c. 2004 Religion News Service

(Rabbi Rudin, the American Jewish Committee’s senior interreligious adviser, is Distinguished Visiting Professor at Saint Leo University.)

(UNDATED) The 60th anniversary of D-Day _ June 6, 1944 _ and the upcoming dedication of the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C., open the floodgates of personal memory.

In the spring of 1944, my grade school classmates and I in Alexandria, Va., eagerly anticipated the American-led military assault on Nazi-occupied Europe. Our teacher added two new words to our limited vocabulary: “invasion” and “liberation.”

Back then my grandfather, Louis Rosenbloom, visited us each year from his home in Pittsburgh. During his early June 1944 visit, I woke up each day to join “Papa Louie” in reciting the Jewish morning prayers. He was with us on D-Day and that morning my grandfather did a remarkable thing. After concluding the traditional devotionals, he added his own English words to the Hebrew liturgy.

Even now, I remember the opening of his prayer: “God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, give our army the strength to defeat Hitler, and blot out his name from the face of the earth. Protect our soldiers and bring them home safely.”

Papa Louie had plenty of reasons to utter those last four words. Three of his sons, his son-in-law (my father), numerous nephews, nieces and cousins, and many children of his Pittsburgh neighbors and friends were in the U.S. armed forces.

Some enlisted in the military, some were drafted, and in my father’s case, his Army reserve unit was called to active duty three years earlier in 1941. I later learned that several family members were stationed in England that fateful spring six decades ago and were involved with D-Day operations.

My family, with its host of soldiers scattered throughout the world, was hardly unique during WWII. Millions of other American families also had their sons and daughters in the military. The entire American nation was mobilized and “the war effort” trumped every other aspect of daily life.

Congress’ official declaration of war on three enemy nations _ Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and militaristic Japan _ created broad popular support. Unfortunately, every military conflict since WWII including Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq lacked a formal declaration of war.

While the American Jewish community fully participated in America’s extraordinary war effort, the battle to destroy Nazism had special meaning. As soon as Hitler gained dictatorial power in Germany in 1933, his anti-Jewish campaign of terror and persecution was set in motion, culminating in the Holocaust.

As a result, during WWII American Jews needed no films, books or presidential speeches to explain why we were engaged in a total war. Indeed, military records indicate that more than 600,000 American Jewish men and women served in the U.S. armed forces from 1941 to 1945.

Happily, all my grandfather’s relatives and friends returned safely at war’s end. One Pittsburgh neighbor, Army medic Theodore Bronk, was captured at Bataan in 1942, survived the “Death March” and spent the rest of the war in a Japanese prison camp. One of Papa Louie’s sons, Stanley, ended the war with Gen. George Patton’s Third Army in Czechoslovakia, and another son, Meyer, was on Iwo Jima.

I believe the military service of those 600,000 men and women was a defining moment in the history of the American Jewish community. Their war service took many of them for the first time far from their hometowns and brought them into direct contact with other Americans from all sections of the nation.

Neil Simon humorously describes his WWII experiences in the play “Biloxi Blues.” Herman Wouk’s “Caine Mutiny” is a classic, Leon Uris’ service as a U.S. Marine was the source of his novel “Battle Cry,” Norman Mailer wrote “The Naked and the Dead,” and Irwin Shaw authored “The Young Lions.”

But the American Jewish WWII experience was more than novels and plays. It represented the community’s full entry into American political, religious, social, economic, academic and cultural life. After fighting for “liberation,” democracy and human freedom, the 600,000 American Jewish veterans and their families would no longer tolerate any form of anti-Semitism in the United States.

It meant no more restricted housing codes that barred Jews, no more job discrimination, no more student quotas at colleges and universities, no more discreet “Gentlemen’s Agreements” that blocked Jews from advancement in occupations and professions, and no more unspoken restrictions on running for any and all political offices.

The military service of the 600,000 American Jews was a rite of passage that broke anti-Semitic barriers and brought Papa Louie’s family, friends and community permanently into mainstream American society.

DEA/PH END RUDIN