University Press of Kansas Logo

The GI’s Rabbi

World War II Letters of David Max Eichhorn

Edited by Greg Palmer and Mark S. Zaid

Introduction by Doris L. Bergen

November 2004
312 pages, 26 illustrations, 6-1/8 x 9-1/4
Modern War Studies
Cloth ISBN 978-0-7006-1356-4, $29.95 (t)

book cover imageWe saw 39 boxcars loaded with Jewish dead in the Dachau railway yard, 39 carloads of little, shriveled mummies that had literally been starved to death; we saw the gas chambers and crematoria, still filled with charred bones and ashes. And we cried not merely tears of sorrow. We cried tears of hate.

He was the soldier in the jeep with the big Star of David, driving from foxhole to foxhole, sometimes under fire, bringing faith and friendship to fighting men. David Max Eichhorn, a Jewish chaplain in the U.S. Army’s XV Corps, saw action across France and into Germany until VE-Day and beyond. He was there at the Battle of the Bulge, participated in the liberation of Dachau, and became embroiled in the behind-the-scenes controversy that led to the execution of Private Eddie Slovik.

Eichhorn’s letters show us a devoutly religious man trying to cope with the perils of combat and the needs of his fellow soldiers. They are filled with amazing stories and poignant insights as Eichhorn tells about combat experiences, relations with Christian chaplains, encounters with Jewish refugees, and impressions of the defeated Germans. Once he was ordered to hold a Yom Kippur service in a beleaguered French town that was still under attack. It was a tough assignment, but after 350 battle-grimed Jewish soldiers showed up he wrote, “I tell you unashamedly that, for the first time since I have been in France, I broke down and cried.” Yet that experience paled before the liberation of Dachau, where he organized the first Shabbat service for the survivors, or the fall of Nuremberg, where he and a handful of Jews held a ceremony
of thanksgiving at the site of Hitler’s infamous rallies.

Eichhorn also writes of French villagers hiding Jews, of the dangers faced by chaplains, and of the place of Jews in U.S. Army ranks. Throughout he vividly conveys the experience of war and how it altered forever a small-town rabbi—a man of faith and courage who never fired a gun in combat.

“This is a wonderful book. Eichhorn’s letters provide a compelling glimpse into the everyday life of a gifted rabbi through some of the most difficult times our nation ever experienced. His recollections of combat are poignant and powerful and his struggles to provide for his soldiers show the compassion of a gentle pastor and the passion of a proud and committed Jew.”--Michael Berenbaum, author of The World Must Know: The History of the Holocaust

“Emotional, insightful, and unique, The GI’s Rabbi is among the very best personal memoirs of American soldiers in Europe during World War II.”--Michael D. Doubler, author of Closing with the Enemy

“Elegantly introduced and edited, Eichhorn’s letters are amusing, disturbing, and enlightening. . . . A great read.”--Gerhard L. Weinberg, author of A World at Arms

GREG PALMER is a Peabody Award-winning screenwriter whose credits include the PBS documentary The Perilous Fight: America’s World War II in Color (in which Eichhorn appears) and Death: The Trip of a Lifetime. MARK S. ZAID, a grandson of David Max Eichhorn, is an attorney in Washington, D.C. DORIS L. BERGEN is associate professor of history at Notre Dame University and author of Military Chaplains from the First to the Twenty-First Century.