The captain gave me a bible. It seems that I was the only Jewish person in this outfit, and he gave me a bible. It said that this bible was left by the last Jewish man who was in the 125th cavalry squadron, and he thought that I might like it, which I did, and I still have that bible.

And, so, I guess that’s brought out to me my—the Jewishness because of the fact that… this was about 120 men in this outfit, and I was the only Jew, and there was only one other Jew before me, at least in the immediate past, and he was wounded, and he left it to me, and unfortunately inside of it, when I thumbed through it, was a little note, which was very, very terrifying for a young man, and it said,

Watch out for the back as well as the front.

And that scared me pretty good.

Did you encounter any difficulties being the only Jewish young man in that unit?

At various—at various times we were once billeted in a… three‐story building, and there was a guy there, who obviously knew [that] I was Jewish, and said to me—uh, he was brandishing a .45 caliber pistol, and he said to me, ‘You know, if I shot off your little toe, you’d go home. How would you like that?’

I said, ‘Well, I’d really like to go home, but I’d like to keep the toe.’ And, uh… he said, ‘It’s a good thing that this gun isn’t loaded.’ And he proceded to pull the trigger, and it was loaded, and it missed my little toe by about two inches. And he nearly killed somebody, ’cause the .45 caliber gun is a very, very strong gun, especially close up, and the bullet went right through the floor and nearly killed somebody below. It scared the hell out of him, and it scared the hell out of me!

And so, you know, it did—it came up in different ways… you know, of being Jewish, you know, because everybody used to pick on me, because they—it was something that Jewish boys were out to live longer, and uh… I didn’t think [that] that was a bad thing. I thought [that] that was the object of a soldier, was to stay alive!

Were Jewish men perceived as being weaker?

I think [that] they were… they were perceived to be weaker, smarter, more cunning, if you will, that was the perception, and, uh… and I think [that] they were—there was a great deal of jealousy, because of trying to stay alive.

(Spotted here.)