For Publication Only
Jewish Youth At War: Letters From American Soldiers.
by Isaac E. Rontch.
New York, Marsten Press, 1945. 304 pp. $3.00.
A Collection of letters of Jewish soldiers in the armed forces might have cast a revealing light on the character of the American soldier had the selection of the letters been made with less of the pious and sanctimonious bias that shapes this dull book. The soldiers who speak in these letters all say the right things. They all know the war is being fought for democracy; they are all glad to do their bit. They all minimize the degree of anti-Semitism in the armed forces; they are all pro-Negro and pro-labor, cheer on the gallant Russian comrades, admire the English people and are charmed with the French. These letter-writers are good boys who write home regularly to their parents and, in awkward, juvenile English, repeat only the official propaganda.
American soldiers, needless to say, weren’t like that. Nor were the Jews among them like that. There was not much difference. A soldier’s Jewishness brought him into contact with the Jews in other countries, predis posed him to listen sympathetically to what they had to say, and thus softened the fierce xenophobia that otherwise characterized the American soldier—but did not abolish it. Awareness of persecution promoted in a minority of Jews a sympathetic attitude towards the Negro soldier; the majority, anxious to conform, accepted all too easily the hate-attitudes that prevailed in respect to the Negro.
Perhaps less than any other soldier in the Western world was the American soldier humanized by the culture from which he sprang. Taught only the necessary mechanical skills of modem life, he surveyed the world he unwillingly traversed with an indifferent and incurious eye, dreaming of drugstores and Saturday night. He never understood the war’s purpose, but patiently endured the official efforts at “orientation,” glad at least for the respite from close-order drill. Overseas, to the despair of the authorities, he perversely insisted on disliking his allies and liking his enemies (insofar as he did not meet them in battle). He fetishized his souvenirs to make meaningful the otherwise meaningless distances he crossed over and pointless places at which he had been.
The only letters in this book that come alive out of something honestly felt are those that bear on the one eternal and incorruptible experience of war—death, and the death of comrades. “We have seen little of each other for so long—my views have ‘changed on some subjects. First of all, I’d rather not be sent those articles. For several months I suffered with nightmares. I used to make the landing at Tarawa. They had to fly me from Hilo to Pearl Harbor. There were only six of us in my boat that reached the beach alive. I don’t want to tell you these things, but I know there’s a war still on and I suffer each day in a way you can’t understand while my buddies are still out there. So, please don’t send me any more articles.”
One can imagine what sort of articles the writer of the letter preferred not to receive.
