Jewish Assimilation – Excursions in Jewish Military History and Jewish Genealogy

The Shield of Memory – Articles from “Der Schild”, Journal of the Reich Federation of Jewish Front-Line Soldiers: January, 1925 – “American Judaism in the Year 2000”

Many of my recent posts having centered around Jewish military service in the Second World War, I though I’d travel back in time to the First World War (in strange and appropriate irony sometimes known as “The Great War”) and bring to you items from the official newspaper of the “Reichsbundes Jüdischer Frontsoldaten” – the “Reich Federation of Jewish Front-Line Soldiers” – Der Schild (The Shield). I explored Der Schild in digital format via Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main about ten years ago, downloading every issue of the publication in PDF format. My goal? To identify articles, editorials, essays, and letters that appeared – based on a cursory glance at both title and text (that’s all I could go by, given that I don’t speak German!) to be significant or unusual, and therefore worthy of translation into English. Of which, I found many. Very, very (did I say very?!) many, of which “this” post – about the future envisioned of the Jews of the United States in the year 2000 – is the first example. Wth more to follow.

Entitled “Amerikas Judentum im Jahre 2000” – “American Judaism in the Year 2000”, the essay appeared in the first issue of Der Schild published in 1925; appropriately, in January.

Here’s an image of the essay as it appears in Der Schild. It’s in Fraktur font, like many items in the newspaper, particularly those published during its early years. If you look closely at the end of the final paragraph, you’ll see that the author was a certain “L.W.”

Here’s L.W.’s essay in translation. Typical of the nature of predictions, the article’s conclusions are arrived at based on the assumption that conditions in the present will persist unchanged and unchangeable into the future, which is tragically ironic given what would transpire in Germany – and beyond – only eight short years later. Otherwise, the author’s estimate of an American Jewish population of eight million by the year 2000 would prove to be far too optimistic, given that the Jewish population of the United States was 5,828,000 in 1992 and 6,544,000 in 2009. Even in the recently-ended year of 2024 the American Jewish population of 7,698,840 was still about 300,000 short of the article’s year-2000 prediction. (See References at bottom of this post.) Otherwise, the essay’s characterization of Eastern European Jewry is a curious mixture of condescension and arrogance, while in its description of the sometime belief that each generation has a tendency to perceive itself as the “last”, it shows insight into human nature in general, and Jewish history in particular.

Here’s the article…

American Judaism in the Year 2000
A review in an American magazine

The Shield
January, 1925

“By the year 2000, if current immigration restrictions remain in place,
the number of Jews in America will have risen to about 8 million,
of whom only about 6% will be foreign-born.”

In the magazine “The American Hebrew,” Rabbi Dr. Julian Morgenstern examines the future of Judaism in America. He asks precisely what the situation will be for American Judaism in the year 2000. In his opinion, if one wants to answer the question in the positive sense, this requires twofold trust: trust in Judaism, and in America. Morgenstern assumes that the new laws regulating immigration to the United States will have a significant impact on the future of Judaism. Over the last 10 years, 2.5 million Jews have immigrated to America. Over the next 40 years, the influx will be less than a million. For him, this leads to the following figures: there are currently about 3.5 million Jews living in America, of whom about 85% were born abroad. In the next generation, around 1950, the number of Jews in America will be about 5 million, of whom only 20% will be born abroad. By the year 2000, if current immigration restrictions remain in place, the number of Jews in America will have risen to about 8 million, of whom only about 6% will be foreign-born.

The influx of foreign Jews to America has, over the past 40 years, added ever new forces to the Jewish community there. If this increase in numbers and culture had not occurred, then, in Morgenstern’s view, Judaism in America would either have died out or would be on the verge of extinction. Many of the Jews living there have given up their faith and become more and more detached from the old customs. In return, they have taken the new paths of their new homeland and thereby weakened Judaism, so that it might have perished with these representatives. It was only the influence of the foreign influx of Jewish human material that has kept Judaism in America alive. But, as Morgenstern points out, we must not draw the wrong conclusions from this fact. For it is not only the Jewish immigrant in America who is irresistibly influenced by his new environment. It is also quite irrelevant to which country the stream of immigration flows. In Argentina, Australia, South Africa, England, Canada, and even in Palestine, the Jewish immigrant makes himself dependent on his new environment in the same way and must do so. How quickly the process of assimilation takes place depends on the degree of superiority that the new culture has over the old, and this is a variable factor. It is simply a historical law to which not only the Jews but immigrants of all races and peoples are and have been subject at all times.

Even if one completely disregards immigration, the internal culture of a country and a people is also a factor that is constantly changing. Culture cannot stand still, but must develop, and the lives of individuals or peoples who come under the influence of such a cultural change must change and develop with the change. It follows that Judaism must also develop with American culture, and that this is an inevitable process, apart from immigration. The question that Dr. Morgenstern ______ is now whether Judaism will _____ remain Judaism despite these changes. The _____ _____ influence of the most diverse cultures has been maintained and developed and has shown that it has been able to preserve its own character despite all the changes over the years and centuries. Of course, Judaism in David’s time was different from the Judaism of Deutero-Isaiah.

The influence of Persian and Greek culture and philosophy has in turn had a strong material impact on Judaism. The Judaism of the Talmud cannot be compared with the Judaism of today in the western countries. Judaism is a living religion that is still developing, but not a science of the past that has been shut down for all time and that could now be regenerated but not actively developed.

“Only in Eastern Europe,
where Judaism suffered from a stagnant culture of its surroundings and from persecution and oppression,
have outdated customs remained the norm,
while in all other countries Judaism has undergone the same development into modern culture as its surroundings.”

~~~~~~~~~~

“Precisely as a result of the rapid development from generation to generation,
parents have always had the feeling that true Judaism was dying out with them,
and this process has, as I have said,
repeated itself from generation to generation
because the older generation could no longer keep up with the younger.”

Only in Eastern Europe, where Judaism suffered from a stagnant culture of its surroundings and from persecution and oppression, have outdated customs remained the norm, while in all other countries Judaism has undergone the same development into modern culture as its surroundings. As soon as the restrictions are lifted, the vitality of Judaism reveals itself through its productive work, especially in the intellectual field. Now that the shackles of Tsarism have been removed from Russian Jewry, a lively development is noticeable there too. It is not Judaism, which had to vegetate for a long time, that is dead; it is only the ghetto that has come to an end, while Judaism, on the contrary, has awakened from its medieval slumber. Morgenstern notices the same process in America. Judaism there is not dying out either. And when hasty prophets speak of Judaism being dead and forgotten in America by the year 2000, Morgenstern takes a completely different view. Such pessimistic prophecies have always existed among the Jewish people. Precisely as a result of the rapid development from generation to generation, parents have always had the feeling that true Judaism was dying out with them, and this process has, as I have said, repeated itself from generation to generation because the older generation could no longer keep up with the younger. By the year 2000, only today’s Judaism will have died out to make way for a new, more vibrant one. But by then, an American Jewry will have developed from the Jewish elements of all nations that have come to America, which, in its capacity as American citizens, will make its essential contribution to the development of American culture. Despite the complaints of the older generation, Morgenstern sees no reason to fear a decline in specifically Jewish interests. He says that the reason for this is that over 100 students have enrolled at the Jewish College for the coming year to study rabbinical studies, a number that has never been reached before. The activity of the Jewish element is also making itself felt in other areas of social work and organization. Morgenstern explains that, of course, one cannot know today what the situation will be for Judaism in the year 2000, because one also does not know under what conditions other nations will then be living. But it is also unnecessary to rack one’s brains over how the future will shape itself in detail. He stresses only one thing: in the year 2000 or 3000 or 4000, as long as America is a free, progressive state, American Jewry will live and prosper, for the benefit of the country in which it lives and works. L.W.

And so, the article in the original German…

Amerikas Judentum im Jahre 2000
Ein Rückblick in einer amerikanischen Zeitschrift

Der Schild
Januar, 1925

In der Zeitschrift „The American Hebrew“ beschäftigt sich der Rabbiner Dr. Julian Morgenstern mit der Zukunft des Judentums in Amerika. Er stellt seine Frage präzise, wie es im Jahre 2000 um das amerikanische Judentum bestellt sein wird. Wenn man die Frage in positivem Sinne beantworten wolle, so erfordere dies nach seiner Ansicht ein doppeltes Vertrauen: Vertrauen sowohl zu dem Judentum, wie zu Amerika. Morgenstern geht davon aus, dass die neuen Gesetze über die Regelung der Einwanderung in die Vereinigten Staaten von wesentlichem Einfluss hät die Zukunft des Judentums sein werden. Während der letzten 10 Jahre sind 2 ½ Millionen Juden in Amerika eingewandert. Während der kommenden 40 Jahre wird der Zustrom weniger als eine Million betragen. Daraus ergeben sich für ihn folgende Zahlen: zur Zeit leben in Amerika etwa 3 ½ Millionen Juden, von denen ungefähr 85% im Ausland geboren sind. In der nächsten Generation, etwa 1950, wird die Zahl der Juden in Amerika ungeführ 5 Millionen betragen, von denen nur noch 20% im Ausland geboren sein werden. Bis zum Jahre 2000 wird die Anzahl der Juden in Amerika auf etwa 8 Millionen gestiegen sein, von denen nur etwa 6& im Ausland geboren sind, sofern die jetzigen Einwanderungsbeschränkungen erhalten bleiben.

Der Zustrom ausländischer Juden nach Amerika hat während der letzten 40 Jahre das dortige Judentum durch immer neue Kräfte ergänzt. Wäre dieser Zuwachs zahlenmässig und kulturell ausgeblieben, so würde das Judentum in Amerika, nach Morgensterns Ansicht, entweder ausgestorben sein oder auf dem Aussterbe-Etat stehen. Viele der dort ansässigen Juden haben ihren Glauben aufgegeben und sich mehr und mehr von den alten Sitten losgelöst. Sie haben dafür die neuen Wege ihrer neuen Heimat eingeschlagen und damit das Judentum geschwächt, so dass es mit diesen Repräsentanten möglicherweise hätte untergehen müssen. Es war nur der Einfluss des ausländischen Zustroms an jüdischem Menschenmaterial, der das Judentum in Amerika erhalten hat. Aber aus dieser Tatsache darf man, wie Morgenstern hervorhebt, keine falschen Schlüsse ziehen. Denn nicht nur der jüdische Einwanderer unterliegt in Amerika unwiderstehlich dem Einfluss seiner neuen Umgebung. Es ist auch ganz gleichgültig, in welches Land der Strom der Einwanderung such ergiesst. In Argentinien, Australien, Südafrika, England, Kanada und sogar in Palästina macht sich der jüdische Einwanderer in gleicher Weise von seiner neuen Umgebung abhängig und muss es machen. Wie schnell der Assimilierungsprozess vor sich geht, hängt von der Grösse der Uebermacht ab, die die neue Kultur über die alte hat, und das ist eine variable Grösse. Es handelt sich hierbei einfach um ein historische Gesetz, dem nicht nur die Juden, sondern die Einwanderer aller Rassen und Völker unterworfen sind und zu allen Zeiten unterworfen waren.

Selbst wenn man ganz und gar von der Einwanderung absieht, ist die interne Kultur eines Landes und eines Volkes auch eine Grösse, die sich ununterbrochen verändert. Die Kultur kann nicht still stehen, sondern muss sich entwickeln, und das Leben der einzelnen Personen oder der Völker, die unter den Einfluss eines solchen Kulturwechsels kommen, muss sich mit dem Wechsel verändern und entwickeln. Daraus ergibt sich, dass auch das Judentum mit der amerikanischen Kultur sich entwickeln muss, und dass es sich dabei, abgesehen von der Einwanderung, um einen unvermeidlichen Prozess handelt. Die Frage, die Dr. Morgenstern ______, ist nun die, ob das Judentum trotz dieser Veränderung ein Judentum _____ bleibt. Das _____ _____ Einwirkung der verschiedensten Kulturen erhalten und entwickelt und hat den Beweis erbracht, dass es trotz aller Veränderungen im Laufe der Jahre und Jahrhunderte doch seine Eigenart bewahren konnte. Natürlich ist das Judentum zur Zeit Davids – ein anderes gewesen, als schon das Judentum des Deutero-Iesaias. Die Einwirkung der persischen und griechischen Kultur und Philosophie hat das Judentum wiederum materiell stark beinflusst. Das Judentum des Talmud kann mit dem heutigen Judentum in den westlichen Ländern nicht verglichen werden. Denn das Judentum ist eine lebendige, in der Entwicklung Befindliche Religion, aber nicht eine für alle Zeiten abgeschossene Wissenschaft der Vergangenheit, die nu regenerieten aber sich nicht aktiv hätte entwickeln können.

Nur in Osteuropa, wo das Judentum unter einer stagnierenden Kultur seiner Umgebung und unter Verfolgung und Unterdrückung zu leiden hatte, haben sich veraltete Sitten als Norm gehalten, während in allen anderen Ländern das Judentum die gleiche Entwicklung zur modernen Kultur durchgemacht hat, wie seine Umgebung. Sobald die Beschränkungen aufgehoben sind, offenbart sich die Lebenskraft des Judentums durch seine produktive Arbeit, namentlich auf geistigen Gebiet. Jetzt, nachdem die Fesseln des Zarismus von dem russischen Judentum genommen sind, macht sich auch dort eine lebendige Entwicklung bemerkbar. Nicht das Judentum, das lange vegetieren musste, ist tot, sondern nur das Ghetto hat sein Ende gefunden, während das Judentum im Gegenteil von seinem mittelalterlichen Schlummer erwacht ist. In Amerika bemerkt Morgenstern den gleichen Prozess. Auch dort befindet sich das Judentum nicht im Absterben. Und wenn voreilige Propheten davon sprechen, dass das Judentum im Jahre 2000 in Amerika gestorben und vergessen sein werde, so ist Morgenstern völlig anderer Ansicht Solche pessimistischen Prophezeiungen hat es zu allen Zeiten bei dem jüdischen Volke gegeben. Gerade infolge der schnellen Entwicklung von Generationen zu Generationen haben die Eltern immer das Gefühl gehabt, dass mit ihnen das wahre Judentum ausstirbt, und dieser Vorgang hat sich, wie gesagt, von Generation zu Generation widerholt, weil die ältere Generation mit der jüngeren nicht mehr mitkam. Es wird eben bis zum Jahre 2000 nur das Judentum von heute gestorben sein, um einem neuen, lebenskräftigeren Platz zu machen. Aber aus den jüdischen Elementen aller Nationen, die nach Amerika gekommen sind, wird sich bis dahin ein amerikanisches Judentum entwickelt haben, das in seiner Eigenschaft als amerikanischer Bürger seinen wesentlichen Beitrag für den Aufbau der amerikanischen Kultur leisten wird. Aber trotz der Klage der älteren Generation sieht Morgenstern keinen Grund, um einen Rückgang der spezifisch jüdischen Interessen zu befürchten. Als Grund dafür fuhrt er an, dass sich an dem Jüdischen College für das kommende Jahr über 100 Studenten für die Rabbinatswissenschaft immatrikuliert haben, eine Zahl, die noch nie erreicht worden ist. Auch auf anderen Gebieten sozialer Arbeit und Organisation macht sich die Aktivität des jüdischen Elements intensiv bemerkbar. Morgenstern erklärt, das man natürlich heute nicht wissen könne, wie es im Jahre 2000 um das Judentum bestellt sein werde, weil man ebenso wenig weiss, unter welchen Bedingungen andere Nationen dann leben werden. Aber es sei auch unnötig, sich die Köpfe darüber zu zerbrechen, wie die Zukunft im Einzelnen sich gestalten werde. Nur eines betont er: im Jahre 2000 oder 3000 oder 4000, solange Amerika ein freier, fortschrittlicher Staat ist, wird auch das amerikanische Judentum leben und gedeihen, für den Rutzen des Landes, in dem es lebt und arbeitet. L.W.

Here’s an overview of how to access Der Schild at Goethe University, excerpted from my post “Infantry Against Tanks: A German Jewish Soldier at Cambrai, November, 1917“, of September 9, 2017. (It certainly seems to have come in handy, even seven years after it was written!)

“Stories and depictions of World War One combat, composed both during and after the “Great War”, are abundantly available in print and on the web.

“A fascinating source of such accounts – but even moreso a source particularly; poignantly ironic – is the newspaper Der Schild, which was published by the association of German-Jewish war veterans, the “Reichsbundes Jüdischer Frontsoldaten”, from January of 1922 through late 1938, the latter date paralleling the disbandment of the RjF. Der Schild is available as 35mm microfilm at the Dorot Jewish Division of the New York Public Library, and in digital format through Goethe University Frankfurt am Main.

“The screen-shot below shows the Goethe University’s catalog entry for Der Schild, which allows for immediate and direct access of the library’s holdings of the newspaper. All years of the publication, with the exception of 1924, are available; all as PDFs.

“Of equal (greater?!) importance, accessing digital holdings is as simple as it is intuitive (and easy, too!) In effect and intent, this is a very well designed website! This is shown through this screen-shot, presenting holdings of Der Schild for 1933.

“The total digitized holdings of Der Schild in the Goethe University’s collection comprise approximately 530 issues. “Gaps” do exist, with 1922 comprising only four issues (9, 10, 13, and 14) and 1923 comprising three issues (14, 15, and 17). However, holdings for all years commencing with 1925 are – I believe – complete, through the final issue (number 44, published November 4, 1938).

“Not unexpectedly, Der Schild’s content sheds fascinating and retrospectively haunting light on Jewish life in Germany during the 1920s and 1930s; on Jewish genealogy; on the military service of German Jews (not only in the First World War but the Franco-Prussian War as well), often focusing on Jewish religious services at “the Front”, rather than “combat”, per se (see the issue of April 3, 1936, with its cover article “Pesach vor Verdun”); on occasion about Jewish military service in the Allied nations during “The Great War”(1); on Jewish history, literature, and religion; on Jewish life and Jewish news outside of Germany.

“There is much to be explored.”

References

Bund jüdischer Soldaten (YouTube Channel)

Der Schild (digital version) (at Goethe University Frankfurt website)

Reichsbund jüdischer Frontsoldaten (at Wikipedia)

Vaterländischer Bund jüdischer Frontsoldaten (Patriotic Union of Jewish Front-Line Soldiers”)

Population figures for American Jews are based on information at the Jewish Virtual Library, therein based on combining: (A) Core Population – Jews born to Jewish parents or converted to Judaism; (B) Other Persons of Jewish Parentage; and (C) Respective non-Jewish households members.

The World at War, The Jews in War: Jewish Military Service in World War One, in David Vital’s “A People Apart”

Thus far, many of the posts at TheyWereSoldiers have focused upon Jewish military service in the Second World War. While I possess a vast amount of information “waiting in the wings” for future posts pertaining to that era, some of my forthcoming posts may (? – !) have a change of emphasis: I hope to focus upon aspects of Jewish military service in the (now) over-a-century-passed First World War, or, as that conflict was known until the advent of World War Two, the “Great War”.

By way of a preface to this vast topic, I searched for a substantive, yet not overly detailed summary of Jewish military service in the military forces of both the Allies and Central Powers during the years of 1914-1918.

Then, I remembered Dr. David Vital’s magisterial, brilliantly written book A People Part – A Political History of the Jews in Europe, 1789-1939, which includes – as an introduction – just such an account. There, Dr. Vital’s describes the military experience of European Jewry in the First World War in sociological, cultural, political (and geopolitical) terms. (This text appears within the book’s third and final section, entitled “New Dispensations”, as the start of Chapter 7, pertinently entitled “War”, on pages 647 to 651.)

Dr. Vital’s treatment of Jewish military service in the Great War is consistent with the underlying nature of his book. His 896 page monograph (in the softbound edition, the cover of which is displayed below) covers a 150-year-span of the history of European Jewry in a tone that is at once analytical, quietly impassioned, and practically (well, seems to me…I couldn’t put the book down) novelistic in literary style. This is particularly so in the sense that the “contemporary” reader – contemplating Vital’s text from the vantage of the early 21st century, after the events recounted in the book have receded into and become part of the past – already “knows” how the story will conclude … even as the innumerable individuals mentioned within the book’s pages, by the very nature of time would not, could not, and did not.

Notably, the late Dr. Robert S. Wistrich wrote a very insightful review of A People Apart that appeared in the November, 1999 issue of Commentary. While praising Dr. Vital’s book, Dr. Wistrich expressed ambivalence about what he deems to have the book’s focus upon interpretation of Jewish history centered upon politics and power relations, coupled with a relative lack of attention to the contributions and successes of European Jewry. Be that as it may, the overall thrust of his review is solidly positive. Other reviews – all laudatory – can be found at GoodReads.

__________________________

By way of digression, thus far, my posts at this blog have avoided presenting opinions, musings, or speculations about culture, politics, and religion. Yet, the verbal “structure” of the title of Dr. Vital’s Book – the end of which temporally “brackets” the course of European Jewish history within the time-frame of “1789-1939”, can’t help but make one ponder the condition of the Jewish people in contemporary times: Only one year before the commencement of the third decade of the twenty-first century. Thus, whether a historian in a future distant, or a future only a few decades from now, will compose a study paralleling A People Apart – for the history of post-WW II European Jewry; for the history of American Jewry – or whether such a work will be unnecessary, is as yet unknown.

What is certain about the history of the Jewish people (and, truth be told, the history of all men) is that though there can be similarities in the pattern and course of events between historical eras, history never repeats itself, from one era to another, with complete geometric congruence. The only certainty we possess about the future is that “things” and “events”; “occurrences” and “circumstances” – in the lives of individual men and women; within families; among communities; in nations; and, within civilizations – can be expected to continue much as they always have.

Until, of course, an era arrives when they no longer do so.

__________________________

So. With appreciation and acknowledgement to Dr. Vital, his text is presented verbatim, below.

“THE Jews of Europe passed through the valley of the shadow of death during the years 1914-18 with the rest of the continent’s population – which is to say, as best they could. That they were no more spared the crippling horrors of the war than any one else was at once the result and the supreme expression of the radical change in their circumstances. The days when, insignificant exceptions apart, it was natural, but also possible, for Jews to keep out of the way when the gentiles foolishly and incomprehensibly fought each other were over. Where their participation in continental warfare, if any, had been on an essentially individual basis – as bankers and provisioners, but only very rarely as soldiers – it was now first and foremost as ordinary fighting men in the ranks of each of the armies of the belligerents. Countless numbers of perfectly ordinary, non-political Jewish people marched off to war and to personal, often fatal involvement in the great and terrifying events that proceeded to unfold from August 1914 onwards along with all the other ordinary, non-political people who were marching off to war. They did so, moreover, for all the world as if it were a natural and (in central and western Europe) a worthy and desirable thing to do. Their political masters had still to determine whether, and if so in what way and to what degree, further advantage was to be taken of their services. And in this respect there were differences. In Russia there was no question at all of access to positions of influence and authority of any kind. In Germany too the contradiction between what wartime state interest appeared to dictate and the political and military classes’ refusal to acquiesce in a really serious relaxation of the rules by which society had been governed in the past remained incapable of resolution to the end. It would be worn down somewhat by undeniable necessity – as in the case of the sullen (and temporary) appointment of Walther Rathenau to a post as a principal organizer of the German war economy – but, no lasting change occurred. In the west Jews were taken on freely enough wherever they seemed likely to bring advantage and, unlike in Germany, regret at the prospect of irreversible change in the social order tended to be wistful rather than bitter. The unspoken rule remained, however, that while, when it was really necessary to do so, Jews might be admitted to the inner sanctums where high policy was decided, they would only be given places below the political salt, those reserved for specialists and experts, not those that would entitle them to wield real power.

Admission into the ranks of the armies themselves was free and unrestricted everywhere. In the dire circumstances of the times and the universal, unslakeable thirst for men to man the trenches, the old assumption that the Jew was useless as a fighting man was forgotten. In an environment that had generally been alien and hostile to him, the Jewish soldier was apt to be treated rather more decently than he had been in the past. If he distinguished himself in battle he was more likely than before to be awarded the honours that were his due. In some armies distinction in battle opened the way to promotion as well. But not in all. The imperial Russian army stood its ground in this respect to the end: its high command, with the full approval of the Tsar, refusing to sanction the granting of officer rank even to the most able, willing, and battle-proven of Jewish soldiers whatever the occasional fair-minded regimental commanded might say on his behalf. But even here matters were not absolutely cut and dried. Officer rank as military surgeons was conceded to Jewish doctors. Here and there, where the dearth of literate, willing, and responsible echt-Russian candidates had reduced a battalion or brigade commander to desperation, the official eye might briefly overlook an individual Jewish soldier’s being given de facto authority to perform an officer’s role. (1) (Of the flatly infamous treatment to which the Russian army’s high command subjected the civilian Jewish population in the area through which its forces moved on their way to the west and, more especially, on their retreat back towards the east, more will be said in in a moment.)

The German army, previously at one with the Russians in this respect, now rescinded its once unwavering refusal to promote suitable Jews to officer rank. By the end of the war some two thousand Jews had been commissioned. Still, no Jew was allowed to reach senior rank in the German army, unlike the Austro-Hungarian army in which, interestingly, some Jews had held rank as general officers even before the war. And the true spirit in which the German high command viewed the matter of then Jewish citizens, and that of Jews in uniform in particular, is conveyed by its notoriously bloody-minded decision in October 1916 to launch a formal investigation into the contribution of the German Jews to the national war effort and of Jewish soldiers to service in the trenches by initiating a systematic counting of heads. This so-called Judenzahlung (or Jew-count) was not only nastily hostile, but unwarranted. Actual Jewish Frontsoldaten (front-line soldiers) were outraged. It was, someone said, ‘as if the yellow patch had been sewn back on’. (2) A tiny handful of pacifists and extraordinarily courageous and determined social democrats had indeed opposed the war and been jailed or otherwise hounded out of society and home. But rare exceptions apart, German Jewry’s support for the war had been immensely (in retrospect almost embarrassingly) wholehearted at every level: from men of the greatest academic distinction (Hermann Cohen, the Kantian philosopher, and Fritz Haber, the chemist, for example) down to the simplest and least politically imaginative petit bourgeois. When the war was over, the society of Jewish Frontsoldaten, the stain on their honour still burning, conducted a meticulous survey of its own. It found that at least 100,000 Jews had served in the German armed forces or 18 per cent of the total Jewish population of imperial Germany of 550,000. Of these 12,000 had been killed in action or died of wounds: namely 2.2 per cent of German Jewry. Their study further demonstrated that these figures were virtually identical with those for the population of the city of Munich (a fair comparison, the Jews being a largely skilled and educated, urban population, much like the citizens of Munich): 645,000 citizens in all; 13,700 war dead. (3) The German general staff’s own figures were never published. But perhaps the most ominous aspect of the Judenzahlung was that when it was proposed and brought up in the Reichstag it was supported not only by the right wing, as was to be expected, but by the Catholic Centre Party and the National Liberals under Gustav Stresemann as well.

No such inquiries were instituted in other countries; nor were any warranted. (4) The general record of Jewish participation in the fighting forces of the various belligerents was in each case at least as high as that of the general population and in some cases higher. No figures as precise as those collated in Germany are available, but it has been fairly reliably estimated that some 450,000 Jews served in the immense Russian army – where it appears, moreover, that in consequence of the severely restrictive rules governing the military functions Jews might or might not perform, they tended to serve somewhat more commonly than others as front-line infantry soldiers and to suffer higher than average casualty rates in consequence. Some 275,000 Jews served in the Austro-Hungarian army: c. 11 per cent of the total Jewish population of the empire; 41,000 served in the British armed forces or a little under 14 per cent of British Jewry; (5) 35,000 in the French army: or c. 20 per cent of the total Jewish population of France. The overall figure for Jews serving in all belligerent armies (including the American army, in due course, in which the proportion of Jews was exceptionally high) was of the order of 1,500,000 or about 2 per cent of all mobilized manpower. It was therefore roughly double that of the Jewish proportion of the entire population of the countries concerned. (6)

There was thus a sense – an ironic one, one may think – in which the Great War, in practice, was the supreme occasion on which the Jews Europe were called upon to be ‘useful’ to each of the several states which they were nationals in very much the sense that those men of the Enlightenment who had troubled themselves either to think about or to legislate for the Jews or both had had in mind. The Jews’ skills, knowledge, experience, and native energy – coupled, in the central and western states, but not totally absent even in the east under the Russians, to their habitual loyalty to the sovereign power in the land and their manifest desire to please it – proved as easily available for harnessing to the machinery of war as Joseph II of Austria or his advisers had ever wished. And the total effect, again very much as the men of the Enlightenment would have wished, was further to promote and hasten their acculturation. The war initiated none of the essential processes of social and cultural change to which European Jewry was subject. But by dint of scattering and dissolving great numbers of young Jewish men into the larger mass of mobilized society on a basis that was unprecedentedly random it did greatly accelerate them and intensify their impact. It loosened the ties binding the individual to his community. It provided Jewish soldiers – much as it provided great numbers of other disoriented people – with new, alternative, if of course no more than temporary focuses of loyalty. And while it lasted there would be much else in its impact to support those who felt that the now century-old, imperfectly kept promise of fair dealing and equitable integration had not, after all, been false. None the less, perversely, the lasting impact of the war so far as the Jews were concerned was to reassert and re-emphasize the ascription to the Jewish people of their ancient status as a distinct – and for certain purposes justifiably autonomous – national entity. The major powers of Europe were moved, each in its way, in varying degrees, and, to be sure, with unequal consequences, to consider whether and how their own urgent national-political needs and interests might be squared with what were reckoned to be the collective needs, Interests, and aspirations of the Jewish people. This was a most dramatic alteration of perspective, as remote from the ordinary hostility that fueled policy towards them in some cases as from the somewhat more considerate, but always unsystematic and severely limited, philanthropic basis on which their affairs were viewed (when they were viewed at all). Nothing, certainly, could have been more remote from the legacy and purposes of the Enlightenment itself.”

______________________________

The following information, from The Committee for A Jewish Army’s 1943 publication The Fighting Jew, presents a statistical overview of Jewish military service in the First World War. The data is, “Condensed from the booklet Jews in the World War, published by the Jewish War Veterans of the United States, in October of 1941.” Notably the figures given below are identical to those presented in Martin Gilbert’s Atlas of Jewish History, on a map (appropriately) entitled “Jewish Soldiers 1914-1918”, on page 87 of that work.

Personnel Mobilized

Allies
Belgium	1,000
British Empire	50,000
France	55,000
Greece	4,400
Italy	6,000
Rumania	38,000
Russia	650,000
Serbia	1,200
United States	250,000

Central Powers
Austria-Hungary	320,000
Germany	100,000
Bulgaria	12,500

Total Casualties (Killed or Died in Service)

Allies
Belgium	125
British Empire	2,400
France	9,500
Greece	300
Italy	500
Rumania	900
Russia	100,000
Serbia	250
Turkey	18,000
United States	3,400

Central Powers
Austria-Hungary	40,000
Bulgaria	1,000
Germany	12,000
Turkey	1,000

(1) See Yohanan Rattner’s autobiography, for example: Hayyai ve-ani (Tel Aviv, 1978)

(2) Cited in Peter Pulzer, Jews and the German State (Oxford, 1992), 205

(3) The Reichsverband Judischer Frontsoldaten’s compilation was published in 1932 as the 423-page Die judischen Gefallenen des deutschen Heeres, der deutschen Marine und der deutschen Schutztruppen 1914-1918; ein Gedenkbuch. It consisted chiefly of the names, regimental affiliations, and dates of death of the war dead (where known). The great warlord himself, Hindenburg, now president of the republic, contributed a friendly preface.

(4) One partial exception was the case of Jews of Russian nationality who had settled in Great Britain, who for the greater part of the war were neither obliged nor permitted to serve in the British army, and who regarded consequent pressure to return to Russia to serve the Tsar as absurd, if not monstrous. They were therefore a source of unending embarrassment to the established segments of English Jewry, but of opportunity to the Zionists who saw them as natural recruits to the ‘Jewish Legion’ that they founded to fight alongside the Allies (on which more below).

(5) The proportion of the general population serving the British armed forces was 11.5 per cent (Geoffrey Alderman, Modern British Jewry (Oxford, 1992), 235).

(6) A.G. Duker, ‘Jews in the World War’, Contemporary Jewish Record, 2, 5 (Sept.-Oct. 1939); Y. Slutsky, and M. Kaplan, Hayyalim yehudiim be-ziv’ot eiropa (Tel Aviv, 1967); Encyclopaedia Judaica, xi, col. 1550; Felix A. Theilhaber, Die Juden im Wcltkriege (Berlin, 1916); Michael Adler, The Jews of the Empire and the Great War (London, 1919).

References

Gilbert, Martin, Atlas of Jewish History, Dorset Press [no location given], 1976

Gitelman, Zvi, A Century of Ambivalence – The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union, 1881 to the Present, Schocken Books [Published in cooperation with YIVO Institute for Jewish Research], New York, N.Y., 1988

Nathans, Benjamin, A People Apart: The Jews in Europe, 1789-1939 by David Vital [Book Review], The Jewish Quarterly Review, Spring, 2006, 288-295, at JSTOR.org

Vital, David, A People Apart – A Political History of the Jews in Europe, 1789-1939, Oxford University Press, 2001

Vital, David, A People Apart – A Political History of the Jews in Europe, at GoodReads.com

Wistrich, Robert S., A People Apart, by David Vital (Book Review), Commentary, November, 1999

The Fighting Jew [no author], The Committee for a Jewish Army, New York, N.Y., 1943