The admiral who risked his career to ban flogging

            Sometimes military heroes are people who may have or have not served on the front line but servicemen and woman who left a legacy for generations to come. Prior to the Mexican American War (1846-1848) flogging was an acceptable form of punishment in the American Navy. Uriah Levy was the man who changed that policy and was kicked out of the navy (later he was reinstated) for standing up for the right thing.

            Uriah Phillips Levy was born on April 22, 1792 into a religious Jewish family in Philadelphia. His grandfather, Jonas Phillips came to the U.S. from Germany, fought for the patriots in the Revolutionary War and Uriah’s nephew became a congressman from New York. His family was thoroughly dedicated into giving back to the country that gave so much for them in particular religious freedom. His great-great grandfather was one of the few Jews to escape the Spanish Inquisition to make his way to America via England.

            As well as being loyal patriots, the Levy family was drawn to the sea and Uriah continued the tradition. He ran away when he was 10 to sail as a cabin boy but returned to Philadelphia to celebrate his Bar Mitzvah with his family. In 1806, Uriah gained valuable skills as an apprentice on a family friend’s ship and a few years later graduated from navigation school.

            Levy was 20 when the War of 1812 against Great Britain broke out, and he volunteered for military service. The captain of his ship quickly recognized his skills and he was appointed as a sailing master on the USS Argus. After dropping off an American minister in France, the Argus sailed to the English Channel and captured at least 21 ships. Levy was placed in charge of one of these captures, the Betty, but on August 12, 1813, the Betty was captured. Two days the Argus was captured by the British ship, the Pelican, and the entire crew, including Uriah, was interred in England for the rest of the war.

            After returning to the U.S. he was assigned to the USS Franklin as a second master. Anti-Semitism shown by other sailors was a problem for Levy and when a drunken officer provoked him, Levy retaliated. The officer challenged him to a duel. In those days, a man could not back away from a duel (where the two combatants shoot at each from a predetermined distance) without shaming his name for a very long time, so Levy accepted and killed the officer. He was indicted but was found not guilty as dueling was an acceptable way of settling arguments.

            Despite this black mark on his record, Levy was commissioned as a lieutenant. Aboard the USS United States, Levy got into another fight (not a duel this time around) and after a court martial was dismissed from the navy. The only person that could make this ruling official was the president and two years later following the advice of the secretary of the navy, President James Monroe reversed the court’s ruling. He was subsequently given his first command a gunboat appropriately named the USS Revenge.

            In 1925, Levy was the second lieutenant aboard the USS Cyane. He was instrumental in aiding an American forced into the Brazilian Navy and whose life was in danger. The Brazilian Emperor, Dom Pedro, was so impressed with Levy that he offered him the rank of captain (the highest ranks in the navy at the time) in his navy. He refused the offer and rode a wave of popularity back home in the States.

            Since he was offered a shore job and not another command, Levy decided to become a private citizen and when into real estate in New York (Jewish real estate agents have a long history in the U.S.) and became very wealthy. He was still in navy and in 1938 he was given another command. He developed his own system of discipline, substituting mild reforms for corporal punishment. Because of his refusal to inflict corporal punishment on a young seaman, he was court-martialed and dismissed from the service; however President Tyler overturned the decision. In 1850, a member of congress took up the case for anti-flogging and in 1862 it was passed as a law.

            Right after the last of the six court-martials against was overturned and he was reinstated, Levy took command of the warship, Macedonian, and became commander of the entire Mediterranean Fleet. In 1960, congress created the rank of Commodore and appointed Levy to the highest rank in the country.

            Levy was an admirer of Thomas Jefferson because he was a major advocate among the Founding Fathers for the freedom of religion. When Levy heard that Monticello, Jefferson’s plantation in Virginia, had come upon hard times and was up for sale, he bought it. Even though his navy duties required that he be in New York for much of the time, Levy used Monticello as a vacation home and his family moved there permanently. He fixed up the rundown property and showed it off to visitors and when he died in 1862, the U.S. government didn’t want it because it was in the south and had no way to look after it. It was confiscated by the Confederacy but after the war, it was returned to Levy’s heirs. His nephew, Congressman Jefferson Levy, bought it out from the other heirs and spent a lot of his own money for the restoration and preservation efforts. He sold in 1923 to the Thomas Jefferson Foundation who made into a museum. The foundation had anti-Semitic members on its board and until the 1980s gave very little credit to the two Levy men that had done so much for the property. Finally, in 1985 the two were honored in a ceremony and there are memorials and information on-site about Uriah and Jefferson Levy.

            Uriah married his niece in 1853 after both of her parents died. She was 18 while he was 61. He died in 1862, and buried in a Jewish cemetery in New York, with both military honors and Jewish traditions. His legacy lives on, as the USS Levy, a WWII destroyer escort, was named after him as well as the Jewish chapel in the Norfolk Naval Base. Uriah P. Levy is best remembered for his role in banning corporal punishment in the navy and his dedication for the men that served under him making him a hero behind the lines.

A Jewish outlaw

Over 100 years ago, west of the Mississippi River there were huge areas of land filled with cattle, buffalo, Indians, cowboys, lawmen, outlaws and of course the famous gunslingers. The area and time was known as the Wild West and the stories of the gunfights, bank robberies, train holdups and other lawless activities that took place are still legendary in today’s society. Among the celebrated names that came from that era were Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Bat Masterson, Wild Bill Hickok, Wyatt Earp and the most famous Jewish gunslinger Jim Levy.

            The era of the Wild West started before the Civil War (1861-1865) and the image of a swashbuckling cowboy on a fast horse brandishing his six shooters can be traced to the territorial wars with the plains Indians in the 1820s. After the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 from France, America doubled in size and the government wanted citizens to settle on the lands. Obviously, the Indians and the Mexicans living in Texas were livid and fought a prolonged war with the settlers (and American soldiers that would from time to time to help) that would last until the end of 19^th century.

            At the beginning, the setters suffered terribly because the Indians would attack on fast ponies and were able to shoot about twenty arrows a minute. The settlers had mainly slow horses and muskets that would only shoot at most three bullets a minute. Even when the US Army stepped in, they could only do a little better with there faster horses (this unit was called the Dragoons and were a precursor to the cavalry).

            The settlers also created a horseback unit called the Texas Rangers and they were only able to do so much with the outdated firearms available at the time. The call went out for manufactures on the east coast to create a weapon that could shoot several bullets a minute. The manufactures, Smith and Wesson, Remington, Winchester and Colt, answered the call and produced the six-shooter. The first six-shooters even had removable chambers that after fire a quick six shots the shooter would pop out that magazine and simply put in the next one. The results were felt immediately because in the first battle with this gun the cavalry of 14 men decimated a band of 70 Indians. Sam Colt patented the first repeating firearm in the US- the Colt 45. A gun that would be the most sought after was the Colt 45 and it was the best-known revolver in history. It was a gun that everybody in the Wild West had to have.

             The gunslingers were known as the toughest men around and that’s exactly the reputation that Jim Levy gained in 1871. He was born in Ireland, came to the US, and worked in the coalmines. He was also a gambler and a merchant but his real calling was the six-shooter. On May 30, 1871, he witnessed the shooting of Tom Gasson in Pioche, Nevada. Supposedly, on his deathbed Gasson bequeathed $5,000 to the person who would hunt down his murderer. Michael Casey, the murderer, knew that Levy was hunting him down and challenged him to a duel.

            Duels were extremely rare in the Wild West (they were made famous in the movies but there are only a handful of documented cases), but the gentleman’s law stated that you can’t shoot an unarmed man, so Levy was allowed to retrieve his gun. The details of the gunfight are a little too gory for this article, but at the end, Casey was dead and Levy had a permanent scar on his face. Levy was acquitted for the murder because he claimed it was in self-defense and got the $5,000.

            After this gunfight, Levy had at least 16 other confrontations in the Wild West. The most famous was with a prolific outlaw Charlie Henderson in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Levy was unknown in this area and everyone thought that Harrison would win with no problem. Harrison said some racial remarks about Levy being Jewish and Irish and the fight quickly escalated. Harrison shot very quickly but missed and Levy, who was always cool under fire, shot and killed Harrison. Both Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp believe this battle was a keen example of how “calm deliberation” will always have an edge over speed in situations such as these. Levy was ambushed at a saloon and was killed in 1882.

The photographer that documented wars around the world

            Since the American Civil War in the 1860s there have been photographers on the frontlines of every war that the United States has partaken in. Along with journalists, these men and women literally live and die with the soldiers as they do battle with the enemy. They understand what the soldiers are going through so they are able to capture the moment through writing, videos and pictures. World War II was a prime example of the work they do as was evident in the famous photo taken by Joe Rosenthal (who was Jewish) depicting six marines raising the American flag on the pacific island of Iwo Jima. Another photographer who captured the most famous invasion in history was Robert Capa.

            He was born Endre Erno Friedmann in Budapest in 1913 and at the age of 18 moved to Berlin where he learned professional photography. After the rise of the Nazi party he moved to Paris in 1933. He found that if he changed his name, it would be easier for him to get a job and sell his photos so he adopted the American sounding name of Robert Capa.

In Copenhagen, Denmark in 1932, Capa was assigned to photograph Leon Trotsky giving a speech on the Russian Revolution.  These amazing photos made him famous and he was sent to photograph other historical events. The first war that he photo-documented was the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). On September 5, 1936, he took the photo entitled “The Falling Soldier” depicting a loyalist militiaman after being shot at Cerro Muriano. The picture was later determined to have been staged but it gave Capa the worldwide exposure (no pun intended) that made him famous. During the rise of the Nazi regime in Europe, Capa fled and during his travels many photographs that he took during this war were lost. However, several were found during the 1990s and Capa was given credit when they were displayed in a museum in Manhattan.

Before the outbreak of World War II on September 1, 1939, there were several battles that took place and were finally settled during the war. One of these was the war between Japan and China, with Japan mauling the Chinese interior and killing millions of innocent civilians. There was one victory for the Chinese and that was at Taierchwang in 1938. Capa was there on a break from the Spanish Civil War and he took some memorable pictures of the battle. After that he returned to Spain before he had to flee Europe entirely to avoid capture by the Nazis.

Technically an illegal alien in New York City when World War II broke out, he was given a job with Collier Magazine as a photographer. He landed with the troops in North Africa before being fired by Collier’s. Recognizing that an amazing photographer was available, Life Magazine hired him and in 1943 he jumped with paratroopers from the 82^nd Airborne Division into Sicily as a part of Operation Husky. The pictures that he took in Sicily depicted the typical reactions of the local populace: the elation after Allied troops had liberated their country and the suffering they had endured while under German rule.

As the Allies advanced into Italy and into “the soft underbelly of the Axis” as British Prime Minister put it, so did Capa. He took pictures of the cities and was in Naples to take pictures of a post office being bombed. In 1944, he returned to England to prepare for the greatest seaborne invasion of the war (and according to many historians, the largest in history).

Robert Capa was always known for his daring and fearlessness in battle even though he was powerless to fight back and was only armed with a 35mm camera. One time he was with beloved writer Ernie Pyle, who was killed later in the war by a sniper on Japanese held island, and was invited to come along to see and photograph an assault on German positions. Pyle writes in his book Brave Men about the incident, “Capa was notorious for his daring”. That’s exactly what made his pictures so amazing; the fact that he was able to get so close to the action without the fear of being wounded or killed. He proved this when he waded ashore with members of the US infantry on the “Easy Red” part of Omaha Beach in Normandy, France on D-Day June 6, 1944. He took 106 pictures of the landings, but due to the eagerness of the photo lab technician back in England most of the pictures were damaged. However, eleven pictures were developed properly and these became known as the :magnificent eleven”. They depicted soldiers coming ashore and accurately told the story of the historic landings to the people back home.

Capa described his feelings coming ashore with the second wave of infantry troops on D-Day. “My beautiful France looked sordid and uninviting, and a German machine gun, spitting bullets around the barge, fully spoiled my return. The men from my barge waded in the water. Waist-deep, with rifles ready to shoot, with the invasion obstacles and the smoking beach in the background gangplank to take my first real picture of the invasion. The boatswain, who was in an understandable hurry to get the hell out of there, mistook my picture-taking attitude for explicable hesitation, and helped me make up my mind with a well-aimed kick in the rear. The water was cold, and the beach still more than a hundred yards away. The bullets tore holes in the water around me, and I made for the nearest steel obstacle. A soldier got there at the same time, and for a few minutes we shared its cover. He took the waterproofing off his rifle and began to shoot without much aiming at the smoke-hidden beach. The sound of his rifle gave him enough courage to move forward, and he left the obstacle to me. It was a foot larger now, and I felt safe enough to take pictures of the other guys hiding just like I was.”

After the war, he went on tour in Soviet Russia with author John Steinbeck and took pictures in Moscow, Kiev and the battle ruins of Stalingrad. In 1947, he cofounded Magnum Photos- an international cooperation that is still around today.

The founding of the State of Israel stirred the Jewish spark in Capa and in 1948 he traveled to Israel to photo document the War of Independence. He took pictures of General Mickey Marcus and the building of the Burma Road to Jerusalem. His work appeared in the United States and the New York Times wrote about him, “Warm and perceptive, Capa's camera has ranged over the faces of land and people, seeking the human qualities as well as historic milestones.” He returned to Israel in 1950 to make a film on recently arrived immigrants.

While in Japan on exhibition put on by Magnum Photos, Life Magazine asked him to go to Southeast Asia to photograph the First Indochina War (before the Americans were involved in Vietnam, the French had been there fighting the communists since the end of World War II). Despite his misgivings about photographing more war and destruction, he agreed. On May 25, 1954 he went ahead of his convoy near Thai Binh, Vietnam to photograph the advance. About five minutes later, two other journalists from Life Magazine heard an explosion and went to investigate. Capa had stepped on a landmine and by the time he reached a field hospital it was too late. He died with a camera in his hand.

In his memory the Overseas Press Club established the Robert Capa Award “for superlative photography requiring exceptional courage and enterprise abroad.”

Being a front-line journalist is a very dangerous job and only the bravest and most determined of men decide to on it for a career path. Robert Capa did it not only because photography was his passion but because he wanted to show the world what war was like. He did it magnificently even though he paid the ultimate price. His life’s work still remains today as we all have reminder how brutal war is and how soldiers serve bravely on the battlefield. The photos are frozen in time as it transforms the viewer into the moment that he took the picture. 

The Brains of the Confederacy

Most of the Jews that lived in America during the Civil War (1861-1865) lived in the north and supported the Union cause wholeheartedly. Nevertheless, there were some living in the south, and even some owned slaves on plantations. One of these was Judah Benjamin.

Judah P. Benjamin was born in 1811 on the British colony of Saint Croix, in the Danish West Indies, now the U.S. Virgin Islands. His parents, Phillip Benjamin and Rebecca de Mendes, were of Sephardic descent that could trace their lineage back to the Spanish Inquisition of 1492. The Benjamin family soon moved to America and settled in New Orleans after a stint in Charleston, South Carolina. When he was fourteen years old he went to Yale Law School, but for reasons unknown to historians he left before he graduated. He was admitted to the Louisiana bar and became a commercial lawyer, and helped that area grow economically. He soon became a political advocate for banking, finance, and railroad interests, things that soon would propel him into the political circle. Soon he established a sugar cane plantation with 150 slaves in Belle Chasse, Louisiana. After a sour marriage, where his wife took his only child to Paris, he sold all of his slaves in 1850, never to own one again.

 In 1842, Benjamin was elected to the Louisiana legislator, and in 1852 became the first acknowledged Jew to be elected to the U.S. Senate. First elected as a member of the Whig party, in 1858 he was reelected as a Democrat. He was asked by President Millard Fillmore if he would like to serve on the Supreme Court. Benjamin declined to be nominated, even though he would probably be confirmed.

Soon after he became a senator, another congressman challenged him to a duel over a suspected insult. That senator, future Confederate President Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, apologized and soon they became close friends. There were some people who did not like the fact that there was a Jew supporting the confederate cause. Senator Ben Wade of Ohio likened him to an “Israelite with Egyptian principles.” Judah responded, "It is true that I am a Jew, and when my ancestors were receiving their Ten Commandments from the immediate Deity, amidst the thunderings and lightnings of Mount Sinai, the ancestors of my opponent were herding swine in the forest of Great Britain." Most of the time, however, he just remained silent and smiled when anyone said an anti-Semitic comment.

After the South seceded and formed their new government in 1861, President Davis named Benjamin as his attorney general. Davis chose him because he “had a very high reputation as a lawyer, and my acquaintance with him in the Senate had impressed me with the lucidity of his intellect, his systematic habits, and capacity for labor”. In this capacity was when he first earned the nickname “the Brains of the Confederacy”.

Later that year Benjamin was appointed the Secretary of War. His appointment was scorned by Generals P.T. Beauregard and Stonewall Jackson, because it was his decision to give up Roanoke Island without a fight. In truth, the island had been defended with about 100 casualties, and reinforcements could not be sent because they were needed elsewhere. Nevertheless, the generals needed some to pin the blame on, and that person was Benjamin. He was cited in the confederate congress for messing up and resigned without protest. Jeff Davis did not want to publicly admit that the south had so few troops, but since he really liked Benjamin, he appointed him as Secretary of State.

In his new post, Benjamin tried hard to get the British to fight on the side of the Confederacy. The public opinion in England was opposed to slavery, so Benjamin made the announcement, “Let us say to every Negro who wishes to go into the ranks, 'Go and fight - you are free”. This would have also alleviated the shortage of troops. The great general of the south, Robert E. Lee, was a huge supporter of this plan, but it did not take effect until March 1865. By then the war was lost, and these troops would not have made any difference. Even with this declaration, the British were not persuaded to aid the South.

Five days after the Civil War had ended, President Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth. Soon the Northerners were calling it a confederate conspiracy to reignite the war, and Judah Benjamin was one of the leaders. There was sustainable evidence that Booth had met with confederate leaders, and was receiving funds from them. To escape these rumors he fled to Florida. He realized that he would have to leave America so he decided to go to England via the Bahamas. On the trip to the island of Nassau, his ship exploded and he and the three Negro crewmen had to be rescued by an English warship. If that was not enough on the trip from the Bahamas, his ship caught fire but was able to make port in England. Once there he was admitted to the bar to begin his career as a lawyer anew. He died on May 6, 1884 in Paris and was buried there under the name of Philippe Benjamin.