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May 24, 2002/Sivan 13 5762, Vol. 54, No. 36
Belated military honors
Jewish vets may get long-denied recognition for wartime bravery
TOM TUGEND
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Visitors walk through the Korean War Veterans Memorial in Washington.
AP Photo/Bob Daugherty
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During the Korean War, Tibor Rubin secured a route of retreat for his company by single-handedly defending a hill for 24 hours against waves of North Korean soldiers.
Despite this and other acts of bravery, Rubin has never received the Medal of Honor, America's highest award for bravery in combat.
Now, however, there's a chance that Rubin and 137 other Jewish war veterans may receive some belated recognition.
The Pentagon recently received a request to examine whether or not the Jewish veterans were denied the Medal of Honor because they were Jews.
Similar appeals regarding anti-Semitism in awarding the Medal of Honor have been routinely ignored by the Pentagon over the decades.
But this time the request carries the force of a law, passed by Congress and signed by President Bush in December, ordering just such a review.
To some, the request may smack of special-interest politics, but it is not the first time that the U.S. military, now a model equal opportunity employer, has been forced to revisit its earlier record of discrimination against minorities.
In 1996, the Pentagon reviewed the files of Japanese-American and other Asian-American veterans, and belatedly awarded the Medal of Honor to 21 of them.
The records of African-American servicemen -institutionally segregated throughout World War II - were re-examined and eight were recognized for the nation's most prestigious decoration. A similar review of Hispanic veterans has been mandated.
The congressional bill providing for a review of selected Jewish veterans is known as the "Leonard Kravitz Jewish War Veterans Act." Kravitz, the uncle and namesake of rock musician Lenny Kravitz, was killed manning his lone machine gun against attacking Chinese troops during the Korean War, allowing the rest of his platoon to retreat in safety.
Kravitz was recommended for a Medal of Honor, but the award was downgraded to a Distinguished Service Cross, the second highest decoration.
All the men on the list, save one, had been awarded the service cross by the Army, Navy or Air Force. The exception is Rubin, who was recommended four times for the Medal of Honor by his commanding officers or comrades, two times for the Distinguished Service Cross, and twice for the Silver Star - but didn't get anything except two Purple Hearts and a 100 percent disability.
Rubin has two other distinctions he would just as soon forget - two years in a Nazi concentration camp as a teenager and 30 months in a North Korean prisoner-of-war camp.
The first impression on entering Rubin's modest home in Garden Grove, Calif., is a living room cluttered with plastic shopping bags and cardboard cartons. They hold 22 years worth of correspondence, appeals and affidavits by his erstwhile comrades, veteran organizations and congressmen, demanding recognition of Rubin's heroism - all routinely ignored by the Pentagon.
Even a small sampling of the papers reveals a record of bravery and sacrifice, counterpointed by the vicious anti-Semitism of a key figure.
Rubin was born in Paszto, a Hungarian shtetl of 120 Jewish families. He was the son of a shoemaker and one of six children. At age 13, he was transported to the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria and liberated two years later by American troops. Both his parents and two sisters perished in the Holocaust.
He came to the United States in 1948, settled in New York and worked first as a shoemaker and then as a butcher.
He tried to enlist in the U.S. Army in 1949, both as an assumed shortcut to American citizenship and, he hoped, to attend the army's butcher school in Chicago. Knowing hardly any English, he flunked the language test, but tried again in 1950 and passed, with some judicious help from two fellow test-takers.
By July of that year, Pvt. Rubin found himself fighting on the front lines in Korea. There he encountered the terror of First Sgt. Artice Watson.
According to lengthy affidavits submitted by nearly a dozen men who served under Watson, he was a vicious anti-Semite who consistently "volunteered" Rubin for the most dangerous patrols and missions.
For his harrowing acts of bravery, Rubin was three times recommended for the Medal of Honor by two of his commanding officers. Both were killed in action shortly afterward, but not before ordering Watson to initiate the necessary paperwork to secure the medals for Rubin.
Some of Rubin's fellow GIs were present when Watson was ordered to seek the medals, and all are convinced that he deliberately ignored the orders.
"I really believe, in my heart, that First Sgt. Watson would have jeopardized his own safety rather than assist in any way whatsoever in the awarding of the medal to a person of Jewish descent," wrote Cpl. Harold Speakman in a notarized affidavit.
Toward the end of October 1950, massive Chinese troop concentrations crossed the border into North Korea and attacked the unprepared Americans. After most of his regiment had been wiped out, the severely wounded Rubin was captured and spent the next 30 months in a prisoner-of-war camp.
Faced with constant hunger, filth and disease, most of the GIs simply gave up.
"No one wanted to help anyone. Everybody was for himself," wrote Sgt. Leo A, Cormier, Jr., a fellow prisoner.
The exception was Rubin. Almost every even-ing, he would sneak out of the camp to steal food from the Chinese and North Korean supply depots, knowing that he would be shot if caught.
"He shared the food evenly among the GIs," wrote Cormier. "He also took care of us, nursed us, carried us to the latrine. ... He did many good deeds, which he told us were 'mitzvahs' in the Jewish tradition."
The survivors of the camp credited Rubin with keeping 35 to 40 of their number alive and recommended him for the Medal of Honor, Distinguished Service Cross and Silver Star.
Cpl. Leonard Hamm of Indiana wrote the army that Rubin had saved his life, both on the battlefield and in the camp. He went on to upbraid the Pentagon for its "degrading and insulting treatment" of "one of the greatest men I have ever known and definitely one of the greatest heroes in this nation's history."
Should Rubin receive all the medals for which he has been recommended, he would become the most decorated American soldier of the Korean War.
Back in civilian life, Rubin finally got his American citizenship in 1953. He tried to resume his old job as a butcher, but a combination of crippling afflictions, traceable to his war wounds and POW experience, forced him to quit.
He now lives with his wife Yvonne, a Dutch Holocaust survivor, and has close ties with his son Frank, an Air Force veteran, and daughter Rosalyn.
Over the years, many attempts have been made to shake the Pentagon's apparent lethargy. In 1988, Sen. John McCain of Arizona introduced a special bill on Rubin's behalf. Former Rep. Robert Dornan (R-Calif.) pleaded for recognition of his constituent, and now the campaign is being spearheaded by Reps. Benjamin Gilman (R-N.Y.) and Robert Wexler (D-Fla.).
The Jewish War Veterans have championed Rubin's cause for many years. At one point, the organization collected 42,000 signatures on a petition, which was personally transmitted to President Reagan by a former JWV commander.
Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. James Cassella said that a review of the combat records of Jewish veterans, depending on their branch of service, would be conducted separately by the heads of the Army, Navy and Air Force.
After more than 50 years of waiting, Rubin hopes that the United States will finally and formally recognize his services.
"I want this recognition for my Jewish brothers and sisters," he says. "I want (non-Jews) to know that there were Jews over there, that there was a little greenhorn, a little shmuck from Hungary, who fought for their beloved country."
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