Mike Rugel | Jews in Green

Passover Latkes in Goebbels’ Castle

31 Mar 2015 Mike Rugel

Corporal Sidney Talmud of Brooklyn was with the 38th Signal Construction Battalion marching through Germany in 1945. He had the opportunity to prepare food for a unique Passover service at Schloss Reydt, the Rennaissance-era palace used as a vacation home by Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. Goebbels had played the key role in creating an environment that allowed for the attempted destruction […]

2015 Normandy Kaddish Project

30 Mar 2015 Mike Rugel

For the second year, the Normandy Kaddish Project is requesting that people around the country and the world say kaddish at Shabbat services on June 5th for those that fell in the vicious fighting in 1944 at Normandy. June 6th is the anniversary of D-Day, when the Allied invasion of Normandy began. There are 149 American Jewish graves at the Normandy American Cemetery. These names […]

Chaplain Roland Gittelsohn Talk at NMAJMH, March 8th

25 Feb 2015 Mike Rugel

Sunday, March 8, 2015, 1:00 p.m. Lee Mandel on Chaplain Roland Gittelsohn: Unlikely Warrior Michael Bloom on the History of the Military Siddur In 1945, when a fellow chaplain opposed Jewish participation in the religious service dedicating the 5th Marine Division Cemetery at Iwo Jima, Rabbi Roland Gittelsohn ended up giving his eulogy to a much smaller group of Jewish […]

Guard of Israel – Bencin Riseman and Family in WWI

12 Feb 2015 Mike Rugel

Russian-immigrant Bencin Riseman joined the Massachusetts National Guard and served on the Mexican Border in 1916. When that conflict ended, Riseman returned home to Boston. The Great War was raging in Europe and Riseman anticipated the need for a growing military in the U.S. He began recruiting in an unofficial capacity. He was particularly interested in training young American Jews to prepare for […]

The American Jewish Soldier Who Brought Democracy to Japan

28 Jan 2015 Mike Rugel

Colonel Charles Kades spent most of his overseas service during World War II in Europe. He landed in Southern France on D-Day, and participated in the multiple campaigns and the battle for Rhineland. But it was in Japan that Kades would leave his legacy. A native of Newburgh, N.Y., he arrived in Japan one week before the Japanese surrender aboard the U.S.S Missouri. […]

Abe Plotkin Recalls Liberating Ohrdruf Concentration Camp

21 Jan 2015 Mike Rugel

Abe Plotkin of Scranton, Pennsylvania served with the 284th Field Artillery, 3rd Army in France and Germany during WWII. In this new video from the National Museum of American Jewish Military History, he describes what it was like, as an American Jew, to discover the Ohrdruf concentration camp and the horrors of the Holocaust in April 1945.

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