“More like brothers than friends. They way they lived. The way they died,” wrote William Kitay in the Birmingham News in 1945. He was referring to Harold Levin and Marvin Yudelson, two U.S. soldiers who grew up together in Birmingham’s Southside and died less than a month apart during WWII’s epic Battle of the Bulge.
Both men hailed from Birmingham’s Jewish community. They were “inseparable” from grade school to Ramsey High School, where they both played French horn in band and belonged to the same clubs, Kitay continues, and “Temple Beth El Hebrew and Sunday School. Bar Mitzvah. First date with girls. All at the same time.” They even both grew to 6 feet one inch tall.
A number of coincidences followed Harold and Marvin once they had both volunteered for the army. They crossed paths during maneuvers in Louisiana, and they were both assigned to the same school in New York. The two even got engaged just days apart, and then showed up at the same pier at the same time to embark for England as part of the 75th Infantry Division.
On January 9, 1945, Marvin was killed by artillery fire while leading his platoon. Less than a month later, on February 5, Harold, a combat medic, died alongside the three wounded men he was trying to rescue. “Harold was found still clutching the bandages he had partially wrapped about his wounded buddies,” Kitay writes. “For this he received the Bronze Star Medal — ‘service beyond the call of duty.’”
Marvin and Harold were both 23 years old. The pallbearers were the same for both funerals, and they are buried just a few yards apart in Birmingham’s Knesseth Israel Cemetery.
Devoted service
When these men were lost fighting the fascist forces of the Axis Powers, the United States was still struggling with its own issues with racism and antisemitism. So secular Jewish organizations in America worked together to record in full the names and awards of every American Jew who served during WWII.
The prodigious project was completed by the Bureau of War Records of the National Jewish Welfare Board to demonstrate that “American Jews marched, American Jews fought, American Jews suffered, bled, died. They behaved as heroes, behaved as men, behaved as Americans. They made their sacrifices side by side with their fellows, on wreck-strewn beaches, in blood-stained waters, in stricken and plummeting aircraft. The Jews of this nation were there, fighting with valor and full measure — and in full proportion to their numbers in the American community.” Jewish graves can be found in every American military cemetery around the world.
Here’s what we know about the other portraits on the wall:
This story was written by LJCC Communications Manager David Gonnerman and amateur historian Zach Dembo. See Zach’s most recent story and more of his writing here…