I should like to emphasize, if I could, the importance of the leave areas for the morale of the troops and their better appreciation of France. During actual hostilities men were willing to give up their leave, especially Americans who could not visit their homes but wanted only a change. After the war, however, military discipline became constantly more irksome to the soldiers, and the week or two without orders, in a real hotel with sheets and tablecloths, sight-seeing or merely resting, was the one thing necessary to bring them back to their units content to work and wait till their turn came to go back home. It was also a rare opportunity to see the best side of France and the French, when they had seen only the worst. No soldier admired the France of the war zone, with its ruined villages, its waste stretches, and its sh.e.l.l holes. Neither did he care for the France of the rest areas, where he knew only the smallest villages, with the least attractive people to a young progressive from the western world. Now he was able to enjoy the beauty and luxury of that older and more sophisticated civilization which always considered him either an amiable savage or a spoiled child.
The trip back to Paris and Le Mans was an experience in itself. I met three young and congenial medical officers on the train, with whom I traveled the rest of the way, stopping off for a half day at the little known town of Digne in the Ba.s.se Alps, where we saw the ancient church with its crypt, the art gallery with its painters of local prominence, and the old Roman sulphur baths, still used to-day. Another day at Gren.o.ble brought us into the heart of the French Alps. We reveled in the city with the snow-caps about. I felt the usual thrill at the tomb of the Chevalier Bayard, and more than ordinary pleasure in the beauty of the city itself.
I now settled down at Le Mans for the work of the Embarkation Center. Le Mans is too well known to Americans who have recently been in France to require much description. It is a city of about 75,000 people, with the customary narrow streets in the heart of the town, the fine parks and boulevards of every French city, and the very interesting cathedral overlooking the whole. There are fragments of the old Roman walls of the third century, and as an ironic contrast a fine street running through a tunnel which is named after Wilbur Wright, whose decisive experiments in aerial navigation were carried on nearby. My billet was a pleasant home opposite the very lovely park, the English Gardens, and my landlady a tiny old gentlewoman, who used to bring me a French breakfast and a French newspaper every morning, and indulge in the most formal compliments, reminding me of a romance of the Third Empire. And for some time Le Mans was the center of 200,000 American troops on their way home!
Instead of one division to cover, I now had from three to six, varying as units came from their old locations and departed on their way to America. And if it had been impossible to cover one division thoroughly, in a great area such as this a chaplain could do only day labor. I traveled from one point to another, had a schedule of services almost every night of the week in a different camp, visited the transient divisions as they came in, and thus came into the intimate contact with the men by which alone I could be of use to them. The territory was an immense one, though much of the time I did not have to cover it alone.
The 77th and 26th Divisions had Jewish chaplains while they were with us; Chaplain James G. h.e.l.ler was a.s.sociated with me until he was transferred to the Second Army (in fact, he was in Le Mans while I was still with the 27th), and after his departure Rabbi Reuben Kaufman of the J. W. B. was a.s.signed to religious work under my direction. But even so the task was staggering. So many regiments and companies scattered over an area eighty miles long and sixty miles wide was no feasible proposition, even with the best of cars and a sergeant to drive it for me.
In addition to the billeting accommodations in every village, the area contained several large camps of importance. The Cla.s.sification Camp, within the city, was an old French barracks turned over to our use, which housed a constantly changing stream of casuals and replacements, flowing from hospitals, camps and schools toward their various units.
The Spur Camp held a large group of construction units, engineers and bakers. The Forwarding Camp was a replica of a training camp at home, and contained a division at a time, at first in training, later in transit toward the ports. The Belgian Camp, originally built for Belgian refugees, now had long rows of wooden barracks for soldiers, a huge and always busy rifle range, and special camps of various types, including one for venereal patients, who underwent a mixture of medical treatment and discipline.
The purpose of the Embarkation Center was to provide a stopping place on the way to the busy ports of Brest and St. Nazaire, where the men might be deloused, have fresh clothing and equipment issued to them, undergo thorough inspections of every kind, and in all ways be divested of the effects of war and prepared to return to America. This task usually took a month or more, but sometimes a division had been partially equipped in its former area and if the ships happened to be ready it might stay in our area less than a week. On the other hand, it might not pa.s.s the various inspections at once, or at the time the transportation home might be lacking, and hence its departure would be delayed time and again. This uncertainty of tenure made all work very difficult, especially work such as the chaplains" which depended entirely on personal contact.
The problem of these divisions, as of the 27th, was chiefly to preserve the splendid morale of the front while the men were in the dreary tedium of waiting. This was done by cutting down the drill to an hour a day, which made enough work in addition to the delousing, inspecting and other necessary activities. The rest of the time was devoted to athletics, an educational program, and a great amount of entertainment, all three under the Welfare Officer appointed by the commanding general of the Embarkation Area, while all the welfare agencies contributed to these various ends under his general supervision. My work, of course, was directly under the Senior Chaplain, according to army regulation.
And as the various units moved toward their goal more rapidly and more steadily, the need for special efforts to keep up morale grew less. Men keep up their own morale when they really know they are going home; the difficulties had been largely caused by the complete uncertainty and endless delays.
Such success as I had was due very largely to the excellent cooperation of the Jewish Welfare Board. Sergeant Charles Rivitz, who had charge of the work in the area, was deeply interested in the welfare of the boys and shared the resources of the organization freely with me in my work.
I had always found this same att.i.tude; the J. W. B. furnished me a car, an allowance for welfare work, an office in its building, and offered its rooms for services in the various camps. Where it had no huts, I was accorded the same privilege by the Y. M. C. A. Whenever its aid fell short, it was because it had no more to give. By this time Le Mans had a large and active group of J. W. B. workers, both men and girls, with their center in the city and huts in many surrounding points. I found the workers" mess the most friendly and pleasant in the city, quite as congenial as the one at the Junior Officers" Club, which I often frequented.
Even in the stress and turmoil of the Le Mans area ("the madhouse," as the boys called it) striking or humorous personalities appeared from time to time. There was Abie, the wandering musician, a little Jew who had a gift for rag-time but no great intelligence, military or otherwise. Abie had gone to France with a replacement unit, was located near Le Mans and spent his spare time playing for the Y. M. C. A. and the officers" dances. When his unit moved toward the front to be incorporated in some fighting division, he stayed behind, not as a deserter, but to play the piano for the "outfits" that followed. He managed even to live at the local hotel by the tips they gave him. After that time he reported, giving his full story in detail, to every commanding officer who entered the village, always to be given enough to eat, but never accepted into any unit as he had no transfer from his original one. At last his story got abroad, he was brought in by the Criminal Investigation Department and investigated, only to prove the truth of his every word. So Abie, happy once more, was stationed in the Cla.s.sification Camp and detailed to the Jewish Welfare Board as a pianist, improvising his rag-time adaptations of serious music and getting many privileges and a steady income for doing the work he enjoyed best.
A different sort of man was the soldier in a famous fighting division, who sought a private interview with me. It seems that in the advance on the St. Mihiel sector he had rescued a Torah, a scroll of the Law, from a burning synagogue. Throwing away the contents of his pack, he had wrapped the scroll up in the pack carrier instead, and carried it "over the top" three times since. Now he wanted permission to take it home to give to an orphan asylum in which his father was active. A soldier was not ordinarily allowed to take anything with him besides the regulation equipment and such small souvenirs as might occupy little room, but in this case a kindly colonel became interested and the Torah went to America with the company records.
The great event of my service in Le Mans was our Pa.s.sover celebration on April 14th, 15th and 16th, 1919. The general order for Pa.s.sover furloughs read:
"Where it will not interfere with the public service, members of the Jewish faith serving with the American Expeditionary Forces will be excused from all duty from noon, April 14th, to midnight, April 16th, 1919, and, where deemed practicable, granted pa.s.ses to enable them to observe the Pa.s.sover in their customary manner."
Among the central points designated for Pa.s.sover leaves was Le Mans, and the Jewish Welfare Board and I labored to arrange a full celebration for the thousand Jewish soldiers who came in from four different divisions.
Quarters were provided in the Cla.s.sification Camp for all the men who did not have the money or the previous arrangements for hotel rooms, as well as full accommodations for the Pa.s.sover feast, the Seder. The Jewish Welfare Board obtained full supplies of Matzoth, unleavened bread, as well as Haggadoth, or special prayer books for the Seder.
The spirit was as strong a contrast as possible to that of my other great service at the fall holydays. Among our congregation were two men from the isolated post of military police at St. Calais, fifty miles to the east, and five from among the students at the University of Rennes, a hundred miles west. We had a number of officers among us, while five French families, several Jews in the horizon blue of the French army, and two in the Russian uniform--labor battalions, since Russia had withdrawn from the war--worshiped beside us. And when the crowd began to a.s.semble, the first men I saw were a group of engineers whom I had not seen since Atonement Day, seven months before. They were on the way home now, their presence emphasizing more strongly than anything else the change that had come to us and the world in the intervening time. Again there were the meetings of friends and brothers, but without the pang of parting afterward. One of the most touching features of the Seder was the large number of requests that I should inquire whether Sergeant Levi or Private Isaacs was present. Then how the whole gathering would be electrified when a voice cried out, "Here," and cousins or comrades who had not known even of each other"s safety were able to exchange festal greetings and rejoice together.
For the two and a half days" leave the Jewish Welfare Board and I tried to keep the men busy, with something for every taste. The full program included a Seder, four services, a literary program, a vaudeville show, a boxing exhibition, two dances and a movie. All were well patronized, for the soldier had a cultivated taste in diversion, especially after the armistice. But certainly the most popular of all was the Seder. The soup with matzah b.a.l.l.s, the fish, in fact the entire menu made them think of home. We held the dinner in an army mess hall, standing at the breast-high tables. The altar with two candles and the symbols of the feast was at the center of the low-roofed unwalled structure. Toward evening the rain, so typical of winter in western France, ceased; the sun came out, and its last level rays shone directly upon Rabbi Kaufman and his little altar. It was a scene never to be forgotten, a feast of deepest joy mingled with solemnity. Afterward we adjourned to the Theatre Munic.i.p.ale for a full religious service with a sermon. Two of the shows of the festival leave were too big for the hall of the Jewish Welfare Board, so we were offered the Y. D. Hut, the great auditorium of the Y. M. C. A., which had been named after the famous 26th Division.
One of these entertainments was the last performance in France of the "Liberty Players" of the 77th Division, who were about to leave for the States that very week.
Finally my work in France drew to a close. On the first of May, 1919, I received the orders for which I had been hoping so long. I was to be relieved and sent home to America. Rabbis in the uniform of the Jewish Welfare Board were now at hand, the number of men in France was decreasing, and my request to be relieved could at last be granted. A final two days in Paris for a conference with the heads of the J. W. B., Chaplain Voorsanger and Colonel Harry Cutler, another day at Le Mans to turn my records and office over to Rabbis Kaufman and Leonard Rothstein, and then I was off to Brest. I had the special good fortune of being held in that busy and rather uninviting place for only four days and then finding pa.s.sage a.s.signed me on the slow but comfortable _Noordam_, of the Holland-American Line. My last duty in Brest was to conduct a funeral, in the absence of the post chaplain, of four sailors drowned in an accident just outside the harbor. We had a guard of honor, a bugler, all naval, and I had the rare experience of an army chaplain conducting a navy funeral, as well as of a rabbi burying four Christian boys.
We were at sea twelve days altogether, being delayed by a gale of three days and also by a call for aid, which took us a hundred miles out of our course without finding the sender of the message. We entered New York harbor late one evening, and anch.o.r.ed off Staten Island for the night. There was little sleep that night; the officers danced with the cabin pa.s.sengers, while the men sang on the decks below. The next morning early every one was at the rail as we steamed in past the Statue of Liberty, which stood for so much to us now, for which we had longed so often, and which some of our company had never expected to see again.
After the customary half day of formalities at the dock, we were directed to different camps for discharge according to our branches of the service. I reported at Camp Dix, New Jersey, where I was mustered out of service, receiving my honorable discharge on May 26th, 1919, eleven months from the date of my commission, nine of which were spent with the American Expeditionary Forces.
CHAPTER VI
THE JEWISH CHAPLAINS OVERSEAS
My experiences, which were fairly typical throughout, showed clearly the great need for Jewish chaplains in the army overseas. Even my trip on leave to the Riviera was typical, showing the effect of release from discipline combined with a pleasure trip on thousands of our soldiers, most of whom needed it far more than I; for the privileges of a chaplain, just a little greater than those of most officers, certainly had prevented my morale falling as low as that of many of the enlisted men. The Jewish chaplain was not only a concession to the very considerable body of Jewish citizens who felt that they should be represented in the military organization as well as men of other faiths; he had a definite contribution to make to the moral and spiritual welfare of the forces. We had to conduct Jewish religious services for both holydays and ordinary seasons, to a.s.sist the dying Jew, and to pray for him at his grave. We had to defend the Jewish boys in the rare cases of prejudice against them, or, what was just as important, to clear up such accusations when they were unfounded. We had to serve the special needs of the Jewish soldier, whatever they might be, at the same time that we did the chaplain"s duty toward all soldiers with whom we might be thrown.
The American Expeditionary Forces never had sufficient chaplains at any time for the work that was planned for them. The proportion desired by the G. H. Q. Chaplains" Office and approved by the war department was one chaplain to every thousand men, or one to an infantry battalion, besides those a.s.signed to administrative work as senior chaplains of divisions and areas, and the very large number detailed to hospitals.
The total number of chaplains who went to France was 1285, just half the number needed by this program, and from this total we must subtract a considerable group of deaths, wounds and other casualties. The chaplains" corps was undermanned at all times,--we Jews were simply the most conspicuous example. Compared to the general proportion of one chaplain to every two thousand men, and the ideal one of a chaplain to every thousand, we had one chaplain to every eight thousand men, and those tremendous numbers were not even concentrated in a few units but scattered through every company, every battery, and every hospital ward in the army.
The British forces contained one Jewish chaplain for every army headquarters, or nine in all. I had the pleasure of meeting Rabbi Barnett, the chief Jewish chaplain in the B. E. F., although I never met his predecessor, Major Adler. Through their long experience and the cooperation of the Chief Rabbi of England, the English chaplains were well equipped with suitable prayerbooks and other material, which I obtained from one of them for the use of our men while I was on the British front. Still, even with their larger proportion of chaplains to the Jews in service, the lack of transportation facilities and the tremendous rush of war-time, especially at the front and in the hospitals, made their actual duties impossible of complete fulfillment.
To cover the enormous field before us was plainly impossible. The chaplain could only work day by day, clearing a little pathway ahead of him but never making an impression on the great jungle about. When I first reached France, I grew accustomed to the greeting: "Why, you"re the first Jewish chaplain I"ve met in France!" That was hard enough then, but it grew harder when the same words were addressed me in Brest just before sailing and on shipboard on the way home. And yet it was inevitable that twelve chaplains could not meet personally the hundred thousand Jewish soldiers scattered through the two millions in the American uniform through the length and breadth of France. Under these circ.u.mstances we all feel a natural pride at the work accomplished against adverse conditions. I for one feel that we did all that twelve men similarly situated could possibly have done, and I gladly bring my personal tribute to those others, chaplains, welfare workers, officers, and enlisted men, whose cooperation doubled and trebled the actual extent and effectiveness of our work. This includes especially the Christian chaplains and welfare workers; their own field was great enough to take all their time and energy, but they were always ready to turn aside for a moment to lend a hand to us, in order that the labors of twelve men serving their faith in the great American army might not be quite futile.
The first of the Jewish chaplains to reach France was Rabbi Elkan C.
Voorsanger, who gave up his pulpit in St. Louis in April, 1917, to join the St. Louis Base Hospital as a private in the medical corps. As his hospital unit was the third to reach France in May, 1917, Rabbi Voorsanger was one of the first five hundred American soldiers in the American Expeditionary Forces. In the medical corps he rose from private to sergeant, gaining at the same time an intimate first-hand knowledge of the problems of the man in the ranks. When the bill was pa.s.sed by Congress in November, 1917, ordering the appointment of chaplains of sects not at that time represented in the army, Rabbi Voorsanger was the first Jew commissioned under its provisions. He was examined by a special board appointed overseas by General Pershing at the direction of the Secretary of War; his commission was dated November 24th, 1917. In January 1918 he was a.s.signed to the 41st Division and in March to Base Hospital 101 at St. Nazaire. While posted there he conducted his first important service overseas in Pa.s.sover 1918, the first official Jewish service held in the A. E. F. He was a.s.signed to the 77th Division in May 1918 on their arrival in France where he served with a most enviable record, receiving the Croix de Guerre and being recommended for the D.
S. M. for exceptional courage and devotion to duty in time of danger.
The midnight patrol on the banks of the Meuse, by which he won these honors, was both a courageous and a useful exploit. He was promoted to Senior Chaplain of his division with the rank of Captain, the only Jew so distinguished. Finally in April 1919, instead of accompanying his division home he resigned his commission to become the head of the overseas work of the Jewish Welfare Board. He returned to the United States in September 1919, after two and a half years with the American Expeditionary Forces. Since that time he has continued his self-sacrifice and his devotion to his people in the service of the Joint Distribution Committee for the Relief of Jews in eastern Europe.
In 1920 and 1921 he conducted two relief units to Poland and carried on their life-saving work.
When I arrived in France, Chaplain Voorsanger was stationed at Chaumont for the time being, to take charge of the arrangements for the Jewish holydays of 1918. I have already described how these were carried out, by designating central points for services, getting in touch with the French rabbis and synagogue authorities and a.s.signing the few American rabbis at hand to fill in the deficiencies.
I was the fifth Jewish chaplain to reach France. Those who preceded me were first Voorsanger and then Chaplains David Tannenbaum of the 82nd Division, Harry S. Davidowitz of the 78th and Louis I. Egelson of the 91st. All these men served at the front, as did also Chaplain Benjamin Friedman of the 77th Division, who took up the Jewish work of that unit when Chaplain Voorsanger was promoted to the Senior Chaplaincy. Chaplain Davidowitz was the only Jewish chaplain to be wounded, receiving severe injuries from shrapnel; these put him in the hospital for several months and occasioned his being sent back home, invalided, the first of us all.
The others, in order of their arrival, were Chaplains Jacob Krohngold, of the 87th Division; Israel Bettan of the 26th Division; Harry Richmond, at the port of Bordeaux; Elias N. Rabinowitz, at Blois; Solomon B. Freehof, at First Army Headquarters; and James G. h.e.l.ler, at Le Mans. The last two left New York on the day following the armistice, so that on November eleventh, 1918, the Jews of America were represented overseas by just ten chaplains and two representatives of the Jewish Welfare Board, Rev. Dr. Hyman G. Enelow and Mr. John Goldhaar.
The twelve of us represented all three Jewish seminaries in this country, although the majority were naturally from the oldest, the Hebrew Union College at Cincinnati, where Rabbi Freehof was even a member of the faculty. We came from every section of the country, east, west and south, including Krohngold and myself from little towns in Kentucky and Richmond from Trinidad, Colorado. Rabbi Richmond had the unusual distinction of not claiming exemption in the draft as a minister. He therefore entered the service as a private and was promoted to the chaplaincy just before his division went overseas.
The chaplains who were commissioned before the armistice and served in the United States were thirteen in number; Rabbis Nathan E. Barasch, Harry W. Etteleson, Max Felshin, Samuel Friedman, Raphael Goldenstein, Abram Hirschberg, Morris S. Lazaron, Emil W. Leipziger, Julius A.
Liebert, Abraham Nowak, Jerome Rosen, Leonard W. Rothstein, Israel J.
Sarasohn. Three of them, Rabbis Rothstein, Felshin and Barasch, soon after resigned their commissions and came overseas as representatives of the Jewish Welfare Board. When the great need for morale agencies was realized after the armistice, the War Department refused to relax its prohibition against the transportation of more chaplains or other special branches of the service, but favored the pa.s.sage of large numbers of welfare workers instead. Rabbi David Goldberg was the only Jewish chaplain in the navy, with the rank of Lieutenant, junior grade; he served at sea on the transport, President Grant.
We were almost all rea.s.signed as our divisions left for home and as the need grew in various areas, especially in the base posts and the Army of Occupation. Chaplain Davidowitz was sent home wounded, and Friedman accompanied his own division back. Krohngold, Bettan, h.e.l.ler and Freehof joined the Army of Occupation in the order named, although for a long time Rabbi Krohngold was the only Jewish chaplain there. Rabbi Egelson left his division for the port of St. Nazaire, Rabinowitz was transferred from Blois to St. Aignan, and I was left behind at Le Mans together with h.e.l.ler, who shortly after was transferred to the Third Army in Germany. Tannenbaum while stationed at Bordeaux was also, by special arrangement, appointed as supervisor of the Jewish Welfare Board for that area; and Voorsanger was mustered out of service to become executive director of their overseas work. Rabbi Richmond alone held the same post to the very end of his overseas service.
As I have mentioned repeatedly in my personal narrative, so long as a man was a.s.signed to one division he had some chance of establishing personal contacts with his men and doing effective work among them; as soon as he was a.s.signed to an area, he had to spread himself thin over a wide expanse of territory and could cover it in only the most cursory fashion. The problem was larger than the matter of transportation, although that was serious enough. The larger aspect lay in the number of men, the number of companies, the infinite possibility of individual service if one were only able to know all these soldiers personally, to understand their needs, and to minister to them. Every hospital ward with its forty beds presented forty distinct individual problems,--often, indeed, more than forty. Sometimes the same man would need pay, mail, home allotment, reading matter, and contact with his original unit and comrades. With the constant shifting to other hospitals further from the front and then to convalescent camps, the ward would always contain a new forty men and the work was always beginning over again. This situation was not in the least unique. The hospital simply represents the extreme case of what was true in a less degree in every branch of the service and every unit.
During the post-armistice period I had several very agreeable reunions with my fellow chaplains, which were at the same time valuable for our common information and cooperation. At my very first visit to Le Mans, on December 6th, I quite unexpectedly met Chaplains Freehof, Bettan, and h.e.l.ler, as well as Rabbi Enelow, who had just come to the city for the dedication of the J. W. B. headquarters. I devoured their comparatively fresh news from home as eagerly as Voorsanger had absorbed mine several months before, when he was already entering his second year in France.
The second time was on the last day of the year, when I met Rabbis Friedman, Egelson and Rabinowitz in Paris, all coming there as I did for the cars which the J. W. B. had ready for us. At the same time Rabbis Martin Meyer of San Francisco and Abram Simon of Washington were in the city, both captains in the American Red Cross. Their six months of duty in France had just expired and they were then making ready for their return home. We all had dinner together at one of the famous Parisian restaurants and discussed war and peace, France, America and Israel, until the early closing laws of war-time sent us all out on the boulevards and home. Chaplain Egelson and I saw the New Year in together, first hearing "Romeo and Juliet" at the Opera and then watching the mad crowds on the streets, headed always by American or Australian soldiers, the maddest of them all.
The most important meeting, however, was the one called by Chaplain Voorsanger for February 24th at the Paris headquarters of the Jewish Welfare Board. Six chaplains were present, Voorsanger, Tannenbaum, Richmond, h.e.l.ler, Bettan and I, together with Mr. John Goldhaar of the J. W. B. Our chief object was to work out a program of cooperation with the J. W. B., our second, to discuss our personal methods for the benefit of our own work. Voorsanger was chairman; we decided to form a Jewish Chaplains" a.s.sociation, which never developed afterward; and planned to hold another meeting soon, which owing to military exigencies, we never did. But we did adopt a program of cooperation with the J. W. B., which indicates the mutual dependency and the closeness of contact which were almost uniformly the case. Our program provided that the J. W. B. should submit to the chaplain the weekly report of the area in which he was stationed and should have relations with the military authorities through him. The chaplain, on the other hand, was to make suggestions to the worker in his area, and in exceptional cases to the Paris office and was to be in complete charge of all Jewish religious work in his area, although religious workers were personally responsible to their superior in the J. W. B. Finally, provision was made for frequent conferences between the chaplain and the J. W. B. worker in the same organization. This program was approved, not only nominally but also in spirit by all the Jewish chaplains and welfare workers throughout the A. E. F. I know that in Le Mans our contact was so close that Mr. Rivitz instructed his religious workers to report directly to me for a.s.signment of services and other division of labor, and I included their work with mine in my weekly reports to my senior chaplain.
On my final visit to Paris at the end of April I found a host of Jewish celebrities gathered together in the interests of the Jewish Welfare Board, the Joint Distribution Committee for the relief of Jews in Eastern Europe, the American Jewish Committee, and the American Jewish Congress. At the office of the J. W. B., I had a farewell conference with Rabbi Voorsanger and Colonel Harry Cutler, giving them a summary of the latest situation in my area. Colonel Cutler was busy as chairman of the J. W. B., one of the American Jewish Congress delegates to the Peace Conference, and a member of the Joint Distribution Committee. I met my old friend, Rabbi Isaac Landman, who was reporting the Peace Conference for his paper, the American Hebrew, and he introduced me in turn to Miss Harriet Lowenstein, at that time the Paris purchasing agent of the Joint Distribution Committee, especially in the important work of buying supplies originally sent to Europe for the use of the American forces. I encountered also three of the active workers of American Jewry, sent to represent us before the Peace Conference in such matters as might concern the Jews; Judge Julian Mack, representing the American Jewish Congress; Dr. Cyrus Adler, for the American Jewish Committee; and Mr.
Louis Marshall, a representative of both organizations. The two last were also active in the Jewish Welfare Board, and Dr. Adler, vice-chairman of the Board, took charge as the representative of the Board after Colonel Cutler"s departure for the States. Even on the ship going home I met two Jewish workers, Rabbi B. Levinthal of the American Jewish Congress delegation and Mr. Morris Engelman, returning from his work in Holland for the Joint Distribution Committee. By that time world Jewry was fully aroused and its delegates were busy, both at the seat of the Peace Conference and in the lands of eastern Europe, where Jewish suffering was becoming daily more intense.
CHAPTER VII
THE JEWISH WELFARE BOARD IN THE A. E. F.
The Jewish Welfare Board in the United States Army and Navy was the great authorized welfare agency to represent the Jews of America, as the Young Men"s Christian a.s.sociation represented the Protestants and the Knights of Columbus the Catholics. It was organized on April 9, 1917, just three days after the declaration of war, and was acknowledged by the Department of War as the official welfare body of the Jews in September, 1917. It was not so much a new organization as a new activity of a number of the leading Jewish organizations of the United States: the United Synagogue of America, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations, the Agudath ha-Rabbonim, the Jewish Publication Society of America, the council of Y. M. H. and Kindred a.s.sociations, the Council of Jewish Women, the Independent Order B"nai B"rith, the Jewish Chautauqua Society, the Order Brith Abraham, the National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods, the New York Board of Jewish Ministers, the Independent Order Brith Sholom, the Independent Order Brith Abraham, and the Women"s League of the United Synagogue. In the camps and cantonments at home it did a large and important piece of work, establishing 490 representatives at 200 different posts and putting up 48 buildings for its work at various important points. This great field, however, is outside the scope of the present study, which can take up only the overseas activities of the J. W. B.
One home organization must be mentioned in this place, the Chaplains"
Committee which made recommendations to the War Department for the appointment of Jewish chaplains. This was composed of representatives of the leading religious bodies of the country: for the Central Conference of American Rabbis, Dr. William Rosenau and Dr. Louis Grossman; the United Synagogue of America, Dr. Elias L. Solomon; Eastern Council of Reform Rabbis, Dr. Maurice H. Harris; the New York Board of Jewish Ministers, Dr. David de Sola Pool; the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations, Dr. Bernard Drachman; the Agudath ha-Rabbonim, Rabbi M.
S. Margolies. Dr. Cyrus Adler, the Acting President of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, was chairman of this committee. They had the task of reviewing the applications of one hundred and forty-nine rabbis, of whom thirty-four were recommended to the War Department and twenty-five were commissioned by the time the armistice put an end to more appointments. I have already given in some detail the story of the twelve of us who served in the A. E. F., while the other thirteen did their service in cantonments in the United States.