Long Beach, CA – Jewish American Military Historical Society (JAMHS) has teamed up with Lesser Known Comics to produce a comic book called Virtue & Valor about the 18 Jewish American Medal of Honor recipients.
The stories span the centuries between the Civil War and the war in Afghanistan.
They include the history of Tibor Rubin, the only Holocaust survivor to receive the Medal of Honor. Rubin survived Mauthausen and Gunskirchen concentration camps and immigrated to the United States, where he joined the US Army to show gratitude to the nation that gave him his freedom. He was recommended for the Medal of Honor multiple times for his “conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of life above and beyond the call of duty,” but his antisemitic sergeant never submitted the recommendations. Rubin was taken as a prisoner of war in 1950 and while being held in a North Korean POW Camp, he was credited with saving over 40 lives. Starting in the 1980s, veterans Rubin had saved, veteran service organizations, and congresspersons began to lobby for Tibor Rubin to receive the Medal of Honor. In 1987, HR 1576 was passed in congress, waiving time limits, and Rubin finally was awarded the Medal of Honor on Sept. 23, 2005.
Ben Salomon received the Medal of Honor posthumously on May 1, 2002, for his actions in the Battle of Saipan during World War II. On July 7, 1944, two weeks after Salomon, a dentist, had replaced the wounded battalion combat surgeon, Japanese Soldiers charged his aid station. Wielding his rifle like a club, Captain Salomon attacked two enemy soldiers who had entered his tent. He bashed them so hard that his rifle stock broke. Salomon ran out of the tent and saw enemy soldiers in a banzai attack overrunning the entire battalion. He took control of a machine gun whose crewmen had been killed and began firing steady bursts. A fellow soldier described the scene: “Saw Jap-(anese) mowed down like one would run a scythe… to cut wheat.” The next morning Captain Salomon’s body was found with 76 bullet holes and multiple stab wounds bent over the barrel of the machine gun, with no ammunition left. Around Salomon’s position, there were 98 Japanese bodies stacked four high in some places. Salomon’s Division Commander denied him the Medal of Honor in 1944 because he erroneously thought a medical officer was ineligible, but after three separate pushes over six decades, Salomon finally received a Medal of Honor.
Virtue & Valor is available at the exhibit at the Orange County Fairgrounds’ Heroes Hall Museum and other JAMHS events in the Southern California area for $10 each. Virtue & Valor is also available for purchase through the JAMHS website, jewishmilitary.org. The first issue focuses on Jewish American Medal of Honor recipients. Subsequent issues about American military history will feature other minorities, as well as Jews.
“The Jewish American Military Historical Society is dedicated to sharing American military history from diverse perspectives,” JAMHS President Sam Yudin says. “We highlight how minorities have played a major role in our military might and defending our country.” This is especially important as the organization seeks to preserve many unique and multicultural histories.
For more information, please contact JAMHS at jewishmilitary@gmail. com or follow our social accounts (FB: @jewishmilitary, Instagram: @jewishmilitary, and YouTube @JewishAmericanMilitary).
Originally published in the Chanukah/Purim 5784 issue of the Jewish American Warrior.
