilliantly chart[s] the psychological effects of anti-Semitism on both its perpetrators and its victims, a newly translated 1934 novel outdoes even such master analysts as Freud and Proust.”
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The situation in Rumania during recent years proves that anti-Semitism may develop not only as a result of economic crises but also as a byproduct of positive economic changes.
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The Jewish citizen of a fascist country is thus dependent on the good graces of the rulers and if he would gain their favor he must discharge his Jewish help and replace it with Rumanian.
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Some time ago I had an opportunity to speak with a group of young Rumanian Jews. To my query regarding their condition they replied with a sigh and a pessimistic shake of the hand. The meaning of the sigh was: Where could we escape to? Where can one get work? This is the unspoken question which torments 200,000 young Jews in Rumania.
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In Fascist Rumania September, 1938
RUMANIA IS a broad land inhabited by 18 million people. Its provinces differ widely in their economic, political and cultural past. Bessarabia, which was acquired from Russia, differs from the lands that were obtained from Austria and Hungary; the original territories of Rumania are a separate subject for study. The various provinces that comprise the Rumanian state have not yet fused into a unit. National minorities constitute 35% of the population in the country and in the cities they reach a high of 45%. The Rumanian population is the most backward relative to its development and is noted for its conservatism.
The one million Jews that live in Rumania constitute 6% of the total population but in the cities their percentage is much greater. Before the war they were 65% of the population of Kishinev; the non-Jewish minority was comprised of Russians, Ukrainian and Moldavians. At the time we hoped that under a democratic regime the Jews would assume the leadership in the government of cities like Kishinev. As late as 1925 they still comprised 60% of the population; today only 50%. The same holds true for Jassy. In 1925 Jews accounted for 60% of the population and today only for 48%. In Czernowitz they were 47% in 1925 and 38% today. The process of relative diminution in the cities if characteristic of all the countries of eastern Europe including the Soviet Union. The cause underlying this process is also the same in all these countries – the urbanization of the majority nationalities and their adoption of western European culture. The tragedy of eastern European Jewry consists in this transition in urban trades because it involves the displacement of the minority which developed these countries and fostered their trade and industry.
But it is not an easy task to displace the Jews from trade in a city like Kishinev where 80% of the commerce is handled by them. The same holds true for Jassy, Czernowitz and scores of other cities and towns. It is a difficult task to displace the Jews from the textile industry two-thirds of which is in their hands. This industry is relatively new in Rumania and the non-Jews, particularly the Rumanians, are not yet acquainted with its operation. In a land of forests, such as Rumania is, where the export of lumber occupies an important part in the economy of the country it is dangerous to replace the Jewish lumber merchants by others before the latter have mastered the trade and have made contacts with forest workers. A similar situation prevails in many other Rumanian industries. The main cause for the downfall of the Goga government was that it attempted to introduce in a backward country – where most of the inhabitants cannot read nor write, have no capital and lack connections with foreign markets – a type of fascism which can only exist in countries with a well developed industry and commerce and with a high cultural level. But we should not deceive ourselves into believing that since 100% fascism faded in Rumania, partial fascism is also bound to fail. The masses of Rumanians have turned to the cities and are eager to engage in all urban callings. This movement towards urbanization largely explains the growth of social anti-Semitism which is always more dangerous than governmental anti-Semitic measures.
The situation in Rumania during recent years proves that anti-Semitism may develop not only as a result of economic crises but also as a byproduct of positive economic changes. During recent years Rumania has enjoyed a measure of prosperity unusual in these days. Its wheat crops have increased by 30% since 1930. Prices of wheat have also been higher during the past four years than they have been previously. The export of wheat accounts for one-third of the total Rumanian exports and in 1937 it amounted to 30 billion Lei.
The textile industry which was largely developed by Jews from Poland has made such rapid strides forward that it can supply almost the entire demand of the domestic market in Rumania. In 1927 there were only 5,300 looms but by 1938 the number has increased to 20,0000 looms. Textile imports have dropped to one-tenth. Textile production rose from 6 billion lei in 1932 to 10 billion in 1937. It is also noteworthy that in most of the textile plants a great number of Jews were employed and the office staffs were entirely Jewish.
But despite the development of industry which absorbed scores of thousands of workers, despite the phenomenal growth of trade and of the government apparatus which employs Rumanians only, social anti-Semitism and the process of displacement of Jews has been increasing steadily. How is this to be explained? It is very simple. The initiative of the Jews in developing trade and industry has not impoverished the villagers. On the contrary, it has increased their economic welfare and it has aroused in them a striving for a still higher standard of living. Thus we find that in prewar Czernowitz there were 173 doctors, 114 of whom were Jews, and 194 Jewish lawyers out of 228. Today the situation is different. The positions of the Jewish doctors and lawyers are now occupied by Rumanians and Ukrainian who had left the villages. Before the war the Jews accounted for 30% of the lower officials and 15% of the higher ones. Today there are no Jewish government officials. The younger Rumanians, the sons of the officials that displaced the Jews, are turning to trade and industry. Since the economic development of the country does not keep pace with the increase in population, the competition for employment and sources of income becomes increasingly keener. During the past twenty years the population of Rumania has increased by four million. With no outlet in the way of mass employment, the villagers are streaming into the cities. There they find the Jews employed in officers and shops and as owners of stores. The Rumanians announce frankly that they intend to seize these sources of employment and income, and in our times might makes right. This is the true meaning of the regulation which requires all employers to employ at least 80% “pure” Rumanians in their plants. If the Rumanians have not yet developed sufficiently – like the Germans – to be able to displace the Jews from trade and industry, they can at least seize the jobs of the Jewish workers and officials. Meanwhile they are satisfied with 80% – until they will acquire the necessary training to displace all the Jews. The method of percentages which has been introduced in Hungary and Rumania clearly illustrates the nature of fascism; it does not affect the rich Jewish merchant and industrialist as long as these are needed to operate their enterprises. It Is true that the Goga government, which followed a 100% anti-Semitic policy, cause complete anarchy in Rumanian economic and financial life and it was soon defeated. But the followers of Goga are more cautious and therefore more dangerous. Their strangulation of Jewish economic life is more gradual but it is sure to bring ruin. It is true that the plan of Goga to deprive half a million Jews of their citizenship has been discarded but several tens of thousands will be deprived of their rights. The revision of citizenship still proceeds and 50-60 thousand Jews are in danger of expulsion from the country for the sole sin of being born Jews.
New labor laws are also gradually but energetically being enforced. As a result of these laws unemployment among Jews has greatly increased. To our great shame we must admit that there are Jews who hasten to displace their Jewish employees by Rumanians in order to win the favor of the authorities and to save their enterprises and their profits. The authorities have the right to issue licenses to engage in export and import trade, to start new enterprises or to liquidate existing ones. The Jewish citizen of a fascist country is thus dependent on the good graces of the rulers and if he would gain their favor he must discharge his Jewish help and replace it with Rumanian. Small scale fascism such as exists in Hungary and Rumania is thus directed primarily against the Jewish proletariat and the impoverished middle class.
The “numerus clausus” has long been in effect in the Rumanian universities. During recent months the lawyers’ federations have been busy expelling their Jewish members. When we remember with what enthusiasm Jewish lawyers were expelled from the courts after the first decrees of the Goga government, we may feel certain that this latest aim will be “successfully” attained. Jewish doctors are not allowed in state and municipal institutions and are on the verge of starvation. Only a few specialists still retain their positions.
Forty to forty-five per cent of the Jews in Bessarabia have been forced to depend on relief as a result of these measures. The mortality rate among the Jews has risen appallingly while the birth rate has dropped. Thirty-five per cent of the Jews in Bukowina are dependent on relief. The poverty of the others is great and it affects segments of the population that hitherto supported Jewish charitable institutions.
Some time ago I had an opportunity to speak with a group of young Rumanian Jews. To my query regarding their condition they replied with a sigh and a pessimistic shake of the hand. The meaning of the sigh was: Where could we escape to? Where can one get work? This is the unspoken question which torments 200,000 young Jews in Rumania.
This is the fourth and last of a series of article on the situation of the Jews in the eastern and central European countries.
The Jews of Central Europe – June, 1938 The Fate of Six Million – July, 1938
The subsequent essays are:
In Fascist Rumania – September, 1938 Terror in Polish Universities – April, 1939 Jewish Expressions in the U.S.S.R. – December, 1948
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Calmly, without tumult and in a “civilized” manner the Jews were brought to a condition where emigration offers the only escape from their predicament.
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Jews in Baltic Lands August, 1938
LATVIA OFFERS an excellent example of how a Jewish community may be destroyed without tumult and violence, without breaking heads and smashing windows and even without the hysteria of anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitic agitation is practically forbidden in Latvia. The supreme and only ruler of this small country is acquainted with that law and he can manipulate it in such a manner as to avoid entirely the “glamour” of anti-Semitic agitation.
Ninety-thousand Jews live in Latvia today and they comprise five per cent of the total population. In 1897 there were 142 thousand Jews in Latvia and they made up 7 ½ per cent of the inhabitants. As recently as 1938 there were 95 thousand Jews in the country and their number is constantly diminishing. The ruling Latvian majority is growing at the expense of the Jews and of other national minorities. Whereas the Latvians constituted only 68% of the population before the war and they were almost exclusively engaged in agriculture, they comprise 76% of the population today and they form the majority in many cities. Two causes contributed to this shift in the population: the greater natural increase among the Latvians as compared to that of the Jews and the Germans and the emigration of Jews from the country. The percentage of Jews in the cities is also decreasing. Before the war they accounted for 40% of the population in Dwinsk; in 1925, 31%; in 1935 only 24%. This change in Dwinsk is characteristic of the trend in other cities.
In the pre-war years, the cites were the backbone of Jewish economic and cultural life in Latvia because in many of these they were the largest single national group. In Dwinsk, for example, the non-Jewish 60% of the population was composed of four different nationalities: Russians, Latvian, Poles and Lithuanians. Under a democratic regime, such as was contemplated before the war, the Jews would have had a majority in the city administration. But reality did not concede form to plan. The Latvians are the sole rulers and it is their policy to displace the national minorities.
Latvia instituted a large-scale agrarian reform program. Of the three million hectares (1 hectare is 10,000 sq. meters) which were previously in the possession of large German landowners, two million were sub-divided among the Latvian peasants. In time it became clear, however, that the peasants who received land and financial assistance, vocational school and aid in marketing their produce, these same peasants who profited from the reform measures became the stronghold of reaction and the supporters of an unbridled chauvinist policy. The sons of those well to do peasants attend the universities. Relatively there are today more university students in Latvia than there are in England. The new generation of educated peasants’ sons swarmed into all the urban trades and professions. With peasant stubbornness and lack of regard they began to displace the national minorities. Over 40% of the student body in Latvia consists of peasants’ sons. The government grants them subsidies and positions even before they are graduated. This phenomenon of the spread of education among the farming population could have been greeted as desirable if the newly educated Latvians had recognized the right of other nationalities to earn a livelihood.
The process of displacing Jews from the professions began even before the triumph of fascism in Latvia. Under Czarist rule there were no Jewish officials in the country. During the honeymoon of the Latvian republic, a few scores of Jews were given official positions for the reason that there were not enough Latvians capable of filling the posts. Later the Jewish officials were discharged. Among the 30 thousand government officials in Latvia, there were never more than 150 Jews. Today there is not a single Jewish official in the country. Even during the years 1930-1933 no Jewish doctor could be employed in the government hospitals and clinics. With the rise of the dictatorship, the majority of those Jews who still had posts were dismissed and only a few indispensable specialists were retained.
The trend towards commercial callings was increasing as a natural process but the dictatorship accelerated it by means of special privileges for the Latvian businessmen and by placing hindrances in the path of the Jewish traders. The first step of the government was to take over the trade in agricultural produce. This measure affected all those who were engaged in this trade. Not only the Jewish exporters but also the small Jewish grain dealers in the small towns and the employees of the export firms were adversely affected. The government agencies which conducted the trade in agricultural produce did not employ even a single Jew. In 1937 the government paid 150 million Lat to farmers for their produce. The total Latvian exports of that year amounted to 261 million Lat. Nearly all the agricultural exports were handled by the government, and yet this branch of trade was previously almost entirely in the hands of Jews. When the government assumes control of any branch of trade, the laborers in that branch are affected even more than the traders and manufacturers. The government refrains from employing Jews even in the unskilled labor of loading and hauling. Many Jews in Latvia heretofore derived their sustenance from such unskilled labor.
The credit institutions are now almost entirely in the hands of the government. In 1936 it granted loans to the extent of 405 million Lat, 76% of the total credit extended in the country in that year. Latvian merchants and manufacturers receive loans at lower interest rates and with less collateral than is required of Jewish entrepreneurs.
But the process of industrialization is still proceeding at a slow pace among the Latvians. They lack the necessary training, the minimum capital outlay and the initiative which this new field of enterprise requires. The government therefore began to take over the factories. The administration of Ulmanis passed a number of laws which enable it to take over any industrial establishment. Latvian law decrees that the government may consider any industrial establishment to be sufficiently important for the interests of the state to give it the right of buying it. In 1936-37 this law was applied to take over a number of Jewish owned factories which also employed Jewish laborers. During these two years, plants manufacturing wagons, machines, cigarettes, chocolate and beer were taken over. The Jewish owned textile plant “Riga-Willa” and three other factories were also recently acquired by the government which thus deprives the Jews of a branch of industry which they founded and developed in independent Latvia.
Five years ago, when it became difficult for young Jews to gain admittance to the university and to look forward to a career in the professions, many of them tuned to physical labor. In the textile factory in Riga I met scores of Jewish workers many of whom were graduated from high schools. During the past five years, this trend toward physical labor has become even more accentuated since prospects in commerce and in the professions have become even poorer than they were. Now the Latvian government denies Jewish youth even this outlet. One can forsee that the Jewish laborers as well as the Jewish officials and technically skilled employees will be dismissed soon. The economic policies of the government and its actions in the past clearly indicate such a course.
According to recent information the Latvian government is about to inaugurate the following industrial enterprises: a textile plant at an investment of eight million Lat; lumber and coke plants for four million Lat; peat works for 3 ½ million Lat; fish distributing depots for 2 million Lat and a bakery for 600 thousand Lat. The appetite grows with the eating. The more deeply the government becomes involved in commercial and industrial ventures, the greater is its desire to control additional economic fields. In the near future private enterprise may be displaced entirely. We would not feel concerned for the private Jewish entrepreneur it the actions of the government were not of such a nationalist nature. In practice it takes everything out of the hands of the national minorities and hands it to the Latvians. Without exaggeration we may say that over half the trade and industry in Latvia is now in the hands of the government and this process is still proceeding at an increasing pace. While the Jewish industrialists and businessmen receive compensation from the government for their plants, the Jewish workers and intellectuals remain without work and without any prospects for the future.
It is therefore not surprising that the Jews of this small country, where no discriminatory laws exist and where, in theory, the Jews enjoy equal rights, are panicky and frantic. Jewish youth is afraid lest the government appropriate a few plants and dismisses them from their jobs.
We did not analyze the cooperatives in Latvia which are supported by the government with credit, special privileges and freedom from taxation. Often one receives the impression that the cooperatives are no more than government stores operated by government officials. No independent activity on the part of the people is noticeable in this field.
Since the political situation in the country is stagnant and there are no prospects for political changes, the Jewish citizens are despairing. Their only hope lies in emigration. It is the dream of every Jew and especially of the youth to emigrate, but where?
Latvia is a small country with a population of less than two million. It is easy to gain control of the economy of the land and this explains the rapid and successful action of the government. The Latvians are a cultured and capable people who adapt themselves rapidly to new trades. They learned much from the Germans when they were subjected to them. Jewish merchants never constituted more than one third of the businessmen in the country. Their share in the industry was even smaller. In parts of the country, as in Riga, there was a “pale of settlement” for Jews before the war. During the twenty years of Latvian independence there came into existence large groups of educated and technically trained people. As a result it was very easy to displace the Jews from their economic positions without expressly legislating against them. Calmly, without tumult and in a “civilized” manner the Jews were brought to a condition where emigration offers the only escape from their predicament.
This is the third of a series of article on the situation of the Jews in the central European countries.
Jews in Baltic Lands – August, 1938 In Fascist Rumania – September, 1938 Terror in Polish Universities – April, 1939 Jewish Expressions in the U.S.S.R. – December, 1948
Being that this essay deals with the history of Polish Jewry, Dr. Ruth R. Wisse’s Mosaic essay from December of 2015 – Jews and Other Poles – is highly relevant, for it unflinchingly explores the complicated intersection between the past and the present.
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The above cited facts combine into a horrifying picture of the hopeless future facing Polish Jewry. The situation is such while theoretically they still enjoy equal rights. No explicit anti-Jewish laws have been enacted yet and the process of displacement has not yet been organized on a governmental scale. The evil must therefore be recognized before it has attained its final growth. Even the present economic displacement is better than complete economic expulsion which would be tantamount to expulsion from the country.
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The Fate of Six Million July, 1938
THE 3 ¼ MILLION Jews that live in Poland constitute one-fifth of the Jewish population of the world but culturally and nationally Polish Jewry is of even greater importance than its numerical strength would lead one to believe. Polish Jewry is today the greatest reservoir of organic, throbbing Jewish life; it not only preserves the heritage of the past but it also grows and becomes rejuvenated. Compared with the poverty of our national life in other parts of the globe, Polish Jewry is still – despite its economic deterioration – a fertile source of stimulation to Jews throughout the world.
The total population of Poland today is 34 ½ million. This figure marks an increase of 8 million people during the past 20 years. During the same period the population of Great Britain increased only by 3 million and British laborers earn on the average three times as much as Polish workers. In the past eight years the Polish population increased ten per cent while production in the country decreased 12% during the same time.
The poverty of the peasantry and the laboring masses in Poland is well known and even those fortunate enough to be officials find themselves in straitened circumstances. Most of the officials earn less than 30 zloty a week (six dollars) yet this salary is high when compared with the earnings of the workers and especially of craftsmen who work at home. The latter constitute a high percentage among the Jews and in Warsaw they make up 80% of the 75,000 Jewish workers of that city.
On the basis of information gleaned from various sources we obtain the following picture of the economic situation of Polish Jewry. 1,240,000 Jews (38%) are dependent on relief. These constitute the lowest stratum of the Jewish economic pyramid. About half of this number are totally dependent on relief while the other half earn only enough for some of the barest necessities and must fall back on outside help to obtain clothes and to pay for medical aid in case of sickness. These families never have enough food and during the winter they suffer from cold. Usually such families possess only one pair of shoes and one overcoat that is used alternately by all the children. Children of ten years help at home and in the store and children of 12 years already look for work. This section of the population provides cheap labor that can compete with coolies. The shops are crowded with children of from 12 to 15 years of age who depress the wage level and hinder the struggle for better working conditions.
The second stratum of Polish Jewish economic pyramid contains about one million Jews who barely eke out an existence. They do not require outside aid but they are unable to pay to the community council even the small annual tax of ten zloty (two dollars) and most of them only pay half that sum. Even minor economic dislocations make them dependent on relief. They live in inadequate houses and meat is a rare item in their diet. Often they require the assistance of loan societies. The younger people see no future for themselves and are anxious to leave their homes at the earliest opportunity. They provide the largest contingent of candidates for emigration. They are ready to migrate anywhere only to escape their hopeless situation. This youth provides the bulk of the Jewish Communists who are ready to risk their lives in the Polish prisons; the ranks of the Chalutzim who are ready to engage in the most difficult labor in preparation for a new, even though difficult and dangerous, life in Palestine are also recruited from this element. An aim in life and useful work is uppermost in their minds. Sons of artisans and store keepers, these young people are not so hungry but that they still have energy left to participate in political parties and to plan for the future, but they are desperate enough to risk their lives for a higher purpose in life. This group therefore provides many idealists and people ready for self sacrifice.
The upper economic stratum contains about one million Jews who are well situated. About fifty thousand of these can be considered wealthy and they enjoy a comfortable and even luxurious life.
The distribution of the Jewish population in Poland in the various economic pursuits can give us an insight into their prospects for the future. One million Jews engage in commerce. Half of these are peddlers and small store keepers; 250,000 are employed in commercial establishments and the remaining 250,000 operate medium and large scale business enterprises.
About half a million Jews engaging in commerce and threatened with economic ruin. No less than 50,000 small stores and open air stands were opened by Poles during the past five years. The number of Jewish stores in the villages is decreasing, and from some villages they were banished altogether. Jews were murdered in more than forty Polish villages during the past two years and in such instances the remaining Jews flee the village. In some villages the peasants showed their kindness to their Jewish neighbors by helping them to load their possessions on wagons and then escorting them – with a hail of stones.
An investigation conducted in thirty villages in eastern Galicia disclosed the following situation: 134 Jewish families lived in these villages in 1932; only 77 families remained in 1937. In 1932 Jews owned 62 stores but they owned only 16 stores in 1937. Poles increased the number of their stores from 14 in 1932 to 112 in 1937. In place of the 46 Jewish stores that were closed there appeared 65 stores owned by Poles. These figures are illuminating in that they indicate that there has appeared an element in the Polish villages which is forced to turn to commerce despite the decline in business.
It has been pointed out before that an estimated 8 million Polish villages are forced to turn to urban trades and to commerce. Only a small number of these turn to commerce but the Polis merchants receive credits from government and municipal banks. The boycott committees picketing the Jewish stores also aid the Polish store keepers to dislodge their competitors. The constant riots primarily affect the Jewish peddlers and small business men. We will admit, however, that even without pogroms and boycott pickets Jews would be displaced from business although at a much slower pace. The situation of the small merchants is desperate and the day is not far off when even the medium and wholesale Jewish dealers will be affected.
The younger generation of the business class has despaired of commerce and is dreaming of emigration, of factory work and even of difficult unskilled work. Of course we should not bemoan this tendency to leave trade for labor but the fact remains that of those displaced from commerce not more than one out of ten succeeds in finding employment. In the coming decade additional tens of thousands of Jews will probably be displaced from business without being able to gain a foothold in other economic fields in Poland. Other hundreds of thousands will remain in their small stores without earning a livelihood. These masses will seek come escape, for their children if not for themselves. This fact is becoming clear to everyone who looks at the situation and who realizes the process of pauperization and displacement to which the Polish Jews are subjected.
About 1,250,000 Jews engages in handicrafts, factory work and unskilled labor. Although they too suffer from anti-Jewish laws whose aim it is to replace them with Poles, their position is never the less superior to that of the merchants. The process of displacement is more difficult in the trades due to the fact that years must pass before new men can acquire the necessary skill. Petty industry, most of which is in Jewish hands, constitutes an involved economic field. One who engages in it must be able to obtain some capital and then to find a market for his products. The danger to the Jews in this economic field is therefore small, and it is a fact that the number of Jews engaged in petty industrial production has increased. But the number of those seeking a foothold in this field is ten fold the number of those that can be absorbed. Competition increases and assumes pathological forms. The market is flooded with boys and girls who earn about $1.50 a week. The number of Jewish workers has greatly increased during recent years but I doubt whether their total earnings exceed the earnings of the Jewish workers of ten years ago when their number was much smaller. If there were possibilities for the emigration of tens of thousands of workers, then the conditions in this field would improve and it could absorb new workers although it could never satisfy the needs of all the masses of Jews who are being displaced from other economic pursuits. We must bear in mind, however, that in the Polish villages Jewish artisans as well as businessmen are displaced. Poles have learned to sew the clothes of the peasants and the government is encouraging this movement through the establishment of trade schools to train Poles.
The situation in the professions is tragic. Jewish lawyers suffer hunger and many of them leave their professions for common labor after years of struggle. Some Jewish doctors in Lodz charge no more than 40 cents a visit. All hope and prospects in the professions is gone. The number of Jewish students has decreased from 10,000 to 5,000 during the past decade while the number of non-Jewish students has increased by 12,000. Most of the Jewish engineers are unemployed while the Jewish journalists, authors and poets are literally starving. No Polish newspaper will employ a Jew and recently the most widely read Polish newspaper discharged all its Jewish employees. No Jew has an opportunity to engage in scientific work nor may he receive the title of professor in Poland. Those who engage in Jewish research work do not earn enough for their sustenance. All branches of the sciences and arts are closed to the Jews of Poland.
The above cited facts combine into a horrifying picture of the hopeless future facing Polish Jewry. The situation is such while theoretically they still enjoy equal rights. No explicit anti-Jewish laws have been enacted yet and the process of displacement has not yet been organized on a governmental scale. The evil must therefore be recognized before it has attained its final growth. Even the present economic displacement is better than complete economic expulsion which would be tantamount to expulsion from the country.
The Fate of Six Million – July, 1938 Jews in Baltic Lands – August, 1938 In Fascist Rumania – September, 1938 Terror in Polish Universities – April, 1939 Jewish Expressions in the U.S.S.R. – December, 1948
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The 1,500,000 Jews who live in these lands now have but one way out of the dilemma: emigration. The question is – where?
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The Jews of Central Europe June, 1938
EVERY NATION is morally compelled to face the bitter truth. This article is written not with the intent of bewailing our plight but in order to arrive at a factual calculation of the status of six million Jews in Central and Eastern Europe and of the prospects that exist in the lands of immigration.
We will begin the reckoning with those countries in which the Jews had reached the peak of their development and where they now tumble at break-neck speed into a bottomless abyss. Over half a million Jews of central Europe are now in the grip of a ruthless inquisition: 300,000 in Germany and 200,000 in Austria. The liquidation of Jewish commercial concerns in Germany is now proceeding at a more rapid pace than it did even during the most difficult months of 1934 and 1935. At that time the Jewish as well as the world press was full of reports concerning the shameless robberies perpetrated by the “saviors” of the German nation. Now the process of pauperization has become a chronic ailment. Everyone, with practically no exceptions, is preparing for flight. As recently as a year ago German Jewish leaders were seriously considering the establishment of homes for the aged to house 250,000 Jews. According to their calculations about 100,000 of the younger and more adaptable Jews would leave the country in the next five years and only the old and those no longer fit for work would remain. They then believed that the old, the decrepit and the widows would be allowed to end their days in the exile of Hitler land. But not they too have changed their minds. They now realize that the departure of the younger ones increase the terror of the old people at the prospect of remaining in the hell which Germany has become for them and that these too are ready to grasp the wanderer’s staff in order to escape the fate of remaining alone in Germany.
Thus proceeds the liquidation of a section of Jewry which for 150 years has enriched the Jewish people and the whole world with hundreds of scholars and scientists. The 150,000 German Jews who have scattered throughout the world are spiritually crushed and will not soon recover. The 40,000 Jews who have settled in Palestine will probably enrich the Jewish community there, but the 110,000 others who fled to various lands are merely looking for a place of refuge where they can hide without attracting attention. Only one hope fills the heart of the German Jewish refugee who had found a domicile – to find room for those dear to him who still remain in Germany.
Such is the end of German Jewry which was the richest and most prosperous from an economic as well as from a spiritual viewpoint.
(Austria)
But the debacle of German Jewry is as nothing when compared to the calamity which has overtaken the Jews of Austria. The measure of destruction which was achieved in Germany in two years has been accomplished in Austria in two weeks. In proportion to the population there were more Jewish shops pillaged in Austria in two weeks than there were in Germany in two years. More Jewish doctors, dentists, lawyers, engineers and architects were expelled from their positions in Austria in one month than were affected in Germany in three years. The number of Jewish officials in Austria was negligible and altogether they numbered no more than 156 in government and municipal positions.
Austrian Jewry suffered from a severe economic dislocation even before the annexation of the country by Hitler. Sixty thousand out of Vienna’s 170,000 Jews – over one third – were dependent on relief. Among the needy who applied for aid there were Jews who only a few years before themselves contributed considerable sums to the Jewish charitable institutions. Even before Hitler seized Austria the majority of the Jewish lawyers were unemployed and the number of Jewish bank employees decreased from 10,000 to 1,200 over a period of two years; the nationalization of the banks transformed the Jewish employees into paupers and unemployed. A similar fate awaited the Jewish employees of the insurance concerns. The bankruptcy of the insurance company “Phoenix” and its absorption by the government reduced 100 Jewish families to poverty. The plight of the Jewish “intelligentsia” of Vienna even before the advent of Hitler is impossible to describe.
In 1933 tens of thousands of Jews found refuge in the neighboring countries. Even Poland and Russia gave temporary refuge to thousands of German Jewish refugees and even though they soon left these countries they found momentary rest in these lands. Today the situation is different. The gates of all the countries are locked fast. All boundaries are carefully guarded and only a handful succeed in escaping. During the first years of the Nazi regime emigrants were allowed to take along enough money to tide them over for a few months. Today the pockets of those leaving Germany are carefully searched. If one does succeed in escaping, he emerges penniless with not a nickel to pay the porter at the station.
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(Hungary)
Hungary, Austria’s neighbor, harbors 430,000 Jews. Events which transpire in Austria cast their shadows on Hungary. We have heard much of the nightly raids in search of foreign Jews during which hundreds of people, 95% of them are Hungarian citizens, are roused from their beds. Much has also been written of the ceaseless attacks of the anti-Semitic Hungarian students during recent years. But very few people are acquainted with the systematic and thoroughgoing efforts to expel Hungarian Jews from economic positions. The Hungarian parliament is now considering a bill to limit Jewish participation in economic life to 20%. In sponsoring this bill the government aims to steal the thunder of the fascist and anti-Semitic parties and to gain the support of the masses which are sympathetic to fascism. The Hungarian government considers this attitude as “favorable” to the Jews; it is convinced that it “saves” the Jews from the still greater dangers which are threatened by the coming of the fascists into power.
The situation in Hungary is very similar to that in Rumania. The Jews fulfill such an important role in the national economic life that their sudden removal would create an economic catastrophe similar to that which occurred in Rumania during the administration of Goga and Cuza.
It is true that only 35% of the total trade of Hungary is in the hands of Jews but in some branches of commerce that percentage is much higher. Eighty-two perc cent of the wholesale trade in wood and coal is in the hands of the Jews; 73% of the marketing of farm produce is in Jewish hands; 88% of the food produce trade, 71% of the book and stationary stores and 79% of the textile trade is also handled by Jews. They are also prominent in industry and represent 68% of the garment production, 66% of the textile manufacture, 67% of the paper production, 44% of the chemical industry and 37% of the metal industry.
Jews are also heavily represented in the professions and they constitute 54% of the medical calling, 49% in law, 31% of the editors and journalists and 25% of the scientific and literary men.
But the figures cited above apply only to private trade and industry. We get an entirely different picture in the government owned sources of employment. The share of the Jews in government positions amount to no more than 1 1/2 %. Jewish judges and state attorneys make up but 1% of the total; 3% of the professors are Jews and only 16% of the doctors employed in government institutions are Jewish. These figures are taken from the census of 1931. During the past seven years most of the remaining Jews in government employment have been discharged. The figures of Jewish participation in economic life therefore apply only to private enterprise. The Hungarians have not yet mastered trade and industry sufficiently – like the Germans – to be able to ride themselves of the Jews at once. Such a move would endanger the economic structure of the country. Such is the argument of the government when it prepares to liquidate the Jews gradually, over a period of a few years, until the Hungarians are capable of operating the Jewish commercial enterprises as well as of seizing them.
At first glance it may appear that limitation of Jews to 20% is not such a calamity since they comprise only 5% of the total population and even in Budapest, where 200,000 Jews are concentrated, they make up no more than 20% of the inhabitants. It is also a fact that the number of Jews in Hungary is decreasing. Before the war there were 470,000 Jews living in the area of present-day Hungary and today there are only 430,000. The death rate among the Jews is much higher than the birth rate and there is additional loss through emigration. But if we consider the position of Hungarian Jewry from a more realistic point of view we will readily realize the terrible consequences which a limitation to 20% will entail. When the government will begin to apply this economic “plan” it will not consider the fact that Jews occupy only 1% of the positions in transportation, the judiciary and civil service and that their share ought to be increased, if not to twenty at least to five per cent. The new law aims only at taking away but not giving. This is the measure of justice to the Jew, but we must admit that in this age of Hitler even such a law is relatively just.
One thing is clear: Hungarian Jewry is faced with a great catastrophe and it is only due to the more dramatic tragedy of Germany and Austria that we do not hear more about it. I suspect, however, that before long we will be compelled to listen to the anguished cry from Hungary. The political developments in this country are progressing at an accelerating pace. The fascist and anti-Semitic tide is constantly gaining in momentum and the proximity of Nazi Germany is bound to exert a fatal influence on events in Hungary.
Hungarian Jewry which has always avoided contact with the Jews of other countries and which was never represented in world Jewish conclaves may soon gave to ask for aid from world Jewry. Heretofore they were estranged from their people and looked upon themselves as Hungarians of the “Mosaic persuasion,” now they will be compelled to reunite with the living and bleeding body of the Jewish nation.
(Note: Before this article was finished the news arrived that the Hungarian government adopted the limitation bill. Our fears in this respect came true. In practice it means that the Jews will be removed from all non-Jewish and governmental establishments but Jewish concerns will be allowed to employ their co-religionists only to a maximum of 20%.)
Among the Jews of Hungary there are 67,000 laborers and 52,000 officials. These are people without means who face starvation immediately after they are discharged. Out of 2,800 Jewish doctors, only 1,600 will be allowed to practice their profession; of 2,700 lawyers only 1,100 will be permitted to continue their practice of law; only 300 out of the 500 Jewish editors and journalists will be allowed to continue their work. The same holds true for Jewish musicians and actors. Altogether nearly 6,000 Jewish families, which gained their livelihood in the professions, will be left without any income. When we add to these the assistants and office workers that were employed by the professionals we may conclude that about 25,000 Jews will be affected by the new decree. Still more tragic is the fate of those employed in commerce and industry. Nearly half of the 52,000 Jews engaged in these callings will remain without employment and the decree will thus affect between 60 and 70 thousand persons. Somewhat more favorable are the prospects for the Jews in heavy industry where they number not more than 7% but the situation is very critical in the smaller Jewish shops which have Jewish employees only. It will thus be an “optimistic” estimate to say that about 150,000 Hungarian Jews will be affected by the new decree and will be faced with ruin.)
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(Czechoslovakia)
The fate of the 360,000 Jews living in Czechoslovakia is probably the most tragic of all despite the fact that they live in the midst of a civilized and democratic nation which is fighting the encroachment of Hitlerism and that they enjoy equal rights. Nearly 100,000 Jews live in districts which are overwhelmingly German; 100,000 live in districts with a Hungarian or Slovak majority; another 100,000 live in the midst of a Ukrainian or Hungarian majority and only about 60,000 Jews live in territory inhabited by Czechs. During the past century the Jews of these districts thrice changed their political orientation. At first they were Austro-German patriots and aided the German majority to assimilate the subject peoples. After the Austro-Germans and Hungarians arrived at an understanding and some of the minorities came under the sway of the Hungarians, the Jews became Hungarian patriots. The third change occurred when the Czechs became the dominant element and the Jews became Czech patriots. Even while they lived in districts inhabited by Germans, Ukrainians or Slovaks, the Jews sent their children to the Czech schools. During election periods the Jews allied themselves with the Czechs and aided them to attain majorities which they never could have obtained without the assistance of the Jews. It became axiomatic for the Jews to side with the stronger force. Why? Because the weakest must always depend on the strongest and is forced to lend its small aid. From a historical perspective such a policy is unwise and charged with dangers but it is part of human nature not to look into the future. People want to live and to enjoy life and when the stronger seeks the aid of a weak group in order to dominate other minority groups the weaker one will grasp the extended hand of friendship. The Jews paid dearly for this policy but they continued to ignore the lesson of history.
A great danger threatens Czechoslovakia. The exodus has already begun. At this moment the immigrants of recent date who settled in the country are leaving it; but every letter that comes out of Czechoslovakia voices a great terror of what is about to come. If Hitler’s plan to partition Czechoslovakia, which was formulated in the Voelkischer Beobachter, is carried out, then the Jews will find themselves in a position much worse than that of the Jews in Germany. The Germans, Slovaks, Poles and Hungarians that will be detached from Czechoslovakia will take revenge upon the Jews for having supported the Czechs. Even if Czechoslovakia is to remain an undivided state it is evident that all its national minorities will obtain a wide measure of autonomy and the Jews will fall under their sway. Sooner or later the Jews will thus be faced with persecution and economic annihilation at the hands of the national minorities.
The terror which has seized Czechoslovakian Jewry – until recently the happiest Jewish community in central Europe – shows that they instinctively sense the approaching calamity. The democratic “paradise” island in the heart of Europe is about to vanish and with its disappearance the last ray of light for the Jews of central Europe will be extinguished.
This is the condition of the Jews in the central European countries. It is a situation which offers no hopes or favorable prospects for the near future. The 1,500,000 Jews who live in these lands now have but one way out of the dilemma: emigration. The question is – where?
Reading – whether fiction or non-fiction – is a journey to places real or imagined. Some literary destinations are both, particularly those in the genre of alternate history. In the overlapping realms of science fiction, and, speculative fiction, this is exemplified by Philip K. Dick’s The Man in The High Castle(see also…) and Cyril M. Kornbluth’s 1957 novella Two Dooms(…also see). Both tales, set in a post-1945 America, occur in a world where the Third Reich and Imperial Japan have defeated the Allies, and, the United States is geographically divided into zones of occupation controlled by the two victorious Axis powers.
The foundation of these two works, and the myriad of other tales in this genre – regardless of geographic or temporal setting – is that either a single and distinct event, or, the unanticipated confluence of a series of ostensibly unrelated events, has eventuated in history flowing along a river of time different – dramatically or subtly; humorously or horrifically – from that of the world we know.
The world in which you’re reading this blog post, at this point in time.
(Right here.)
(Right now.)
Given the staggering impact of the Second World War – whether ideologically, demographically, technologically, or bureaucratically; an impact that is continuing today, in 2023 – it’s not surprising that that near-eight-decade-old conflict would be the setting for writers as skilled and perceptive as Dick and Kornbluth, however different they were in life experience, world-view, and literary style.
However, what about the First World War as a springboard for a tale of alternate history?
An example published in the year 2000 is Martin J. Girdon’s The Severed Wing. In his novel, Mr. Gidron has imagined a world where the First World War ended with an outcome stunningly different than that of “our” world”: The Russian monarchy was never overthrown; Imperial Russia was never transformed into the Soviet Union; Communism never wreaked horror across the world; there was never a Shoah. And with all, there was never a Second World War. (Mr. Gidron discusses such details in detail in his closing “Author’s Note,” paralleling Leo Tolstoy’s afterword to War and Peace.) And yet, while the world created by Mr. Gidron is dramatically unlike ours, it is still a world most human: a world of military alliances, geopolitical conflict, and unrelenting social and economic uncertainty, as exemplified in the life and fate of its protagonists, Janusz and Irena.
While I won’t present any “spoilers” in this post, suffice to say that the novel is very well-written and the plot smartly and well-conceived. A particularly eerie aspect of Gidron’s novel is the way in which, through a succession of events of steadily and (as we know…) irrevocably greater impact, the world of The Severed Wing is supplanted with and completely replaced by our world. The novel’s notable difference from The Man in The High Castle and Two Dooms is the near-absence of a science-fiction ambience, though one could justifiably include the book in that literary genre. In this, I think it’s close in tone to Ward Moor’s brilliantly executed Bring the Jubilee – (ohhh, has that novel long-deserved a feature film or mini-series!!!) about a world in which the Confederacy won the Civil War, in indirectly posing questions about the nature of free will, destiny, and fate.
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Portrait of Ward Moore, from his FindAGrave biographical profile, by contributor RPD2
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Otherwise, by nature and intention, Jewish history and Jewish destiny (I suppose the destiny of the Jews will be revealed in time, but “that” time will never be our time) are entirely and intentionally central to The Severed Wing, unlike Dick’s or Kornbluth’s works.
In all this, I cannot say that I “l i k e d” the conclusion of The Severed Wing – I did not – but I did appreciate it. (Well, if I restricted my reading to books about bouncing bunny rabbits with winsome eyes, I wouldn’t be reading much of anything!)
So, here are the novel’s front and read covers. (For your consideration.)
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I read The Severed Wing in the early 2000s.
About a decade and a half later, amidst reviewing, examining, and otherwise-looking-at issues of the Jewish Frontier at the Dorot Jewish Division of the New York Public library, I discovered works of a vastly different sort of writer, written in an altogether different sort of context, that – by virtue of their timing – immediately; eerily reminded me of Gidron’s novel. The context? The journal Jewish Frontier (on 35mm microfilm, remember that?!). The writer? Jacob Lestschinsky.
As described in his biographical profile at YIVO and Wikipedia, Lestschinsky (8/26/76-3/22/66) was a historian and sociologist specializing in Jewish demography and economic history. He lived in Ukraine, Switzerland, Poland, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Latvia, and Poland once more, before – was it prescience, luck, or something else? – moving to the united States in 1938, where he lived until going on aliyah in 1959. As an academic and journalist who lived during an era and in a world of enormous and perhaps inescapable political and social turbulence, Lestschinsky had a complex professional life, which included working for ORT (The Society for Handicraft and Agricultural Work among the Jews of Russia (Obshchestvo Remeslennago i Zemledelecheskago Truda Sredi Evreev v Rossii), helping to organize the Fareynikte Yidishe Sotsialistishe Arbeter Partey (United Jewish Socialist Party), working as a correspondent for the Forverts, being a founding member of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, editing Bleter far yidisher demografye, statistik, un ekonomik in the mid-1920s, and throughout his career, writing for Jewish newspapers and periodicals.
In terms of Lestschinsky’s scholarship, Gennadiy Estraikh, in Science in Context (2007) notes the former as having been the author of over 35 academic papers, while a search of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s database yields 53 “hits” listing Lestschinky’s name in news items published between 1926 and 1966. At the Center for Jewish History, his “Correspondence with individuals and institutions” comprises about 1,800 letters.
I’ve had no success in finding his photographic portrait, but his biography at YIVO includes three images in which he appears with other intellectuals, writers, and YIVO members. I’ve taken the liberty of editing (“Photoshop-Elementing”, that is) these images, which are shown below, accompanied by YIVO’s captions:
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“Jakob Lestschinsky (second from right), historian Simon Dubnow (center), Meyer Abraham Halevy from Bucharest (left), and other delegates to the YIVO Conference pose at the grave of Tsemaḥ Szabad, a physician, leader of the Folkist party, and founder of YIVO, Vilna, 1935.”
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“A gathering of Jewish intellectuals in Kulautuva, Lithuania, 1920 or 1921. Those identified in the photograph include journalist Reuven Tsarfat (2, in fedora); Bal-Makhshoves (4, wearing white boater); Dovid Bergelson (6, on ground with his head on his neighbor’s knee), his wife (10, seated, second from left), and son (5, small child to Bergelson’s left); Zelig Kalmanovitch (7, with striped tie, center); Jakob Lestschinsky (8, to Kalmanovitch’s right); and Nokhem Shtif (9, to the left of Bergelson’s wife).”
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“Shmuel Niger (second from right, hand-numbered “3”), his brother, the writer Daniel Tsharni (second from left, “2”), scholar Jakob Lestschinsky (left, “1”), and others, on a trip to the Alps, ca. 1920s. Photograph by M. Aschwarden.”
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Lestschinsky’s writings in the Jewish Frontier, all penned while he resided in the United States, pertain to the same topics as his scholarly work: They profile life in the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe in vocational / professional, economic, and demographic terms, effectively capturing a late 1930s sociological snapshot of the world Eastern European Jewry … only one year before the commencement of the Second World War. Though entirely substantive, direct, and grimly unflinching in content, and characterized by statistics and quantitative information, the quality of Lestschinsky’s writing is excellent, and comports well with the serious but not-necessarily-too-academic tone of the Jewish Frontier.
Four of these items were published as a series from June through September of 1938, each installment pertaining to a different Eastern European region or country. These titles comprise:
The Jews of Central Europe – June, 1938 The Fate of Six Million – July, 1938 Jews in Baltic Lands – August, 1938 In Fascist Rumania – September, 1938
A fifth item, published five months before the war’s September beginning, specifically describes conditions experienced (well, a more apt word would be endured) by Jewish students in Polish academic institutions. The appropriate title:
Terror in Polish Universities – April, 1939
Lestschinsky’s sixth and last item in the Jewish Frontier pertains to the Jews of the Soviet Union, but – the Second World War having ended three years previously – covers Jewish life in the Soviet Union during the early years of the (first?!) Cold War. Paralleling the refreshing, anti-Communist, anti-leftist ethos of the Jewish Frontier from the mid-1930s through the early 1950s, Lestschinsky, too, has a deeply skeptical and worried (in retrospect, more than validly so) view of the future of Jewish life in the Soviet Union. The title:
Jewish Expressions in the U.S.S.R. – December, 1948
And so, my next bunch of posts will be comprised of Lestschinsky’s Jewish Frontier articles, one article per post, verbatim.
The one conclusion that can be drawn from the articles, especially those from 1938, is that even if the river of time had traversed an altogether different and infinitely more benign course, Eastern European Jewry – in a collective sense; as it existed under conditions prevailing in the 1930s – would have intentionally and steadily reduced to an abject, irrecoverable level of penury and social degradation. Lestschinsky proposed no explicit answers to this awful predicament, but he didn’t need to: The very publication of his articles in a publication unapologetically devoted to Zionism was his answer.
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In the meantime, here are some sort-of-randomly chosen news articles about, or mentioning, Jacob Lestschinsky, several found via FultonHistory. They’re chronologically arranged, and illustrate how his scholarship appeared in both the general and Jewish news media, as opposed to specialized, professional, and academic venues.
The central and haunting take-away in terms of raw numbers is how relatively little total Jewish numbers have changed across a century’s span.
Then again, what will historians of the future (if there are historians in the future) write of the world of 2023; the world as a whole; the Jewish world?
I won’t broach that question.
Oh. Seems I just did.
Whether for good, ill, or neither, perhaps it is best that the future remains unknown to man.
Some articles…
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Estimates 14,830,832 Jews in World
The New York Times August 7, 1925
BERLIN, Aug. 4 (Jewish Telegraphic Agency). – The dispute concerning the total number of Jews in the world has become more complicated by the publication here of new figures gathered by Jacob Lestschinsky, who says that the total is 14,830,832. According to the American Jewish Yearbook the total is 13,000,000, while Trietsch’s estimate is 17,000,000. Besides these figures there are others less authoritative compiled in America and elsewhere.
New York State Digital libraryNew York State Digital library
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Jewish Population Is Put at 16,000,000 World Total is Five Times That of a Century Ago German Authority States
The Evening Leader (Corning, N.Y.) November 1, 1932
During the last hundred years the world’s Jewish population has grown from 3,000,000 to 16,000,000, having quintupled in numbers from 1825 to 1925, whereas Europe, America, South Africa and Australia increased their population only three and a half times, according to figures published in the current number of the Menorah Journal by Jakob Lestschinsky of Berlin, an authority on Jewish demography.
“Never before,” Mr. Lestschinsky writes, says the New York Times, “were the Jews so numerous, nor to such a great extent gathered together in Metropolitan centres. Almost a third of the Jewish people now live in the fourteen largest cities of the civilized world.
“Quintupling in numbers from 1825 to 1925, the Jewish people propagated at over one and one half times the rate of Europe’s population as a whole. In no other period of their history have the Jews shown a similar growth. Moreover, this phenomenal increase was achieved not through Increased birth rate but through extraordinarily reduced death rata.
Rate of Increase High
“In the 55 years from 1825 to 1880 the Jewish numbers grew from 3,280,000 to 7,660,000; and in the halt century from 1880 to 1930 their numbers grow again to 15,800,000. In each of these periods they mora than doubled.
“This unprecedented increase seems all the mora remarkable when we recall that during the last half century the East European Jews were engulfed by three large pogrom-waves (1881-82, 1903-5 and 1918-21), with 2,000 massacres in which approximately 100,000 Jews were murdered and from 200,000 to 300,000 prematurely died of epidemics.”
What may properly be called “World-Jewry,” the writer says, arose only during the last century. Out of a small people, the greater majority living in Southeastern Europe, Asia Minor and North Africa, and strewn about in innumerable villages and small towns, forming tiny, unimportant islands in vast Gentile seas, the Jews have expanded over the entire world, settling in the industrially most advanced countries and concentrating in the largest cities.
“The geographical map of Jewry of a hundred years back,” he writes, “shows plainly that the Jews warn at that time crowded together in the most backward countries: In the Russian part of Europe, in Poland and Galicia, in the Balkans, in North Africa and Asia Minor.
Migrations to the West
“In the course of the century huge Jewish migrations took place from East to West; from the agrarian to the Industrial countries, from political despotisms to democratic nations, from the spheres of Slavic-Arabian culture to those of English-German culture.
“Perhaps the most striking change has come about in America, which now contains about a third of world Jewry, whereas a hundred years ago it contained only one-third of 1 per cent – no less than a hundredfold multiplication.”
In the fourteen largest cultural centres in Europe and America, of more than 1,000,000 inhabitants each, there are now 4,500,000 Jews – almost 20 per cent of the entire Jewish people. New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston and Cleveland have 2,750,000 Jews, or more than 80 per cent of the entire Jewish population in the United States.
More than 6,000,000 of the world Jewry, or 38.6 per cent, are engaged in trade, contracting and banking. The next largest group, 5,750,000, of 36.4 per cent, is engaged in Industry and handicraft. A million, or 6.3 per cent, are professional men and public officers: 625,000 are engaged in agriculture, 325,000 are houseworkers and diverse hirelings, while 2,000,000 are without vocations.
New York State Digital libraryNew York State Digital library
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30 PCT. OF JEWS LIVE IN AMERICAS
Nearly Two-Thirds Are in Europe, New Survey Discloses.
The Evening Star (Washington, D.C.) April 10, 1936
WARSAW, April 10 (Jewish Telegraphic Agency). – A total world Jewish population of 16,240,000 of whom 5,000,000, or 30 per cent, live in the Americas it has been reported by the Jewish Scientific Institute in a statistical survey published in the publication, Yivo Bletter.
The survey, conducted by Jacob Lestschinsky, economist and writer, as of the beginning of 1936, shows the world Jewish population increased 1,300,000 in the last 10 years.
The distribution of the Jews has remained stationary. More than 60 per cent of them, about 10,000,000, live in Europe, 5,000,000 In the Americas, more than 5 per cent, or 500,000, in Asia, and the rest, about 30,000, in Australia.
More than 10,000,000 Jews, or two-thirds, live in three countries. The United States has 4,450,000, Poland has 3,150,000 and Soviet Russia 3,080,000.
The Jews are scattered over 30 countries, of. which only four – the above three and Rumania – have more than 1,000,000. Seventeen countries have more than 100,000 Jews. The number of Jews shows an increase in every country except Germany, Austria, Hungary, Switzerland, Italy and Turkey.
Digital Newspaper Archives of US & CanadaDigital Newspaper Archives of US & Canada
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Jewish Population
The Southern Jewish Weekly June 6, 1952
The figures indicating the Jewish population in various sections of the world, released last week by the World Jewish Congress, are substantially similar to those made available earlier in the year in the American Jewish Year Book for 5712, published jointly by the American Jewish Committee and the Jewish Publication Society.
The present study, made by Dr. Jacob Lestschinsky, statistician and demographer, shows that “wars and anti-Jewish terror in Europe, the birth of Israel and other factors led to the migration of more than 4,000,000 Jews since the turn of the century, thus changing the entire Jewish demographic picture.”
Coming closer home, the United States is given a Jewish population of five million; Argentina, 400,000; Canada, 200,000; Brazil, 120,000; with the Jewish population in other eighteen Latin-American countries estimated at 150,000.
Of especial significance, Dr. Lestschinsky points out is the “remarkably swift growth of the Jewish community in the Holy Land, where the Jewish population has increased forty-fold in the last fifty years, rising from 35,000 in 1900 to 1,400,000 at the end of 1951.” One shudders to contemplate what might have happened to a preponderant majority of these 1,400,000 men, women and children had Israel not been eager, even though not prepared, to receive them. This may not come within the purview of the statistician; it must not be overlooked by those who read his figures.
In Europe, that is, with the exception of the Jewish groups behind the Iron Curtain, there are only two major Jewish communities – Britain with a Jewish population of 400,000, and France with a Jewish population of 240,000.
All of which furnishes an interesting picture of world Jewry today.
Digital Newspaper Archives of US & CanadaDigital Newspaper Archives of US & Canada
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This April, 1966 issue of TheNational Jewish Post and Opinion (of Indiana) is interesting on two counts.
First, it mentions Jacob Lestschinsky’s passing in Jerusalem.
Second, it carries an obituary for and tribute to a man whose life took a far different path: Israel Jacobson of Rochester, New York, who at the young age of forty-four (young even in 1966) passed away only a week before Lestschinsky. Though Jewish affairs in upstate New York would ostensibly have little relevance to Jewish life in Indiana, it turns out that Israel Jacobson, as T/Sgt. Israel Jacobson (12017570), heavily decorated for military service as an infantryman in the North African campaign, was the subject of several articles in Rochester and Buffalo newspapers in mid-1965. These related his belated receipt of military awards, and (perhaps because he’d been a boxer before entering the military) his struggle with cancer.
A member of E Company, 18th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, Israel Jacobson was the son of Rabbi Harry Jacobson, of 60 Baden Street, in Rochester. Born in Poland on November 2, 1921, he passed away on March 20, 1966, and is buried at Britton Road Cemetery, in Rochester. His name appears on page 351 of American Jews in WW II, which records that he received the Silver Star with one Oak Leaf Cluster, Bronze Star, and Purple Heart (he was wounded in mid-February of 1943) with one Oak Leaf Cluster. His wartime story was noted in The American Hebrew (6/11/43), Chicago Jewish Chronicle (5/28/43), and Rochester Times Union (3/26/43, 8/24/43, 7/11/45), while postwar, news articles about him appeared in the Buffalo Courier-Express, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, and Jamestown Post-Journal.
Jacob Lestschinsky
National Jewish Post and Opinion April 1, 1966
JERUSALEM – Jacob Lestschinsky, dean of Jewish sociologists, died at the age of 89 last week following long illness.
A native of Russia, Lestschinsky was one of the founders of the Zionist Socialist Party and was a delegate to the Sixth Zionist Congress in 1903.
Later he devoted himself to Jewish sociology, publishing dozens of books and studies and countless articles in Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian, German and English.
Following the Bolshevik Revolution he moved to Poland, then to Germany, finally to the U.S. In 1959 he settled in Israel – first in Tel Aviv and later in Jerusalem.
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RABBI’S SON ENTERS PRO PRIZE RING
The Wave (Rockaway Beach), July 11, 1946
After five years in uniform, ex-Army tech sergeant Israel Jacobson, the fighting son of a Rochester, N.Y., rabbi, has laid aside his carbine, and henceforth will restrict his fighting qualities to the professional prize ring as a Long Island’s bid for featherweight honors among the paid to punch brigade.
Twice overseas and twice wounded, “Battling Jacobson” as he has been dubbed by Long Island fight fans, participated in five major campaigns and two invasions. He holds several Army awards including the Croix de Guerre, Silver Star Medal, Bronze Star Medal, New York State Conspicuous Service Cross, and the Purple Heart with Oak Leaf Cluster.
Wisely enough, Jacobson, now a resident of Queens, has placed his fistic destiny in the hands of Irwin Goldie, internationally known fight manager and former G.I. who managed Billy Conn’s overseas tour and promoted service boxing tournaments in London, Paris and Rome.
Sgt. Jacobson’s story travelled from Rochester to Long Island. Here’s an article from The Wave (Rockaway Beach) from July 11, 1946:
Old Newspapers
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MEMORIAL SERVICES FOR LESTCHlNSKY HELD IN NEW YORK; DIED IN ISRAEL
Jewish Telegraphic Agency April 27, 1966
NEW YORK, April 26. (JTA) — Memorial services for the late Jacob Lestchinsky, Jewish sociologist and author, who died a month ago in Israel were held here today by the American section of the World Jewish Congress and YIVO, the Institute for Jewish Research. Dr Maurice L. Perlzweig, director of the WJC department of international affairs, who presided at the services, noted that Dr. Lestchinsky was a founder of the Congress movement, and was known for many detailed studies and reports on the Jewish position in many parts of the world. Other speakers were Prof. Salo Baron, Jewish historian, and C. Bezalel Sherman, chairman of the administrative committee of the WJC American section. Mr. Lestchinsky died at 89, in Israel.
Twenty-six years after The Jewish Chronicle published two articles about Miss Annie Edith Landau, found and Headmistress of the Evelina de Rothschild School in Jerusalem, The Palestine Post (today, The Jerusalem Post) published an article that is both a reminiscence and an observation: Miss Landau, in 1941 sixty-eight years old, presents her recollections of life in that city during the First World War, and, muses about living conditions in the Yishuv during the “Great War” in comparison with those of contemporary times – the early 1940s – less than two years after the September, 1939 advent of the twentieth century’s second global war.
The article closes on a small note of irony: Whereas the Chronicle’s articles of 1915 spoke of supplies sent to the Yishuv from beyond, the Post’s 1941 article notes that Miss Landau is sending a parcel in the opposite direction: to England.
Annie Edith Landau passed away three and a half years later, and is buried in Jerusalem.
The article…
MISS LANDAU REMEMBERS WHEN PALESTINE WAS BESIEGED
The Palestine Post July 3, 1941
“During the last war Palestine was only a ‘pauper colony.’ Who would have dreamed of the changes which have come about since then,” muses Miss Annie Landau, head mistress of the Evelina de Rothschild School.
Miss Landau came to Jerusalem from England 42 years ago. During the War of 1914-18 she was the last British subject to be exiled from Palestine to Egypt. However, this war sees the tables reversed. Last week she received a family of evacuees from Cyprus. One of them turned out to be a five months old baby and there was some ado about arranging a crib to welcome the little guest. As Miss Landau talks, five year old Mary from Famagusta sits on the floor, learning to spin a new top.
It is a far cry from the last war when Miss Landau left, for Egypt on the last orange boat from Jaffa and taught school in mud huts for several years. There was no bath tub available, so they fetched her the silver bath of a khedive, which was the one sign of luxury in the desert.
In those days, there was no thought of air raid shelters in Palestine. Who would waste a bomb on the place? But there were other hardships to be endured. To trade in gold was forbidden; and yet merchants would not accept paper money. And so there was practically no bread in the towns. Miss Landau remembers purchasing flour in the villages with illegal gold and baking bread in the cellar.
There were practically no Jewish agricultural settlements and the shortage of vegetables and dairy products was acute. “We never saw a potato,” added Miss Landau.
Waiting for Letters
Those who complain about the slow mails may be comforted by the fact that the mails were as slow and sometimes slower. In those days, there was an added difficulty. Even after the mails arrived, they could not be landed at the Jaffa port if the sea was rough. Miss Landau remembers queues reaching from the Citadel to beyond Jaffa Gate on the days when a mail boat had arrived.
At the beginning of the last War; the Evelina de Rothschild School had 700 pupils and 23 teachers. Although the staff was depleted when the foreign teachers were ordered to leave, the school continued to function throughout the war.
After Allenby marched into Jerusalem, “we literally sat on the steps of the Consulate in Egypt waiting for permission to return,” relates Miss Landau. Meanwhile, she wired friends in China and received money to buy supplies. She scoured the Cairo markets for food, cottons, and leather. Six weeks later she received permission to return. Together with sacks of toasted bread and other necessities, she came back to Jerusalem.
Escorted by a platoon of soldiers, Miss Landau combed Jerusalem for her pupils. She found 500 and it was later revealed that the others had succumbed to hunger or disease. The black-boards were ferreted out from the homes of those who had stolen them, although they had no idea what to do with their “booty.” Several hundred desks had been kindly rescued by some priests.
And so, with the desks back in their places; the pupils behind the desks; and the black-boards on the wall, school began again.
Yes, the tables are reversed. The days when one brought supplies to Palestine seem far-away; Miss Landau has just been sending a parcel to England. And little Mary from Famagusta sits on the floor, spinning her new top.
It’s time that I returned to the “Times”. The New York Times, that is…
And so, here’s the latest post in my ongoing series covering the military service and participation of Jewish soldiers during the Second World War, based on news items published in The New York Times through the duration of that global conflict.
As such, this is (~ about ~) my fortieth post in the series.
Otherwise, a different angle: It’s my third post about Jewish-servicemen-in-The-New-York-Times – who, though they were the subjects of news articles published on different calendar days … in this case, Sgt. David Snider on March 4, 1945, and, Second Lieutenant Maurice David Kraus on March 8 of that same year … lost their lives on the same day: Tuesday, February 6, 1945. (Shevat 23, 5705) The prior two posts in this regard concerned Second Lieutenant Arthur Chasen and Sergeant Alfred R. Friedlander (December 23, 1944), and, Captain Paul Kamen, PFC Donald R. Lindheim, and PFC Arthur N. Sloan (April 20, 1945).
This post is unusual from another angle: Sergeant Snider was a Marine. Thus far, my only posts concerning Jews in the Marine Corps pertain to WW II Captain Howard K. Goodman, and, PFC Richard E. Marks, who served in Vietnam.
As before, this retrospective follows the same general format of my other “Jewish-soldiers-in-The-New-York-Times” posts. However, being that there’s such an abundance of information about the events of “this” day – February 6 of ’45 – I’m presenting information about these soldiers in two posts.
“This” post covers aviators.
A second post pertains to soldiers who served in the ground forces of the Allied Armies.
May his soul be bound up in the bond of everlasting life.
________________________________________
Second Lieutenant Maurice David Kraus
United States Army Air Force
5th Air Force
5th Air Service Area Command
On Thursday, March 8, 1945, the following news item appeared in The New York Times:
Bomber Navigator Dead After a Crash on Leyte
The War Department has notified Mrs. Mary Braunstein Kraus of 482 Fort Washington Avenue that her son, Second Lieut. Maurice D. Kraus, 22 years old, a bomber navigator in the Army Air Forces, was killed Feb. 6 on Leyte in an accidental airplane crash. Lieutenant Kraus had flown thirty-one missions in the Southwest Pacific.
Born in New York City, Lieutenant Kraus was graduates from Townsend Harris High School and was a student at City College in 1942 when he joined the Army. He had been overseas since 1943.
In addition to his mother he leaves his father, Abraham Kraus, who is in the millinery and novelty business, and a sister, Miss Jean Kraus, both of the Fort Washington Avenue address. Miss Kraus is a Barnard College student.
Lieutenant Maurice David Kraus, whose name appears on page 368 of American Jews in World War II, was awarded the Air Medal and Purple Heart. Born in New York City on July 18, 1922, he graduated in Selman Field Class 43-08 (August of 1943) with serial number 0-805172.
Oddly, an account of the incident on Tacloban even now – in 2023 – is more conjecture than conclusion.
How so?
The Missing Air Crew Report (MACR) index name card filed for Lt. Kraus’ bears no MACR number.
The AAIR (Aviation Archeological Investigation and Research) database for 1945 is absent of any record – assuming such even existed – pertaining to a February 6, 1945 plane crash at Tacloban, or, Leyte Island.
Lt. Kraus’ IDPF (Individual Deceased Personnel File), which records his father’s business address as “Kraus Import Company, 15 West 38th St., Room 907, New York, 18, N.Y.”) lists his military unit as the 5th Air Service Area Command of the 5th Air Force, but is devoid of specific information about the Tacloban incident.
The unit history of the 5th Air Service Area Command, on AFHRA Microfilm Reel A7368, is remarkably vague about the February 6, 1945 plane crash, the Command’s history for February of 1945 (on frame 620, to be specific) stating, “A Depot #2 C-47 airplane loaded with priority freight and one passenger, crashed on takeoff at Tacloban Airstrip. All persons were killed and the plane was completely demolished.”
Thus, the mystery.
However, some rather circuitous research suggests that the plane’s pilot may (…may…) have been 2 Lt. Ralph C. Stava of Douglas, Nebraska, who was assigned to the 43rd Service Squadron of the 12th Air Depot Group. Quoting the news article “Lt. RALPH STAVA REPORTED KILLED” at Lt. Stava’s FindAGrave biographical profile (based on articles in the Omaha World Herald and Plattsmouth Journal):
“Edward F. Stava, Douglas, has been advised that his son, Second Lieutenant RALPH C. STAVA, was killed in a plane crash in the Leyte area of the Philippines February 6, 1945. This message was received here in the Plattsmouth Journal office Friday by the Kenneth McCarthy family.
“Born in Plattsmouth, Lieutenant Stava graduated from Plattsmouth High School in 1940 and attended Tarkio, Missouri College prior to going into the service. He entered the military shortly after the outbreak of the war and received his training in the south until graduation.
“Lieutenant Stava received his silver wings and was commissioned a Second Lieutenant status at the Marfa, Texas, AAF advanced two-engine pilot school. He was assigned to Gardner Field, Taft, California.
“Lieutenant Stava was sent to the Pacific area early last summer and has since been in action in that part of the war zone. He had been overseas seven months.”
Much like the IDPF for Lt. Kraus’, the IDPF for Lt. Stava has no specifics about the accident of February 6, 1945, whether in terms of technical information about the C-47, a list of the plane’s crew and passengers, or extracts from a report about the accident.
And so, the mystery remains.
Lt. Kraus, whose name appeared in an official casualty list published on March 8, 1945, and in the “In Memoriam” Section of the Times on February 10, 1946, is buried at Mount Hope Cemetery, in Hastings, New York.
This series of Mapple Apps Apple Maps, of larger and larger scale as you scroll down the page, show the location of the current Daniel Z. Romualdez Airport (formerly Tacloban Airfield) on Leyte Island, in the Philippines.
This first map shows Tacloban and Leyte Island in relation to other major islands of the Philippines.
Moving in closer, we see Tacloban relative to Leyte Island on the west, Samar Island on the east (separated by San Juanico Strait), and San Pedro Bay to the South.
And, a closer map view of the airport itself. Note that there is a single runway, oriented almost exactly north-south…
… which can be seen more clearly in this aerial (or satellite?) photo.
Approximately eighty years old, this photo (U.S. National Naval Aviation Museum photo 2001.294.006) show the Tacloban airfield in late 1944. In this image, the view is looking directly south along the eastern coast of Leyte Island, with San Pablo Bay to the left (west).
The man who may have been the pilot of the unidentified C-47: Lt. Ralph C. Stava. This image, via FindAGrave contributor Loren Bender, is from Stava’s FindAGrave biographical profile. The winged propeller cap insignia indicates that the photo was taken when he was an aviation cadet.
______________________________
Sergeant David Snider
United States Marine Corps
Bombing Squadron VMB-613
(Here’s the (un)official insignia of VMB-613, as designed by First Lieutenant James R. Edmunds III. As described at the squadron association’s website, “This … squadron insignia was set on a circular red background. Centered on the background were Naval Aviator wings with a globe and anchor. Above the wings were three maces. The main feature was a 75mm cannon tube with a skull in the muzzle, proudly denoting VMB-613’s unique status as only Marine Bombing Squadron to utilize the cannon-armed PBJ-1H in combat.”)
Sgt. David Snider, Marine Corps, of 1981 Eightieth Street, Brooklyn, was killed Feb. 6 in the Central Pacific theatre, according to word received here yesterday. His age was 20.
Born in New York, he was graduated from Erasmus Hall High School and entered the Marine Corps in 1942.
He leaves a widow, Lenore; his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Isidore Snider; two brothers, Corp. Samuel Snider, Marine Corps, and Leon Snider, and a sister, Mrs. Ruth Barst.
Sgt. Snider was married, his wife, Lenore, residing at 1981 80th Street in Brooklyn. Interestingly – well, this was the United States of nearly-eight decades ago! – Lenore’s family lived “just down the street” from the Sniders, who resided at 2019 80th Street. David’s parents were Isidore (4/3/89-5/29/52) and Baseva (Sophia or Sophie) (Melamed / Blumberg) (9/10/89-9/21/71) Snider; his brothers Samuel and Leon, and his sister Ruth Barst. He was reburied at Riverside Cemetery in Rochelle Park, New Jersey on July 6, 1949.
His name appeared in a Casualty List published on 2/27/45, and can also be found on page 448 of American Jews in World War II, which notes that he was awarded the Purple Heart.
A photographer in Marine Corps bomber squadron VMSB-613 (a unit of Marine Air Group 31 of the 4th Marine Air Wing), Sergeant Snider (805866) was one of six men aboard PBJ-1H Mitchell #35275 – plane-in-squadron number “6”, otherwise known as the LOVE BUG – which was shot down by anti-aircraft fire during a bombing mission to Airstrip #2 on Ponape (Pohnpei) Island, “…one of the Senyavin Islands which are part of the larger Caroline Islands group,” an archipelago of small islands in the western Pacific Ocean.
Piloted by 1 Lt. William John Love (0-23765) from Vineland, Kansas (whose surname inspired the bomber’s nickname), the plane’s other crewmen comprised:
Given the plethora of information about the LOVE BUG and her crew, rather than rewrite the crew’s entire story, I’ll instead present excerpts from PacificWrecks and VMB-613. Of particular and ironic note is the fact that Lt. William J. Love’s brother, 1 Lt. Robert E. Love, was also a pilot in VMB-613, the brothers and their crews – William J. Love’s “Crew No. 2”, and Robert E. Love’s “Crew No. 1” – alternately flying the LOVE BUG.
First, from Pacific Wrecks, quoting VMB-613 veteran Robert Yanacek
“Here is an interesting story, told to me by one of Bob Love’s radio-gunners, Lloyd McDaniel. Bill Love and his crew were not scheduled for the fateful raid. Bob Love and his crew were supposed to have been on the raid. Lloyd told me that at about dusk on February 5th, a Japanese sub was sighted. VMB-613 dispatched one aircraft to investigate. That aircraft was the “Love Bug” flown by Bob Love and his crew. The patrolled the area for a number of hours but couldn’t locate anything. The headed back to Eniwetok and did not land until after midnight. Because the arrived back so late, it was decided that they would not fly the strike on Ponape. Bill Love and his crew were then assigned to the mission. Bill Love and his crew left Eniwetok at 9AM in the “Love Bug” never to return. As Bob Love and his crew awoke on Eniwetok about noon, word came over the radio that there had been some problems.
Wartime History
On February 6, 1945 at 9:00am took off from Enewetak Airfield (Stickell Field) piloted by 1st Lt. William J. Love with Crew No. 2 armed with four 500 pound bombs on a strike mission against Palikir Airfield (Airfield No. 2) on Ponape Island. This formation included six PBJ Mitchells flying in three sections in pairs at an altitude of 8,000′. This PBJ was flying as the lead plane in the third section.
Over Ponape Island were thunderstorms and the PBJs had to change their planned attack. The first section found a hole in the weather and made a violent turn to get over the target but the second aircraft was not able to release its bombs. The second section was able to make a better approach and flew the length of the target and claimed several bomb hits but the second plane had three bombs hang up.
When the third section attacked, it swung wide to the left then circled to the right to attack Palikir Airfield (Airfield No. 2) from another angle. Over the target, medium and light anti-aircraft fire was intense. During the bombing run, this PBJ was hit by anti-aircraft fire in the bottom of the fuselage that entered the nose section fire from “a small gun atop Dolen Pahniepw” (Dolen Palikir) and crashed and burned on impact at Palikir. Soon after the crash one of the bombs still aboard exploded.
Second, VMB-613 has an extremely detailed account of the PBJ’s loss…
This comprises a transcript of the Aircraft Action Report, an account of exploration and research of the crash site in the early 2000s (two decades ago already…?!) by Stan Gajda, Richard D. Williams and Russell French, their efforts to definitively establish the fate and burial location of Sgt. Snider, and, a retrospective of the 60th anniversary memorial service (February 6, 2005) for the crew, in which the airmen were commemorated by Ambassador Suzanne K. Hale. Particularly valuable and moving are the many (very many!) photographs of the crash location and surviving fragments of 35275 (at least, the little that still remained as of 2001 and 2005) by Stan Gajda and Dick Williams.
Third, here’s an excerpt of the Aircraft Action Report from the website of VMB-613’s Association website:
Bombing Airstrip #2, Ponape Island
“The tail gunner of the first plane of the last section saw the right wing of the last plane collapse immediately outboard of the engine nacelle just as the pilot completed a wide turn and leveled out for his approach. The plane crashed just short of the runway exploding on impact with the ground and burning violently. In the opinion of the tail gunner no bombs had been dropped by this plane and no heavy A/A fire was observed although light and medium flak was intense. No cause for the collapse of the wing has been established. It is believed that all personnel aboard were killed in the crash and also that classified material carried in the plane would have been destroyed by the fire preventing its compromise.”
It’s my understanding that the LOVE BUG was VMB-613’s only aircraft lost to enemy action during WW II. The squadron’s only other combat fatality also occurred on the February 6 mission: Pvt. William M. Farley, serving as a navigator, was killed by a fragment from one of the 500-pound bombs dropped from his own aircraft, during the strike against airfield #2. Unfortunately, the Bureau Number of his PBJ is not listed.
Relevant information and photos can be accessed at the following VMB-613 Association web pages:
Aircraft Action Report PONAPE CRASH-SITE: PAGE 1 – 20 photos (map and 19 photos of crash site) PONAPE CRASH-SITE: PAGE 2 – 20 photos (fragments of wreckage discovered in early 2000s) PONAPE CRASH-SITE: PAGE 3 – 8 photos (fragments of aircraft wreckage, Sgt. Snider’s matzeva and dog-tag, collective grave marker for the bomber’s other five crew members, and, a contemporary (early 2000s) photo of Susan (Stone) Clare, Lt. Stone’s daughter, who was two months old at the time of her father’s death.)
You can also view several images of Tory Mucaro’s 1/72 model of the LOVE BUG (web page from 2006) at Hyperscale.com.
Here’s the LOVE BUG in an image from the biographical profile of co-pilot 1 Lt. Thomas W. Stone, via FindAGrave contributor John T. Chiarella. Note that the only personal marking is the nickname itself, nose art being absent. Other VMB-613 Mitchell nicknames, all similarly painted along the muzzle port of the plane’s 75mm cannon, included, “…8-Ball, Betty Lou, Bung-Ho!, Fireball, Flaming Fury, Green Weenie, Ladders Up, Long Gone, Marlene, Miss-Carriage, and Pregnant Annie.”
This in-flight digital depiction of the LOVE BUG in flight is among five such images of the plane at WarThunder.com. These images clearly illustrates the camouflage and markings of VMB-613’s Mitchells: “…the three-tone color scheme adopted by the U.S. Navy in March of 1944 – sea blue, intermediate sea blue, and white. An unusual feature of this color scheme was that the sea blue on the upper surfaces was carried over onto the leading edges of the lower surfaces of the wing and horizontal stabilizer. The squadron number for each aircraft was stenciled in large white numbers within a dark-colored rectangular box below the aircraft’s Bureau Number on the vertical stabilizer. The purpose of this dark-colored rectangular box was simply to obliterate the original two-digit aircraft numbers used stateside while the squadron was training.”
Though not actually visible at the scale of this map, Ponape Island, the site of the LOVE BUG’s loss in combat, as one of the Caroline islands, would be “within” the location designated by the red oval.
Oogling in much (much) closer onto Ponape (Pohnpei) Island, Airstrip #2 is located near Palikir, in the island’s northwest.
Even closer: The LOVE BUG crashed at the location indicated by Oogle’s emblematic red pointer. In this 2022 CNES air (or is it satellite?) photo, it can be seen that Airstrip #2 has been replaced by a road, and, what appears to be a cluster of houses.
This topographic map of the LOVE BUG’s crash site, at a slightly larger scale than the preceding Oogle image, is via VMB-613 website. It can be seen that Lt. Love’s bomber crashed into a hillside due north of the northeast corner of the airstrip.
From the Voith Family Tree at Ancestry.com, this image, presumably from the late 20s or early 30s, shows David’s parents Isidor and Sophie, with (left to right) brother Leon, sister Ruth, Davey (David) himself, and brother Sam in front.
Another Voith Family Tree image. This photo, evidently sent by Sgt. Snider to his family, is captioned: “A. L. Brasington Florida A. P. Petko : Penna. J. L. Packard – Calif R. L. Stehman, Penna. F. J. Dudzik Illinois & Your One & only Davy”. Further research revealed that these men are:
Albert L. Brasington (Florida) Andrew P. Petko (Pennsylvania) James L. Packard (California) Robert L. Stehman (Pennsylvania) Frank J. Dudzik (Illinois) … and … David Snider, having a bite in lower right.
David (right) and his brother Samuel. I’m not certain of the source of this image; it may be VMB-613.com.
David married the (almost literally) “girl next door”…
This 2022 Oogle Street View shows the former Snider home, at 2019 80th Street in Brooklyn.
Some home, different perspective: The view has been rotated to the left, showing the intersection of 80th Street and 20th Ave, with 1981 80th Street just to the right of the traffic light. Not much of a walk between houses, eh?
And so, we arrive at 1981 80th St., the home of Lenore – David’s wife. A “deep dive” into Ancestry.com revealed that Lenore – who may also have gone by the names Lenora or Leonora – was actually Lenore Ehrlich. Born on December 25, 1923, her father was David Levine; her sister Mary; her brother Alvin. She and David were married on May 9, 1944 in Brooklyn, their all-too-brief marriage spanning just a little over nine months.
From VMB-613 (specifically, “TRANSFER TO MCAF NEWPORT: PAGE 1“), this Marine Corps photo (from the David Snider Collection, c/o the Manning Brothers) is captioned, “REMMEL PARK: First Lieutenant Francis S. Manning, Sergeant David Snider, and an unidentified VMB-613 member enjoy an outing at Remmel Park in Newport along with their wives.” The obvious conclusion is that the lady to David’s left is his wife and at-one-time girl next door, Lenore.
Lt. Love and his four crew members were buried at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in Saint Louis, on June 10, 1949. This photo of the crew’s collective grave, at the FindAGrave biographical profile of Sgt. John R. Schwaller, is via FindAGrave contributor Jami.
Sgt. David Snider’s dog-tag: As described at VMB-613, “Immediately following the end of World War II, a number of squadron members went to Ponape in search of the crew of MB-6 that had been lost over the island on February 6, 1945. One squadron member recovered a dog tag from the body of Sergeant David Snider and brought it back to Kwajalein where it was given to Dave’s friend, Corporal Herbert E. Schwartz. [Served in Ordnance section of VMB-613.] Corporal Schwartz had hoped to return the dog tag to Sergeant Snider’s wife upon his return to the United States, however he was unable to locate her. Photograph: Marine Bombing Squadron Six-Thirteen (Courtesy of Herbert E. Schwartz)”
Here’s a last image from the Voith Family Tree: Sergeant David Snider’s matzeva, at Riverside Cemetery, in Rochelle Park, New Jersey.
______________________________
Flight Officer Stanley Louis Dietel
8th Air Force
509th Bomb Squadron, 351st Bomb Group
(Here’s the insignia of the 509th Bomb Squadron, as embroidered upon an A-2 flight jacket once worn by John R. Bluford of the 351st Bomb Group. The jacket was auctioned through invaluable.com on December 15, 2020. As shown in images at invaluable’s website, the insignia seems (?!) to have been sewn upon the jacket in an incorrect orientation. I’ve thus Photoshopped (rotated) the image to depict the insignia as designed, such that the bomb is pointing downwards to the left.)
Thus for the Pacific Theatre.
Now, on the world’s other side: The European Theater.
What’s striking on February 6, 1945, is that the majority of casualties this day, except for the men who were captured, occurred in incidents that did not involve direct and immediate contact with the enemy.
In the case of the 351st Bomb Group, after a mission to Targets of Opportunity at Eisfelde, Germany, a mid-air collision occurred between two B-17s of the 509th Bomb Squadron, claiming the lives of nineteen airmen. While circling the Group’s base at Polebrook, Northamptonshire, un-named B-17G 43-38080 (DS * Q), piloted by 1 Lt. Edward R. Ashton, was struck from underneath by B-17G 43-37595 (“RQ * O”) piloted by 2 Lt. Reinhold W. Vergen (thus that plane’s nickname: Vergen’s Virgins) while circling the base, tearing off the right wing of 38080. (“Clouds were down to 200 feet over the base when the planes returned, making landing difficult.”) Both aircraft crashed in a field near Lutton, east of Polebrook, with no survivors.
Lists of the crews of 43-38080 and 43-37595 can be found here.
Among the nine men aboard Vergen’s Virgins was bombardier Flight Officer Stanley Louis Dietel (T-129652), from New Brunswick, New Jersey. The son of Jacob (1885-1940) and Sarah (Ellenswig) Dietel (12/25/84-1958) of 191 Sanford Street – he also had six sisters – he was born in Highland Park on November 15, 1924.
Though a Missing Air Crew Report name index file card was created for F/O Dietel, no MACR was actually compiled for this incident.
F/O Dietel’s name appeared in a Casualty List published on March 15, 1945, and can be found on pages 230 and 231 of American Jews in World War II. He received the Purple Heart and Air Medal, the 351st Bomb Group website indicating that the sortie of February 6 was his tenth mission.
F/O Dietel is buried in Grave 14, Row 7, Plot F, of the Cambridge American Cemetery.
This composite image shows Stanley Dietel as he appeared in the 1943 (left) and 1945 editions of the Highland Park High School yearbook. The 1945 image is available via the Barwick Family Tree at Ancestry.com, and, Stanley Dietel’s biographical profile at FindAGrave.
This was unexpected. While reviewing F/O Dietel’s FindAGrave biographical profile, I discovered that his matzeva is a crucifix (as seen in this photograph by Skip Farrow) in accordance instructions in his Headstone Inscription and Interment Record, which lists his mother as his next of kin.
Both of his National Jewish Welfare Board Bureau of War Records biographical information cards verify that he was a Jew, his name also appearing on pages 230 and 231 of American Jews in World War II.
Though extraordinarily rare in terms of WW II casualties in the American military, this is not entirely unprecedented, as exemplified by the story of General Maurice Rose. Though I have no plans to access F/O Dietel’s Individual Deceased Personnel File, perhaps the explanation could be found amidst correspondence in that document.
There’s a detailed and moving account concerning 2 Lt. Morton H. Feingold (0-838396), a co-pilot in the 549th Bomb Squadron of the 8th Air Force’s 385th Bomb Group, by Ron McInnis, his crew’s tail gunner, at IanMcinnis.com, under the title “Flying Backwards in ‘44”.
Mr. McInnis’ story reveals that during the February 6 mission to Chemnitz, Germany, after having bombed the target, the 385th Bomb Group temporarily became lost due to a combination of headwinds and jamming of aircraft navigational gear by the Germans. The formation leader thus decided to descend to 12,000’ while still over Germany, the squadron (and group?) eventually breaking into clear weather directly over the city of Cologne.
The Luftwaffe anti-aircraft gunners were ready: Flak, visually aimed, was fired directly into the 385th’s formation.
Struck by flak as Lt. Feingold piloted Miss Fortune (43-38118; XA * K) – he and aircraft commander Lt. Jerome Stiel alternated this task on combat missions – the aircraft suddenly went into a climb verging on a stall. After Lt. Stiel recovered control of the aircraft, it was discovered that Morton had been struck in his right kidney by a large piece of flak. No other crew members were injured.
Lt. Stiel immediately contacted Ninth Air Force Command, informing them of a medical emergency, and was directed to land at Florennes, Belgium. Lt. Feingold was removed from his seat by Miss Fortune’s navigator and bombardier and then given morphine, the crew’s flight engineer taking over as co-pilot. With a remarkable job of piloting Miss Fortune during an extremely challenging landing involving – which necessitated avoiding a parked B-17 and a bellied-in C-47 – Lt. Stiel brought his B-17 to a temporary and rapid halt as medics removed Lt. Feingold from the airplane, even as he avoided yet another B-17 making an emergency landing.
Taken to a hospital in Charleroi, Lt. Feingold passed away two days later. His injuries were too severe for survival.
Like Flight Officer Dietel, a MACR name index cards exists for Lt. Feingold, albeit with the notation “No MACR #”.
The son of Abraham and Rose Feingold and brother of Thelma, Lt. Feingold’s family resided at 3933 Gladys Street in Chicago, where he was born on April 15, 1924. Buried at Glen Oak Cemetery, Hillside, Illinois, on May 31, 1949, his name appears on page 98 of American Jews in World War II, which records that he received the Air Medal and Purple Heart. News about his death in combat appeared in The Chicagoan on July 11, 1946, while notice of his burial appeared in the Chicago Tribune on May 29, 1949.
You can read Ron McInnis’ account of the February 6 mission here, and with links to all five sections of his writings here.
This image of Miss Fortune / XA * K, is from B17FlyingFortress.de, via 385th Bomb Group.com. Given that the aircraft’s landing gear has been lowered and it’s dropping packages at minimal altitude, it would seem that it’s engaged in a food dropping mission over the Netherlands in late April of 1945, as described on page 230 of Roger Freeman’s The Mighty Eighth. Particularly noticeable is the distinctive late-war red checkerboard tail marking of the 385th Bomb Group.
Here’s Miss Fortune on the nose of 43-38118. This image is from the website of the 385th Bomb Group Association. According to Roger Freeman’s The B-17 Flying Fortress Story, this aircraft survived the war and ended up at Kingman, Arizona, by late November of 1945.
______________________________
Flight Officer Edwin London
8th Air Force
857th Bomb Squadron, 492nd Bomb Group
(Maurer and Maurer’s Combat Squadrons of the Air Force, World War II, states that the 857th Bomb Squadron had no squadron emblem. However, Battlefield.Store on EBay, describes this insignia as the emblem of the 857th.)
A non-combat incident claimed the crew of B-24H Liberator Gunga Din (41-29505) of the 492nd Bomb Group’s 857th Bomb Squadron.
The aircraft, manned by 2 Lt. Charles H. Edwards with his crew of eight, crashed during a night training mission at Lyon-Bron Airfield, France, during an attempted emergency landing on three engines.
Among the plane’s crew was bombardier F/O Edwin London (T-128655). Born in Manhattan on Oct. 9, 1923, he was the son of Louis and Sophia London, of 2483 Davidson Ave., in the Bronx. (Also at 138 Remsen St., in Brooklyn?)
Paralleling F/O Dietel, though a Missing Air Crew Report name index file card was created for F/O London, the card is absent of a MACR Number, implying that no such document was filed to report on Gunga-Din’s loss.
F/O London’s name appears on page 383 of American Jews in World War II, but this entry is absent of a notation indicating the receipt of a Purple Heart or any other award, suggesting that the Edwards crew had flown fewer than five – or perhaps no? – actual combat missions prior to the accident February 6.
F/O London is buried at King Solomon Memorial Park in Clifton, New Jersey.
Edwards, Charles H. – 2 Lt. – Pilot – 0-719592 Burt, Merrill A. – 2 Lt. – Co-Pilot – 0-2062978 London, Edwin – F/O – Bombardier – T-128655 Roy, Gerard L. – 2 Lt. – Navigator – 0-2065189
Front, left to right
Matthews, James D. – Sgt. – Flight Engineer – 38506486 Mellotte, James O. – Sgt. – Radio Operator – 14136535 Stuckey, John T. – Sgt. – Gunner – 38389577 Boren, Mose C., Jr. – Sgt. – Gunner – 19106534 Cathers, Allan W. – Sgt. – Gunner – 42072365 Wolfersberger, R.G., Jr. – Sgt. – Gunner – 36466780
______________________________
______________________________
Some Came Back
Among the Jewish airmen who were casualties during combat missions on February 6, 1945, six men were captured; all in Europe. All returned to the United States after the war’s end in Europe. Four of these men served in the 8th Air Force, and two in the Italian-based 12th Air Force.
On a mission to Weisbaden, Germany, Lady Satan, B-17G 42-97175 (9Z * C) of the 728th Bomb Squadron, 452nd Bomb Group, commanded by 2 Lt. James L. Bayless, was struck by flak, setting the plane’s right inboard (#3) engine afire. As reported in Missing Air Crew Report 12240, “Shortly afterwards the engine fell off and the fire went out. Four chutes were seen from the A/C at 49-52 N, 07-49 E (by Gee Fix) at 1248 hours and then the A/C, losing altitude in a glide, disappeared into the clouds still under control.”
Eight of the bomber’s nine crew members survived as prisoners of war: Four men parachuted, and four rode Lady Satan to a crash-landing.
It turned out that the flak burst which destroyed the #3 engine also struck co-pilot 2 Lt. Harold E. McComb, almost severing his right leg below the knee. Unable to bail out or assist in flying the aircraft, he placed a tourniquet around his leg and remained in Lady Satan’s nose compartment, while uninjured navigator Lt. Harold Brod and wounded togglier Sgt. John Young moved to the bomber’s waist. From then on, Lt. Bayless alone piloted the badly damaged bomber.
According to Luftgaukommando Report KU 3649, at 1310 hours, Lady Satan made an “emergency landing” near Simmern, “behind” Dhaun, 1 km north of Kirn-Soberheim Street.
Placed in an ambulance and taken with Sgt. Young to a hospital in the city of Kirn, Lt. McComb was given a blood transfusion from the wounded togglier, his lower leg being amputated. However, he died during the evening.
As for those who parachuted from the B-17? Postwar, radio operator Sgt. Hubert Salyer reported that, “We left formation almost immediately. Shortly after leaving the formation (approximately 2-4 minutes) I bailed out of plane on orders from pilot. I was captured when I hit the ground, a small village named Deutschild. Two other crew members were also picked up here with me. I understand from Alexander Jacobs, the waist gunner on our crew, that he was captured at Bad Kreuznach, Germany.”
Navigator 2 Lt. Harold Brod (0-2065036) was born in Manhattan on June 27, 1924. His parents were Louis and Rose, of 718 Brunswick Ave. in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and (earlier?) 111 Benjamin Street, in Cranford, New Jersey.
Like the other six survivors of Lady Satan, Lt. Brod and Sgt. Jacobs spent the rest of the war as POWs, though the camps in which they were interned are unknown. Neither man’s name appears in American Jews in World War II, though Sgt. Jacobs’ name appeared in a list of liberated POWs in a Casualty List published on June 10, 1945.
The nose art of Lady Satan, from FindAGrave contributor and historian Jaap Vermeer.
This image, also via Jaap Vermeer, is from the FindAGrave page for 2 Lt. James L. Bayless, Sr. Though the image lacks a caption, one of the two doughnut-enjoying officers in the photo is presumably Lt. Bayless, who died in 1982.
The documents preserved in Luftgaukommando Reports can be as informative as they are striking. In this case, Luftgaukommando Report KU 3649, which covers the identification of Lady Satan, and, the identification and “processing” of her crew, includes the crew roster shown below, which – being in English – was not compiled by German intelligence!
I’d suggest two origins for this document. 1) It was created after the crew was formed, during training in the United States, 2) It was drafted just before the crew’s departure from the United States to England. In either case, it probably represents the Bayless crew as originally formed. The reason being, that Lieutenants John R. Jekutis and Maurice L. Waterson, Sr. were not aboard the aircraft when it was shot down, and Germans Intelligence was able to identity Lt. McComb and Sgt. Young as filling in for those two men’s crew positions, as evident in the notations in red in the left margin.
In any event, though it’s my understanding that flight crews were never supposed to carry personal documents, family correspondence, photos, memorabilia, or trinkets – whether military or civilian – on combat missions, a perusal of Luftgaukommando Reports reveals that this rule was often honored in the breach. Ironically, this can make a perusal of these documents surprising, moving, and (at times) haunting.
As shown here.
The document below, from KU 3649, is an “Angaben über Gefangennahme eines Angehörigen der feindlichen Luftwaffe” (Information about the capture of a member of the enemy air force) form for Lt. Brod.
Note that Lady Satan is (correctly) recorded as having “Notgelandet” (made an emergency landing), and Lt. Brod is stated to have “Verweigert Aussage des Geburtsdatums und letzten Wohnortes” (Refused to state date of birth and last place of residence.)
Also note… The diminutive but not-necessarily-innocuous “H” penciled to the right of Lt. Brod’s name and serial number.
Here’s Lt. Brod’s Casualty Questionnaire from MACR 12240. Note that Lt. Bayless landed the plane while alone in the cockpit, Lt. McComb (after having been given morphine) having been placed in the nose, while Sgt. Young (also wounded) and Lt. Brod remained in the waist.
And, below is the “Angaben über Gefangennahme eines Angehörigen der feindlichen Luftwaffe” form for Sgt. Jacobs.
The document correctly records that the Sergeant “Mit Fallschirm abgesprungen” (Jumped out with a parachute.)
Unlike the form for Lt. Brod, that for Sgt. Jacobs – despite the fact that both men’s dog-tags were stamped with the letter “H” – lacks a notation about the Sergeant’s being a Jew. However, comments about his physical description are penciled in the upper right corner.
Ironically; sadly, Lt. Brod, once again “Harold Brod”, twelve years later encountered what is known in literature, myth, and legend as an “appointment in Samarra”. To quote an example from the Talmud (Tractate Sukkah 53a):
Johanan stated, A man’s feet are responsible for him; they lead him to the place where he is wanted.
There were once two Cushites who attended on Solomon, and these were Elihoreph and Ahyah, the sons of Shisha, scribes, of Solomon. One day Solomon observed that the Angel of Death was sad. ‘Why’, he said to him, ‘art thou sad?’ — ‘Because’, he answered him, ‘they have demanded from me the two Cushites who sit here’. [Solomon thereupon] gave them in charge of the spirits and sent them to the district of Luz. When, however, they reached the district of Luz they died. On the following day, he observed that the Angel of Death was in cheerful spirits. ‘Why’, he said to him, ‘art thou cheerful?’ — ‘To the place’, the other replied, ‘where they expected them from me, thither didst thou send them!’ Solomon thereupon uttered the saying, ‘A man’s feet are responsible for him; they lead him to the place where he is wanted.’
As an executive (import-export manager) of the United Stated Plywood Corporation of Los Angeles, he was killed in a plane crash at Bulog Village, Batangas Province, Luzon, on October 11, 1957, while aboard a civilian aircraft whose four other passengers included Carlos P. Romulo, Jr., eldest son of Brigadier General Carlos Romulo. The aircraft was piloted by Paul Irving “Pappy” Gunn, famed WW II aviator and – at the time, as owner of the plane – General Manager of the Philippine Air Development Company. Strangely, while the Wikipedia entry for Pappy Gunn indicates that the plane crashed in a storm, a United Press news story dated October 11 states that the unidentified twin-engine aircraft exploded in mid-air, while an Associated Press story filed on the same day states that the aircraft ran out of fuel. (What?! Very strange.)
Though I’ve not been able to find any images of Harold Brod, his FindAGrave biographical profile includes this newspaper photo – probably from 1957 or ’58 – showing Beth L. Brod, his widow, donating a check to Columbia University in honor of her late husband. The text accompanying the image follows:
“ACCEPTING a check from Mrs. Harold Brod, center, for a scholarship in honor of her late husband, to be known as the Harold Brod Memorial Room at Columbia University, Grayson Kirk, president of Columbia, is pictured above, right, as Dean Lawrence H. Chamberlain looks on. The endowed scholarship room in a Columbia dormitory will be awarded annually to a deserving student at the college, who must maintain regular scholarship standards. The first award will be made in the fall. Mrs. Brod is the former Beth Drexler [Beth L. Drexler] of Larchmont, whose husband was killed Oct. 11, 1957, when the plane in which he was returning home from a business trip to Mindanao exploded 50 miles south of the Philippines. Mrs. Brod was awaiting him in Hong Kong and the couple, married in November, 1956, [Nov. 4, 1956] had planned a round-the-world trip. The five passengers in the plane, including Carlos P. Romulo, Jr., were all killed. Members of the class of 1947 at Columbia of which Mr. Brod was president, have also formed a Harold Brod Scholarship Committee to contribute to the scholarship established by Mrs. Brod. The thirty-three-year-old Mr. Brod was import-export manager for U.S. Plywood at the time of his death.”
Sgt. Alexander Jacobs (12178235), the bomber’s waist gunner, was reported in Luftgaukommando Report KU 3649 (Luftgaukommando Reports can be rather detailed!)) as having been captured at 1257 hours on Bad Kreuznach-Hackenheim Street. The son of Rubin (11/7/90-10/27/41) and Rose (Katz) (1887-4/6/75) Jacobs, his family’s residence was 2720 Grand Concourse, in the Bronx. Born in Manhattan like Lt. Brod – on February 11, 1923 – he passed away at the young age of 45 in June of 1968.
______________________________
Sergeant Martin Howard Rubin
8th Air Force
330th Bomb Squadron, 93rd Bomb Group
(The emblem of the 330th Bomb Squadron, from abqmetal’s ebay store.)
Staff Sergeant Martin Howard Rubin (32896697) was also captured on February 6.
A nose gunner in the 330th Bomb Squadron of the 8th Air Force’s 93rd Bomb Group, his B-24J Liberator 42-50505 (AG * E), Gremlin’s Roost, was shot down by flak during a mission to Magdeburg, Germany. Piloted by 1 Lt. Howard E. Jennings, seven of the bomber’s nine crewmen survived the loss of their aircraft, with waist gunners S/Sgt. Arthur S. Humphreys, and S/Sgt. Vance K. Jeffers being killed in action.
As reported in Missing Air Crew Report 12355, the aircraft left the 93rd’s formation 15 miles south of Alkmar, Holland.
According to German records (specifically, Luftgaukommando Report AV 1908/45) Gremlin’s Roost crashed 2 km north of Akersloot.
S/Sgt. William R. Barton and 2 Lt. Billie J. Holmes, respectively, describe the bomber’s loss in these accounts from MACR 12355:
On mission 6 February 1945 I was flying tail gunner in ship #880/S. After we had crossed the Dutch coast I heard over the interphone that #42-50505/E had been hit and was going down. At this time I saw 505/E make a right turn away from the main formation. The ship then straighten(ed) out and I saw three chutes come out. After flying straight for a few moments the ship started a steep climb and about ten seconds before the ship turned over on its back I saw one man come out of the bomb-bay. On the way down the ship blew up into three or four pieces all of which were on fire. I then watch(ed) one chute hit the water about three or four hundred yards from the coast, and another two chutes I saw land on the beach. I also saw the ship hit the ground about two minutes before the first chute hit.
On mission 6 February 1945 I was flying co-pilot in ship 880/S. As we were crossing the Dutch coast I saw ship #42-50505/E receive a direct hit behind #2 engine, the ship must have received hits on the flight deck, for at the time flares started shooting out of the ship. After the flares went off flames started coming out of the bomb-bay, then the ship turned away from the formation to the right. After a few moments it started climbing and I saw three chutes come out. After this we turned a little and this obstructed my view. At the end of the ship’s steep climb I saw the ship roll over on its back and start down. After 505/E had fallen about six thousand feet (approximately 10,000 feet off of the ground) it blew up into three or four pieces, all of which were on fire. At this point the entire formation made a turn to the left and here I lost sight of the ship.
Sergeants Barton’s and Lt. Holmes’ statements report that only three to four crew members escaped the mortally damaged bomber. However, Casualty Questionnaires in the Missing Air Crew Report suggest that S/Sgt. Vance K. Jeffers, left waist gunner, though mortally wounded by flak, was able to successfully parachute from the damaged plane. After landing, he walked several yards to the home of a Dutch family, in whose presence he died. S/Sgt. Arthur S. Humphrey, the right waist gunner, was killed aboard the aircraft and never left the plane.
Luftgaukommando Report KU 3672 contains a small plethora of documents that were in Sgt. Rubin’s possession when he was captured. As listed in the report, these include:
Booklet AAF Form No. 206 2 pages of immunization register 3 self-photos 2 receipts numbered 1993 and 1994 1 green card 1 N.C.O. Club card 1 identification card Card 1 Bicycle Permit A-2323 and card authorizing transfer of bicycle Slip of paper regarding spectacle prescription data Calendar paper slips cut from newspaper
As for Sergeant Rubin, his mother Sarah lived at 68-35 Burns Street, in Forest Hills, New York. MACR 12355 reports that he completed 27 missions. His capture was reported in the Long Island Star Journal on April 19, 1945, while his name appeared in a list of liberated POWs published on June 22 of that year. His name – like other names reported for February 6, 1945 – is absent from American Jews in World War II, while the POW camp in which he was interned is similarly unknown.
Born in Brooklyn on September 26, 1924, he died on January 11, 1999.
Three photographs as one: This is a composite image of the three Escape and Evasion portraits carried by Sgt. Martin Rubin, found in Luftgaukommando Report KU 3672. Though such pictures are present in many Luftgaukommando Reports (well, at least it seemed (?!) that way when I reviewed the original physical reports at NARA, at least based on a cursory examination of the documents), only a miniscule number of these images bear an airman’s name. In such cases, as in the center image of Sgt. Rubin, his name was presumably written by a German investigator.
Among the many personal documents carried by Sgt. Rubin is this civilian personal identification card, from the Pioneer Suspender Company of Philadelphia.
______________________________
Sergeant Jacob Zuckerman
8th Air Force
849th Bomb Squadron, 490th Bomb Group
(The colorful nose art of B-17G 43-37894, BIG POISON, of the 849th Bomb Squadron, via the American Air Museum in Britain.According to InchHighGuy, the artist was Master Sergeant Jay D. Cowan and the photographer Captain Arnold Delmonico. (Perhaps the original image was Kodachrome?)
Another mid-air collision during the Chemnitz mission … this incident involving aircraft of the 388th and 490th Bomb Groups.
B-17G 43-37806, Miss Fortune, of the 561st Bomb Squadron, 388th Bomb Group, piloted by Lt. George Thompson, collided over England with B-17G 43-37894, Big Poison, of the 849th Bomb Squadron, 490th Bomb Group, piloted by Lt. John W. Hedgecock.
Miss Fortune crashed in the vicinity of Wicken, Cambridgeshire. Of the bomber’s nine crewmen, 1 Lt. Robert A. Wettersten was killed.
Big Poison crashed in the vicinity of Prickwillow, Suffolk, killing two civilians on the ground, along with ball turret gunner Sgt. Edward T. Tijan. The rest of the bomber’s crew parachuted to safety.
In Big Poison’s crew was Togglier Sergeant Jacob Zuckerman (32179227). The son of Rose Zuckerman, of 3150 Rochambeau Ave. in Manhattan, his name appears on page 478 of American Jews in World War II. He received the Air Medal.
______________________________
Second Lieutenant William Stanley Schoenfeld
Sergeant Hymie Mehlman
8th Air Force
850th Bomb Squadron, 490th Bomb Group
(EBay seller spsw1967 offers remarkably realistic, detailed, hand-painted reproductions of the insignia of USAAF, AVG, and USMC WW II combat squadrons, among which is this nice example of the 850th Bomb Squadron’s flak-evading mutt.)
Other combat losses not involving enemy action…
During the above-mentioned mission to Chemnitz, a mid-air collision occurred between two B-17G Flying Fortresses of the 490th Bomb Group’s 850th Bomb Squadron: Aircraft 43-38699, and 43-38167 (Lucky Strike), collided at an altitude of 17,000 feet, in the vicinity of Mittersheim, Moselle, France.
From B-17G 43-38699, piloted by 1 Lt. Marshall C. Dunn, there emerged three survivors: The bomber’s radio operator (S/Sgt. George A. Naifeh), and two gunners (S/Sgts. Dean R. Smith and Osvil F. Johnston). The crew (list from France – Crashes 39-45) comprised:
Pilot: Dunn – KIA Co-Pilot: 2 Lt. Jack O. Philley – KIA Navigator: 2 Lt. Helmer O. Baland – KIA Togglier: S/Sgt. Donald B. Mayew – KIA Togglier: S/Sgt. Edward J. Mulvihill – KIA Flight Engineer: T/Sgt. Clarence H. McKinney – KIA Radio Operator: S/Sgt. Osvil F. Johnston – Survived Gunner: S/Sgt. Fred H. Horton – KIA Gunner: S/Sgt. Dean R. Smith – Survived Gunner: S/Sgt. George A. Naifeh – Survived
From Lucky Strike, piloted by 1 Lt. William Seymour Schoenfeld, there emerged four survivors, who presumably survived by parachuting from their B-17: Lt. Schoenfeld himself, 2 Lt. Raymond D. Schar (one of two co-pilots aboard the plane), flight engineer (Sgt. Frank M. Alexander, Jr.), and a gunner (Sgt. Irwin H. Wrampe). The crew (list also from France – Crashes 39-45) consisted of:
Pilot: Schoenfeld – Survived Co-Pilot: Lt. Jack R. Owen – KIA Co-Pilot: 2 Lt. Raymond D. Schar – Survived Navigator: 2 Lt. Garry I. Leonard – KIA Bombardier: F/O Bradell – KIA Flight Engineer: Sgt. Frank M. Alexander, Jr. – Survived Radio Operator: Mehlman – KIA Gunner: Cpl. Drayton P. Mannies – KIA Gunner: Sgt. Irwin H. Wrampe – Survived
Lt. Schoenfeld and his radio operator, Sgt. Hymie Mehlman, are most definitely listed in American Jews in World War II: The former on page 433, with the notation that he received the Air Medal and Purple Heart, and the latter on page 49, with the notation that he received the Purple Heart.
Lt. Schoenfeld (0-694266) was the husband of Charlotte Schoenfeld, and the son of Abraham and Antoinette (Weiss) Schoenfeld, of 4515 12th Ave., Brooklyn, where he was born on January 3, 1921 – just over a hundred and two years ago. He passed away on November 27, 2002. His name can be found on page 433 of American Jews in World War II, with the notation that he received the Air Medal and Purple Heart.
Cpl. Hymie Mehlman (19181734) was born in Manhattan on June 1, 1923. His parents were Charles (8/15/96-3/26/66) and Dora (Appelbaum) (4/30/96-2/1/79) Mehlman, and his sister Shirley Ann (5/12/30-12/12/06), who resided at 3546 Whiteside Street in Los Angeles. His brother Jacob (“Jack”) Bernard Mehlman (7/2/21-5/24/18) possibly lived at 2032 Palm Grove, also in L.A.
Cpl. Mehlman married Miriam Frances (Licker), of 801 North Mott Street, Los Angeles, on September 14, 1944 in California. The couple had one child, Bruce Raymond, who was born on June 28, 1945, almost five months after his father’s death; Bruce Raymond passed away on January 1, 2009.
Cpl. Mehlman, whose name appears on page 49 of American Jews in World War II, was awarded the Purple Heart, and is buried at Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles.
In the image below, published on page 43 of Rank’n File – The Spirit of 44-D! (the class 44-D graduation album of the Rankin Aeronautical Academy at Tulare, California – via Army Air Forces Collection – Historical Documents from World War II), Cpl. Mehlman – at the time of the photo, Aviation Cadet Mehlman – stands at far left. Given his status as an Cadet, it would seem that he became a radio operator after having “washed out” of pilot training.
The other men – all members are Squadron C – are, left to right:
H.A. Oliver J.J. Mehlhoff E.E. Mecker W.A. Majors R.H. McMillen At rear center in cap and scarf stands Instructor Bertram
______________________________
Second Lieutenant David Kames (Kaminkowitz)
8th Air Force
860th Bomb Squadron, 493rd Bomb Group
(From “100 Missions” (1945), here’s the emblem of the 493rd Bomb Group.)
(Though Maurer and Maurer’s Combat Squadrons of the Air Force, World War II, indicates that the 860th Bomb Squadron had no squadron emblem, Battlefield.Store on EBay, describes this insignia as the emblem of the 860th Bomb Squadron.)
A few of my prior posts mentioning Jewish airmen in the 8th and 15th Air Forces recounted incidents in which their aircraft, on missions to Germany, landed behind Soviet lines in Eastern Europe, due to fuel exhaustion and / or combat damage, with their crews eventually returning American military control. At least one such incident occurred on February 6, when un-nicknamed B-17G 43-38593 of the 493rd Bomb Group’s 860th Bomb Squadron, piloted by 2 Lt. Warren P. Whitson, Jr., with his eight crewmen, disappeared during the mission to Chemnitz.
As recorded in Missing Air Crew Report 12235, “Very little is known as to the whereabouts of A/C 593. At 1145 hours or approximately one half hour after target time, Lt. Whitson, pilot of A/C/ 593 radioed that he was proceeding to Russia. Later, at 1330, a message from 3D Air Division instructed Lt. Whitson to proceed to Motala (58 32 N, 15 02 E) in Sweden. Last position of A/X ascertained from radio message. – No further information on A/C 593 is available at this time.”
Whitson, Warren P., Jr. – 2 Lt. – Pilot Morrow, Charles H., Jr. – 2 Lt. – Co-Pilot Kames, David – 2 Lt. – Navigator Flesher, Robert A. – 2 Lt. – Bombardier McClure, Ronald W. – Sgt. – Flight Engineer Magee, Robert S. – Sgt. – Radio Operator Justice, Ora G. – Sgt. – Gunner (Ball Turret) Kelly, Robey J. – Sgt. – Gunner (Waist) Dyrud, Kenneth M. – Sgt. – Gunner (Tail)
Lt. Whiton’s crew resumed flying combat missions, only to be shot down by an Me-109 in B-17G 43-39070 (S) on the April 7, 1945 mission to Gustrow, as reported in MACR 13890. They were fortunate once again, for the entire crew survived, all returning to military control from mid-April to early May. With their date of return to American military control listed, they were:
Whitson, Warren P., Jr. – 2 Lt. – Pilot – 5/2/45 Morrow, Charles H., Jr. – 2 Lt. – Co-Pilot – 5/5/45 Kames, David – 2 Lt. – Navigator – 5/2/45 Flesher, Robert A. – 2 Lt. – Bombardier – 5/1/45 Rinaldi, Carmen C. – T/Sgt. – Flight Engineer – 5/2/45 Magee, Robert S. – Sgt. – Radio Operator – 4/15/45 Long, James C. – S/Sgt. – Gunner (Ball Turret) – 4/15/45 Belsinger, Robert H. – Sgt. – Gunner (Waist) – 4/15/45 Gardner, Thomas T. – S/Sgt. – Gunner (Tail) – 4/15/45 Meyers, James W. – Sgt. – Radio Countermeasures – 4/15/45
It can be seen that the officers (pilot, co-pilot, navigator, and bombardier), and radio operator (Magee), were identical on both missions.
Among Lt. Whitson’s crew was 2 Lt. David Kames (0-2060303), the bomber’s navigator. The location of the POW camp (camps?) where he spent the European war’s final month is unknown, but based on postwar reports by fellow crewmen, it seems that the men – who returned to Allied control from one week to nearly a month after having been shot down – were never at any once location for a truly lengthy interval.
Research via Ancestry.com revealed that David Kames was born on Feb. 17, 1919 – as David Kaminkowitz – to Philip and Luba (Kartt) Kaminkowitz. He retained that surname through October of 1940, when he signed his Draft Registration Card – and was thereafter known, in military and civilian life – as David Kames, under which name he married Martha Siegel (later his wife, “Molly”?) in 1941. The couple’s wartime address was 5908 20th Ave., in a place called Brooklyn.
David Kames passed away on April 15, 1996. Continuing with the theme of Jewish-soldiers’-names-not-present-in-the-1947-compilation-American Jews in World War II, his name is likewise absent from that volume.
As “David Kaminkowitz”, here’s David Kames’ portrait – via Ancestry.com – in the 1936 edition of the Erasmus Hall High School yearbook
Taken on January 4, 1945, here’s a portrait of the Whitson crew, with Lt. Whitson standing far left. Going by his facial features in the portrait above, it looks as if Lt. Kames is standing at far right, in the rear row. (USAAF photo B-62290AC – A10478)
This picture was taken on April 6, 1945, one day before the Whitson crew was shot down on the Gustrow mission. Once again going by “looks”, I believe Lt. Kames is fourth from left. The airman standing third from left is wearing a ushanka (ушанка) – the universally-recognized Russian fur cap – probably a souvenir of the crew’s sojourn in Soviet territory after the mission of February 6. Lt. Warren P. Whitson stands at far right as the crew collectively contemplates someone’s “short snorter“. (USAAF photo 62301AC – A10513)
From the American Air Museum in Britain, this image shows B-17s of the 860th Bomb Squadron, with 43-39070 – S – flown by the Whitson crew of April 7 – in foreground. Nicely visible are the red wing and tail stripes of the 493rd. (Photo UPL36820.)
In terms of information about this crew’s missions of February 6 and April 7, Missing Air Crew Reports 12235 and 13890 – which respectively cover those two dates – are confusing in organization, as most of the documentation for both MACRs pertain to the April 7 mission. This includes transcripts of the Group Intelligence Officer’s interviews of Lieutenants Flesher and Morrow. These accounts are fascinating in recounting the highly varied (extraordinarily dangerous and threatening, or, rather indifferent to ostensibly benign) attitudes of German military personnel and civilians towards Allied POWs just before the war’s end, and, the chaos and disorder prevailing in that country at the time. One interesting facet of Lt. Flesher’s account: Knowledge about the 493rd Bomb Group (down to aircraft serial numbers!) available to the Germans.
Transcripts of these transcripts follow below:
Lieutenant Morrow:
INTERROGATION OF CHARLES H. MORROW, 2nd Lt, AC, 0-775970, 860th BOMB SQUADRON, ESCAPED PRISONER OF WAR.
On the 7th of April I was flying as co-Pilot with Lt. Whitson and crew on a mission to Gustrov, Germany. The formation was attacked by enemy fighters about three minutes before the I.P. I saw only one ME 109. The bomb bay of our aircraft was set on fire after an attack from 6 o’clock high by this plane. The A/C was flown out of formation and the bombs jettisoned. Shortly after this, the oxygen system caught fire and the bail out order was given. It is believed that the engineer, S/Sgt Carmen Rinaldi, was the first to jump. There were 10 men on the plane. However, only 9 chutes were seen and Rinaldi has not been accounted for at this date.
I landed in the vicinity of Neustadt. A civilian farmer was waiting for me when I landed. My left shoulder was fractured and I had a little difficulty in getting out of the harness. The farmer did not help, but rather threatened me. He started me off down a road, and about a mile along, I saw Lt Whitson who was in the custody of several civilian guards. They took us to a farm house, where we met Lt David Kames. A Luftwaffe captain came in and we were taken to an Airdrome at Neustadt where we were put in separate cells. It was 36 hours before we were fed or given medical attention. After this interval, we were given some bread and margarine. We stayed at this base for seven days. Since we were hungry, we asked the major in charge if we couldn’t be sent to a regular P/W camp. He agreed, and shortly thereafter, we were sent to the railroad station, but no train arrived. So we waited by the road for motor transport. None came. The two guards in charge agreed to send us to a nearby political camp where forty RAF and US flyers were being held. Again there was little to eat. Staying overnight at Beuerline, we moved the next day to a small village. For five days we were kept in a barn. Here, Red Cross packages ware given to us. After 5 days, the little group started on the road again, heading north toward Lubeck. Marches were about 25 miles a day. We finally wound up at Lebenz, about 40 miles southeast of Lubeck. We were all in fairly bad physical condition. The guards were rather brutal in urging the party along and appeared to be quite disgusted with the whole proceedings. There were roughly three guards to each man. The party, which started out composed of 43 men, arrived at Lebenz with some 60 officers and enlisted men; RAF, US and Canadians.
The evening of the arrival, the German major in charge of us, told Major Polleson, a US pilot of B-24s, that he was disgusted with us and was going to leave us where we were to be over run and picked up by the advancing British. Four German guards, volunteers, were left with us. The following morning, British tanks came in. Several British soldiers took over the German guards.
From there on in, the British took care of me as well as the other Allied P/Ws.
The Germans interrogated me the first night at Beuerline, asking for my name, rank, age and position on crew. Also if I was married, number of children, what part of the US I was from, my wife’s address. I refused to answer these latter questions, although my wallet which was taken from me, contained all the required information and also L 62. The interrogator asked about my bomb group and our assigned target. The interrogator was an officer and was not harsh or brutal during interrogation. He did not threaten, although he couldn’t understand why I didn’t answer all of his questions. No medical attention was given to me by the Germans who claimed facilities and attendants were not available because of many German wounded.
Lieutenant Flesher:
INTERROGATION OF ROBERT A. FLESHER, 2nd Lt., A.C., ESCAPED PRISONER OF WAR.
The assigned target for our Group was Gustrov, Germany, about; 85 miles Northwest of Berlin. The data was April 7, 1945.
Just after leaving the I.P. and while on the bomb run an ME 109, attacked our aircraft from five o’clock high. Our aircraft was hit in the bomb bay, probably by incendiary bullets; at any rate a fire was started in the bomb bay. We dropped out of formation, jettisoned our bombs (incendiary and G.P.), and exhausted both of our fire extinguishers. The fire continued to spread and it became evident that we could not put it out. After it appeared that the plane would explode at any minute the pilot gave the signal to bail out. I was the last one to bail out, and prior to leaving the plane I made an examination of the other positions to make sure that everyone had left. When it came my turn to leave the plane, the escape hatch had developed a malfunction and I was unable to get it open. My escape was made by diving through the bomb bay doors which were burning furiously; the metal was red hot. My face, ears and nose were burned, which necessitated medical treatment later.
My landing was made near Rastow, a small German town. Upon landing I was told that nine chutes had been observed coming from our plane. I was immediately gathered in by four German civilians who searched me for a gun and then took me into town to get the burgomaster. The burgomaster then marched me to the Wehrmacht headquarters, which was in a thick forest beautifully camouflaged.
S/Sgt. Thomas T. Gardner, tail gunner in our plane, and I were first taken before an officer who appeared to be the Commanding Officer and who became highly indignant at the burgomaster for bringing us there. He took the position that we should have been shot upon reaching the ground, as it appeared that our jettisoned bombs had hit a German school house, killing a number of German children. We were then stripped of our clothing and taken outside to be shot. At this time some Nazi official put in his appearance, asked us if we were Canadians, and when it developed that we were Americans he ordered the other Germans to give us back our clothes. We were than blindfolded, marched down the road a mile or so and put on a hay wagon where we were taken to a house which was used as a radio station. After spending the night in separate cells, we were taker back to the Headquarters, and then taken to the Deutsche Luftwaffe on a bus where we were treated extremely well, being fed roast beef, lettuce and other palatable articles of food. Some of the German airmen talked to me, were very friendly, in a low state of morale and ware extremely bitter against the Nazi party and against the S.S. troops. Since this was not an interrogation center and since they made no effort to get any information from me, it was my own impression that this was no “come on” gag, but was sincere.
That night were taken by train to Stendal, which is a Stalag interrogation center for airmen. I stayed there for four days and three nights in solitary confinement. We were fed two cups of soup and a piece of black bread per day.
On the fourth day, I was taken before a German Major for interrogation. He asked me my name, rank and serial number which I disclosed. He then attempted to get other information, such as my Group number, my Mother’s name, what air force I belonged to, name of our assigned target with I.P., whether it was an all-out effort on the part of the air force. I refused to answer these questions. He then stated that this was a mere routine examination and that he already knew the answers to the questions which he had propounded. He then reached in his desk and pulled out a paper with a picture of a B-17 with the 493rd Group markings, the number of our aircraft and our call number. After this he pulled out a book, turned to the page that was for the 493rd Bomb Group and showed me the number of all of our planes with call numbers, the names of most of the pilots and the squadron commanders. It is interesting to note that Major Sianis, former CO of the 862nd was not listed. He also had the name of Lt. Col. Fitzgerald. He then asked me how it was that Col. Helton was not with the 493rd Group any more. The interrogator then indicated on the map the route which we had taken, giving timings of fighter rendezvous, time of takeoff etc. He gave no indication as to where he obtained his Information, and the amount which he had at his finger tips was amazing. The interrogator was very friendly, offered me cigarettes and was respectful at all times.
After interrogation I was taken back to the cell for more solitary confinement. Colonel Crawford of the 446th Bomb Group made arrangements that night with a German Lieutenant interrogator for our escape. The Interrogator gave Col. Crawford the key to our cells, and that night we took off, 29 Americans and one R.A.F. navigator from England. The German Lieutenant and one German Sgt. went with us where we stayed at a barn for two days waiting on the approaching Americans. During this time the two Germans guarded us and prevented other Germans from detecting us, the understanding being that when the Americans rescued us we would take care of these two Germans and see that they were decently taken care of.
On April 13th we saw an advancing column in the distance but were unable to determine whether it was friendly or enemy. When an FW 190 flew overhead and was fired upon by these troops we knew that it was one of our columns. We were them rescued by the 5th Armored Division and the two Germans were later turned over to American forces with instruction that they should receive fair treatment.
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Sergeant Isidore Ifshin
Sergeant Norman Babe Lubinsky
12th Air Force
447th Bomb Squadron, 321st Bomb Group
(Via the 57th Bomb Wing, here’s the insignia of the 447th Bomb Squadron, from Vintage Leather Jackets.)
Moving south to Italian latitudes, Sergeants Isidore “Sonny” Ifshin and Norman Babe Lubinsky, both members of the 321st Bomb Group’s 447th Bomb Squadron, were captured after their B-25 Mitchell bombers were shot down by anti-aircraft fire during a mission to the Roverto Railroad Station.
Sergeant Ifshin (32821301), the flight engineer of B-25J 43-36240 (MAYBE) was among the bomber’s five survivors, all of whom escaped by parachuting from their damaged plane, which was piloted by 1 Lt. Earl H. Remmel (completed 67 missions) 2 Lt. Leslie J. Speer (completed 15 missions), neither of whom survived.
The pilots managed to keep their damaged B-25 under control long enough to give their crew a chance to escape, but were unable to leave the spinning and broken aircraft before it crashed into mountains below. Both men were killed when MAYBE crashed at Pannone, as reported in Luftgaukommando Report ME 2783.
As described by S/Sgt. Robert Cubbage in Missing Air Crew Report 12134, “I saw a ship after his right engine was feathered and it was sliding off to the left losing altitude. Four parachutes opened out of the ship. The plane then went into an inverted spin, tail down, to crash about half way up the side of a mountain at north end of Lake Gorda.
One of the chutes floated over the mountain peak and into the valley toward Roverto. The other three men went down on the side of the peak.”
2 Lt. John B. Allendorph reported, “I saw the ship go into a spin and almost immediately one chute opened behind it. Then I very short order, two more left the plane. It fell for a good length of time then two more chutes appeared, very close together. I didn’t see the plane hit although I watched it until I lost it against the mountainside. I am positive that there were five parachutes that came from the plane.”
Bombardier Lt. Darrel, in his postwar Casualty Questionnaires for Lieutenants Remmel and Speer, reported that, “Plane was very badly damaged by flak. Lt. Remmel managed to keep it from going out of control as long as possible but as we were preparing to leave, tail section and left wing broke up and plane went into spin.” “1st Lt. Harlan Tulley and T/Sgt. Isidore Ifshin [bailed out] from front hatch, T/Sgt. Bernard Guild and Sgt. Albert Barrett [bailed out] from rear hatch. All men bailed out immediately upon receiving order from 1st Lt. Earl Remmel, pilot.” Lt. Darrel also reported that Lt. Remmel, “Ordered all crew members to leave ship. Said he would hold it as steady as possible. … He told me he was not wounded just before I bailed out.” At the same time, Lt. Speer, “Was helping pilot hold ship while crew members bailed out,” and, “climbing from co-pilot’s seat preparing to bail out.”
Sgt. Ifshin was captured at 1500 hours, 3 kilometers north of Pannone, near Rovereto, by “3./SS Police-Regiment Schlanders”. According to notes at the Ifshin Batterman Family Tree at Ancestry.com, “Sonny bailed out and landed in a tree. … The Italians spotted him in the tree & had him jump to the ground, then turned him over to the Germans. He injured his ankle upon jumping from the tree, and was forced to march from Italy to Germany in the snow. … He had flown 60 missions.”
Sgt. Ifshin was eventually interned at Stalag 7A (Moosburg).
His parents were Morris (5/1/96-3/18/82) and Jacha “Yetta” (Kaplan) (9/15/00-6/25/82) Ifshin, his family residing at 500 Southern Boulevard. Born in Manhattan on September 8, 1924, he passed away on December 15, 2017.
His name – a repeating pattern here?! – is absent from American Jews in World War II.
A wedding portrait of Irving’s parents Jacha and Morris. This image, and the related photos that follow, are all from the Ifshin Batterman Family Tree at Ancestry.com.
Irving Ifshin, presumably photographed in the United States.
In this composite image, the photo on the left shows Irving Ifshin during training at Miami Beach, while the right image shows Irving and his mother Yetta in front of the family’s candy shop … at 500 Southern Boulevard in the Bronx?
MAYBE, at the 321st Bomb Group’s base in Corsica. The plane is a natural-metal (un-camouflage-painted) aircraft. Unfortunately, the plane’s individual identification letter – painted on the outer surface of its fins and rudders – isn’t visible in this picture.
As the bomber’s flight engineer, one of Sgt. Ifshin’s responsibilities would have been to have manned the aircraft’s upper gun turret, next to which he’s sitting in this photo.
Here’s most of the crew of MAYBE: At least four of the men in this photo were aboard the aircraft on the mission of February 6.
T/Sgt. Harold R. Bauer (not aboard MAYBE on the February 6 mission) T/Sgt. Ifshin – Survived T/Sgt. Bernard Robert Guild? (Radio Operator) – Survived
This image, via FindAGrave contributor Patti Johnson, shows pilot Lt. Remmel as an Aviation Cadet. His FindAGrave biographical profile is here. Given that he’s listed in the Missing Air Crew Report as a Lieutenant, while his tombstone indicates his rank as Captain, I suppose the latter rank was a posthumous promotion.
This composite image of Co-Pilot 2 Lt. Leslie Thomas Speer is comprised of photos via FindAGrave contributors patootie (left photo), and, PRINCESSBARBI (right photo). The left image of Lt. Speer is from Army Air Forces Training Command 1943 Walnut Ridge, Arkansas – Class 43-E (May, 1943), while the newspaper article on the right, probably from March or April of 1945, reports on his (then) “Missing in Action” status. There are actually two FindAGrave commemorative pages for Lt. Speer: Here, and here.
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447th Bomb Squadron, 321st Bomb Group
A bombardier, Sgt. Norman Babe Lubinsky (39577232) and his crew in un-nicknamed B-25J 43-27730 – piloted by 1 Lt. Jackson R. Didson – had a more benign fate than the men of Maybe: 43-27730’s entire crew survived by parachuting. According to Luftgaukommando Report ME 2784, their bomber, shot down by Anti-Aircraft Battalion 454, crashed 3 kilometers west of Schio (south-east of Roverto … or … 7 ½ kilometers east of Roverto, at Piazza.
As one of three 447th Bomb Squadron B-25s lost on February 6, there was a degree of ambiguity in terms of a report of the planes’ loss, as reflected by Operations Officer Captain J. Maurice Wiginton in Missing Air Crew Report 12131. Namely, “Inasmuch as there were three aircraft involved (the entire lead element) and there occurred confusion and dispersion of the aircraft that followed, due to the loss of the lead element, it becomes difficult to disseminate all reports of returning crews. No one observer can give a complete sequence of happenings regarding each or all three aircraft in distress.
In light of the above, it is reasonable to conclude that the following did happen to plane 730: At approximately bomb-release point, the plane was hit by flak and immediately fell out of formation and dived to about 7000 feet. As the plane was in a dive two parachutes were seen to leave the plane. The plane leveled out and at about 7000 feet and one engine was feathered.
The last that anyone saw of it, it seemed to be under control and going west, just north of Lake Gorda. The formation tried to contact him by radio but failed.
The third 447th Bomb Squadron loss on February 6 was B-25J 43-27542, Superstitious Aloysius. Piloted by 1 Lt. Carl W. Cahoon, the plane’s entire crew of 6 survived, as reported in MACR 12133 and Luftgaukommando Report ME 2782.
The son of Paul I. (1/24/82-2/16/60) and Lena L. (Gordon) (12/15/85-1960) Lubinsky and brother of Louis and Sam, Norman Lubinsky and his family resided at 130 West Colton Ave., in Loma Linda, California. Born in Los Angeles on March 30, 1919, he passed away at the age of 93 on April 19, 2012. Though his name appeared in a list of liberated POWs published on June 12, 1945, his POW camp is unknown, and his name is absent (once again) from American Jews in World War II.
About a month before becoming a prisoner of war (and having his name recorded in Missing Air Crew Report 12131), Sgt. Lubinsky’s statement concerning the loss of a B-25 was recorded in MACR 11713.
Specifically, “On the mission on January 18th I was Bombardier on the plane flying on Lt. Murchland’s left wing. Just after coming off the target it was obvious that Lt. Murchland’s plane was in trouble. The first thing that I saw leave the ship looked like a bomb, but it was a delayed jump and the chute opened at about 1000 feet. In just a few seconds another came out and opened, and then two more blossomed out. Then it seemed a minute before the last man that I saw jump came out, and his chute opened immediately. While the last man that I saw jump was floating to the ground that the ship went into an 86 degree bank, made a right turn, and dived onto the bank of the river (Adige).”
There were four survivors from the six crewmen aboard this aircraft, B-25J 43-4069, piloted by 1 Lt. Robert K. Murchland. The identification and recovery of the aircraft and crew is covered in Luftgaukommando Report ME 2735.
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Leading Aircraftman Woolf “Willie” Nerden
England
Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve
Number 140 Wing
In the Royal Air Force, Leading Aircraftman Woolf “Willie” Nerden (1440455), of No. 140 Wing Royal Air Force, was killed in the crash of Dakota III (C-47) KG630, piloted by W/O Peter M. Oleinikoff. The aircraft struck a hill at South Downs Folkington, East Sussex, in bad weather, eventuating in the loss of all 23 crew and passengers.
Born in Poplar, London, in 1921, he was the son of John and Hannah (Hirsch) Nerden, and brother of Joseph and Phillip, all of 2 British Street, Bow, London, E3. Buried at East Ham (Marlow Road) Jewish Cemetery, Essex, England (at Block U, Grave 29), the inscription on his Matzeva states, “Deeply mourned by parents – Brothers and relatives – Remembered by all”.
Notice of his death appeared in The Jewish Chronicle on March 2, 1945, while his name is recorded on page 218 of Volume I of Henry Morris’ We Will Remember Them.
You can read much more about his life, and the accident that claimed the crew and passengers of KG630, at Cathie Hewitt’s magisterial website Remembering the Jews of WW2. (Which incidentally features biographical records of Jews in the Merchant Navy and Royal Navy.)
This image of LAC Nerden’s matzeva is by FindAGrave contributor Mike Ganly.
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Matelot Radio (Aerial Wireless Operator / Gunner) Sylvain Isaac Boucris
France
Aéronautique Navale en Grande-Bretagne (A.N.G.B.)
Forces Navales Françaises Libres (F.N.F.L.)
Number 4 Wireless School, Medley, England
To conclude, yet another non-combat accident.
Matelot Radio (Aerial Wireless Operator / Gunner) Sylvain Isaac Boucris, assigned to No. 4 Wireless School, Medley, England / F.N.F.L. (Forces Navales Françaises Libres) – (Aeronautique Navale), of the aéronautique navale en Grande-Bretagne (ANGB), was killed in the crash of a Percival Proctor III (LZ595) during flight training over England. The aircraft – piloted by F/Sgt. Christian Henry Gerner – crashed at Oswestry, Shropshire.
Born in Mahdia, Tunisia, on February 28, 1925, Matelot Radio Boucris’ place of burial is unknown. His name appears on page 109 of the rare volume Livre d’Or et de Sang.
This image of Matelot Radio Sylvain Isaac Boucris is from page 109 of Livre d’Or et de Sang. His family origins and place of burial are unknown.
I was very (very!) fortunate to access and scan the first (and only) edition of Livre d’Or et de Sang. This copy is from the University of Toronto.
Exactly four months after the crash of Proctor LZ595, pilot F/Sgt. Christian Henry Gerner’s father, Chris H. Gerner, sent the following letter to Officer Commanding, Records, Department of Air, in Melbourne, requesting information about the accident that claimed the life of his son and Matelot Boucris… The letter was found in F/Sgt. Gerner’s Casualty File, via the National Archives of Australia.
Here’s a nice video of a Proctor in flight – “Percival Proctor and Mew Gulls – Shuttleworth Vintage Airshow” – circa October of 2022, at the YouTube channel of Patrick Clear.
References
Four Books
Dublin, Louis I., and Kohs, Samuel C., American Jews in World War II – The Story of 550,000 Fighters for Freedom, The Dial Press, New York, N.Y., 1947
Freeman, Roger A., The Mighty Eighth – Units, Men and Machines (A History of the US 8th Army Air Force), Doubleday and Company, Inc., Garden City, N.Y., 1970
Freeman, Roger A., The B-17 Flying Fortress Story: Design – Production – History, Arms & Armour Press, London, England, 1998
Morris, Henry, Edited by Gerald Smith, We Will Remember Them – A Record of the Jews Who Died in the Armed Forces of the Crown 1939 – 1945, Brassey’s, United Kingdom, London, 1989
