GI JEWS: Jewish Americans in World War II had it’s national broadcast premiere on PBS on April 11, 2018 (check local listings for additional showings). The film is available for home use from Shop PBS. For educational/AV use, the film is available from Shop PBS Teacher Shop.
THE FILM
GI JEWS: Jewish Americans in World War II tells the profound and unique story of the 550,000 Jewish men and women who served in World War II. Through the eyes of the servicemen and women, the film brings to life the little-known story of Jews in World War II – as active participants in the fight against Hitler, bigotry and intolerance.
These brave men and women fought for their nation and their people, for America and for Jews worldwide. Like all Americans, they fought against fascism, but they also waged a more personal fight—to save their brethren in Europe. After years of struggle, they emerged transformed, more powerfully American and more deeply Jewish, determined to continue the fight for equality and tolerance at home.
- Read more about the film
- A Jewish Story: Jewish men fought in every branch of service and in every theater of war. They were held as POWs and awarded honors for merit and valor. Thousands were wounded and 11,000 were killed in action. Ten thousand Jewish women joined up as well, disregarding their parents’ warnings that the military “was no life for a nice Jewish girl.” In the midst of it all, they fought a second, more private battle, against anti-Semitism within the ranks. They endured slurs and even violence from their fellow servicemen, and often felt forced to prove their courage and patriotismAll the while, they observed their religion, far from home. Jewish men and women sought solace in their faith and celebrated holidays overseas, even on the frontlines. Some went without rations for days to keep kosher, and many carried a small prayer book with them on every mission. An American Story: World War II was a watershed in American history—with 16 million Americans fighting for their country, everyone intermingled. Fighting together in the trenches and in the air, men forged deep friendships across religious lines, and learned to set aside their bigotry for the greater good.Jewish Americans earned their citizenship by shedding blood, leaving their outsider status behind. For the first time, their nation embraced them as true Americans. Liberating the Camps: Jewish servicemen were among the first to reach the concentration camps liberated by American troops. Many spoke Yiddish and so were able to offer the survivors their first words of comfort, and explain to them that after years of suffering, they were finally free. Rabbi chaplains said prayers for the dead, and held services, honoring the survivors as the bravest heroes of the war. Many Jewish servicemen stayed on to help care for the survivors, locating relatives, fighting for their rights and even smuggling thousands of them to Palestine. Coming Home: In the wake of the Holocaust, America’s Jewish community was now the largest in the world. With their new responsibility as international leaders, many American Jews became full participants in postwar culture and politics, fighting for social change. They would demand equality at home, join the battle for civil rights, and fight for the creation of a Jewish state.
THE FILMMAKERS
Producer/Director: Lisa Ades is a documentary filmmaker who has produced and directed films for PBS and cable television for more than 25 years. Her acclaimed film, Miss America, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival before its broadcast on the PBS series American Experience in 2002. Previously, she produced award-winning films with Ric Burns, including New York, a ten-hour series (PBS, 1999, Alfred I. duPont Columbia University Award), The Way West (PBS, 1995), and The Donner Party (PBS, 1992). Prior to that, she was a producer at WNET/Thirteen on The 11th Hour and Metroline. Documentaries for cable television include Beauty in a Jar (A&E, 2003), In the Company of Women (IFC, 2004), and Fabulous! The Story of Queer Cinema (IFC, 2006).
Writer: Maia Harris has written and produced documentaries for PBS for many years and has received two Emmy awards. Her previous work includes The Italian Americans (PBS, 2013), No Job for a Woman (PBS World, 2010) and Banished (PBS, 2008), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Other credits include The Life and Times of Frida Kahlo (PBS, 2005); Beyond Tara: The Extraordinary Life of Hattie McDaniel (AMC, 2001); Storyville: The Naked Dance (PBS, 1998) and Listening to Children: A Moral Journey with Robert Coles (PBS, 1995).
Producer: Amanda Bonavita has worked in commercial television, and documentary and narrative film for the past fifteen years. Her previous documentary work includes 40th Anniversary of Stonewall (PBS, 2009) and Waiting for Hockney (Tribeca Film Festival, 2008).
Editor: George O’Donnell has edited numerous documentary films, including many for PBS broadcast: Jackie Robinson: Part Two (PBS, 2016), The Italian Americans (PBS, 2015), The Jewish Americans: The Best of Times, The Worst of Times (PBS, 2008), Reporting America at War (PBS, 2003) and several American Experience films, including Edison (2015), 1964 (2014), Clinton (2012), Panama Canal (2011), and Kinsey (2005).
Composer: Joel Goodman is an Emmy Award-winning composer who creates music for narrative feature films, documentaries, television and album releases. Joel has scored over 125 films and television programs that have received 5 Oscar nominations, 20 Emmy awards and over 30 Emmy nominations. He has scored over 40 films for HBO and composed the Main Theme for the long-running and critically acclaimed PBS series American Experience. He recently completed scores to: Everything Is Copy (HBO), about screenwriter Nora Ephron; Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah, the Oscar-nominated documentary, and Dirty Weekend, directed by Neil LaBute.
Narrator: Mark Zeisler has appeared on and off- Broadway, around the country on regional stages, and in television and film over the last 25 years. His credits include House of Cards, Bull and The Blacklist on television and at theatres such as American Repertory Theatre, Yale Rep, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Playwrights Horizons and Second Stage amongst many others. Roles have included Mark Rothko in Red, Eddie Carbone in A View from the Bridge, and Iago in Othello. He is an audiobook reader and can be found on Audible.
For THIRTEEN
Coordinating Producer: Benjamin Phelps
Budget Controller: Karen Feigenbaum
Legal Counsel: Antonia Carew-Watts
Station Relations: Robin Rodriguez
Audience Engagement: Emma Dayton & Natasha Padilla
Executive Producer: Lesley Norman
Executive in Charge: Stephen Segaller
GI JEWS: JEWISH AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II is a production of TURQUOISE FILMS, INC. in association with THIRTEEN Productions LLC for WNET
ADVISORS
Senior Historical Advisors
Deborah Dash Moore is a leading authority on Jewish Americans in World War II and the author of GI Jews: How World War II Changed a Generation (2004). She is currently the Frederick C. L. Huetwell Professor of History at the University of Michigan and Director of the Frankel Center for Judaic Studies.
James E. Young is Distinguished University Professor Emeritus and Founding Director of the Institute for Holocaust, Genocide and Memory Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He has written widely on the Holocaust, memorials, and national memory, including The Texture of Memory (1993), At Memory’s Edge (2000), and The Stages of Memory (2016).
Historical Consultants
Richard Alba is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His books include Ethnic Identity: The Transformation of White America (1990); and Remaking the American Mainstream: Assimilation and Contemporary Immigration (2003).
Deborah E. Lipstadt is Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies at Emory University, where she founded the Institute for Jewish Studies. A leading authority on the American response to the Holocaust, she is the author of Beyond Belief: The American Press and the Coming of the Holocaust (1986, 1993), and The Eichmann Trial (2011).
Donald L. Miller is the John Henry MacCracken Professor of History at Lafayette College. His books include D-Days in the Pacific (2004); Masters of the Air: America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany (2007); and The Story of World War II (2001). He has collaborated on more than 40 television productions, including The Pacific (HBO, 2010), produced by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg.
Allan R. Millett is Stephen E. Ambrose Professor of History and Director of the Eisenhower Center for American Studies at the University of New Orleans. A retired colonel of the Marine Corps Reserve, he is senior military advisor at The National World War II Museum. He is the author of seven books, including A War To Be Won: Fighting the Second World War (2000).
Jonathan D. Sarna is the Joseph H. & Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History at Brandeis University and Chief Historian of the National Museum of American Jewish History. He has written, edited, or co-edited more than thirty books on Jewish culture and history, and is one of the nation’s leading commentators on American Jewish life.
Beth S. Wenger is Professor of History and Director of the Jewish Studies Program at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of New York Jews and the Great Depression: Uncertain Promise (1996), and The Jewish Americans: Three Centuries of Jewish Voices in America (2007), the companion volume to the six-hour PBS series.
MAJOR FUNDING PROVIDED BY
National Endowment for the Humanities
Corporation for Public Broadcasting
Righteous Persons Foundation
Dobkin Family Foundation
Alexander Wolf & Son
Al Berg
Sumner M. Redstone Charitable Foundation
The Sylvia A. and Simon B. Poyta Programming Endowment to Fight Anti-Semitism
Mandell and Madeleine H. Berman Foundation
River Birch, LLC
Marlene & Hymie Mamiye
Mass Humanities
Robert & Pamela Jacobs
Jacquin P. Fink Foundation for the Arts, Inc.
Alan I. Franco
Paler Foundation, Inc.
Other funding was generously provided by numerous individual donors. A complete list is available from PBS.
- Full Film Credits
- Directed & Produced by
Lisa Ades
- Produced by
Amanda Bonavita
- Written by
Maia Harris
- Edited by
George O’Donnell
- Narrated by
Mark Zeisler
- Music by
Oovra Music
- Music Produced by
Joel Goodman & Andrew Dewitt
- Director of Photography
- Daniel B. Gold
- Associate Editor
- Connor Culhane
- Co-Producer
- Maia Harris
- Consulting Producer
- Nancy Spielberg
- Associate Producer
- Persephone Whiteside-McFadden
- Senior Historical Advisors
- Deborah Dash Moore
- James E. Young
- Historical Consultants
- Richard Alba
- Thomas Doherty
- Deborah Lipstadt
- Donald L. Miller
- Allan R. Millett
- Jonathan D. Sarna
- Beth S. Wenger
- Production Associate/Graphics
- James Stuart
- Additional Cinematography
- Buddy Squires
- Jon Else
- Simon Fanthorpe
- Donald Flynn
- Sound Recording
- Sean O’Neill
- James Goddard
- Michael Jones
- Greg Miller
- Paul Rusnak
- Additional Music by
- Joy Ngiaw, David Bramfitt & Joel Goodman
- Assistant Camera/Gaffers
- Peter Mychalcewycz
- Todd Leatherman
- Jared Ames
- Sunil Devadanam
- Malcolm Jolley
- Clare Major
- Online Editor
- Judd Blaise
- Research
- Rachel Weinstein
- Archival Research
- Ann Leifeste
- Gina B. McNeely
- Susan Strange
- Production Assistants
- Liv Carlson
- Julianne Castro
- Zoe Dubno
- Jillian Entenman
- Richard Gartrell
- Sean Havey
- Babak Homayoonmehr
- Michael Lang
- Cody Maher
- Nicholas Mendez
- Sophia Richter
- Anne Snyder
- Post Production Services
- DuArt Media Services
- Blue Table Post
- Final Frame
- Sound Editing & Re-Recording Mixing
- Matt Gundy, DuArt
- Rich Cutler, Blue Table Post
- Narration & Voice Over Recording
- Joshua Pleeter, Blue Table Post
- Alan Guss, Duart
- Kessler Media
- Vivid Mix & Soundworks
- Colorist
- Jane Tolmachyov, DuArt
- Social Media Coordinator
- Lindsay Eve Van Dyke
- Website Development
- Michael Murphy
- Dean Pajevic
- Website Design
- Randi Hazan
- Interns
- Lulu Kline
- Kaitlin Lorio
- Dakota Mann
- Viktoria Markus
- Maeve O’Sullivan
- Ethan Young
- Transcription
- Production Transcripts
- Christopher Bonavita
- Nicholas Mendez
- Legal Services
- Iddo Arad
- Melissa Georges
- Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz PC
- Financial Services
- Ed Weisel, Laski & Weisel, P.C.
- Bookkeeper
- Julie Majchrzyk
- Debi Zelko
- Insurance
- Debra Kozee, C&S Intl Insurance Brokers
- Fiscal Sponsor
- City Lore, Inc.
- Archival Photographs
- National Museum Of American Jewish Military History
- American Jewish Historical Society
- American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Archives
- AP Photo
- Archive Memorial And Museum Trutahain
- Archives Of The Center For Jewish Culture, Claire T. Carney Library Archives And Special Collections, Umass Dartmouth
- Austin History Center
- Harold ‘Hal’ Baumgarten
- Bea Abrams Cohen
- Beeldbank WO2 – NIOD
- The Bernstein / Goldman Family
- Brooksfilms Limited
- Morton D. Brooks
- Bundesarchiv
- Paul Cohen
- Jerome D. Cohen
- David Eliahu Cohen
- Congregation Shaarey Zedek, Southfield, MI
- Harry Corre
- Ted Diamond
- Family Of Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds, Righteous Among The Nations
- The Eighth Air Force Historical Society
- Dr. William Eisenberg
- Leonard Everett Fisher
- Max Fuchs
- Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum, Israel\Photo Archive
- Getty Images
- Betsy Gotbaum
- Stan Gottheim
- Green Family
- Hachette Book Group
- Harry Ransom Center, The University Of Texas At Austin
- Eliot S. Hermon
- Holocaust Museum & Center For Tolerance And Education
- Albert Horowitz
- Imperial War Museums
- The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of The American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, Ohio
- Jewish Historical Society Of Greater Hartford
- Jewish Museum Of Maryland
- Dahlia ‘Pobie’ Johnston
- Kairey Family
- Sam Kessler
- Henry Kissinger
- Mildred Landis
- Ann Lefkowitz Lentz
- Si Lewen
- The Library Of Congress
- The Library Of The Jewish Theological Society Of America
- Little, Brown, & Co.
- Magnum Photos
- Michael Mailer Films
- The Norman Mailer Estate / Norman Mailer Licensing
- Marlene & Hymie Mamiye
- Tamara Marcus Green & Roberta Marcus Leiner
- Robert M. Morgenthau
- Alan Moskin
- Museum Of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial To The Holocaust
- National Archives And Records Administration
- National Baseball Hall Of Fame And Museum, Cooperstown, NY
- National Museum Of The U.S. Air Force
- The National World War II Museum
- Rudolf Eberhard Neuber
- The New York Times
- Ontario Jewish Archives
- Ellan Levitsky Orkin
- Maurice ‘Chic’ & Cecile Paper
- Penguin Group
- Carl Reiner
- Rhinehart & Co.
- Mimi Rivkin
- Elihu Rose
- Jim Sabastian
- Peter Selz
- Sid Shanken
- Art Sherman
- Simon & Schuster
- South Caroliniana Library, University Of South Carolina, Columbia, S.C.
- Stadtarchiv Bielefeld
- Stars And Stripes
- Lester Tanner
- Iris Towers
- Tulsa Historical Society & Museum
- Turquoise Films, Inc.
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
- U.S. Marine Corps History Division
- Volksveritas
- Bernard Waldow, Jr.
- Felix M. Warburg
- Barbara Mailer Wasserman
- World Machal Archives
- Yad Vashem Photo Archive, Jerusalem
- Mark S. Zaid
- Archival Footage
- Harvey Ades
Lou Ades
Agentur Karl Höffkes
AllStockFootage
American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Archives
Family Of Herman ‘Hy’ Bartimer
Budget Films Stock Footage
Bundesarchiv, Filmarchiv, Berlin/Transit Film Gmbh
Buyout Footage
Sharon Campbell
CriticalPast
Robert J. Dweck
Footage Farm
Framepool
Getty Images
Historic Films Archive
The Library Of Congress
Lumiere Media
Martin Lisius/Stormstock
National Archives And Records Administration
Oddball Films
Ontario Jewish Archives
Periscope Film
Elihu Rose
Sam Bryan / International Film Foundation
Steven Spielberg Film And Video Archive, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Tawil FamilyAachen Service Audio:
American Jewish Committee ArchivesSongs“We’re In The Army Now”
By Isham Jones
WB Music Corp. (ASCAP) OBO The Bantam Music Publishing Co.
Performed by The Jesters
Courtesy of Universal Music Enterprises, a division of UMG Recordings, Inc.“Over There”
By George Cohan
Emi Feist Catalog Inc.
Performed by Norman Brooks
Courtesy of Hindsight
By arrangement with The Orchard“Swing Ride”
By Joel Goodman
Idnar Music
Courtesy of 5 Alarm MusicSpecial Thanks toDr. Charles & Rachelle Abady
Harvey & Rebecca Ades
Alan & Ruth Ades
Richard & Elaine Ades
Susan Ades
Walter Bernstein
Madeleine Blaise & John Katzenbach
Merom Brachman
David Eliahu Cohen
Janiece Cohen
Jerome D. Cohen
Ted Diamond
Erika Doering
Pam Elbe
Dr. William Eisenberg
Sherri & Ken Falchuk
Foulkeways At Gwynedd
Betsy Gotbaum
Stan Gottheim
Art Greenberg
Aviva Kempner
Nina & Daniel Libeskind
Hope Litoff
Fred Loeb
Nik Lokensgaard
Marlene Mamiye
Julia Mintz
North Oaks Senior Independent Living Community
Cecile Paper
Ted Raviv
Mickey Rathbun & Christopher Benfey
Gini Reticker
Bess Scher
Paul A. Shapiro
Sadie Sonnenreich
Irwin Stovroff
Iris Towers
Jeanne Bonfilio, West Los Angeles Veterans Home
Bernard Waldow, Jr.
Felix M. Warburg
Linda Young
James E. Young
Major funding provided by
National Endowment for the Humanities
Corporation for Public Broadcasting
Additional funding provided by
Righteous Persons Foundation
Dobkin Family Foundation
Alexander Wolf And Son
Al Berg
Sumner M. Redstone Charitable Foundation
The Sylvia A. And Simon B. Poyta Programming Endowment to Fight Anti-Semitism
Mandell L. and Madeleine H. Berman Foundation
Robert & Pamela Jacobs
Marlene & Hymie Mamiye
Mass Humanities
Jacquin P. Fink Foundation for the Arts, Inc.
Alan I. Franco
Paler Foundation, Inc.
Other funding was generously provided by numerous individual donors. A complete list is available from PBS
For THIRTEEN
Coordinating Producer
Benjamin Phelps
Budget Controller
Karen Feigenbaum
Legal Counsel
Antonia Carew-Watts
Station Relations
Robin Rodriguez
Audience Engagement
Emma Dayton
Natasha Padilla
Executive Producer
Lesley Norman
Executive In Charge
Stephen Segaller
- Executive Producer
Lisa Ades
- GI JEWS: JEWISH AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II is a production of
TURQUOISE FILMS, INC. in association with
THIRTEEN Productions LLC for WNETCopyright 2017 Turquoise Films, Inc.