From the E-mail Bag #10: Missive from Israel

 Jewish Soldiers Monument at Salem Cemetery

After my recent series on and around Memorial Day about local veterans' monuments and memorials, I received an email about my blog that was out of this world.

Well, out of this country at least. Actually, the email came from the farthest location yet: Jerusalem, Israel!

Building at Salem Cemetery

The sender, Yisrael Bronstein, used to live in Lorain. "My father served as the rabbi in Lorain from 1977 until 1986," he stated. "I recall that there is a monument for the Jewish soldiers who died in action in the Jewish cemetery on Cooper Foster Road outside the Sheffield Shopping Center.

"As a child we used to help place U.S. flags on all the graves of the veterans who were buried there."

This past weekend I paid a visit to Salem Cemetery at 1459 - 1461 E. North Ridge Road to check out the monument, which is inscribed with the names of seven veterans. The monument is quite attractive, with a poignant inscription: "At the going down of the sun and in the morning we shall remember them."

Yisrael also had another Lorain reminisce. He attended Masson School from 1977 until 1983. "I actually needed to get documents from the Lorain City Schools to get USA citizenship for my children born here in Israel," he explained, "and they even had a picture from when I started school."

Yessir, former Lorainites are all over the world!

Special thanks to Yisrael for sharing his stories.

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UPDATE – A few days after the above post, I received an additional email from Yisrael telling me about how his father used to meet with the Lorain Superintendent of Schools in order to keep the school system informed about Jewish holidays, and also about the Hebrew inscription on the bottom of the monument in the photo above. In case you were wondering what it says (like me), it reads, "They gave their souls for their country... Rest in peace."