Crosses and a star of David Crosses and a star of DavidFor Combat_Boots —
103 posted on 10/5/2013 5:03:26 PM by combat_boots: “Normandy: Crosses and a star of David”
Great photo.
If a Jewish person had to die in 1944, it was sure better to die shooting the soldiers whose Nazi government built Auschwitz than to be dying in the Nazi death camps.
Does anyone know the story of PFC Richard Kunkel, the Jewish soldier whose “Star of David” tombstone is in that photo? I did a quick Google search and found that he was from the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division, was from New York, was killed in action June 6, 1944, in France at Colleville-sur-Mer, and was posthumously awarded a Purple Heart.
That info is here and several other places:
http://www.wwiimemorial.com/registry/cemetery/search/plaq.asp?HonoreeID=709869
There was also apparently a Capt. Richard Kunkel at Normandy, but this unit history from July 1944 indicates that Capt. Kunkel survived D-Day: http://www.oldhickory30th.com/30th%20DivArty%20June%20July%2044.pdf
There are a couple of online obituaries of people with the name “Richard Kunkel” who were World War II veterans, but all seem to have survived World War II. I haven't done my research but I'm guessing that one of them is the “Capt. Kunkel” referenced in that July 1944 unit history.
However, my guess is that photos of this Normandy memorial to PFC Richard Kunkel are some of the few things online memorializing his sacrifice — but it would be great if some World War II history organizations could do something to research and tell the story of a Jewish soldier who died fighting Nazi Germany. I know there were many Jewish people in the US military during World War II, but PFC Kunkel’s gravesite certainly gets a lot of photos due to the tombstone with the Star of David and it would be nice to be able to put a story with the stone.