American soldiers killed in battle were usually routinely buried with Christian gravestones—even if they were Jewish.
Such mistakes are now being identified and corrected.
Posted April 2023. Updates appear at the bottom of this post.
In early September 1944, Mrs Blanche Garadetsky received a telegram telling her that her son, Pfc Benjamin Garadetsky, had been killed in action in Normandy ten weeks after D-Day. He was 30 years old.
His religious identity was part of this military record, as he had registered with the National Jewish Welfare Board when he enlisted.
Nevertheless, Pfc. Garadetsky was buried in a Christian grave in the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial in Colleville-sur-Mer, France.
However, his distinctive surname led, years later, to the unravelling of this mistake, and the beginning of a movement to correct similar errors.
Normandy American Cemetery
Alerted by a friend who had visited the cemetery, Shalom Lamm, an American amateur historian, researched Garadetsky’s background. He’d been born in Zhitomir, part of Russia at the time, part of Ukraine today. His father emigrated to America, followed by his wife, son and daughter a few years later.
For Lamm, finding the historical Garadetsky documents that established the soldier’s actual religion was only the start. He then had to persuade the American Battle Monuments Commission to change the cross to a Star of David. Lamm details this effort on the Operation Benjamin website
Operation Benjamin was instrumental in the 2020 ceremony at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial in the Philippines when the graves of five Jewish soldiers were rededicated in a single ceremony.
“While we might never know exactly how the errors to their narratives were made — whether it was the chaos of conflict, a clerical error or personal omission due to the persecution of the Jewish people by the enemy — today, we erased those errors,” said William M. Matz, secretary of the American Battle Monuments Commission, who presided over the ceremony. (ABMC website)
24 May 2024: “The indomitable Martin Sugarman, the AJEX [Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and Women] archivist, has compiled a record of the many Jews who fought and died at Arnhem. Many went into battle under assumed names and are buried at the cemetery at Oosterbeek. In many cases, Sugarman has uncovered their true identity and ensured that a Star of David is engraved on their tombstone — and not the Cross.” Colin Shindler, Jewish Chronicle review of Saul David, Sky Warriors: British Airborne Forces in the Second World War, and Robert Verkaik, The Traitor of Arnhem: WWII’S Greatest Betrayal and the Moment that Changed History Forever.
https://www.thejc.com/life-and-culture/books/book-review-reassessing-kafka-100-years-on-d4uq9tny
1 June 2024: A Jewish-American soldier, Lt. Nathan Baskind, was killed two weeks after D-Day, but he was buried in a German military cemetery. Decades later, his remains were identified and he was reburied at the Normandy American cemetery in a grave marked with a Jewish star.
Further reading:
The New York Post, 1 June 2024, Jewish grave in Germany
American Battles Monument Commission (ABMC), 21 June 2024,
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