Archival Audio, Your Job in Germany propaganda film: “In battle, you kept your wits about you. Don’t relax that caution now. The Nazi party may be gone. The Nazi thinking, Nazi training and Nazi trickery remain. The German lust for conquest is not dead, it’s merely gone undercover. Somewhere in this Germany are the SS guards, the shotstop, the gestapo gangsters, out of uniform. You won’t know them but they’ll know you. Somewhere in this Germany are stormtroopers by the thousands, out of sight, part of the mob but still watching you and hating you. Somewhere in this Germany there are two million ex-Nazi officials out of power but still in there and thinking about next time. Remember that only yesterday every business, every profession was part of hitler’s system – the doctors, technicians, clockmakers, postmen, farmers, housekeepers, toymakers, barbers, cooks, dock workers, practically every German was part of the Nazi network.”
Rebecca Naomi Jones: Over the course of World War II, more than 550,000 American Jews, including an estimated 10,000 Jewish women, served in the U.S. military. Towards the end of the war, while the Allied nations worked to govern Germany, many Jewish American GI’s were stationed throughout Europe. As demobilization – the process of bringing American military personnel home after the war’s end – escalated, the United States military found itself in need of personnel. Many of these GI’s remained in Germany and other parts of Europe to support these efforts to maintain order and rebuild. For those at home, programs like the GI Bill paved the way for postwar life.
From the American Jewish Historical Society, this is The Wreckage: Year Zero. I’m your host, Rebecca Naomi Jones. This week’s episode, The GI’s, begins back in the mess halls and barracks at military camps across the United States, where Jewish GI’s and their fellow soldiers were sent for training.
Archival Audio, WWII Training Video: He is an American, prepared to accept his responsibility to protect and defend his nation and those he loves. That is the soldier’s mission – a mission which has never changed. The modern soldier begins to accept his first responsibility. He must learn and learn well. Stronger, quicker and more accurate than they. He is learning to be part of a team where every man’s life depends on how well his buddy has learned his job – a job that must be second to none.”
Rebecca Naomi Jones: Joining us is Dr. Deborah Dash Moore, professor of history at the University of Michigan and author of GI Jews: How World War II Changed a Generation.
Deborah Dash Moore: The military recognized three official faiths: Protestant, Catholic, and Hebrew, which was the term for Jew. And many of the men, especially the Jewish men, had lived relatively secluded lives in the sense that most of their friends would have been Jewish. They grew up in big cities. So this was an opportunity for them to meet, not just Catholics whom they met in the big cities, but also Protestants, white Protestants especially, and to start to understand where they fit in the sort of panoply of American life.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: Before World War II, most non-Jewish Americans had never met a Jewish person before. For those enlisted, the military was the first opportunity that these young Jews and other fellow soldiers had to co-mingle. Those first encounters were complicated, and Jewish soldiers experienced challenges that were foreign to their Catholic and Protestant peers, including the lack of available Kosher food. Arthur “Artie” Gorenstein, an eighteen year old soldier who had just completed his freshman year at the Teacher’s Institute of Yeshiva College, chronicled his daily life in the Army reserves for his parents, Saul and Lillian.
Deborah Dash Moore: He writes to his parents even before he’s actually got his uniform. And he describes getting up early in the morning, marching to the mess hall, and having breakfast. And it was a typical American breakfast, you know? It was coffee and eggs and orange juice and toast and milk—and ham. And he’d never eaten ham before. He’d never even thought about it because he didn’t eat out. He only ate at home. His mother kept a kosher home. And he didn’t know what to do with the ham and eggs. So he told his parents that he decided he needed it for energy, and he would eat it and sort of wash it down like he would an aspirin with the coffee.
Now, all this is happening inside of him. The guys sitting at the table have absolutely no idea that he’s struggling, as a Jew, to confront this new situation.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: The practice of, quote: “eating ham for Uncle Sam” unquote, was just one of the ways that Jewish GI’s had to assimilate to their new reality in the military. Artie’s parents, who were socialist Zionists, had experienced a great deal of antisemitism in their own lives, and feared that Artie would be isolated without a community of fellow Jews and discriminated against while serving.
Deborah Dash Moore: There were times when the struggle to be a Jew was very public, where Jews were called nasty terms. Everybody had nicknames in the Army. Many of those were ethnic slurs. But Jews had to decide whether they were going to respond, and, if they were going to respond, how they were going to respond. Were they going to fight over it? Some guys got into fights every ten days over the ethnic slurs. Other guys tried explanation, to say how—what it meant to be a Jew, to say what it meant to be a Jew, and to try to educate their fellow GIs. The reason this was so important, of course, is when you go overseas, you have to trust your fellow soldiers. You can’t be worried about your back. They’ve got your back. And if you think that there’s someone who’s an antisemite who’s behind you, you’re afraid because of what might happen. So the experience of being a GI was complicated.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: Jews were just one of the religious and ethnic minorities subjected to bigotry in the armed forces. Soldiers of Japanese descent and Black GI’s were forced to serve in segregated units. Black soldiers were frequently relegated to menial jobs, and for many stationed in the Jim Crow south, they faced additional risk at the hands of both local police and vigilantes intent on enforcing their town’s segregation laws. And at the order of President Roosevelt, Latino Americans were classified as “white” regardless of their skin color, citing his “Good Neighbor” policy, which promised non-intervention in Latin America’s domestic affairs.
Abroad, Jews who were shipped off to the European Theater were well aware that they could be targeted not just as Americans, but also as Jews.
Deborah Dash Moore: They debated what to do with those dog tags with the H on it which labeled them as a Jew. And we know, let’s say, during the Battle of the Bulge, that when American soldiers were captured, there were whole units that threw away their dog tags just to protect the Jews in the unit. We know that flyers who flew over Germany had to decide, do they fly with the H on the dog tag, or do they take it off? Or maybe they substituted. One of the guys I interviewed—he had two dog tags, one with a P which he wore when he flew, and the other with an H which he wore when he was not in the air. And there was real debate over it. But the ones who chose to wear the H basically wanted the Germans to know that it was a Jew who was dropping the bombs. They had that sense of—that was one of the battles that they were fighting.
So Jewish GIs—they fought as Jews. They fought as Americans.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: Liberation began before the war in Europe was officially over, first in Italy, and then France before Allied troops reached Belgium and Germany.
In France and Italy, American troops were greeted with a hero’s welcome as throngs of people lined the roads to cheer, held out their arms to hug the soldiers, and cried tears of relief.
The Jewish population that had been in hiding greeted the GIs as liberators, many of whom were uncomfortable with the label. Some of the freed European Jews tore off the yellow stars they had been forced to wear during the war and handed them to the Jewish GIs.
The liberation of Germany was far more somber, and in the years after the war, veterans reported that the first thing they noticed was the smell of death around them.
“You never really get the smell of burning flesh out of your nose entirely,” the author J. D. Salinger would later recall to his daughter. “No matter how long you live.”
Rebecca Naomi Jones: There were also Jewish GI’s from Germany and Austria, who had immigrated to the United States during the war, joining the Army in exchange for citizenship. Trained at Camp Ritchie, 2,000 of these quote “Ritchie Boys” unquote were Jewish refugees who had escaped Nazi persecution. They underwent training in intelligence, and provided unique insight into the enemy. The Ritchie Boys and other enlisted refugees were put to work in a variety of ways, both during and after the war.
Deborah Dash Moore: And they were used for translation. They were used for propaganda. They were used in interrogation. Their reaction was different from an American Jew who had never been to Germany and didn’t know German. The ones who go back often want to go back to their own town. They want to go back to see some of the people who had oppressed them. And there’s a desire for revenge, but not outside the bounds of what would be considered proper protocol.
There are other Jews who are more religious, and they very much want to try to help restore synagogues, and their anger is directed against Germans who have desanctified and ruined synagogues. So they see an effort for a kind of spiritual supremacy, right? I mean, that’s their response, which is different from the ones who—the German Jews who come to the US and are in the military.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: After liberation, guidelines were put in place on how to deal with the German civilian population. Among the most critical of these guidelines: no friendships, no intimate relationships, no fraternization of any kind with the Germans.
Deborah Dash Moore: You’re not supposed to fraternize. And many GIs felt, yeah, this was absolutely right, that it wasn’t just German soldiers who were Nazis. The whole German society had sustained Hitler. So men and women—you know, older people—they too were, in that sense, responsible and guilty, and they didn’t want to have anything to do with them.
Most of the GIs are not, in fact, interested in fraternization. Many of them try to understand. How did this happen? They look at these people, and they don’t understand. How did they let such horrible things occur? So it’s really perplexing, from their point of view. And I think that there weren’t any easy answers. I mean, they recognize—these GIs do—that these Germans are lying when they say they don’t know. They see through that very much. They pick up propaganda sheets that are still around to try to understand. You know—so people believe this? And, yeah, it’s a complicated relationship, yeah.
Archival Audio, Your Job in Germany propaganda film: “You are not being sent into Germany as educators. You are soldiers on guard. You will observe their local laws, respect their customs and religion, and you will respect their property rights. You will not ridicule them. You will not argue with them. You will not be friendly. You will be aloof, watchful, and suspicious. Every German is a potential source of trouble. Therefore, there must be no fraternization with any of the German people. Fraternization means making friends. The German people are not our friends. You will not associate with German men, women or children. You will not associate with them on familiar terms, either in public or in private. You will not visit in their homes nor will you ever take them into your confidence, however friendly, however sorry, however sick of the Nazi party they may seem, they cannot come back into the civilized fold just by sticking out their hand and saying ‘I’m sorry.’ Don’t clasp that hand. It’s not the kind of a hand you can clasp in friendship.”
Deborah Dash Moore: Occasionally, if a soldier was particularly politically engaged, they had very strong feelings. So someone on the left—one of the men I interviewed, you know, he writes home to his wife, and he says, “absolutely no fraternization.” Then he gets to Germany, and he has to kick an elderly couple out of their house because it’s going to be used by the American soldiers. And he writes to his wife. He felt really awful about kicking these people out. So he says, My whole belief that there should be no fraternization conflicts now with—when I actually see people and causing them to suffer.
On the other hand, another guy writes to his wife, and he says, There are little children here, and they want candy and stuff. And he said, I know they’re not responsible, but I can’t manage to look at them and not hate them. So there were very different views about non-fraternization.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: American military policy stated that Jewish survivors of the Holocaust were included in the non-fraternization rules. Many Jewish GIs broke this rule, and worked to help survivors connect with distant relatives in the United States and other nations. Others formed romantic bonds, and in the years that followed, roughly 200,000 European women married American soldiers.
Deborah Dash Moore: Fortunately, the rules change. And by ‘46, it’s recognized that Jews are not the same as Germans, and that they are victims, and that they need to be treated differently. And partly, that has to do with the Harrison Report. Earl Harrison goes and sort of surveys the camps that have been set up in the American zone for displaced persons, or DPs, as they were called. And he’s just shocked with how the Jewish DPs are being treated. I mean, there’s a famous line in that report that says we Americans—the only thing we’re not doing like the Nazis is we’re not killing them. But we’ve got, you know, barbed wire. They are confined there.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: On December 28, 1945, the United States enacted the War Brides Act, which allowed foreign-born spouses, natural-born children, and adopted children of GIs to enter the country as non-quota immigrants. Under the act’s provisions, more than 100,000 people entered the United States over the next three years, until the act expired at the end of 1948.
Even with the passing of the War Brides Act, the process to emigrate was arduous, and many families waited months and in some cases even years before they could be together. Over the next decade, the United States would pass a series of additional immigration laws that would weaken the tough restrictions that had been in place since 1924.
While the American occupation of Germany would last eleven years, the military began the process of demobilization in September 1945. There was immense pressure from both soldiers and civilians to get the troops home as quickly as possible, and to reintegrate them back into civilian life.
There were stages to demobilization. Before returning home, soldiers were sent to one of nine cigarette camps – tent cities that were set up near ports in France and Belgium – until it was their turn to leave. Named for cigarette brands like Pall Mall, Philip Morris, and Lucky Strike, the camps were both a welcome refuge from the chaos of war, and a recipe for boredom, frustration, and low morale. To pass the time, some soldiers found new passions and vocations, and became politically active.
Deborah Dash Moore: One of the guys started a photo studio. (laughs) You know, a lot of people had liberated German cameras from soldiers. And so he set up a photo studio and would take pictures and develop and print them and send them—give them to the GIs so they could send them home to people. Other people—there were, among Jews, people who had ambitions to write, so they did writing. Some of the Jews were politically involved. And so they could reach out to Jews who were living, let’s say, in France—there were quite a few of these camps in France—where they helped to sort of organize them again into Zionist groups. So there were a range of activities that people engaged in.
You know there’s this gap, right, between when—V-E Day and then V-J Day. And in the gap before V-J Day, there’s always the possibility of being sent to the Pacific theater. And, okay, come August, fine. Everybody’s going to come home eventually, except for the peacekeeping. There’s also opportunities for some of the soldiers, if they want to, to stay longer and not to demobilize. And very often, these are soldiers who feel a particular attachment to European Jews and want to help.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: After returning home, veterans were entitled to education, housing, and other benefits through the GI Bill – landmark legislation enacted in 1944 designed to reward service and make reintegration into civilian life easier.
Deborah Dash Moore: Now, the GI Bill did pay for four years of college. And many Jewish soldiers used that opportunity because before the war, they couldn’t have afforded it. Now, in New York City, granted, there were free colleges, but elsewhere, that wasn’t the case. You could also, if you were a soldier, use the educational piece for graduate training or for law school or for—it was—medical school—it was a very important part of the GI Bill.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: While the GI Bill was a success, some groups including Black Americans who lived in the Jim Crow south, found that they were unable to fully participate in benefits, and that they’d come home to the same prejudices that had plagued the nation before the war.
A number of Jewish veterans returned home with deeper motivation to fight against antisemitism and racism, greatly influenced by their experiences fighting in a military and the relationships they formed across faiths and ethnicities. Many also became involved in the growing Zionist movement, having witnessed the post-war refugee crisis first-hand.
The GI Jews also became a generation disenchanted with Europe, and in the years that followed, many veterans refused to go back to the continent or buy German goods, carrying with them the wounds of war.
Archival Audio, Your Job in Germany propaganda film: “The problem now is future peace. That is your job in Germany. By your conduct and attitude while on guard inside Germany, you can lay the groundwork of a peace that could last forever – or just the opposite. You could lay the groundwork for a new war to come and just as American soldiers had to do this job 26 years ago, so other American soldiers – your sons – might have to do it again another 20 odd years from now. Germany today appears to be beaten. Hitler, out. Swastikas, gone. Nazi propaganda, off the air. Concentration camps, empty. [Music] You’ll see ruins, you’ll see flowers, you’ll see some mighty pretty scenery! Don’t let it fool you. You are in enemy country. Be alert, suspicious of everyone, take no chances. You are up against something more than tourist scenery. You are up against German history; it isn’t good. This book was written chapter by chapter, not by one man, not by one furor. It was written by the German people.”
Rebecca Naomi Jones: From the American Jewish Historical Society, I’m Rebecca Naomi Jones. This episode was written by executive director Gemma R. Birnbaum. Recording, sound design, and mixing were done at Sound Lounge. Archival material is courtesy of the collections of the American Jewish Historical Society and the U.S. National Archives. Special thanks to Dr. Deborah Dash Moore, whose research papers for GI Jews provided additional research material and were the inspiration for this episode.
For episode transcripts, additional resources, and links to the collections featured in this episode, visit ajhs.org/podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, which helps others discover our series.
