Jan Meisels Allen wrote:
Seventy-five years later a mistake has been rectified: Jewish WW ll soldiers buried under a cross are now buried under a Star of David headstone at the Manila American Cemetery. This is part of ongoing work of Operation Benjamin, a non-profit organization which identifies soldiers buried with the wrong religious markers. It was coordinated with the American Battle Monuments Commission.

Thank you Jan for your post and the link to the JPOST article about Operation Benjamin. This has given me ideas.

My maternal grandmother's brother was an auxiliary doctor in the German army in WWI and was killed in July 1918 in Northern France and buried there under a cross. The story goes that my ggfather, a very devout Jew, told the family his son had been killed somewhere on the Eastern front and his burial place was unknown. My ggfather had a memorial stone set up on the family grave in Weissensee cemetary, with an epitaph describing his son as an "unerschütterlich treue Deutscher" (an adamantly faithful German) whose heart was in Israel.

Is Operation Benjamin restricted to American soldiers killed in WWII? Does anything similar exist for WWI and for participants in other armies?

Nicole Heymans, near Brussels, Belgium

 

At 00:13 14/02/2020, Nicole Heymans wrote:

Jan Meisels Allen wrote:
Seventy-five years later a mistake has been
rectified: Jewish WW ll soldiers buried under a
cross are now buried under a Star of David
headstone at the Manila American Cemetery. This
is part of ongoing work of Operation Benjamin, a
non-profit organization which identifies
soldiers buried with the wrong religious
markers. It was coordinated with the American Battle Monuments Commission.

Thank you Jan for your post and the link to the
JPOST article about Operation Benjamin. This has given me ideas.

My maternal grandmother's brother was an
auxiliary doctor in the German army in WWI and
was killed in July 1918 in Northern France and
buried there under a cross. The story goes that
my ggfather, a very devout Jew, told the family
his son had been killed somewhere on the Eastern
front and his burial place was unknown. My
ggfather had a memorial stone set up on the
family grave in Weissensee cemetary, with an
epitaph describing his son as an
"unerschütterlich treue Deutscher" (an adamantly
faithful German) whose heart was in Israel.

Is Operation Benjamin restricted to American
soldiers killed in WWII? Does anything similar
exist for WWI and for participants in other armies?

Nicole Heymans, near Brussels, Belgium

I have missed that report ! - May I learn how this reversion was achieved?

I am prompted by Nicole Heymans' response to ask another question.

Have you any knowledge of Half-Jews dying in
German military uniform while being forced to
slave labour in the infamous "Organisation Todt" ?

I am researching one such example about Richard
KAHN (1922 - 1944) who died "of natural causes" in Saint Maur, France.


David Lewin
London

This is from the Operation Benjamin website:


"The aim of Operation Benjamin is to locate Jewish personnel at American military cemeteries all over the world who, for various reasons, were buried under markers incorrectly representing their religion and heritage. Our mission is to correct these mistakes and provide, these many decades later, comfort to the families of the fallen. We work quietly and with dignity, without any cost to the families involved." 


Joe Hirschfield
Portage MI  USA
HIRSHFELD, BUXBAUM, LINDENBAUM, KARPEL-Glinyany, Skwarzawa, Selets, Novvy Yarychiv-GALICIA
MINOWITZKI, MINOWICKI, MINOFF-Brest Litovsk, Wysokoe-Litovsk-BELARUS

There are other organizations in the world that are changing the monuments of Jewish soldiers that fell in battle.  Believe it or not the Volksbund or German War Graves commission has been active in doing just that.
Here is a link to an article about one such soldier.  The Berlin Football Club Hertha was honoring its football / soccer players that fell in the Great War 1914-1918 when their preliminary field research--before their delegation visited the cemetery in France, they found out that one of their Jewish players Georg Löwenthal, had been buried under a Latin cross instead of the Jewish monument and yes they had it changed!

https://www.moz.de/nachrichten/brandenburg/artikel-ansicht/dg/0/1/1570143/

In France, the Rabbi Emeritus of Bordeaux, Rabbi Claude Maman has been active in the same cause, researching Jewish soldiers buried under crosses and having them replaced by Jewish grave markers.

https://www.chiourim.com/a-la-recherche-des-soldats-juifs-oublies-html/

If anyone is interested in Jewish soldiers they can please contact me.

All the best

Eric FEINSTEIN
New Jersey

the commonwealth war graves commission maintains graves for fallen soldiers of britain and the commonwealth countries (canada, australia, new zealand, india, etc.) all over the world. they replace lost or damaged stones, and have also fixed mistakes, such as jewish service personnel buried with the wrong kind of marker. unfortunately, i know of at least one case where the jewish graves were vandalized in a small military cemetery in the aegean.

if you know the location, you should be able to contact the organization which maintains that cemetery, and hopefully they will cooperate in having the stone changed.

....... tom klein, toronto

Thanks to the Operation Benjamin article (Jan Allen) for this important string of messages. To follow up on Eric Feinstein, I appreciate your links because I have also found a cousin who was killed in action as a French Nationalist in the town of Arthonnay, France. This was the 42nd Infantry Regiment and included a number of Senegalese soldiers. He was initially buried in a soldiers trench near that town in June 1940. His remains were later moved to Necropole nationale La Ferme de Suippes, a military cemetery near Paris.

I googled his name—Moisek Boguslawski—and found a picture in a small church in Arthonnay of a plaque with over 100 soldiers names listed. They were killed in that skirmish (a massacre). I contacted the wonderful photographer of that photo in France who graciously went to the cemetery and recorded all documents including pictures of the cross and accurate birthdate/location. After several attempts to contact the French government departments, changing the headstone appeared to be an impossible task.

I will definitely contact your links (& those of Tom Klein), much appreciated.

--
Ken A. Drabinsky
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
kenjdgen@...

Paternal:
DRABINSKY, ZURAWSKI, JAKUBOWSKI, ZELINSKI, HENIG [Chodecz, Przedecz POLAND]
BOGUSLAWSKI, FRYDLANDER [Chodecz, POLAND; Paris, FRANCE, Auschwitz]
RISEMAN, CUTLER, LURIE [UKR, Malden/Boston, Mass.USA]
ROIZMEN/SEGAL [Havana CUBA]
Maternal:
MINOVITCH, MINOV(W)ITZ, MINEVICH, FRIEDMAN, RAICHMAN,  [Kalinkovichi, Mozyr, Choiniki, Brahin, BELARUS, Lipton, Sk.CAN]