Jewish Veterans – In Their Own Voices
The Veterans History Project (VHP) of the Library of Congress is an oral history program that collects and preserves the first-hand interviews of America’s wartime veterans. Among their many collections, is one devoted specifically to Jewish veterans of WWII. It’s an interesting window into the daily lives and experiences of these young men when they went off to war. In addition to video interviews of veterans, there are also photos and letters written to the home front from several of the subjects.
One example is that of Milton Stern:
Shot down over Holland in March 1944, navigator Milton Stern was sheltered by Dutch partisans for 10 weeks before being captured and sent to a German prison camp. There he recorded lists of German rations by weight and composed poems to keep up his spirits. Later in the war, he helped “liberate” a shipment of Red Cross parcels that civilians working near the camp were hoarding, gorging himself on the contents in anticipation of his own liberation by the Allies.
While the production value of the video interviews aren’t always the best, the content is fantastic.
As the veterans of WWII continue to age and their numbers dwindle, it’s easy to see how important projects like this are. The VHP is currently collecting accounts from:
- World War I (1914-1920)
- World War II (1939-1946)
- Korean War (1950-1955)
- Vietnam War (1961-1975)
- Persian Gulf War (1990-1995)
- Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts (2001-present)
While documenting your own personal experiences in recent conflicts might not cross your mind once you get home, it’s something we should all think about at some point. The best time to preserve these stories are when they are still fresh in our minds. A time will come when our grandchildren will mourn the loss of the oldest living Afghanistan veteran, and projects like this will do a great deal to preserve the first-hand accounts of these events. There’s no reason there shouldn’t be an exhibit for “Jewish Veterans of Iraqi Freedom” or “Jewish Veterans of Vietnam” along with those of WWII.
The VHP relies on volunteers, both individuals and organizations, throughout the nation to contribute veterans’ stories. In addition to audio and video interviews, they accept memoirs, collections of original photographs and letters, diaries, maps, and other historical documents from World War I through current conflicts.
A quick look through the exhibit shows that it’s not just fantastical stories of heroism and intense combat either. May are the quirky, humorous, or plain tales from everyday life that is often overlooked and forgotten in “mainstream” documentaries.
If you or someone you know would like to participate in the project, you can sign up online via their information page.