Some 100 people, ranging in age from about 8 to 102, huddled for warmth as they braved 40-degree temperatures on a damp day at Arlington National Cemetery on Monday to watch, as speaker after speaker put it, Pfc. Adolph Hanf and Pvt. David Moser “come home.”
Neither of the Jewish soldiers, who served in World War I and have been dead for more than 100 years, underwent a geographic relocation. But with the help of Operation Benjamin, a donor-supported nonprofit, Moser (1898-1919) and Hanf (1884-1918) received new gravestones with Magein Dovids rather than Latin crosses.
“We take a moment out of our busy lives to remember two men of the Jewish faith, long at rest in this cemetery but mistakenly commemorated,” said Rob Dalessandro, deputy secretary of the American Battle Monuments Commission. “Today, thanks to the efforts of Operation Benjamin and their team, we can better appreciate the shared Jewish sacrifice in the cause of democracy and freedom.”
Rabbi Jacob J. Schacter, the president of Operation Benjamin, told the attendees that his organization’s work is “very important and precious and I would even say holy.”
Schacter told JNS that the new headstones finally provided the two men with a grave marker that was appropriate for them as Jews.
“What we have seen today is an extraordinary expression of the commitment of the Jewish people and of the leadership of the United States of America to set the historical record straight, to bring soldiers who gave their lives for America, as Americans and as Jews, under the marker that represents their ancestral faith,” he said.
Shalom Lamm, the chief historian of Operation Benjamin, noted that few people gathered at the cemetery had even heard of Moser and Hanf prior to two months ago. “What is it about their story that stirs the human soul?” he said. “I’d like to suggest that we all feel a sense of justice being done after all these years for two young men, who sacrificed all for an idea bigger than themselves.”
“We instinctively know that when they lost their lives, they lost the ability to fight for their own identity. Our sense of fair play is aroused by our ability to make things right after all of these years,” Lamm said. “We have a sense, I think, of paying a long overdue debt to these men. We got it wrong for over 100 years. We buried them incorrectly for over 10 decades.”
Doug Collins, U.S. secretary of veterans affairs, and Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) and Laura Gillen (D-N.Y.) attended the ceremonies, which were Project Benjamin’s first at Arlington National Cemetery.
Wasserman Schultz announced during her remarks that she and colleagues in the Senate and House are introducing legislation, which would authorize $500,000 per year, for a decade, to replace grave markers for Jewish American service members to represent their faith.
The legislation the members of Congress will be pursuing includes “an appropriation, so that we can make sure that over the next decade there is funding available to do the research and be able to go through the process of finding and replacing the headstones,” Wasserman Schultz told JNS.
“Identity is so incredibly important, especially for the fallen. As the ranking member of the Military Construction, VA appropriations subcommittee, honoring the entire arc of a service member’s commitment and service to our country is incredibly important, including in their death,” she said.
‘We are not rewriting history’
“As a Jew, and as a member of a community that has been persecuted for millennia, making sure that the final resting place of our fallen is honored with their identity is incredibly important not just for them but for those that come to military cemeteries and help honor them,” she told JNS.
“Particularly now, given the massive precipitous rise of antisemitism and the incredible importance of our being able to be who we are publicly, making sure that our fallen can be as well is critical,” she added.
Torres represents Deborah Berlinger Eiferman, 102, who is Moser’s niece. The congressman noted that although Hanf has no known living relatives, Eiferman’s “grace and generosity” and love extend “not only across space but across time, not only to family and friends but also strangers.”
“Private Hanf is not alone,” Torres said. “He is part of a larger Jewish family, a larger American family. All of us Jews and non-Jews alike should claim and celebrate him as our own.”
Days before Pesach, those gathered at Arlington National Cemetery were engaged in “a form of redemption,” Torres said. “A restoration of identity. A reaffirmation that these men belong to their families, to their faith and to their country, and that none of these are mutually exclusive.”
“As we approach Passover, we are redeeming ourselves by liberating the memory of these Jewish American heroes from the enslavement of an engraved error. Today, we are not rewriting history, we are rectifying it.”
Eiferman told attendees that being at the cemetery that day to unveil the new tombstone for her “baby uncle” is an “overwhelming experience.” (The whole family called him a “baby,” she said, because he only lived to 20.)
The 102-year-old said that she hopes attendees will take away from the day that going to a cemetery isn’t always an awful experience, but can be “morally justified.”
Eiferman said that her grandfather had a stroke when he heard that Moser, her uncle, had died and never spoke again thereafter. At the time, in the 1930s, wheelchairs weren’t as available as they are today, so her grandfather pushed a wooden chair with four legs around the house to get around, she said.
“This day is profound in the context of Judaism,” she said. “We were aware of the fact that for over a century, my baby uncle David, his identity as a proud Jew, was hidden. He was so patriotic.” She added that at 102, “it was a bit of a miracle from shamayim,” from heaven, “that I’m here today to give honor to my baby uncle David Moser and to my new adoptee Adolph Hanf.”
“Adolph, you’re not alone,” she said. “I’m here for you.” JNS
{Matzav.com}
