Tagged World War II

(JTA) — My father, whose own father changed his unpronounceable last name to Carroll when he came to America, would often tell a story about job hunting in the late 1940s and 50s. It was only after the interview that the men across the desk would ask, “And all… Read more »

Richard H. Love, 95, died Feb. 27, 2018. Mr. Love was born in Detroit. He flew a B24 Liberator in World War II as a first lieutenant in the Army Air Force.  He was a manager at the Michigan branch of Dominion Risk Management, an insurance provider. Mr. Love… Read more »

A U.S. Army casket team lays to rest Pfc. Bernard Gavrin at Arlington National Cemetery while Rabbi Marvin Bash looks on, Sept. 12, 2014. (Ron Kampeas)

ARLINGTON, Va. (JTA) — The scene at Arlington National Cemetery last Friday was not quite routine, but nor was it unusual: A clergyman said a prayer, an army NCO handed Bernard Gavrin’s closest living relative a folded U.S. flag, and a volunteer — one of the “Arlington Ladies” who… Read more »

From left to right: John Goodman, Matt Damon, George Clooney, Bob Balaban and Bill Murray star in "The Monuments Men" (Claudette Barius/Columbia Pictures)

BOSTON (JTA) — There’s nothing like a star-studded Hollywood movie to shine a light on a little-known piece of history. That’s the hope of Robert Edsel, who wrote the book that inspired “The Monuments Men,” the George Clooney-Matt Damon film that opens Friday in theaters across the country. The… Read more »

Phyllis Fields, second from right, during a 1989 family trip to Hawaii. (Courtesy Fields family)

The Seeking Kin column aims to help reunite long-lost relatives and friends. BALTIMORE (JTA) – Earlier this month, a “Seeking Kin” column concluded with Rozanne Dittersdorf of New York expressing hope that Phyllis Garfunkel, a childhood friend with whom she lost contact in the late 1940s, “found happiness over… Read more »

Harry Ettlinger, right, and Dale Ford, U.S. soldiers who served in the Monuments Men, are shown in 1945 or 1946 inspecting a Rembrandt self-portrait in a salt mine where the Nazis stored stolen and hidden art. (Courtesy National Archives and Records Administration)

The “Seeking Kin” column aims to help reunite long-lost friends and relatives. BALTIMORE (JTA) — Like many immigrants from Germany who fought in the U.S. military during World War II, Harry Ettlinger served his adopted country by translating captured materials and interpreting during interrogations of enemy prisoners. But within… Read more »

Frisians in traditional garb celebrating Fisherman's Day in Harlingen, Aug. 31, 2012. (Cnaan Liphshiz)

LEEUWARDEN, Netherlands (JTA) – When Jacob Nathan de Leeuwe found himself returning nearly two decades ago from his home in a suburb of Amsterdam to this isolated idyll he calls “the end of the world,” it undoubtedly was the pull of his roots. De Leeuwe’s family had lived in… Read more »

Marika Weinberger, a Holocaust survivor and former president of the Australian Association of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Descendants. (Henry Benjamin)

SYDNEY (JTA) — In a court ruling that is bringing new attention to Australia’s failure to prosecute alleged Nazi-era war criminals, the government will not surrender to Hungary the man believed to be the country’s last World War II war crimes suspect. The nation’s High Court ruled Wednesday that… Read more »

Mitchell Flint standing in front of his P51 Mustang fighter plane in Israel in 1948. (Courtesy Tom Tugend)

LOS ANGELES (JTA) — After a 64-year detour, Mitchell Flint, a former fighter pilot for the United States and Israel, has finally landed for the London Olympic Games. In the summer of 1948, Flint, with a four-year wartime stint as a U.S. Navy fighter pilot in the Pacific under… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — Albert Einstein stepped forward several times in the 1930s and 1940s to help raise money for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Now, more than half a century later, the international Jewish news service known these days as JTA is hoping the father of relativity can come… Read more »

Ernie Blake, founder of Taos Ski Valley, with his wife, Rhoda, in an undated photo. (Courtesy Taos Ski Valley)

TAOS, N.M. (JTA) – One of the most wonderful things about skiing is the sense of seclusion, the incomparable quietude and serenity of standing atop a 12,000-foot peak surveying miles and miles of snow-covered emptiness. Somehow the prosaic concerns of the everyday world don’t seem to reach there. So… Read more »

In preparation for an upcoming display at the Tucson Jewish Community Center celebrating the Allied victors of World War II and the liberation of Europe, volunteer Bill Kugelman and JCC communications specialist Marty Johnston are collecting historical artifacts. To date, Jeffrey A. Marks has donated a World War II… Read more »