With plans set for a monument honoring Jewish chaplains to be dedicated at Arlington National Cemetery Columbus Day weekend, the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington has initiated a campaign to help raise funds for that memorial and to create a new glossy brochure of Jewish sites in the cemetery.
JHS sees its Arlington Campaign as a community project, according to Laura Cohen Apelbaum, executive director, and is therefore seeking to raise small contributions from at least 100 area Jews, with a goal of $10,000. "We want to make the contribution on behalf of the Washington Jewish community," she said.
The memorial will be on Chaplains Hill, a section of the cemetery that already has monuments to chaplains who died in World War I, none of them Jewish; to 134 Protestant chaplains; and to 83 Catholic chaplains who died in World War II, Korea and Vietnam.
The new monument will memorialize nine Jewish chaplains who died in World War II, one in Korea and three who died during the Vietnam War era, according to Sol Moglen of Caldwell, N.J., who is spearheading the project with Ken Kraetzer of Westchester, N.Y.
The overall effort has reached its goal of $30,000, according to Moglen, who said fund raising continues with an objective of "publishing a 30-page booklet that will be a history of the Jewish chaplains," as well as paying the travel costs for family members of the chaplains being remembered.
JHS' brochure also will focus on other Jewish service members buried at Arlington, and will be done in conjunction with the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Washington.
