Jews in the American Military Recommended Reading

History

Hall of Heroes Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Jewish History

Women in the Military: A Jewish Perspective Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Jewish History

Barish, Louis, ed. Rabbis in Uniform: The Story of the American Jewish Military Chaplain, A Century of Service to God and Country (1862-1962). New York: Jonathan David, 1962.

Bendersky, Joseph W. The “Jewish Threat”: Anti-Semitic Politics of the U.S. Army. New York: Basic Books, 2000

Brody, Seymour. Jewish Heroes and Heroines of America: 150 True Stories of American Jewish Heroism. Hollywood, FL: Lifetime Books, 1996.

Fredman, J. George, & Falk, Louis A. Jews in American Wars. New York: Jewish War Veterans of USA, 1954

Gumpertz, Sidney. The Jewish Legion of Valor: The Story of Jewish Heroes in the Wars of the Republic. New York: Privately printed, 1934.

Haber, Julian Stuart. They Were Soldiers in Peace and War. Fort Worth: H.J. Wells Publishing, 2006.

Leavitt, Howard J. Semper Chai: Marines of Blue and White (and Red). Philadelphia: Xlibris, 2002.

———. Footsteps of David: Common Roots, Uncommon Valor—The Jewish Experience in the Military.Bloomington, IN: 1st Books, 2002.

———. Tales of Valor. Philadelphia: Xlibris, 2003.

———. Oz: Chronicles of Courage. Bloomington, IN: Authorhouse, 2005.

Mosesson, Gloria. The Jewish War Veterans Story. The Jewish War Veterans of the U.S.A. 1971.

Penslar, Derek. Jews and the Military: A History. Princeton UP, 2013.

Rubin, Eli. 140 Jewish Marshals, Generals, and Admirals. London: DeVero Books, 1952.

Slomovitz, Albert Isaac. The Fighting Rabbis: Jewish Military Chaplains and American History. New York: New York University Press, 1999.

Revolutionary War

Friedman, Lee M. Jewish Pioneers and Patriots. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1948.

Schwartz, Laurens R. Jews and the American Revolution: Haym Salomon and Others. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 1987.

Rezneck, Samuel. Unrecognized Patriots: The Jews in the American Revolution. Westport: Greenwood, 1975.

Civil War

Mendelsohn, Adam, Jewish soldiers in the Civil War: The Union Army. New York: New York University Press. 2022

Korn, Bertram. American Jewry and the Civil War. Philadelphia: Jewish Pub Soc of America, 1951.

Rosen, Robert N. The Jewish Confederates. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2000.

Sarna, Jonathan and Mendelsohn, Adam D. Jews and the Civil War. New York: New York University Press, 2010.

Simonhoff, Harry. Jewish Participants in the Civil War. New York: Arco, 1963.

Wolf, Simon, & Levy, Louis E. (ed.). The American Jew as Patriot, Soldier and Citizen. Philadelphia: Levytype Co., 1895 ed.

Young, Mel. Where They Lie: The Story of the Jewish Soldiers of the North and South Whose Deaths—[Killed, Mortally Wounded, or Died of Disease or Other Causes] Occurred During the Civil War, 1861-1865. New York: University Press of America, 1991.

———. Last Order of the Lost Cause: the Civil War memoirs of a Jewish family in the ‘Old South’. New York: University Press of America, 1995.

World War I

Cooperman, Jessica. Making Judaism Safe for American: World War I and the Origins of Religious Pluralism. New York: New York University Press, 2018.

Sterba, Christopher. Good Americans: Italian and Jewish Immigrants During the First World War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

World War II

GIs Remember: Liberating the Concentration Camps. Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Jewish History, 1994.

Bard, Mitchell G. Forgotten Victims: The Abandonment of Americans in Hitler’s Camps. Boulder: Westview Press, 1994.

Bernstein, Phillip S. Rabbis at War: The CANRA Story. Waltham: American Jewish Historical Society, 1971.

Blumenthal, L. Roy. Fighting for America: A Record of the Participation of Jewish Men and Women in the Armed Forces During 1944. New York: Jewish Welfare Board, 1944.

Cohen, Roger. Soldiers and Slaves: American POWs Trapped by the Nazis’ Final Gamble. New York: Knopf, 2005.

Davis, Mac. Jews Fight Too! New York: Jordan, 1945.

Eliach, Yaffa. The Liberators: Eyewitness Accounts of the Liberation of Concentration Camps. New York: Center for Holocaust Studies, 1981.

Garett, Leah. Young Lions: How Jewish Americans Reinvented the American War Novel. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2015.

Grobman, Alex. Rekindling the Flame: American Jewish Chaplains and the Survivors of European Jewry, 1944-1948. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1993.

Henderson, Bruce. Sons and Soldiers: The Untold Story of the Jews Who Escaped the Nazis and Returned with the U.S. Army to Fight Hitler. New York: Harper Collins, 2017.

Karras, Steven. The Enemy I Knew. Zenith Press, 2009.

Kaufman, Isidore. American Jews in World War II: The Story of 550,000 Fighters for Freedom, 2 Vols. New York: Dial Press, 1947.

Kurzman, Dan. No Greater Glory: The Four Immortal Chaplains and the Sinking of the Dorchester in World War II.New York: Random House, 2004.

Moore, Deborah Dash. GI Jews: How World War II Changed a Generation. Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2006

Museum of Jewish Heritage. Ours to Fight For: American Jewish Voices from the Second World War. New York: Museum of Jewish Heritage, 2003.

Rontch, Israel E. (ed.). Jewish Youth at War: Letters from American Soldiers. New York: Marstin Press, 1945.

Wolk, Bruce. Jewish Aviators in World War II. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2016.

Vietnam War

Lee, Eric. Saigon to Jerusalem: Conversations with U.S. Veterans of the Vietnam War Who Emigrated to Israel. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co., 1992.

Winograd, Leonard. Jungle Jews Of Vietnam: Untold Stories Of Heroism, Suffering, And Sacrifice In An Unpopular War. 1993.

Biography and Memoirs

Abrahams, Robert D. The Commodore: The Adventurous Life of Uriah Phillips Levy. Philadelphia, Jewish Publication Society, 1954.

Alper, Benedict S. Love and Politics in Wartime: Letters to My Wife, 1943-45. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992.

Baron, Richard, Major Abe Baum, and Richard Goldhurst. Raid! The Untold Story of Patton’s Secret Mission. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1981.

Baumgarten, Harold. D-Day Survivor: An Autobiography. Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing Co., 2006.

Berkman, Ted. Cast a Giant Shadow: The Story of Mickey Marcus Who Died to Save Jerusalem. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1967.

Birnbaum, Meyer. Lieutenant Birnbaum: A Soldier’s Story. Brooklyn: Mesorah Press, 1993.

Borsten, Laura Rappaport with Orin Borsten. Once a WAVE: My Life in the Navy, 1942-1946. Privately printed, 1995.

Brender, Edward. A Wartime Log: How the Pencil Was Mightier Than the Sword. Kauneonga Lake, NY: Privately printed, 2003.

Buchwald, Art. Leaving Home: A Memoir. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1993.

Buckholtz, Alison. Standing By: The Making of an American Military Family in a Time of War. New York: Tarcher/Penguin, 2009.

Byrne, Frank and Jean Soman (eds.). A Jewish Colonel in the Civil War: Marcus M. Spiegel of the Ohio Volunteers.University of Nebraska Press, 2013.

Chaikin, Rosalind Byron. “To My Memory Sing: A Memoir Based on Letters and Poems from Sol Chick Chaikin an American Solider in China-Burma-India During World War II” Monroe, NY: Library Research Association, 1997.

Childers, Thomas. Wings of Morning: The Story of the Last American Bomber Shot Down over Germany in World War II. New York: Addison-Wesley, 1995.

Coram, Robert. Brute: The Life of Victor Krulak, U.S. Marine. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 2010.

Darling, Paul. Taliban Safari: One Day in the Surkhagan Valley. University Press of Kansas, 2019.

Davis, Henry K. K-Rations, Kilroy, KP & Kaputt: One GI’s War. n.p.: Merrick & Litchfield, 1995.

Decter, Avi Y. and Karen L. Falk (eds.). Of Hats and Harmonies: The Recollections of Baltimore’s Lester S. Levy.Baltimore: Jewish Museum of Maryland, 2005.

Dudik, Linda. To Quiet the Fears of Others: – The Story of a World War II Army Nurse. World War II Experience, 2014.

DuPlessis, Rachel Blau. The Selected Letters of George Oppen. Durham: Duke University Press, 1990.

Dworkin, Ira Bernard. A G.I. Remembers: The 97th Infantry Division. Chicago: Adams Press, 1985.

Dye, Ira. Uriah Levy: Reformer of the Antebellum Navy. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2006.

Elkins, Dov Peretz. God’s Warriors: Dramatic Adventures of Rabbis in Uniform. Middle Village, NY: Jonathan David Publishers, 1974.

Engel, Gene. An Un-Anticipated Adventure: Fort Custer to the Normandy Beaches, Belgium, and Germany (1943-1945). Bloomington, IN: 1st Books, 2001.

Evans, Eli N. Judah P. Benjamin: The Jewish Confederate. New York: Macmillan, 1988.

Felton, Harold W. Uriah Phillips Levy. New York: Dodd, Mead, and Co., 1973.

Fitzpatrick, Donovan and Saul Saphire. Navy Maverick: Uriah Phillips Levy. New York: Doubleday, 1963.

Feldman, Milton. Captured, Frozen, Starved—and Lucky: How One Jewish American GI Survived a Nazi Stalag, Amazon Digital Services, 2018.

Fixler, Barry. Semper Cool: One Marine’s Fond Memories of Vietnam. Orangeburg, NY: Exalt Press, 2010.

Freedlander, Harold. I’ll Be Back: World War II Letters to the Home Front. Wooster, OH: Wooster Book Co., 2002.

Glickman, Les. Laugh It Off and Move On. Privately printed, 1998.

Goldstein, Ivan. Hard to Forget, Harder to Remember: A Soldier’s Tale of Faith & Survival. Privately printed, 2008.

Goldstein, Walter. Shreds from an Old Sun Helmet. New York: Greenberg Publishers, 1947.

Gordon, Harold H and Zev Zahavy (ed.). Chaplain on Wings: The Wartime Memoirs of Rabbi Harold H. Gordon.New York: Shengold Publishers, 1981.

Grassey, Paul C. Its Character that Counts

Green, Paul S. From the Streets of Brooklyn to the War in Europe, 1917-1945. Tulsa: Council Oak Books, 1999.

Hall, Gwendolyn (ed.). Love, War and the 96th Engineers (Colored): The World War II New Guinea Diaries of Captain Hyman Samuelson. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995.

Hanish, Alvin A. Always Look Back: A Jewish Combat Infantryman’s Memoir. New York: Vantage Press, 2002.

Harris, Harvey L. The War As I Saw It: 1918 Letters of a Tank Corps Lieutenant. St. Paul: Pogo Press, 1998.

Held, Lewis I. Jr. Gen. Lewis I. Held: Leader, Scholar, Patriot (Held Family History, Vol.2). Privately printed, 1993.

Heymont, Irving. Among the Survivors of the Holocaust, 1945: The Landsburg DP Camp Letters of Major Irving Heymont, United States Army. Cincinnati: American Jewish Archives, 1982.

Herron, John and Wynkoop, Mary Ann. Navigating a Life: Henry Bloch in World War II. Kansas City: BkMk Press, 2017.

Hoffman, Alice and Howard Hoffman. Archives of Memory: A Soldier Recalls World War II. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1990.

Hoffman, Daniel. Zone of the Interior: A Memoir, 1942-1947. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000.

Horn, Harvey S. Goldfish – Silver Boot: The Story of a World War II Prisoner of War

Howe, Irving. A Margin of Hope: An Intellectual Autobiography. New York: Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich, 1982.

Jacobs, Colonel Jack (retired) and Douglas Century. If Not Now, When?: Duty and Sacrifice in America’s Time of Need. New York: Berkley Books, 2008.

Jeruchim, Simon. Frenchy: A Young-Jewish French Immigrant Discovers Love and Art in America – And War in Korea. McKinleyville, CA: Fithian Press, 2005.

Kahn, Sy M. Between Tedium and Terror: A Soldier’s World War II Diary, 1943-45. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993.

Kaufman, Mozart. Fighter Pilot: Aleutians to Normandy to Stalag Luft I. San Anselmo, CA: M & A Kaufman Publishers, 1993.

Kempner, Marion Lee. Letters from Sandy. Privately printed, 1967.

Kertzer, Morris N. With an H on My Dog Tag. New York: Behrman House, 1947.

Korn, Jean Millicent. The Korn Legacy, Vol. 1. Baltimore: Gateway Press, 1990.

Kotlowitz, Robert. Before Their Time: A Memoir. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997.

Krulewitch, Melvin L. Now That You Mention It. New York: Quadrangle, 1973.

Kurtz, Richard G.. Then A Soldier.

Levin, Meyer. In Search: An Autobiography. London: Constellation Books, 1951.

Levinger, Rabbi Lee J. A Jewish Chaplain in France. New York: Macmillan, 1921.

Lichtenfeld, Seymour L. Kriege 312330: A Prisoner’s Story. Privately printed, 2001.

Litvin, Martin. The Journey. Galesburg, IL: Galesburg Historical Society, 1981.

Litwak, Leo. The Medic: Life and Death in the Last Days of WWII. Chapel Hill: Algonquin, 2001.

Marks, Harold. Doing My Best for My Country: October 1940 to July 1945. Privately printed, 1992.

Martin, Ralph G. The GI War, 1941-1945. Boston: Little Brown, 1967.

Melrood, Paul (ed.). We Were There – World War II: The Milwaukee Jewish Experience. Milwaukee: Milwaukee Jewish Archives, 1996.

Mezoff, Maurice. Moishe: A Memoir. Bloomington, IN: 1st Books, 2001.

Miller, Donald L. Masters of the Air: America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006.

Miller, Merle and Abe Spitzer. We Dropped the A-Bomb. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1946.

Nemerov, Howard. War Stories: Poems about Long Ago and Now. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.

Nowalsky, Harry. A Life of Service: The Memoirs of Harry Nowalsky. Privately printed, 1995.

Nussbaum, Chaim. Chaplain on the River Kwai: The Story of a Prisoner of War. New York: Shapolsky Publishers, 1988.

Ossad, Steven L. and Don R. Marsh. Major General Maurice Rose: World War II’s Greatest Forgotten Commander. Lanham, MD: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2003.

Palmer, Greg and Mark S. Zaid (eds.). The GI’s Rabbi: World War II Letters of David Max Eichhorn. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2004.

Pember, Phoebe Yates. A Southern Woman’s Story. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2002.

Petit, Carl D. A View From Above: A World War II Memoir & History – European & Pacific Theaters. Charleston, SC: BookSurge Publishing, 2007.

Plaut, W. Gunther. Unfinished Business: An Autobiography. Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1981.

Pollard, Clarice F. Laugh, Cry, and Remember: The Journal of a G.I. Lady. Phoenix: Journeys, 1991.

Rosenthal, Rose. Not All Soldiers Wore Pants: A Witty World War II WAC Tells All. Roschelle Park: Ryzell Books, 1993.

Rothbart, David. A Soldier’s Journal: With the 22nd Infantry Regiment in World War II. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003.

Roush, Col. John H. (ed.). World War II Reminiscences. San Rafael, CA: Reserve Officers Association, 1995.

Sarvas, Milton. My Three Score and Ten. Solana Beach, CA: LifeWorks Press, 1994.

Shachnow, Sidney. Hope and Honor. New York: Forge Books, 2006.

Scharf, Erich. Remembrances of My Service in World War II. Santa Fe: Privately printed, 1997.

Segel, Arnold L. A Soldier’s Journal: January 2, 1941 – January 28, 1946. Privately printed, 1995.

Schaffer, Mollie Weinstein and Schaffer, Cyndee. Mollie’s War

Shapiro, Karl Jay. V-Letter and Other Poems. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1944.

———. The Younger Son: The Youth and War Years of a Distinguished American Poet. Chapel Hill: Algonquin, 1988.

Sharpe, Dr. George. Brothers in Blood: A Battalion Surgeon in the South Pacific. Austin, TX: Diamond Books, 1989.

Sobel, Samuel (ed.). Jewish Sea Stories. Middle Village, NY: Jonathan David, 1985. pp. 297-337.

Soman, Jean Powers and Frank L. Byrne (eds.). A Jewish Colonel in the Civil War: Marcus M. Spiegel of the Ohio Volunteers. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985.

Spandau, Irwin B. Lost Diary: A True War Story. Willingboro, NJ: WWII Publishers, 1993.

Steinman, Louise. The Souvenir: A Daughter Discovers Her Father’s War. Chapel Hill: Algonquin, 2003.

Sugarman, Tracy. My War: A Love Story in Letters and Drawings. New York: Random House, 2000.

Weckstein, Leon. Through My Eyes: 91st Infantry Division in the Italian Campaign, 1942-1945. Central Point, OR: Hellgate, 1999.

Weinstein, Alfred A. Barbed-Wire Surgeon. New York: Macmillan, 1948.

Weinstein, Lewis H. Masa: Odyssey of an American Jew. Boston: Quinlan Press, 1989.

Weisman, Seymour S. A Writer’s Odyssey. Kearney, NE: Morris, 2002.

———. Dodging the Last Bullet: A Memoir. Kearney, NE: Morris, 2000.

Welch, Bob. American Nightingale: The Story of Frances Slanger, Forgotten Heroine of Normandy. New York: Atria Books, 2004.

Winston, Kenneth and Sarah Winston (ed.). V-Mail: Letters of a World War II Combat Medic. Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 1985.

Wolfe, Daniel. Cold Ground’s Been My Bed: A Korean War Memoir. iUniverse, Inc, 2005.

Zaslow, Harry. A Teenager’s Journey Through War & Peace. Bloomington, IN: Authorhouse, 2006.

Zerlin, Leonard. World War II Memories. JDS, 1996.

Zinn, Howard. You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train. Boston: Beacon Press, 1994.