Jewish Chaplain Memorial Pensacola Exhibit at Pensacola Naval Aviation Museum

Jewish Military Chaplains Memorial Exhibit at Pensacola Naval Air Museum
By Jerry Gordon

A traveling exhibit of the Jewish Military Chaplains Memorial was on display September 16, 2011 at the Pensacola, Florida Naval Aviation Museum. The bronze tablet commemorates the 14 Jewish Chaplains who gave selflessly of their lives in service to our country during WWII, the Korean and Viet Nam Wars. On October 24th, This Jewish Military Chaplains memorial will join two other memorials for Protestant and Catholic chaplains already installed on Chaplains Hill at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. Watch this PBS video about the background for this Jewish Chaplains Memorial that required an act of Congress supported by the Jewish War Veterans of America and the Jewish Federation of North America.

Watch this You Tube video of the Jewish Military Chaplains Memorial exhibit at the Pensacola Naval Air Museum. The video was prepared by Jerry Gordon, Board Member of B'nai Israel Synagogue in Pensacola, who served as a US Army intelligence officer during the Viet Nam era. Gordon is also a senior editor at the New English Review.
Accompanying the exhibit was a facsimile of the commemorative stamp issued in the memory of four chaplains who selflessly gave their lives when the US Army Transport Dorchester was torpedoed by a Nazi submarine in the North Atlantic on Feb .3, 1943. Rabbi Alexander D. Goode, who was among the four chaplains on board the Dorchester, was the only Jewish chaplain previously honored for his valor. Rabbi Goode is included among the names listed in the Jewish Military Chaplains on the bronze tablet in the traveling exhibit.

The story of the valiant sacrifice of the four chaplains can be found at the website of the Four Chaplains Memorial Foundation located at the Naval Business center in Philadelphia.

Here is a local news story on the Jewish Military Chaplains traveling exhibit published in the Pensacola News Journal.
Museum monument honors military Jewish chaplains

They fight for two armies — their country's and their God's.
Many a military chaplain has lost his life on the battlefields of war. Today, Pensacola residents get a chance to see a new monument honoring 14 Jewish chaplains who have died while on active duty.
The Jewish Chaplains Memorial will be on display from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. today at the National Naval Aviation Museum at Pensacola Naval Air Station. The bronze memorial is touring cities across the United States before its installment at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia on Oct. 24. It will be located in the cemetery's Chaplains Hill, which already has monuments to Catholic and Protestant military chaplains.
"The chaplains shared the same fundamental risk as anyone in combat," said retired Navy Capt. Fred Levin, 74, a Vietnam War veteran and current vice-president of Temple Beth-El synagogue in downtown Pensacola. "In war, the ability to talk to a chaplain was, in my judgment, a link to country and a link to solace and comfort."
Levin plans on seeing the memorial today and said he imagines many local Jews and military supporters will do the same.
The memorial is approximately 4 feet tall and 2.5 feet wide. It features the names of the 14 chaplains who are honored, as well as tablets of the Ten Commandments and the Star of David.
Other chaplain monuments include a World War I-era monument honoring 23 chaplains killed during the conflict. A Protestant chaplain's memorial honors 134 officers killed in battle, while a similar memorial honors 83 Catholic chaplains.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Arlington National Cemetery

[historyconsultancy]

Only some died in combat. Others died of disease an natural causes.