JEWISH MILITARY HEROES -- MEMORIAL DAY, November 11, 1988
by Dr. Philip Ernest Schoenberg

A. INTRODUCTION

During World War I, General Pershing, the leader of the American Expeditionary Force, gave a medal to a Jew for having the most outstanding record in capturing German soldiers. He asked the soldier for his secret. The soldier replied: "Every night, I go out to the enemy lines. I tell them I need a minyan and bring back several soldiers." We may laugh but this makes concrete the issue the Jew has faced constantly. Whether it was the seventeenth century or the twentieth, the Jew has to defend himself against the charge of double loyalty or lack of loyalty to his or her country. Well, we Jews have a long record that goes back to disapprove this canard. Jews are no different from anybody else in love of country and their willingness to defend it. The Talmud, a Jewish commentary on the Bible, says the Jew is obligated to defend the country he lives in even if he involves killing a Jew from another country.

Today we have a holiday set aside for the veterans of all wars. The Jews have played a prominent role in defending our country from the earliest times. Almost from the founding of New Amsterdam by the Dutch, we can trace the participation of Jews in defending the country in which they live.

B. SEVENTEENTH CENTURY: ASSER LEVY VON SWELLEM

In 1654, Jews came fro a Dutch colony in Brazil. They had taken part in defending the colony against the Portuguese. Already, we can see Jews were fighters from colonial times. Unfortunately, the Portuguese had won a war against the Dutch. The prospect of the inquisition's return to colony that the Dutch had to surrender to Portugal made the Jews decide to take up the Dutch offer of refuge in New Amsterdam.

In 1655, Governor Stuyvesant of the Dutch colony of New Netherlands, recruited seven hundred men to retake Fort Casimir in what is now New Castle, Delaware from the Swedes. Among those who volunteered for the campaign was Asser Levy Von Swellem. Asser Levy Von Swellem, a fur trader, was on of the immigrants that landed in New Amsterdam. Stuyvesant refused to allow them to join his expeditionary force. Governor Peter Stuyvesant decided that the Jews would pay a small tax instead of standing guard duty along the walls of the fort erected against the Indians. The street where the fort was located is now called Wall Street. The city council passed an ordinance in 1655 that the Jews were not permitted to serve in the militia, and were to pay a special monthly tax instead for this exemption. Asser Levy refused to pay the tax.

Asser Levy demanded his right to be on guard duty since he was a "burger" or citizen like everybody else. He and his fellow Jews protested all the way to the Netherlands. The Dutch West India Company, having Jewish stockholders, and the Netherlands, the most tolerant country in Europe for Jews, decided that the Jews had a right to defend their country. Asser Levy became the first Jewish soldier in an American colony.

C. EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: FRANCIS SALVADOR

During the American Revolution, Francis Salvador, an indigo planter, took an active role n the colonial cause. He was a recently arrived immigrant from England. The leaders of South Carolina, impressed by his education and ability, took him into their innermost councils. He was made a delegate to the Revolutionary Provincial Congress of South Carolina in 1775.

This political body rejected British rule and constituted itself as the legislature of the newly independent state of South Carolina. Thus Salvador became the first Jew to represent people in a legislative body in America, and possibly the first Jew in the modern world to hold such a public office. When the British attacked Charleston, in August, 1776, he lead a night attack of militia men against hostile Cherokee Indians. Salvador was wounded three times. He died after being scalped. Thus, he was the first Jew to give his life in the struggle for American independence.

D. NINETEENTH CENTURY AGAIN: URIAH PHILLIPS LEVY

I recently visited Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Virginia Statute of Religious Liberty. In reading the pamphlet describing this national monument, I read that Uriah P. Levy had purchased the home but it did not elaborate. Only recently, because of pressure from Jewish organizations, has the private association which owns this landmark acknowledged a Jewish connection.

Uriah Phillips Levy grew up in Philadelphia. He had such a deep interest in the sea that he ran away from home to pursue this interest at age ten in 1802. However, he came back in time for his bar mitzvah.

He then joined the United States Navy where became a sailing master at twenty in 1812 and a midshipman four years later. He was in and out of the navy constantly because he was a fighter who would tolerate no slights whether it was in defending his dignity as a Jew or defending the sailors who served under him. Just as the military officers do in Israel, he believed in setting an example and said "follow me!" He believed in defending his honor. He tolerated no anti-Semitic remark from anyone without challenging to an armed duel. More than one anti-Semite in the navy hit the dust thanks to his trusty sword. He went through six court martials of which each time he was found innocent.

Levy's greatest liability, so far as popularity with his fellow officers went, but his greatest claim to lasting fame was his active espousal of a law to prohibit corporal punishment in the navy. He wrote books on how discipline could be maintained on board ship without resorting to the lash. Eventually, President Abraham Lincoln signed the prohibition into law. As a naval officer, Levy also found time to explore the Rio Grande River in the recently admitted state of Texas. Just before the Civil War, he was ordered to the Mediterranean Sea, where in 1859, he served for six months as commodore of the U. S. fleet, the highest rank possible in the U. S. Navy.

During his years of inactive naval serve, he pursed a career in buying and selling New York real estate in order to achieve another dream. He made enough money to buy Monticello, the former home of President Thomas Jefferson in Charlottesville, Virginia. Jefferson's family had been unable to keep up the home and had sold it where it had fallen into disrepair. Levy admired the man who wrote the Virginia Statue of Religious Liberty and bought the estate to serve it. He refurbished Jefferson's mansion at great expense. It became the summer home of his nephew Jefferson Monroe Levy until it was purchased by a patriotic organization and made into a historic monument. If it was not for his efforts, it would not have been preserved. His mother is buried along the walk approaching the main house.

E. TWENTIETH CENTURY: DAVID DANIEL MARCUS

In my opinion, perhaps the most unusual Jewish solder of the twentieth century was Mickey Marcus. His formal name was David Daniel Marcus. When I was a young lad of seven or eight, my favorite book was a biography of this man by many of the people he had touched as a lawyer, soldier, and citizen.

Mickey Marucs grew up on the Lower East Side. He learned how to box from YMHA where he helped to protect his elders from anti-Semitic hooligans. He attended the United States Military Academy. His room mates were a Protestant and ad a Catholic; together, they were known as " the trinity" because they were so close together.

Eventually, Marcus became a lawyer who was employed in the U. S. Attorney General's Office. Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia appointed him to the director of the New York City Department of Correction where he was known for being tough but fair.

At the outbreak of World War II in Europe, he rejoined the U. S. Army to defend his country. He served as personal assistant of General George C. Marshall, the highest military officer in the armed forces. Marshall was the one who told Eisenhower and MacArthur what to do. On more than one occasion, Marshall threatened to court-martial Marcus for leaving his desk job to engage in actual fighting in Europe. On D-Day he volunteered to participate in the airborne assault, parachuted into Normandy despite his lack of previous training. After the war, he was appointed head of the War Crimes Branch of the Army. In 1947, he retired from the Army to return to civilian legal practice.

At the request of the Jewish Agency and the Haganah, he want to Palestine at the end of January, 1948. He served as David Ben Gurion's military advisor under the nom de guerre of Mickey Stone, since it is against U. S. law for a person to serve in another country's army without our government's permission. Marcus helped to trained the armed forces and helped to devise the strategy that helped the State of Israel to survived being attacked by seven Arab nations.

In May, 1948 Marcus became commander of the Jerusalem front in the Israel War for Independence. He was instrumental in saving the New City for Israel. Under the truce arrangements of 1948, it was suppose to be a continuous road to connect the New City to there rest of Israel. While the United Nations or UN truce team was having lunch, he had its jeep lifted up to the road so that UN staff would find no impediments in the flow of traffic between Jerusalem and the rest of Israel.

Mickey Marcus was the first officer in the Israeli army to receive the new rank of alluf (brigadier general). Ironically, he was killed when a soldier, a newly arrived immigrant, asked him for the password and Marcus, who knew no Hebrew, could not answer correctly. His body was transferred with military honors to the Unite States and buried at West point. A village in Israel, Mishmar David (Defense of David), is named after him.

F. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

Thus, as we can see today, all these military heroes were born into Jewish families, were proud to be Jews, and raised Jewish families. They gave of themselves freely to their community, Jewish and general, and to their country. The image that stands out in my mind is the photograph taken by Joseph Rosenblatt, a Jew needless to say, during World War II at Iwo Jima. You don't know the creed, race, color or religion of the U. S. Marines that participated in raising the flag on the top of Iwo Jima. They were all people who gave freely to their country.

©Philip Shoenberg