An Open Letter
AN OPEN LETTER TO:
“THE PROUD BOYS” (although we’ve never figured out what you are proud of or why), the “3 PERCENTERS” (despite the fact that your name is historically inaccurate), the OATH BREAKERS (‘nough said), the IDIOTS WHO MARCHED WITH TIKI TORCHES IN CHARLOTTESVILLE (with an apology to idiots), and the MARAUDERS OF 1/6:
After much prayer, reflection, study and just plain revving-up our common sense, we’ve determined that you have much to teach us, if – and only if – you can match the courage of Tbor Rubin and/or Benjamin Levy. And, to make it easy for you, we won’t ask you to come close to Volodymyr Zelensky.
The Medal of Honor is the highest decoration a member of the U.S. Armed Forces can receive for outstanding heroism and bravery. It is bestowed on those who have distinguished themselves through “conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his or her life above and beyond the call of duty.”
Among the recipients, immigrants who were not yet citizens, were:
Tbor Rubin was one of six children and the third son of his Hungarian parents. At age 15, his parents launched him on a futile journey to Switzerland, hoping he would escape Nazi brutality and the Mauthausen concentration camp to which his brother Emery had been sent. Ultimately, Ruben suffered the same fate; his parents and sister Edith were murdered in Auschwitz in 1944; Rubin and Emery were liberated by US forces on May 5, 1945. Ruben, his two brothers and two sisters found their way to the United States, where Rubin fulfilled a promise he made to himself at liberation – to become a “GI Joe.” It was a promise fulfilled when the English-poor immigrant received a little “help” from fellow test takers.
Though not yet a US citizen, he was part of the 8th Cavalry Regiment, First Cavalry Division under the “leadership” of a sergeant described by other soldiers as a “vicious anti-Semite,” who regularly gave Rubin the most dangerous assignments.
On one assignment, the soldier singlehandedly defended a hill against a steady torrent of North Korean forces for twenty-four hours. When several officers recommended this immigrant Jew for the Medal of Honor, the sergeant refused to submit the paperwork, despite affidavits from other soldiers that the sergeant had purposefully attempted to get Rubin killed and denied him commendations – because of his religion.
In Fall 1950, Rubin’s unit was nearly decimated and he was wounded several times before he and other Americans became prisoners of war in November. The Hungarian-American soldier called on the survival skills he had honed in Mauthausen – sneaking out of the camp at night to steal from enemy depots the food other Americans needed to survive. When the North Koreans learned of his Hungarian birth, they offered to return him to his “People’s Republic” and “freedom.” Tbor Rubin refused. He was an American soldier and performing mitzvahs – good deeds – for his fellow Americans was important. He knew survival was “mind over matter” and convinced a fellow POW to keep fighting by bribing him with “medicine” – actually goat droppings disguised as pills. The American soldier found the strength to stay alive.
At only 24-years-old and already twice a prisoner, Tbor Rubin and his fellow American POWs were freed on April 21, 1953. He had spent a total of four of his twenty-four years in prison camps. Six months later, he became an American citizen.
In the 1980s, his fellow soldiers began protesting to the Army about the lack of recognition of his bravery and life-saving efforts. In 2002, the National Defense Authorization Act called for the review of the war records of Jewish- and Hispanic-American vets from World War II through Vietnam who had met the criteria for the Medal of Honor but were denied due to racism.
In a September 25, 2005 White House ceremony, President George W. Bush presented the Medal of Honor to 76-year-old Tbor Rubin:
For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life… While his unit was retreating to the Pusan Perimeter, Corporal Rubin was assigned to stay behind to keep open the vital Taegu-Pusan road link used by his withdrawing unit. During the ensuing battle, overwhelming numbers of North Korean troops assaulted a hill defended solely by Corporal Rubin. He inflicted a staggering number of casualties on the attacking force during his personal 24-hour battle, single-handedly slowing the enemy advance and allowing the 8th Cavalry Regiment to successfully complete its withdrawal… During the advance, he helped capture several hundred North Korean soldiers. On October 30, 1950, Chinese forces attacked his unit at Unsan, North Korea, during a massive night-time assault. That night and throughout the next day, he manned a .30 caliber machine gun at the south end of the unit’s line after three previous gunners became casualties. He continued to man his machine gun until his ammunition was exhausted. His determined stand slowed the pace of the enemy advance in his sector permitting the remnants of his unit to retreat southward. As the battle raged, Corporal Rubin was severely wounded and captured by the Chinese. Choosing to remain in the prison camp despite offers from the Chinese to return him to his native Hungary, Corporal Rubin disregarded his own personal safety and immediately began sneaking out of the camp at night in search of food for his comrades. Breaking into enemy food storehouses and gardens, he risked certain torture or death if caught. Corporal Rubin provided not only food to the starving soldiers, but also desperately needed medical care and moral support for the sick and wounded of the POW camp. His brave, selfless efforts were directly attributed to saving the lives of as many as 40 of his fellow prisoners….
On June 30, 1862 Private Benjamin Levy, the son of immigrants and a member of the 1st New York Volunteers, was a 17-year-old drummer boy assigned as an orderly/messenger, carrying dispatches onboard the steamboat Express when it was attacked by Confederate forces; with the Express in danger of capture, Benjamin Levy cut loose a water schooner they had in tow, freeing the Express to arrive safely at Fort Monroe.
In June 1862, Levy’s regiment was assigned to reinforce the Army of the Potomac; on the morning of June 30, the 1st New York was attacked as the regiment formed for muster. Because his tentmate, Jacob Turnbull, was seriously ill and to save him from being taken prisoner, Levy threw away his drum, grabbed his comrade’s gun and equipment and went into the fight.
Regimental “colors” had tactical and ceremonial significance, marking a regiments line of battle. Soldiers looked for the colors to see where they should be. Protecting the flag was a task given to the senior-most sergeant and the enemy concentrated fire on the man holding the flag. If he was shot and the colors fell, a retreat could result.
The Battle of Glendale began around 3:00 p.m. and in less than ten minutes, four color sergeants and eleven corporals – all but one member of the “color guard” -fell to intense fire. When color bearer Charley Mahorn was felled by a Confederate bullet, Levy charged ahead and picked up the unit’s colors to rally his regiment in defense until relieved by other Union forces. In the end, 230 solders of the 1st New York – a quarter of the men who went into action - were killed, wounded or missing.
When his two-year enlisted was completed, levy reenlisted and was severely wounded during the Battle of the Wilderness – May 5-7, 1864 - and received a discharge due to disability in May 1865.
These heroes remind us that anti-Semitism is cowardly and unpatriotic!
It is also un-Christian.
On October 28, 1965, Pope Paul VI promulgated Nostra Aetate: Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions. It was the first document of the bishops of the Catholic Church gathered in the Second Vatican Council and “promulgated to the glory of God.” It is doctrinally binding on all Catholics. In part, the document reads:
One is the community of all peoples, one their origin, for God made the whole human race to live over the face of the earth. One also is their final goal, God. His providence, His manifestations of goodness, His saving design extend to all men, until that time when the elect will be united in in the Holy City, the city ablaze with the glory of God, where the nations will walk in His light…
As the Sacred Synod searches into the mystery of the Church, it remembers the bond that spiritually ties the people of the New Covenant to Abraham's stock.
Thus, the Church of Christ acknowledges that, according to God's saving design, the beginnings of her faith and her election are found already among the Patriarchs, Moses and the prophets. She professes that all who believe in Christ -- Abraham's sons according to faith -- are included in the same Patriarch's call, and likewise that the salvation of the Church is mysteriously foreshadowed by the chosen people's exodus from the land of bondage. The Church, therefore, cannot forget that she received the revelation of the Old Testament through the people with whom God in His inexpressible mercy concluded the Ancient Covenant. Nor can she forget that she draws sustenance from the root of that well-cultivated olive tree onto which have been grafted the wild shoots, the Gentiles. Indeed, the Church believes that by His cross Christ Our Peace reconciled Jews and Gentiles, making both one in Himself…
The Church… also recalls that the Apostles, the Church's main-stay and pillars, as well as most of the early disciples who proclaimed Christ's Gospel to the world, sprang from the Jewish people…
…God holds the Jews most dear for the sake of their Fathers; He does not repent of the gifts He makes or of the calls He issues -- such is the witness of the Apostle. In company with the Prophets and the same Apostle, the Church awaits that day, known to God alone, on which all peoples will address the Lord in a single voice and "serve him shoulder to shoulder.”
Since the spiritual patrimony common to Christians and Jews is thus so great, this Sacred Synod wants to foster and recommend that mutual understanding and respect which is the fruit, above all, of biblical and theological studies as well as fraternal dialogues.
… the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures. All should see to it, then, that in catechetical work or in the preaching of the Word of God they do not teach anything that does not conform to the truth of the Gospel and the spirit of Christ.
Furthermore, in her rejection of every persecution against any man, the Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel's spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone.
…We cannot truly call on God, the Father of all, if we refuse to treat in a brotherly way any man, created as he is in the image of God. Man's relation to God the Father and his relation to men his brothers are so linked together that Scripture says: "He who does not love does not know God" (1 John 4, 8).
…The Church reproves, as foreign to the mind of Christ, any discrimination against men or harassment of them because of their race, color, condition of life, or religion.
Ours is a simple message to the antisemites and the haters: Anti-Semitism is unpatriotic and it’s unChristian.