When Rabbi Jacob Schacter visited the Normandy American Cemetery in 2014, one detail stayed with him long after his return home.The observation seemed insignificant at first. But for Schacter and the historians and genealogists who would later found Operation Benjamin, it raised a troubling question: Why did there appear to be so few Jewish grave markers among the thousands of American soldiers buried overseas?“It was hallowed and profound,” he later recalled. “But I thought there would have been more Stars of David.”
The answer, they would eventually discover, was that some Jewish American servicemen killed during World War I and World War II were buried under crosses instead of a Jewish Star of David.
Now, decades later, Operation Benjamin is working to correct those headstones and restore the identities of fallen soldiers buried under the wrong markers.
“Our main task is justice and memory,” Shalom Lamm, co-founder and chief historian at Operation Benjamin, told the Washington Examiner. “A soldier gave his life for our country and then lost his ability to fight for his own identity.”
Operation Benjamin, a nonprofit organization, works with the American Battle Monuments Commission, the federal agency that oversees U.S. military cemeteries abroad, to investigate and verify cases and change headstones for American soldiers buried under the wrong marker.
