Milwaukee, WI – A Jewish veteran’s headstone now holds the Star of David instead of a cross after a rabbi from Queen’s discovered the headstone of his distant relative was incorrectly marked with the Christian symbol.
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Rabbi Avrohom Richter of Queens, who is the director of Chabad of Howard Beach, discovered the grave of his grandmother’s first cousin – Henry Dienstein – during genealogy research.
Dienstein was a private in World War II and is buried in Wood National Cemetery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin – a VA National Cemetery.
Upon discovering the error on the headstone, Rabbi Richter reached out to Rabbi David Niederman, Executive Director and President of the United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg, who put him in touch with U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand just in time. Rabbi Richter contacted the senator 49 years and 11 months since the memorial was erected. VA rules prohibit changing a memorial after the 50 years.
“We pay tribute to Mr. Dienstein’s courageous service in defense of our nation in World War II,” said Senator Gillibrand. “This headstone will ensure that Mr. Dienstein’s memory is rightly honored.”
A favor of such extreme importance to a ‘neshomah’ is priceless beyond words and then some. I envy your beautiful mitzvah !!!
we should do mishnayot and or tehilim for this neshama…
I will start (read along with me)
(the shortest Mishnah) “Stam Neeroot Shloshim Yom” (if someone says they are a Nazir but they didn’t specify for how long ..he’s is considered a Nazir for 30 days)
now for the shortest Tehilim “Halllu et Adon(ai) Kol goyim shabichuhu kol haumim ki gavar aleinu chasdo Vemet Adon(ai) leolam Halleluy(a)”
Thank you, Schmaltz, for being a caring, compassionate Jew! Mi k’amcha Yisroel!
I have an inspiring similar true story. My Uncle (a”h) was in the Royal Canadian Air force during World War II and was shot down & killed during an air raid over Germany. During the war, his body was temporarily kept in a morgue in England. After the war, his body along with other allies who perished, was reinterred to the “Becklingen” War cemetery in Germany;which to their credit is kept in immaculate condition. However, for almost 60 years, no-one had bothered visiting my Uncle’s grave.Then in 2005, two years before my father’s petira, my father had this startling dream in which his this Uncle (his brother) came to him in the dream & complained that no one had ever visited his kever.The dream was so powerful and vivid, that my father took my mother and my older brother to Germany to grant his brother’s request. After much effort, they located the cemetery & grave site, and my older brother took a photo of my father standing beside this kever. When I saw the photo, I pointed out that it had a cross engraved on it; and this is probably why he came to you in that dream. After two years of effort, Baruch ha Shem, the family got it changed to a magen dovid.