These three Jewish American World War II veterans may be upwards of 100 years old — or months away from the big centennial — but they’re full of life and stories to tell.
In honor of Jewish American Heritage Month, WWII veterans Al Jacobs, Frank Cohn and Harold Terens shared their experiences as Jewish American servicemen in a panel discussion moderated by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in the nation’s capital May 20.
The event was organized by the American Jewish Committee, Jewish War Veterans and the National Museum of American Jewish Military History.
Cohn, 99, who lives in Fort Belvoir, Virginia, was drafted for WWII just a month after his 18th birthday in 1943. He served as an infantry replacement to England, had stints in France and Belgium, and was even mistakenly detained during the Battle of the Bulge, he said at the event.
Born in 1923, Al Jacobs was drafted into the U.S. Army at the age of 20. He served two and a half years in the Army Air Corps. A radio operator, Jacobs was sent to India about 60 miles west of Calcutta, where he communicated with American pilots and helped them navigate over the Himalayas.
He didn’t engage in any combat during the war: “I had an easy time in service.”
At the event, Jacobs recalled attending Seders and dinners — some of the locals wanted to introduce the servicemen to their daughters, he said.
Harold Terens enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1942. He said he was “probably one of the only American soldiers stationed in Russia” during WWII. Terens helped repair and paint airplanes headed for Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944. In France shortly after, he helped transport recently captured Germans and just-freed American prisoners of war to England.
Terens notably didn’t realize the Holocaust was going on in Germany: “I had no idea that Jews were being persecuted. I had no idea that they were in concentration camps,” he said at the event.
Cohn, on the other hand, experienced this persecution firsthand, as he escaped Nazi Germany.
After celebrating the end of the war in 1945, Terens helped transport freed Allied prisoners to England before returning to the U.S., he said.
Blitzer, the moderator and son of two Holocaust survivors, shared that he feels indebted to the soldiers of WWII because “without them, his parents wouldn’t have survived, would not have gotten married,” said Joel Poznansky, an officer of JWV Post 692 who helped organize the event.
“We owe an enormous debt to the Greatest Generation,” Poznansky told Washington Jewish Week. “As several people said, none of us would be here if we’d lost the Second World War, if the soldiers had not done their duty as well as they did.”
He was glad to shine a light on Jewish American veterans.
“I want people to know that over 525,000 Jewish Americans served in uniform during the Second World War in every theater of war and in every capacity,” Poznansky said. “Many of them were very young men and women leaving their homes for the first time and traveling abroad under often very difficult circumstances.
“That’s what I want people to know — they weren’t supermen. They were just regular men and women doing their patriotic duty.”
Hearing anecdotes from these “regular men” helped humanize the war effort, according to Michael Rugel, the National Museum of American Jewish Military History’s program and content director.
“They’re amazingly human stories in the context of trying to win a war that has consequences unlike anything before or since,” Rugel said, adding that it was a “huge accomplishment” to gather three WWII veterans in a room 80 years after the war’s end.
Cohn, who does an average of one weekly speaking engagement, said he continues to share his story publicly to help combat hate, which leads to antisemitism.
Attendees told Poznansky that the veterans were “all over [or nearing] 100 years old and they had more vitality than anybody who you can possibly imagine,” Poznansky recalled after the event.
The veterans wove quips and funny moments into their anecdotes, with Cohn recalling how he led a group of new recruits to a theater for a viewing of “How to Avoid Venereal Disease” and Terens discussing how he got “blasted drunk” with his fellow soldiers while celebrating the end of WWII.
“Unless you use a little bit of humor, you’re going to lose your audience,” Cohn told Washington Jewish Week. “They like the humor and they stay and learn something in the process.”
