A North Vietnamese flag on the wall of Washington’s Jewish military museum got the gears in Lt. Col. Sheldon Goldberg’s head turning: Were there any Jewish prisoners of war in Hanoi during the Vietnam War?

The lifelong member of Jewish War Veterans consulted his friend, Col. David Brog, who gave him biographies and photographs of four Jewish airmen who had been among the 600 Americans held in the Hao Lo Prison.

“When I contacted one of them, I found out that there were two others, and so now we had six,” Goldberg told Washington Jewish Week. “As I got into their bios and contacted them, I got to thinking that this should be a book.”

He is currently “wrapping up some loose ends” of a five-chapter book on these prisoners of war titled, “Hanoi’s Jewish POWs: Six Came Home, Five Survived.” The title is a reference to the fact that one of the POWs died by suicide after returning home.

The Silver Spring resident brought the former POWs’ stories to the Bender Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington in Rockville on Nov. 9 for the JWV Post 692’s 10th annual Veterans Day program.

“[There’s an] idea that Jews don’t fight; that we’re doctors, we’re lawyers, we’re dentists, but we’re not soldiers,” Goldberg said. “I think it’s important that [people] know what these people did and what they went through and what they’ve done with their lives afterwards.”

Goldberg said that while many of over 700 U.S. prisoners of war in Vietnam wrote books after being freed, none of the Jewish ones did. Three of them are still alive, he noted.

Arthur Neil Black, a pararescueman in the United States Air Force, spent more than seven years as a POW in the capital of Vietnam. Along with Bill Robinson, he shares the record for being the longest-held enlisted American POW in history. The then-20-year-old was flying with the 41st Air Rescue Squadron when his helicopter was shot down over North Vietnam in September 1965.

After 2,703 days in captivity, Black was released during the 1973 Operation Homecoming and was briefly hospitalized in Prince George’s County for his injuries. He was commissioned as an officer by fellow POWs in Vietnam and the promotion was recognized by President Richard Nixon upon his return.

Melvin Pollack, also a member of the U.S. Air Force, was on a combat mission when he was forced to eject over North Vietnam in July 1967. Pollack was taken as a POW about 50 miles north of Hanoi and held for five years and eight months.

He and his fellow prisoners faced isolation, degrading treatment, torture, interrogation and brainwashing. After his 1973 release, Pollack continued his career in the Air Force and eventually became a lieutenant colonel.

Army flight surgeon Col. Floyd Harold Kushner’s helicopter crashed in enemy territory in November 1967, according to the Library of Congress. He spent the next five and a half years imprisoned, mostly in “rudimentary POW camps” in parts of South Vietnam held by the Viet Cong.

“The people that were prisoners of the Viet Cong suffered terrible malnutrition, dying heat. Kusher will tell you that 10 Americans died in his arms [from] malnutrition and lack of care,” Goldberg said. “He himself said he … had doubts about himself and didn’t know whether he was going to live or die until just before the end [of the war].”

In 1971, Kushner was forced to march more than 550 miles north to Hanoi, where he remained for the rest of the war. “Once he got there, the food was a little bit better. The conditions were a little bit better,” Goldberg said. “He knew then that he was going to live.”

The other three known Jewish POWs in Hanoi — Brigadier General Alan Lurie, First Lt. Edward Brudno and Captain Charles Jackson — have since died.

Goldberg has documented many of these stories and was excited about sharing them with the Jewish community in honor of Veterans Day.

“I just thought this would be something that could [give Jewish POWs] their 15 minutes of fame, if you will, and let people know that, ‘We were there, and this is the price that we paid because of who we are and what we did,’” Goldberg said.

zbell@midatlanticmedia.com