During this Veterans Day period, two forms of recognition have come to Naomi R. Horwitz, one of the Milwaukee area’s few remaining Jewish woman military veterans from World War II.
First, as an American woman soldier who served during that war and has been involved in local and national veterans’ organizations ever since, a photo of her face appears on one of the posters publicizing this year’s Veterans Day Parade.
This event will take place on Saturday, Nov. 8, beginning at 11 a.m. in downtown Milwaukee.
Horwitz, 92, is still active, alert and relatively healthy, despite some arthritis in her hands. During an interview at her apartment, this former sergeant major said she is a member of the planning committee for the parade and would be a greeter of high-ranking officers and guests in the reviewing stand at the event.
“I don’t like to be in parades,” she said. “I like to watch them.”
Second, she has received recognition as a Jewish veteran in Israel. A plaque in her honor recently has been purchased and placed at Ammunition Hill in Jerusalem.
There, at the site of a pivotal battle in the 1967 Six Day War, the Jewish National Fund has created a Wall of Honor for recognizing Jewish military people of any and all countries.
“It’s quite a deal,” said Horwitz. She added that her niece and the niece’s husband will be traveling to Israel in June and are planning to include this Ammunition Hill display on their itinerary.
These are not the only recognitions she will receive this month. Horwitz said she was chosen to participate in a Stars and Stripes Honor Flight on Nov. 19.
Organized by the national Honor Flight Network, founded in 2005, this project flies veterans free of charge to Washington, D.C., for a day so they may visit the monuments to the wars in which they served.
And these are hardly the only recognition Horwitz has received. The Chronicle issue of Nov. 12, 2004, reported that the Veterans Board of Directors for the Milwaukee County War Memorial named her Veteran of the Year for Milwaukee County for 2004-05.
She was the third woman and the first Jewish woman selected in the then 41-year history of the honor.
Fell from a horse
Horwitz enlisted in 1942, when she was 26. “My brother had been drafted, and I was only working [in ladies retail clothing] and not doing anything worthwhile,” she said. But she added that her awareness that Nazi Germany was persecuting Jews “might have been one reason I went in.”
She did basic training at Fort Des Moines in Iowa, and was then stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas. She worked in administration at the Cavalry Replacement Training Center, which supplied horses and donkeys used to transport supplies in the China-Burma-India theater of the war.
Her army service was “the best thing that ever happened to me,” she said. “I met wonderful people.”
Nevertheless, she admitted her service had ups and downs. One of the downs — “the worst thing that happened to me” — was her one attempt to learn to ride a horse. On her first try, something made her horse rear up, causing her to slide off the saddle and land on the ground.
The sergeant ordered her to get back on, saying that otherwise she would be scared of horses the rest of her life. She refused. “I still never go near a horse. I’ll stick to dogs and cats.”
Horwitz said she never experienced any anti-Semitism during her service but sometimes received puzzled comments from Jewish men: “What is a nice Jewish girl like you doing in the Army?”
After discharge in 1946, she did some work in a wholesale jewelry firm, but also served in the Army reserves and eventually became a civilian employee of the reserves before retiring in 1976.
Since then, she has been a member of just about every veterans’ organization for which she qualifies, including Jewish War Veterans. She has been a member of the Veterans Board of Directors for 15 years and a member of the planning committee for the Veterans Day Parade for the past “six or seven years,” she said.
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