In March 1945, with World War II nearing its end and President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s health failing, Vice President Harry S. Truman stepped up to deliver a Passover message to Jewish troops serving overseas. Roosevelt was just weeks from death. Truman, barely two months into the job, seized the moment—and made history.
On March 26, Truman addressed Jewish service members via radio during a Passover service hosted by the Jewish Welfare Board. The Missouri native and future president didn’t just deliver words of comfort. He drew a powerful link between the Exodus story and the Allied fight against tyranny.
“Today the Angel of Death is again passing over the house of the modern tyrants,” Truman said, referring to the Nazis. He praised Jewish resilience, noting how Jews had long been “in the vanguard of the fight to aid other oppressed minorities.”
For Truman, this was personal. His friendship with Rabbi Samuel Thurman of St. Louis and their shared Masonic values gave him deep ties to the Jewish community. That bond would later lead Truman, as president, to invite Thurman to offer the first rabbinical prayer at a presidential inauguration.
That same Passover night, Jewish soldiers in the 42nd Infantry Division held a seder in Dahn, Germany. Led by Chaplain Eli Bohnen and Cpl. Eli Heimberg, they used a handmade Haggadah—believed to be the first Jewish liturgical text printed in Germany since 1933.
Across the world, seders like that were taking place in tents, barracks and battlefields. The American Jewish Historical Society houses an extraordinary collection of photographs from these wartime gatherings. Pulled from the National Jewish Welfare Board Collection, these images show Jewish soldiers clinging to ritual and community wherever they were stationed—from Europe to the Pacific.
Each photo tells its own story of endurance, faith and the fight for freedom.
