We always sat in the back of Shul. It was our seat from a generation that long preceded mine. It was my father’s seat from when he and his good friends Eli Hirsch and Eddie Gutmann were single. Later, they sat together when their families were young. Dad always said that once a week we sit at the front of the Shul. When the congregation does an “about face” for the recital of Bo’i V’eshalom. 

Pacing the back of the Shul, one finds a plaque unlike those regularly found in Shuls. “Our Members in the Armed Forces.” This plaque has the names of all the enlisted men of the Kehilla in the Second World War. It used to be a felt board behind glass until the Jewish Heritage Museum convinced someone to donate our memorial and replaced it with a heavy bronze plaque. You all know this. 

(I am entirely certain that had not the name “Henry Kissinger” been on that board, the museum would not have asked for it.) 

Anyhooooow, in the four-plus decades that I have been aware of that plaque, it did not ever cross my mind to ask who the one soldier with a star by his name was. The name reads “Erich Goldschmidt”, and the star indicates that he fell in battle. (It says that on the plaque.) 

Who was the lone fallen soldier of our Kehilla? 

Before we talk about this, I want to note that while KAJ had one fallen soldier, Ahavath Torah (Lieber’s) had three, Sharei Hatikvah had four,  and Beth Hillel had nine! Also worthy to note that in the lobby of the original KAJ in Frankfurt there was a large plaque from the first World War,  with some 50 or 60 names as well. These were not the names of the men enlisted, but – G-d spare us- those that fell! 

I did a bit of asking around and discovered that Erich (Yitzchok) Goldschmidt z’l was the son of Leo Goldschmidt and the brother of Gus Goldschmidt, a well-known member of the community. As you can see on the plaque, Gus, Erich, and a third brother, Karl, were all enlisted at that time. Erich, however, was sent to the front, served as a “Ritchie Boy” (a German-speaking Jewish refugee used in intelligence operations and interrogations), and perished in March of 1945, just two months short of VE-Day- when his unit went over a land mine. Erich is buried in our cemetery, with his military unit prominently listed on his stone. To his family, though, his greatest legacy lies in how he was known for keeping all the Mitzvos, including Kashrus, while deployed in a hot war.  

The Goldschmidt family came from Frankfurt, and all three brothers went to the Hirsch Realschule. Leo, their father, who lived out his days in Washington Heights, was married to Theresa Eismann. She and her two sisters would sit next to Rebetzin Breuer when they came to Breuers, and I assume they were Mishpocho- although the Rebbetzin was born Eisenmann and they were Eismann. 

During the war, Theresa, her husband, and her sons were split up. Leo was in Scandinavia, Theresa was taken to the French labor camp in Gurs, and the boys were in Saint Cyprien. By nothing short of a miracle, the boys were later transferred to Gurs, and then, in a very rare turn of events, Theresa’s brother Gustave Eisemann, who had immigrated to the US many years earlier and established clout and capital, was able to arrange their release from Gurs and arrival in America just a few months shy of the liquidation of that camp to Auschwitz.  (Gustave Eisemann was an important donor and builder of the Breuer’s Shul in the years of its construction, and deserves an article of his own.)

This background (laid out in greater detail in the chapter attached HERE, with the family’s permission) should bring the life and memory of this soldier to new light. His family lost him just as they narrowly escaped the jaws of death, as they struggled to make life anew in a new country, as they crowded into an apartment, as they waited to be reunited with their father, as they took jobs to support themselves with dignity. Then, as the journey almost came to its conclusion, they would yet part with the brave and pious Erich; Yitzchok ben Hechover Moshe Yehudah z’l.  

A year later, almost to the day of his first Yahrzeit, Gus had a son whom he named Eric, who still wears his uncle’s Tefillin daily at the early Minyan in the Young Israel of Scarsdale. Gus’s daughter, Debbie, received Erich’s Tanach, and this year she gifted it to her granddaughter on the occasion of her Bat Mitzvah. The family observes Erich’s Yahrzeit, and his name is not lost upon their new generations.  

Just as it is not lost upon those who stroll the rear of our Shul. 

Zichrono Levracha.