December 14, 2006 - Canadian Jewish News by: Janice Arnold

Data for Canadian Jewish vets goes online


MONTREAL - After a five-year investigation, the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) archives department has been able to confirm the deaths and burial sites of 570 Canadian Jews or Jews serving in the Canadian forces killed during the two world wars, plus one in the Korean War.

The goal is to compile a comprehensive list of the Jewish casualties, and that number is expected to grow as more information continues to become available.

What is known about these men is now posted on the Internet (www.cjccc.ca/archives/casualties.php) in a searchable format. There are many gaps in the data for each man, and the archives is trying fill them in.

Archives director Janice Rosen said it is hoped that, with the casualties database now online, those who plan to visit a military cemetery will print a list of all the known Jewish burials in that location and report any errors to CJC.

The project is headed by assistant archivist Hélène Vallée, who has been helped by volunteers Abe Bonder and Willie Glaser of Montreal, and Gordon Jenkins of Ottawa. Vallée and Jenkins are not Jewish, but both have an expertise in military history and an interest in seeing that the individuals who made the supreme sacrifice are properly documented.

The work is not easy. It has involved matching existing information, mainly from chaplaincy records compiled on Jews who served in the wars, notably by the late Rabbi Herman Abramowitz, who was a World War I chaplain with the British forces, and the late CJC archivist David Rome after World War II, and synagogue and Jewish organizational lists. Another source has been recent information released on the websites of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, the Canadian Virtual War Memorial and Soldiers of the First World War, created by the Library and Archives of Canada.

Personal information about World War I enlistees is only now being made available, after being embargoed for a certain period after death, while the World War II records remain sealed. In any event, religion was not asked at the time of enlistment, Veterans Affairs Canada confirmed.

Other casualties have been brought to the attention of CJC by relatives and people who have visited war cemeteries. One came from a CJN story published Nov. 11, 2004, about Harry Jassby of Montreal, a World War I pilot in the RAF who was killed in a 1918 accidental crash and lies in a churchyard in an English village.

More than 130 of the 570 recorded are World War I casualties.

The sole Jew known to have fallen in Korea is Lt. Joseph Yehudi Levison of the Princess Patricia’s Light Infantry, of Yarmouth, N.S., who died May 26, 1951, and is buried in the UN Cemetery at Tanggok, South Korea.

The idea for this project took root after Larry Rosenthal of Montreal discovered that the tombstone of his older brother William Guy Rosenthal in the Canadian War Cemetery in Agira, Sicily, did not bear his Hebrew name, their father’s name, or Jewish calendar dates. He wondered if the other Jewish war dead had appropriate epitaphs.

A gunner with the Royal Canadian Artillery, he was killed in action July 22, 1943, at age 22. Before enlisting, he worked for Canadian Press.

It is chilling to read his last report in the YMHA Beacon, written shortly before his death: “No price is too great to pay, no life too precious to enforce our beliefs and ideals.”

The database provides a glimpse into who these largely forgotten men, some not much more than boys, were.

In addition to date of death and burial site, including lot number, the data includes, where known, enlistment number, rank, unit, date of birth, age and any additional information, such as where they were from and the circumstances of their death. Photos are also now being added.

They are listed alphabetically, beginning with Elmer Oscar Aaron of Philadelphia, an RCAF flying officer who completed 14 missions and had to bail out twice. He was participating in a raid in Tours, France, and was 15 miles from his target when his squadron was fired on in May 1944. He lies in the Orleans Main Cemetery in Loiret, France. The last entry is Ottawa’s Moses Zumar, RCAF warrant officer, 2nd class, who was 23 when he failed to return from anti-submarine patrol in the Bay of Biscay in October 1942. He lies in Runnymede Memorial Cemetery in Surrey, England.

The record shows that Jews enlisted from across the country and from Newfoundland, which did not join confederation until 1949, and in all divisions, although the RCAF predominates during World War II. Several Americans can be found on the list, and quite a number of Canadians served in British forces.

Most lie in military cemeteries in Europe, but some rest in more remote locales.

Montrealer Sgt. John Lewis Michaels of Britain’s Royal Worcester Regiment, who received the Military Medal for his services in the Middle East campaign, lies in the Khartoum War Cemetery in Sudan.

Russian-born Paul Belkin of Calgary, an RCAF pilot officer, lies in the Rangoon War Cemetery in Myanmar (formerly Burma) in the Protestant section, but with a Star of David on his stone. He was 22 on Oct. 9, 1943, when he was killed in an operation over Japanese territory.

Hymie Steinberg of Winnipeg, an RCAF pilot, is buried in Reykjavik, Iceland near the mountain he crashed into in December 1944, at age 19.

The final resting place of 24-year-old Winnipegger Samuel Jacob Donen, an RCAF warrant officer, 2nd class, is Ghana, near the place where the aircraft he was ferrying across the Atlantic crashed.

Among the youngest is Pte. Max Rodin of the 78th Canadian Infantry’s Manitoba Regiment who died in 1916 at 18 and whose name is inscribed on the Vimy Ridge Memorial among the 11,285 Canadian soldiers who died in France.

Bertram William Glickman of Montreal, an RCAF flying officer, was one day shy of his 21st birthday on Dec. 12, 1942, when he failed to return from a mission over Tripoli. He lies in the Alamein Memorial Cemetery in Egypt.

Much closer to home, RCAF warrant officer Jack Silverstein of Windsor, Ont., lies in the St. Donat Roman Catholic Cemetery in the Laurentians. He was among 24 men on leave from Gander, Nfld., who were killed when the Liberator bomber they were aboard crashed en route to Ottawa in October 1943. The plane was eventually recovered from the peak of Black Mountain, near St. Donat, in June 1946. There is a Star of David on his tomb.

Not only combatants fell. Harold Chizy of Montreal, a sick-berth attendant with the Royal Canadian Navy Reserve, was 20 when the HMCS Nabob aircraft carrier was torpedoed off the coast of Norway.

One civilian is on the list: Dr. Louis Slotin of Winnipeg, who died at age 36 in May 1946, as a result of exposure to radiation during the development of the atomic bomb at Los Alamos, N.M., where he worked for the U.S. War Department.



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