At the turn of the century, publications such as Harper's Weekly and the North American Review reflected the anti-semitism of the day when they printed articles accusing Jews of being non-patriotic, of not serving in the armed forces during the Civil War and of being peddlers, who followed the Army for the purpose of making a profit off the soldiers.
Mark Twain even joined the libel, saying that Jews did not participate in the Civil War.
Statements such as these led to the formation of the Hebrew Union Veterans Association of Civil War Veterans March 15, 1896. Seventy-eight Jewish veterans who were tired of hearing anti-Semitic rhetoric formed the organization, which today is known as the Jewish War Veterans of the USA, said Robert M. Zweiman, JWV's national centennial chairman.
Their first order of business was to prove that people of the Jewish faith were patriotic and did go to battle to defend the values and principles on which America was founded, he said.
After examining irrefutable facts such as six Jewish soldiers receiving the Congressional Medal of Honor, Mark Twain retracted his previous remarks and apologized, Zweiman said. In fact, historian and archivist Sandy Cohen said, the best figure on participation in the war is around 12,000, including between 3 and 4,000 in the Confederate Army. This was about a tenth of the Jewish population in America.
* Adm. Hyman Rickover, the father of the modern Navy;
* Maj. Gen. Julius Ochs Adler, who served in both world wars and later as the general manager of The New York Times;
* Sgt. Maj. Lawrence Freedman, Army special forces. The first American killed in Somalia in 1993, he was nicknamed ``Super Jew'';
* Judith Resnick, mission specialist on the Challenger space shuttle, which exploded during its 1986 launch.
Also buried there was a key non-Jewish influence on the fighting forces that led to the Israel Defense Force. Maj. Gen. Orde Charles Wingate, of the British Army, trained early Jewish settlers in Palestine in defensive battle techniques. Although British, he was killed on a U.S. plane in Burma and buried with the 12 others who were on board the place.
* The highest-ranking Jew buried at Arlington is Adm. Jeremy Michael Boorda, chief of naval operations, who killed himself in 1996 amid revelations that he had worn medals to which he was not entitled. While his headstone bears a Jewish star, a miniature Christmas tree decorated his grave in December.