Washington Times - Jews don gray, fight for SouthHello,
Here is a segment of our history that most American's today are not aware of.
Deo Vindice,
Mike in Sacto
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Jews don gray, fight for South
Gordon Berg SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES
There are 30 of them, with names such as Adler, Cohen, Hessberg, Wolf and
Seldner. They came from Virginia, Mississippi, Texas, North Carolina, South
Carolina, Georgia and Louisiana. All of them were soldiers, Jews, and they all
died in Virginia during the Civil War.
Today they lie together in a peaceful plot known as the Soldier's Section of the
old Hebrew Cemetery, the oldest Jewish military cemetery in the world, on
Richmond's Shockoe Hill.
Jews had lived in Richmond since the 1760s, and by 1860, the city boasted three
synagogues. In 1816, the Richmond Common Council deeded one acre of land on
Shockoe Hill to Kaal Kadosh Beth Shalome "to be by them held and exclusively
used as a burying-ground, subject to their rites and laws, for that purpose and
for that alone."
In 1843, Congregation Beth Ahabah, founded two years earlier by German Jews,
gained burial privileges shared with the older synagogue until the congregations
merged in 1898. Many prominent Jewish business and cultural leaders are buried
in the Hebrew Cemetery, now comprising 8.4 acres, although Jews also are buried
in other Richmond cemeteries.
Donning the gray
When the Southern states began to secede from the Union and war seemed imminent,
young Jewish men across the South flocked to the Confederacy's colors with the
same enthusiasm as their Christian counterparts, and for many of the same
reasons.
Because Jews rarely self-identified outside of their religious communities and
did not form ethnic regiments like the Irish or the Germans, it is hard to know
precisely how many donned Confederate gray. Estimates run between 2,000 and
3,000. New Orleans, the South's largest city, also had the would-be nation's
largest concentration of Jews. Charleston, S.C., Atlanta and Richmond also had
sizable Jewish populations.
Richmond's Jews quickly immersed themselves in the war effort, both on and off
the battlefield. More than 100 enlisted in the Confederate army, including 15
who joined the Richmond Blues, later to become the 46th Virginia Infantry.
Myer Angle, president of Beth Ahabah, had six sons who served in the Army of
Northern Virginia. Rabbi Maximilian J. Michelbacher waged a campaign throughout
the war for religious observances on behalf of Jewish Confederates. He wrote
repeatedly to Gen. Robert E. Lee, requesting furloughs for the soldiers to
attend High Holy Days and Passover services. Lee respectfully declined each
time.
The men buried in the Soldier's Section rest in hallowed ground, maintained
today by the Hebrew Cemetery Co. because after the war, a devout and determined
group of Jewish women followed the example of their gentile sisters and formed a
memorial association to, in the words of historian Caroline E. Janney, "bury the
dead but not the past."
Powerful symbols
Organized on June 5, 1866, the Hebrew Ladies' Memorial Association (HLMA) began
a process, repeated in communities all across the South, to rebury Confederate
soldiers and sanctify their memory by erecting monuments and celebrating
memorial days that honored their sacrifice. Historian Gaines Foster says these
memorial associations "helped to ensure that the Confederate dead became
powerful cultural symbols," thus enabling the ghosts of the Confederacy to haunt
the New South for decades.
Rachel Levy, HLMA's corresponding secretary, dedicated the plot of ground for
the Soldier's Section the same day the organization was created. The HLMA
couldn't afford the expense of maintaining the plot, so Levy issued a printed
appeal to the "Israelites of the South" for "some pecuniary assistance" to
"furnish a simple stone" at the head of each grave.
The circular, printed in newspapers across the South, concluded with a ringing
affirmation of Jewish patriotism to the Confederate cause. "When the malicious
tongue of slander, ever so ready to assail Israel, shall be raised against us,"
it read, "then with a feeling of mournful pride, will we point to this monument
and say 'There is our reply.' "
Originally the Soldier's Section consisted of six rows with five plots to a row,
each grave marked by a simple marble headstone. Deterioration and the cost of
maintenance caused the individual markers to be removed in the 1950s, replaced
by a granite boulder with a bronze plaque containing 29 names and recognition of
one unknown (probably identified as a Jew because he was circumcised).
Five Jewish soldiers who also died in battle are buried outside the Soldier's
Section, and as many as 40 Confederates are buried elsewhere within the Hebrew
Cemetery.
The iron fence
In 1871, the association commissioned William Barksdale Myers, a noted Richmond
artist, to design a wrought-iron fence to surround the Soldier's Section. Myers
had served as an engineer officer and adjutant for Maj. Gens. Samuel Jones and
William B. Loring during the war and was described as "witty and full of quaint
satire ... a good and reliable officer."
The posts of the fence are furled Confederate flags with stacked muskets, with a
flat Confederate soldier's cap on top of them. The railings between the posts
are crossed swords and sabers hung with wreaths of laurel. The fence is
considered the finest piece of 19th-century ornamental ironwork in the city.
Myers died at age 33, two years after designing the fence.
Like other memorial associations, the HLMA collected money for maintaining the
Soldier's Section and sponsored speakers for Memorial Day celebrations. Because
Jews do not adorn graves with flowers, the boundary fence usually was wreathed
in greenery for special occasions.
During the early decades of the 20th century, many ladies' memorial associations
began to decline, often merging into other benevolent or commemorative
organizations, such as the United Daughters of the Confederacy. The HLMA of Beth
Ahabah never numbered more than 60 members. It closed its financial accounts in
October 1943.
Capt. Jacob A. Cohen
It's not clear how these 30 men came to be buried in the Soldier's Section, and
there is only partial information about many of them. Even the accuracy of some
of the data on the bronze tablet adorning the monument today is open to
question.
Nevertheless, personal information pieced together from Beth Ahabah records,
regimental histories and service records stored in the National Archives reveal
that these soldiers probably represented a cross section of the rich and diverse
Jewish life that thrived in the South during the antebellum and war years.
Three officers are buried in the Soldier's Section. Capt. Jacob A. Cohen, 41, of
Company A, 10th Louisiana Infantry, probably was the oldest when he died along
with 18 other men from his regiment on Aug. 30, 1862, in the desperate fighting
along the railroad cut at the Battle of Second Manassas.
The men of the 10th Louisiana were predominantly immigrant Irish, recruited in
the tough New Orleans neighborhood known as the Irish Channel. Cohen, probably
born in Dublin, was a laborer before enlisting.
Literate in spite of his humble profession, Cohen had written a scathing letter
to Rabbi Max Lilienthal of Cincinnati after Lilienthal had castigated Southern
Jews who supported secession. Across a picture of the respected and well-known
rabbi, Cohen wrote: "I shall be engaged actively in the field and should be
happy to rid Israel of the disgrace of your life."
A charming officer
Lt. William Meyer Wolf of Company G, 11th South Carolina Infantry, was just 21
when he was killed at Swift Creek during the siege of Petersburg on May 9, 1864.
When Wolf died, the regiment's colonel wrote to his father in Ridgeville, S.C.,
calling the young lieutenant "one of the most efficient, active, and charming
officers of his rank in my regiment." Wolf's company paid for his coffin.
The body of Pvt. Julius Zork (listed as Zark on the plaque) of Company E, 7th
Louisiana Infantry, probably traveled the farthest after he was killed in the
Shenandoah Valley at the Battle of Cross Keys on June 8, 1862. Pvt. Henry L.
Caldwell recorded in his diary that he saw Zork, a hat maker from New Orleans,
die instantly from a bursting Union artillery shell.
Moses Levy of the 16th Mississippi Infantry also died in the valley. The 16th
was part of Gen. Stonewall Jackson's foot cavalry and the only Mississippi
regiment to fight in the storied 1862 Valley Campaign. Levy probably was wounded
at the Battle of Winchester on May 25, 1862. He died six days later while his
regiment was marching south toward Strasburg.
Solomon Oury, also of the 16th Mississippi, died in an environment far less
bucolic than the Shenandoah Valley. On June 16, 1864, the day Oury died, his
regiment was on the move to Camp Holly on New Market Heights outside of
Petersburg. It's not clear how Oury died, but it could have been from wounds
received at the slaughter pen that was the Battle of Cold Harbor.
Henry Gintzberger of the 9th Virginia Infantry was killed at Cold Harbor on June
2, 1864, and his story probably is the most unusual of all. A German immigrant,
Gintzberger was a peddler in Roanoke County before he enlisted in the Salem
Flying Artillery at the beginning of the war. A comrade recalled that "the only
Jewish soldier in the Command was shot thru the head while peering over the
breastworks." His name, however, was mistakenly reported to be Gersberg, and he
was buried in the Soldier's Section under that name. It wasn't until 1963 that
his true identity was established and his proper name added to the bronze
plaque.
Fitting epitaph
Five other Virginians are buried in the Soldier's Section. Henry Adler, 22, of
the 46th Virginia was the first private in his regiment wounded in action on
Roanoke Island. He died on March 18, 1862 at a hospital in Portsmouth, Va.
Matthew Isaac Hessberg of the 30th Virginia died of typhoid fever on Oct. 16,
1861, in Fredericksburg, Va. Isaac Seldner was a clerk in Norfolk when he
enlisted in the 6th Virginia. Captured at Crampton's Gap just before the Battle
of Antietam, Seldner was killed at Chancellorsville on May 3, 1863.
These soldiers all died fighting for a cause in which they believed. A sentence
in Levy's 1866 appeal for financial assistance can probably serve as a fitting
epitaph for all the men buried in the Soldier's Section. "While as Israelites we
mourn the untimely loss of our loved ones," she wrote, "it will be a grateful
reflection that they suffered not their country to call in vain."
• Gordon Berg is past president of the Civil War Round Table of the District
of Columbia.
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