Their names were Victor L. Berger and Elkan C. Voorsanger. Both came to Milwaukee from elsewhere, and both exemplified some of what World War I meant to Wisconsin’s and America’s Jewish community.
When the war began 100 years ago, about 17,000 Jews lived in Milwaukee and probably less than 10,000 lived in other areas of the state. (The “Encyclopaedia Judaica” second edition says the state had 28,000 Jews by 1920.)
According to Robert C. Nesbit’s book “Wisconsin: A History” (1973), “World War I was a traumatic experience” for the state generally. Most of the population had German background and so were initially inclined to sympathize with that country, and many felt conflicted when the U.S. began being increasingly inclined to the side of the Entente.
And according to “The History of the Jews of Milwaukee” by Rabbi Louis J. Swichkow and Lloyd P. Gardner (1963), “Few people in Wisconsin more quickly sensed what the war meant than Milwaukee’s Jews.” Most of them were immigrants who “had come from the areas being bombed and overrun by German, Austrian and Russian arms.”
Moreover, many Jews in Wisconsin and throughout the country were reluctant to support Britain and France because those countries were allied with Czarist Russia, then the most vehemently and brutally anti-Semitic country in the world.
In addition, Wisconsin was home to the Progressive movement and an active Socialist movement, both of which opposed the war and U.S. involvement in it; and many Jews were active in both.
“Probably no state opposed war more than Wisconsin, and these attitudes strongly influenced the Jews,” wrote Swichkow and Gartner.
Berger (1860-1929) helped to lead this opposition. He was born in Austria-Hungary and emigrated to the U.S. with his parents in 1878. He came to Milwaukee in 1881 and taught German in the public school system.
He met German American Socialists and became involved as an organizer and newspaper editor. He was a founder of the Socialist Party of America in 1901. In 1910, he became the first member of that party to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and served one term.
When the war started, many European Socialists, at least at first, put loyalty to their respective countries ahead of what had been the ideal of the international unity of all the world’s workers. The U.S. Socialists rejected that stance.
In 1917, around the time President Woodrow Wilson asked the U.S. Congress to declare war on Germany, the U.S. Socialists, including Berger, met in St. Louis, and within days after war was declared, the party “adopted a militant anti-war position,” according to Nesbit.
“The war will be an opportunity for profiting both from the necessities of the government and the needs of the people,” Berger wrote in his newspaper, the Milwaukee Leader. “Future generations of workers will be mortgaged to pay vast sums of interest to the heirs of our plutocrats.”
“The truest of patriots,” he wrote in the Leader’s April 6, 1917, edition, “is not he who pours forth an hysterical froth of jingo rhetoric. The real lover of his country is the man who stands for her liberties in the hour when passion and frenzy and the interests that profit by them are ready to sweep freedom away.”
Berger thereby became involved in a drama that had repercussions in general U.S. history. He and four other Socialists were indicted under the federal Espionage Act in early 1918.
In spite of that, Berger received 26 percent of the state vote when he ran for the U.S. Senate in a spring 1918 special election, coming in third in a four-candidate race.
Berger then ran for the House in the fall, winning his second term. But on Feb. 20, 1919, he was convicted of violating the Espionage Act and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Moreover, Congress formed a special committee to determine whether Berger should be seated, and this committee in November 1919 declared the seat vacant. A special election was called, and Berger won again. In January 1920, the House refused to seat him again.
The U.S. Supreme Court overturned his conviction in January 1921. Berger ran for Congress again and won the first of three consecutive terms. He died of injuries suffered in a streetcar accident.
For many if not most Wisconsin and American Jews, a turning point in attitudes occurred in March 1917, when the Russian Revolution overthrew the Czarist government.
“The removal of the moral obstacle of Czarism made American Jews more receptive to entering the war” when the U.S. declared war on Germany in April 1917, wrote Swichkow and Gartner, and “the great majority of Jews abandoned any skepticism and opposition to support it.”
Among those who were receptive was Voorsanger (1889-1963). Some Milwaukeeans might still remember him as the executive director of the Milwaukee Jewish Welfare Fund — the previous name of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation — from 1939 to 1955.
But he was a World War I hero before he came to Milwaukee. He was born in San Francisco, earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Cincinnati in 1913 and was ordained a Reform rabbi at the Hebrew Union College in 1914.
He worked as a congregational rabbi in Grand Rapids and St. Louis; but when the U.S. entered the war, he decided to enlist despite his general opposition to war.
“I am entering this war to register my protest against war,” he wrote in a letter quoted in the book “The Fighting Rabbis: Jewish Military Chaplains and American History” by Albert Isaac Slomovitz (1999). “I can do that in no better way than to go to the front to alleviate the suffering of those who know not why they go.”
He started as a private and was trained as a medic. When the U.S. government passed a law authorizing additional military chaplains, Voorsanger became a chaplain with the rank of first lieutenant.
He was among the first members of the American Expeditionary Force to arrive in France and one of the first military rabbis in the AEF. His achievements included conducting a Passover seder in Paris in 1918 and winning decorations for bravery. In fact, he became known as “The Fighting Rabbi” for his willingness to be with the soldiers in battle.
After leaving the army in 1919 with the rank of captain, Voorsanger worked for the Joint Distribution Committee in Poland, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations and the Chicago Public Works Department before coming to Milwaukee. He retired to San Francisco and died there.
Of course, Jews living in Wisconsin at the time also responded. Swichkow and Gartner recorded that about 1,000 Wisconsin Jews enlisted in the armed forces during the war, of whom 700 to 800 came from Milwaukee.
Rabbi Manfred Swarsensky in his “From Generation to Generation: The Story of the Madison Jewish Community 1851-1955” gives the names of 17 Jewish Madison men who enlisted.
Swichkow and Gartner wrote that 13 Milwaukee Jews and eight from elsewhere in the state died in the line of duty; and seven Wisconsin Jews were cited for gallantry.
Among the Milwaukeeans who served was Sam Marcus, whose portrait in his army uniform appears at the start of this article. He was born in Romania and came to Milwaukee as a young man.
He enlisted in late 1917, when he was 23. He was injured during his service in France and was honorably discharged in 1919. He died in 1982, age 85.
The war also inspired a watershed event for the Jews of Milwaukee. Concern about Jews in war-ravaged Eastern Europe and in then-Palestine, ruled by the autocratic Ottoman Empire, led to humanitarian campaigns.
Community members organized Ezer beTzar (Help in Distress), an organization to raise local funds for needy Jews.
“Among the immigrants, Ezar beTzar was a mass movement which functioned throughout the war with unusual harmony,” wrote Swichkow and Gartner. “Ideologically and economically antagonistic groups in the community worked together for the first time…”
Jewish efforts like this throughout the country received official national, state and local recognition. President Wilson proclaimed Jan. 27, 1916, Jewish Relief Day; and Wisconsin Gov. Emanuel L. Philipp and Milwaukee Mayor Gerhard Adolph Bading proclaimed the day for the state and city.
Then in 1917, after the U.S. entered the war, “Milwaukee Jewry undertook its first fundraising campaign in modern style, with a dinner and a mass meeting,” wrote Swichkow and Gartner.
This dinner raised $36,000 which “was more than Milwaukee Jewry had ever raised in one campaign previously,” and the event “marked the opening of contemporary large-scale Jewish fundraising in Milwaukee.”
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