Holy Day Observances on the Killing Ground

Stanley Weintraub’s piece on the 1914 Christmas truce (Commentary, Dec. 24) recalls a parallel experience of my grandfather, Lester Reich, a quartermaster with the American Expeditionary Forces in 1918 France.

As the sun set over the trenches on Erev Yom Kippur (the evening beginning the Jewish Day of Atonement), a white flag went up on the German side. A messenger came over to ask the American sector commander if several German Jewish soldiers could join their American co-religionists for a brief Yom Kippur observance, because their number was too small to constitute the 10-man minyan required to conduct Jewish communal prayer. The commander agreed, and four tired Germans crossed no man’s land to sing through the service along with the Americans, including my grandfather. All too soon, the “Huns” returned to their lines and both sides went back to killing each other.

This episode, like the Christmas truce so well described by Weintraub, highlights the consciousness of a better world that human beings can retain even in the midst of the most bitter conflict. Unfortunately, the generals could not let Yom Kippur and Christmas go on for too long.

Peter Reich

Los Angeles