In the audience were three Protestant chaplains who were so outraged by the bigotry and hate expressed by their colleagues that they boycotted their own service to attend Gittelsohn’s. One of them borrowed the manuscript and, unknown to Gittelsohn, distributed thousands of copies to his regiment, which led to broad public dissemination, coverage by major news magazines, an Army broadcast of the sermon to American troops throughout the world, and its publication in the Congressional Record. The speech, titled “The Purest Democracy,” became widely known as “The Gettysburg Address of WWII.” (The original is in the American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati.)
Ordained at Hebrew Union College in 1936, Gittelsohn became a renowned scholar on religious and governmental issues. Appointed by President Truman to a committee studying civil rights issues, he would speak out in the years ahead out on subjects ranging from family relationships and euthanasia to Israeli politics and American involvement in Vietnam, writing numerous articles and books on civic and religious matters.
Several months before his death in 1995, he was invited to re-read a portion of his eulogy at the fiftieth commemoration ceremony at the Iwo Jima Memorial in Washington. In his autobiography he reflected: “I have often wondered whether anyone would ever have heard of my Iwo Jima sermon had it not been for the bigoted attempt to ban it.”
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The prolific Felix Weiss de Weldon, “the artist to presidents and kings” and one of the most important sculptors of the 20th century, created more than 2,000 public monuments, which are displayed on all seven continents, more than any other sculptor in history. His bust of John F. Kennedy is prominently displayed in the Kennedy Library in Boston, and many of his other sculptures grace the halls of the White House, the United States Capitol, and other prominent locations worldwide. He is best known, however, for the Iwo Jima Memorial Monument (formally The United States Marine Corps War Memorial), which was based on Rosenthal’s Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph.
Shown on this page is a postcard of the Iwo Jima memorial inscribed “To Dr. Moshe Goodman with best wishes, Felix W. de Weldon, sculptor. June 4, 1969,” along with the Iwo Jima 3-cent postage stamp (issued in 1945), also signed by de Weldon. In an interview, the renowned sculptor stated that Rosenthal told him it was “a dream come true” to see his Iwo Jima photograph come to life.
De Weldon, an Austrian Jew who escaped Nazi persecution in the 1930s, immigrated to the United States, where he enlisted in the Navy at the outbreak of World War II. When Rosenthal’s photo was wired by radio from the Pacific to the United States, de Weldon was serving as an artist for naval aviation as a painters mate first class.
Stationed at the Pautuxet Naval Air Station in Maryland (the site of the Pentagon’s large wireless communications station), he was one of the first to see the photograph. Thus, on the very day after Rosenthal took his photo, de Weldon began sculpting a model of the flag-raising out of modeling wax and plaster. (This original model was presented to President Truman in 1945 and is now on display at the Truman Presidential Library in Independence, Missouri.)
Congress designated de Weldon to construct an Iwo Jima Memorial Monument but the government, burdened by the vast war debt, lacked funds for its construction. De Weldon built it at his own expense and offered the monument to the government at no cost.
Since the Marine Corps was then part of the Navy, the original monument was erected in front of the old Navy Department Building (now the Federal Reserve Building) on Constitution Avenue. After its November 10, 1945 unveiling on the 170th birthday of the Marine Corps, it became a great symbol of national pride. In his speech at the dedication ceremony, de Weldon said:
