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14 

AMERICAN LEGION  v. AMERICAN HUMANIST ASSN. 

GINSBURG,  J., dissenting 

for  Graves  of  American  Soldiers  in  Europe,  Hearings 
before the Committee on Military Affairs of the House of 
Representatives, 68th Cong., 1st Sess., 24 (1924) (empha-
sis added).  The Executive Director of the Jewish Welfare 
Board stated that “if any religious symbol is erected over 
the graves, then Judaism should have its symbol over the 
graves  of its dead.”  Id., at 19.  Others expressing views 
described  the  Latin  cross  as  the  appropriate  symbol  to 
“mar[k] the graves of the Christian heroes of the American 
forces.”    Id.,  at  24  (emphasis  added).    As  stated  by  the 
National Catholic War Council, “the sentiment and desires 
of  all  Americans,  Christians  and  Jews  alike,  are  one”: 
“They  who  served  us  in  life  should  be  honored, as they 
would have wished, in death.”  Ibid.13 
  Far  more  crosses  than  Stars  of  David,  as  one  would 
expect, line the grounds of American cemeteries overseas, 
for Jews composed only 3% of the United States popula-
tion  in  1917.    J.  Fredman  &  L.  Falk,  Jews  in  American 
Wars 100 (5th ed. 1954).  Jews accounted for nearly 6% of 
U. S.  forces  in  World  War  I  (in  numbers,  250,000),  and 
3,500  Jewish  soldiers  died  in  that  war.    Ibid.    Even  in 
Flanders Field, with its “ ‘crosses, row on row,’ ” ante, at 5 
(quoting J. McCrae, In Flanders Fields, In Flanders Fields 
and Other Poems 3 (G. P. Putnam’s Sons ed. 1919)), “Stars 
of David mark the graves of [eight American soldiers] of 
Jewish faith,” American Battle Monuments Commission, 
Flanders Field American Cemetery and Memorial Visitor 
Booklet 11.14 

—————— 

13 As  noted,  supra,  at  12,  the  bodies  of  soldiers  who  were  neither 
Christian  nor  Jewish  could  be  repatriated  to  the  United  States  and 
buried  in  a  national  cemetery (with a slab headstone), Quartermaster 
Report,  or  in  a  private  cemetery  (with  a  headstone  of  the  family’s 
choosing). 

14 Available  at  https://www.abmc.gov/sites/default/files/publications/ 
FlandersField_Booklet.pdf  (all  Internet  materials as last visited June 
18,  2019).    For  the  respective  numbers  of  cross  and  Star  of  David