THE JEWISH SOLDIER AND ANTI-SEMITISM
During the war we felt that prejudice between men of different groups
and different faiths was lessening day by day, that our common
enthusiasm in our common cause had brought Catholics, Protestants and
Jews nearer together on a basis of their ardent Americanism. Especially
we who were at the front felt this in the first flush of our
cooeperation, our mutual interest and our mutual helpfulness. After you
have stood beside a man in the stress of front-line work, have shared a
blanket with him, have seen him suffer like a hero or die like a martyr,
his origin, his family and his faith become less important than the
manhood of the man himself. More than once I have said, talking to
soldier audiences of Jewish or of mixed faith: "After this war no man
can knowingly call the Jew a coward again. If you ever hear such a
statement, you can be sure that our detractor is not an honest bigot, as
may have been the case in the past; he is either ignorant or malicious."
We knew that and our comrades knew it. The men at the front knew very
little about the whole-hearted participation of every section of our
vast population, Jew and non-Jew together, in the campaigns for
production, Liberty Bonds, the United War Work campaign, and all the
rest. That record is a permanent one and is known to every man who did
his duty in "the rear lines" back in the United States during the war.
But those who served overseas know the record the Jew made for himself
at the front, his promotions, his decorations, his woundings and his
deaths. They know that differences of religion and race counted not at
all in the American army, that our heroes and our effective, able
soldiers came from all religions and all races. With what high hopes we
entered the war; with what fine fervor we saw it end! We felt that our
efforts had insured something more of liberty for the oppressed of all
the world, for Czech and Armenian, Alsatian and Belgian, Pole and Jew.
Perhaps the greatest disappointment of all to the fighters and the
sufferers has been the survival and the occasional revival of the old
hatreds in a more intense form. I am thinking of the many national and
group hatreds and antagonisms which have tormented the world in the last
years, and especially of one of them, that against the Jews. The
oppression of the autocratic regime of the Czar has been carried on by
the free nation of Poland; the pogroms of the Black Hundred have been
revived in the Ukraine, where the slaughter of war was doubled by the
slaughter of peace. Hungary has seen its "white terror," where Jews were
murdered as Bolshevists and Bolshevists as Jews. Austria and Germany
have seen a strengthening of the political anti-Semitism of pre-war
times, here blaming the Jews for beginning the war, and there for ending
it. Finally the movement has been carried over into the freest and most
intelligent of nations, and some apologists for it have appeared even
in England and America. Here the Anti-Semites can work by neither
political nor legal means, but through a campaign of slander they strive
to weaken the morale of the Jew and injure his standing before the mass
of his fellow citizens.
I shall not turn aside to deal, even for a moment, with the mass of
accusations against the Jew, trivial or grave as the case may be. They
have been adequately answered by Jew and non-Jew, especially in the
address on "The 'Protocols,' Bolshevism and the Jews," by ten national
organizations of American Jews on December 1, 1920, and the subsequent
protests against anti-Semitism by a distinguished group of non-Jewish
Americans, notably President Woodrow Wilson, former President William
Howard Taft and William Cardinal O'Connell. The only one of these
accusations with which I can properly deal in this place, and one on
which my fellow-soldiers will agree with me in every detail, is the
revival of the ancient slander against the patriotism and courage of the
Jew. We are reading, not for the first time in history, but for almost
the first time in the _English_ language, that the Jews are not patriots
in their respective nations, that they all have a super-national
allegiance to a Jewish international conspiracy, that their real loyalty
is to this other group within and above the state, even to the extent of
treachery or anarchy against their own governments. We feel the
disgrace, the pathos of such a charge just after the war when Jews died
with non-Jews that America might be safe, at a time when Jews even more
than non-Jews are enduring the dread aftermath of war, the famine, the
poverty and the epidemics, in Eastern and Central Europe. It is the
sort of charge which only facts can answer, the kind of facts which are
present in this book, as in every official or personal story of the war
by men who took a personal part in the war. Prejudice is too largely the
product of those who gained by the war but did not personally enter the
ranks. The men who know, the men who fought together and bled together,
have a different story.
America has, in fact, too much fairness as well as too much humanity, to
listen to any such movement of partisan hatred or bigotry. I quote the
statement of over a hundred distinguished "citizens of Gentile birth and
Christian faith," referred to above:
"The loyalty and patriotism of our fellow citizens of the Jewish faith
is equal to that of any part of our people, and requires no defense at
our hands. From the foundations of this Republic down to the recent
World War, men and women of Jewish ancestry and faith have taken an
honorable part in building up this great nation and maintaining its
prestige and honor among the nations of the world. There is not the
slightest justification, therefore, for a campaign of anti-Semitism in
this country."
In this connection, we can recall the words written by Theodore
Roosevelt, at that time President, in 1905, on the occasion of the 250th
anniversary of the first landing of Jews in what is now the United
States:
"I am glad to be able to say that while the Jews of the United States
have remained loyal to their faith and their race traditions, they are
engaged in generous rivalry with their fellow-citizens of other
denominations in advancing the interests of our common country. This is
true, not only of the descendants of the early settlers and those of
American birth, but of a great and constantly increasing proportion of
those who have come to our shores within the last twenty-five years as
refugees reduced to the direst straits of penury and misery. In a few
years, men and women hitherto utterly unaccustomed to any of the
privileges of citizenship have moved mightily upward toward the standard
of loyal, self-respecting American citizenship; of that citizenship
which not merely insists upon its rights, but also eagerly recognizes
its duty to do its full share in the material, social and moral
advancement of the nation."
It would be beside the issue to refer to the Jewish participation in
American life during the past, if that also had not been brought up as
an accusation. But the records exist, and the facts are conclusive. In
the American revolution forty-six Jews fought under George Washington,
out of the little Jewish population of about two thousand in the United
States at that time. The leading Jews of New York and Newport left those
cities because they were patriots and would not carry on their business
under British rule. Haim Salomon, the Jewish banker of New York and
later of Philadelphia, was among those who rendered the greatest service
in financing the infant nation. In the Civil War ten thousand Jewish
soldiers of whom we to-day possess the records served in the Union and
Confederate armies. Each generation of immigrants has been most eager to
learn the English language and American ways, to take advantage to the
full of American liberty and opportunity, to make a home for their
families in a free land and to help that land maintain its freedom. The
World War was for the Jews, as for all Americans, simply the
culmination, bringing out most strongly the high lights in American
life. Heroes and slackers, loyal and disloyal, showed themselves in
their true colors during the war. And the Jew, like all Americans,
showed himself in this crisis loyal to America. The Jewish record stands
on a par with the best record of any group of American citizens, of any
church or any race. Jews of Russia, whose only contact with their native
government had fostered hatred and distrust, flocked to the colors in
America. Jews of American birth, like all citizens of American birth,
did their full duty for their country.
On this point again, my own facts, clear as they are, need not stand
alone. I can quote Major General Robert Alexander, who commanded, in the
77th Division, the largest group of Jews in any unit of the American
Expeditionary Forces: "I found that Hebrew names on the Honor Roll of
the division were fully up to the proportion that they should have been;
in other words, the Hebrew boy paid his full share of the price of
victory. When the time came for recommendations to go in for marks of
distinction which we were able to give, I found there again that the
names of the Hebrews were as fully represented on that list as the
numbers in the division warranted, by long odds."
To-day the Jewish soldier, no longer a soldier or a hero, but still a
Jew and an American, appeals to the American people. Will they suffer
such a propaganda, he wonders, such an attack on him and on his
brothers who still lie overseas, in their American graves on foreign
soil? Will they tolerate for a moment such a venomous and false attack
on the defenders of their nation, on any group, small or large, of the
boys who rallied to the defense of democracy? In the army overseas we
felt that prejudice was a thing of the past, that only in ignorance or
malice could the old serpent lift its head again. To-day, with all the
newer bitterness, we feel the same. We know that our soldier comrades
are loyal still, that America is still America, that as we have once
defended her we need not now muster our arguments or records to defend
ourselves against her. If the Jew ever needed justification, he surely
needs it no longer to-day. The Jewish soldier has once for all made
anti-Semitism impossible among the men who served America in arms, and
who still in days of quiet continue to serve and save their country.
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes
Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
Diacritics have be made consistent throughout the text.
Hyphens removed from "Where[-e]ver I went" (page 8), "looked like
side[-]streets" (page 11), "a complete prayer[-]book" (page 18), "an
every[-]day matter" (page 147).
Hyphens added to "new war-time societies" (page 3), "miles by side-car"
(page 70), "private soldier in war-time" (page 145), "their new-found
manhood" (page 209).
Unchanged spellings: "Ausies", "B'nai B'rith" but "Brith" elsewhere.
Page 6: "cemetary" changed to "cemetery" (hospital and cemetary).
Page 10: "new born" changed to "newborn" (see my newborn son).
Page 34: "devasted" changed to "devastated" (villages were devastated).
Page 35: "conspicious" changed to "conspicuous" (village had a
conspicuous).
Page 36: "experiencd" changed to "experienced" (experienced a queer
sensation).
Pages 57, 59: "accomodations" changed to "accommodations" (separate
accommodations, living accommodations).
Page 75: "excellant" changed to "excellent" (excellent cooeperation).
Page 78: "shown" changed to "shone" (shone directly upon).
Page 86: "Fredman" changed to "Friedman" (Samuel Friedman).
Page 90: "if" changed to "of" (in the interests of).
Page 110: "Cemetarial" changed to "Cemeterial" (Cemeterial Division of
the War).
Page 117: "Herschovitz" changed to "Herschkovitz" (Herschkovitz was the
only man).
Page 124: "ocasion" changed to "occasion" (occasion of a further).
Page 126: "grenades" changed to "grendates" (throwing grenades).
End of Project Gutenberg's A Jewish Chaplain in France, by Lee J. Levinger