According to the US National Park Service, 11,000 Jewish servicemen fell in World War I and around the same number in World War II, fighting overseas.
However, Jewish headstones are notably scarce in the international cemeteries where 40% of American casualties are buried. This reality struck Shalom Lamm while walking the grounds of Normandy in 2014, on a tour led by Rabbi Dr. Jacob J. Schacter of Yeshiva University.
While at Normandy, where more than 4,000 Allied servicemen died on D-Day alone during Operation Overlord, the group made an unplanned detour to the Normandy American Cemetery to pay respects at the graves of some of the 26,000 US personnel killed in the region. The small detour and the questions it inspired would soon lead to a full-time job for Lamm, who, together with Schacter, went on to form Operation Benjamin, an organization that tracks down the graves of the unidentified Jews and aims to remedy the situation.
“I’d love to tell you that I had planned this as a career, and had a great amount of thought, but I’d be lying. It’s not how it happened at all,” Lamm, the organization’s chief historian, told The Jerusalem Post.
“I always liked things military. I’ve always been intrigued by American military history, and so as a father with a career and five kids and a very busy life, I went and got a master’s degree in military history in 2001, and that’s sort of the background to my interest in military history,” Lamm explained, speaking on how Operation Benjamin came into existence.
Less than a month after returning from the trip, Lamm recounted how Schacter had made one small comment that would soon plague his mind and begin his journey identifying and reburying Jewish soldiers: “It was magnificent, but I thought there would have been more Stars of David.”
“I literally sat there and I counted the stars, and there were 149. Where’d the missing Jews go? And that was the first question that came up, and that curiosity led to: well, why are there not as many Jews? Are there other cemeteries that don’t have as many Jews as there should be?” Lamm shared. “This continued to snowball until we came up with some crazy theories that were all wrong, but as we learned more and investigated more, out of pure intellectual curiosity, we started seeing there was a pattern and that Jews were underrepresented. And the question is, why were Jews underrepresented? And we slowly figured it out, how it happened, why it happened. These were innocent errors. There were mistakes, not of malice but of, really, the American government trying to do the right thing.”
The innocent errors made by the US were driven by several factors – including, in some cases, the actions of Jewish soldiers themselves. During World War II, it was not uncommon for Jewish servicemen to damage their dog tags – sometimes at the urging of a well-meaning superior – to avoid being identified as Jewish if captured by the enemy. As a result, when they fell in battle, the ID left little indication of their religious identity, and so they were buried under crosses.
“Nobody thinks they’re going to die. But then, when they were killed, the poor guy from the graves registration, right after a battle, what’s he supposed to do? He looks and he sees a ‘P’ for Protestant, buries him under a cross, and the next guy buries him, buries him under a cross. And this keeps going,” Lamm granted, noting the practical limitations which would prevent the mistakes from being corrected for the nearly 80 years following the deaths.
Lamm explained that with little technology at the time, the expense and impracticality of international travel meant that many families would never see the graves of their loved ones, and the mistaken headstones would remain.
“What’s amazing is not that there are so many mistakes; it is that there are so few,” Lamm explained, adding that soldiers were often buried four or five times before their final place of burial.
“Most families never saw these graves,” Lamm continued. “If you think about it, if you want to go from London to Tel Aviv today, you get on Expedia. Get on the Internet – it’s a nothing flight. It’s a nothing process. But after World War II, Europe was utterly and absolutely devastated, and it took a long time to get [somewhere]. There were no hotels. There was no way to do it, and families were poor, so they never went and visited, so they didn’t know that their loved ones were buried under crosses.”
Bringing peace to Jewish soldiers
Lamm estimates that between 600 and 900 American Jewish soldiers from both World Wars are mistakenly buried under crosses. With 40% of the fallen still buried overseas, he and his team must carefully navigate a host of international regulations to correct these errors.
While their efforts have seen them travel across continents, two of their most recent discoveries were in a territory far less exotic than what they may be used to: Arlington, Virgina.
Army Pvt. David Moser and Pfc. Adolph Hanf were both finally buried under the symbol of their Jewish faith after spending over a century under a cross.
During World War I, more deadly than bullets and bombs were the rampant diseases sweeping through Europe and the trenches. For every soldier killed in battle, 12 succumbed to illness (Lee County Historical Society), with 45,000 American troops dying from the Spanish flu alone. Among them was Moser, who died of influenza while fighting in Germany in 1918 and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery two years later.
Hanf, who migrated from Russia with his brother, was killed in 1918. His brother died childless, and so there were no relatives left to correct the mistaken headstone. After being lost and almost forgotten for 106 years, 150 mourners finally said kaddish for him in April in a joint ceremony.
“So the families had no idea. Well, one soldier’s family had no idea, because there was no family. He actually, literally, was alone in the world. There is no surviving family. We’ve traced that,” Lamm said of Hanf. “And the other soldier actually has family all over New York. They had no idea. They knew his story, that he was killed in the war, Uncle David, David Moser, but they had absolutely no idea he was buried under a cross. And when we pointed this out to them, they were horrified.”
Given the many years that have passed, the complex international connections, and the scarcity of surviving relatives, it might seem nearly impossible for cases like Hanf’s to be discovered – let alone for sufficient evidence to be found to authorize a headstone change. While such a task would overwhelm many, Operation Benjamin employs three full-time genealogists skilled at navigating these challenging cases.
“We do know that only two brothers came to the United States, Adolph Hanf and his brother; all the others remained in Europe. Some went to Poland, some remained in Russia. But after World War II, they disappeared entirely, except for one cousin who was in Poland, who died when he was 65 and had no children,” Lamm shared. “So that’s the end of the line for him.... We haven’t been able to find any trace of that family that proceeded forward.
“But the brother in the United States, the brother who did not get killed in the war, died childless. We can follow him perfectly. We have all of it, all of his records. His brother did live past World War I, but he never visited [Virginia]. He lived on the West Coast.”
Typically, changing a military headstone requires consent from a close family member. Without such a bloodline, it was only Operation Benjamin’s strong reputation and close ties with the military that prevented Hanf from spending eternity under a faith that was not his own.
Finding the lost Jewish servicemen
With nearly 525,000 names (Americans lost in both world wars) to sift through, Lamm explained that Operation Benjamin has developed several techniques to identify Jewish soldiers who were mistakenly recorded under other faiths.
Operation Benjamin’s World War I historian focuses especially on regiments from New York, a city known for its vibrant Jewish community, then as today. Working unit by unit and soldier by soldier, the historian manually checks if they once carried a Jewish serviceman’s card. Once identified, they check whether the soldier’s headstone bears a Star of David. These painstaking, time-consuming tasks are all done by hand, and when a possible error is found, the real work begins. For each Jewish serviceman buried under a cross, the historian must then trace his Jewish ancestry back at least three generations – spanning another century into the past.
“Sometimes we go back five and six generations,” Lamm shared, “and we create a consistency of Jewish heritage. And then we say: ‘Okay, if he’s buried under a cross, why did that happen? And the needle in the haystack, the detective work, is our having to prove how that happened.”
Once the research is 95% complete, and they are sure the serviceman was Jewish, Operation Benjamin delicately approaches the family. “We say, did you know that you have an uncle? Did you know that you have a grandfather? Did you know that you have a father who was killed in the war? And most of the time, better than 80% of the time, they had sort of a vague idea, but really knew nothing about that soldier. But because our research is so intense, we know tons about this soldier. We have his high school yearbook. I mean, we really go nuts. We know who married his parents. We know which synagogue they belong to. We know where his bar mitzvah was, because we get the records from the synagogue. This is the research we do,” Lamm said.
Much of the lost history and forgotten stories, Lamm explained, stem from the pain of loss. Parents, partners, and children of the deceased often chose not to share their loved one’s stories because it was simply too painful to speak of then – leaving those memories to fade away.
“People lost children in war. There’s nothing more horrifying that you can imagine, right?” Lamm said, reflecting on how the culture of grief at the time encouraged silence, condemning loved ones to become little more than a ‘faded photograph.’
For Lamm, facilitating these reunions is deeply emotional, something he wouldn’t trade for anything. “That’s part of my job – to introduce these families to their ancestor. It’s incredibly moving, incredibly gratifying, and truly special. Then we hold the ceremony, they come to Europe, and we change the headstone right in front of them. It’s unbelievable – really very moving.”
“I can proudly say I have cried at every single one of these,” he said, “because at the end of the day, you’re doing something that’s existential, and it’s for eternity, and it’s right, and it’s very emotional. It’s amazing.”
For some families who have married out of the religion, Lamm sheds light on a Jewish heritage that they were completely unaware of, as was the case with the descendants of 21-year-old Pfc. Ralph Greenstein.
Greenstein was buried in the Manila American Cemetery in the Philippines after being killed by an enemy grenade on April 5, 1945, on the Island of Cebu. The New Yorker had been assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 132nd Infantry Regiment of the Americal Division (B Company).
Before going off to war, he fathered a daughter with an Irish-Catholic woman. The daughter, only two years old when Greenstein fell, had no knowledge of her father’s Jewish faith. It was her descendant who eventually learned from Operation Benjamin about the mistaken headstone and gave permission for it to be corrected. Despite being a practicing Catholic, Lamm recalled, the grandson took pride in his Jewish heritage and strongly advocated for Greenstein’s headstone to be changed, which it eventually was in 2023.
In the many cases where non-Jewish relatives were informed, only one was “really angry and belligerent,” but several denied their ancestor a Jewish headstone and service, making the extensive work of Operation Benjamin unfruitful.
“If the family is no longer Jewish, they [sometimes] say: ‘Listen, this is very special, but we’re believing Christians, ’ and we don’t press. There are other circumstances where a guy is just a militant atheist and doesn’t care and is not interested, but is polite about it,” Lamm said. “And you know, it’s heartbreaking to us.”
For some, Operation Benjamin’s work brings about a painful truth that they will never be willing to accept. Lamm recounted how one mother had refused to acknowledge a grave, mistakenly marked with a cross, could be her son’s, and continued until her dying breath to insist that he was simply traveling the world.
In another emotional case, Operation Benjamin rescued an American soldier who had spent the best part of 80 years buried in a mass grave with Nazis, while his family only understood his status was “missing.”
A genealogist unaffiliated with Operation Benjamin contacted the nonprofit after discovering the name Nathan Baskind while searching a German cemetery database. The name stood out as distinctly non-German.
After researching the name, Lamm found that there was a first lieutenant by that name who had been missing for 79 years. Operation Benjamin began intense research into Baskind, and found circumstantial evidence that supported that the man buried in a German grave was actually 1st Lt. Nathan Baskind, of Pittsburgh – the very same Baskind who landed in Normandy on Utah Beach on D-Day with the 899th Tank Destroyer Battalion and who went missing after doing recon on enemy troops ahead of his unit in the Battle of Cherbourg on June 23, 1944.
It was later learned that Baskind was ambushed and shot, taken prisoner by the German Army, and sent to a Luftwaffe field hospital, where he later died and was buried along with 23 German soldiers. After the war, Baskind’s mass grave and another with 52 German military bodies were moved to the Marigny German War Graves Cemetery.
Through employing the generous help of the German ambassador to Israel, Operation Benjamin was granted permission from the US, Germany, and France to exhume the grave. With 17 pairs of hands and in freezing cold weather, Baskind was finally found.
Baskind’s twin sister and both parents died long before his fate was discovered in 2023, though his niece, a professor of Holocaust studies at Cleveland State University, was able to see him receive a proper burial in June 2024 at the Normandy American Cemetery. Baskind received full military honors and a fully halachic burial.
Operation Benjamin has provided a Jewish burial for Pfc. Frank Kurzinger, Technician Fourth Grade Ben Zion Bernstein, and 2nd Lt. Paul S. Singer, and closure for their families.
Kurzinger, a combat medic, fled Nazi Germany to Colorado with his family five years before enlisting. Fearing what would happen if he were captured, he wore a Catholic medal to conceal his identity.
In 1945, he was deployed to Italy during Allied efforts to capture the strategic point of Monte Belvedere from occupying German forces. On February 19, 1945, the 85th Infantry Regiment attempted to claim the location under darkness, but German booby traps wounded two of the soldiers, leaving them trapped under fire. Despite the personal risk, Kurzinger attempted to rush to their aid, when he stepped on a minefield and was killed instantly.
Kurzinger was finally given a Jewish star at the Florence American Cemetery in May this year.
Bernstein, born in Ohio to Russian-Jewish immigrants, enlisted in the US Army in 1941 and was quickly recruited into the elite American-Canadian commando unit First Special Service Force, also known as the “Devil’s Brigade.”
In 1943, his unit was deployed to Italy to fight in the Battle for the Bernhardt Line. During the first combat mission, Operation Raincoat, on December 3, 1943, Bernstein was killed by shell fragment wounds, along with 72 of his unit members.
His remains were initially buried near Monte La Difensa, before being relocated to the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery, under a Latin cross.
Bernstein’s remains remained under the cross until May of this year, despite the National Jewish Welfare Board verifying his Judaism in 1946.
Singer, born in Wisconsin in 1918, was the only child of Phillip and Irma Singer and was orphaned at 16. He attended Columbia University before enlisting in the Canadian Air Force and later in the US Army Air Forces, where he served as a navigator with the 506th Bomb Squadron, 44th Bomb Group.
On August 16, 1943, his aircraft was attacked above the German airfields near Foggia, Italy. While he was able to escape the plane, his parachute was damaged and he did not survive. He was buried alongside Jewish 2nd Lt. Sheldon Finder, whose parachute also failed, under a cross which has now been corrected.
Despite the tremendous work that Operation Benjamin puts into locating, researching, and reburying Jewish American servicemen, Lamm stressed that the results are made possible with the help of an endless stream of governments and organizations, not limited to the American Battle Monuments Commission, the US military, Arlington National Cemetery, and the American Battle Monuments Commission.
Despite the history, Lamm emphasized that two serving German military officers “went to the ends of the earth” to help Operation Benjamin fulfill its mission.