This Veteran’s Day we’re saluting J.D. Salinger, author of The Catcher In The Rye, and a man far better known for writing than fighting. But before he wrote the Great American Novel, Jerome David Salinger was a G.I. who helped liberate one of the Holocaust’s most notorious concentration camps.
While Salinger didn’t often write about Jewish themes, he was born to a Jewish father and an Irish-Scots mother who considered herself an unofficial member of the tribe. And his Catholic-Jewish heritage was shared by some of his most famous characters: namely, the precocious Glass family of Franny and Zooey and A Perfect Day For Bananafish.
Salinger was born in 1919 and, like many Americans of his generation, served in World War II. He saw combat in some of the war’s most pivotal battles, including the 1944 D-Day invasion of Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge. He also carried his literary aspirations with him, working on an early draft of The Catcher In The Rye during down time, and even arranging to meet Ernest Hemingway while on a few days’ R&R in Paris.
Salinger also became one of the first Americans to see a concentration camp, in his role going undercover as part of an operation to liberate Dachau in 1945. The experience left him shaken and afterwards he spent several weeks in treatment for “combat stress reaction.” He later told his daughter, “You never really get the smell of burning flesh out of your nose entirely, no matter how long you live.”
What Salinger saw at Dachau would haunt him for the rest of his life, but like so many World War II veterans, he suffered his combat trauma and PTSD in silence. His experiences instead made their way indirectly into his writing, which often deals with traumatized people struggling to reintegrate into society. After the war, he would go on to publish The Catcher In The Rye to high acclaim. But Salinger was overwhelmed by the pressure of celebrity, and retreated to a remote farm in New Hampshire, where he lived out the rest of his days without ever publishing another book again. Though he would mention his military service frequently to his children, he refused to go into detail. He died in 2010, at the age of 91, of natural causes.
The Jewish Federation works to combat anti-Semitism and hate in all its forms so that we never witness another horrific event like Salinger witnessed. Our Jewish Community Relations Council sponsors programs such as the Holocaust Youth Symposium and the Mordechai Anielewicz Creative Arts Competition which help teach the lessons of the Holocaust to school children. The impact the Symposiums can be viewed here and click here to listen to what some teachers, parents and students had to say about the Arts Competition.
In additional, the focus of this year’s Jewish Federation Main Event is securing our Jewish communities amid another rising tide of anti-Semitism. Get tickets today to hear from guest speaker Bari Weiss, New York Times opinion section writer and editor, and author of the recently released book How to Fight Anti-Semitism.
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