From the archives: A Jew and a Catholic, together forever

Editor's Note: This story was originally published Nov. 15, 1994

In the early afternoon of Aug. 6, 1944, just after bombing a German aircraft factory, a U.S. Army Air Corps B-17 was shot down near Brandenburg. Five crew members bailed out; four others died in the crash.

As fate would have it, the bodies of two staff sergeants in the crew – Solomon Henry Bernstein, 20, a tail gunner and crew chief, and Chester F. Bartoszewicz, the radio operator – were so entwined that each man's casket had to contain parts of the other. The two were buried in Belgium, then repatriated in 1950 to Beverly National Cemetery in Burlington County.

This summer, 50 years after their plane went down, the two airmen got a new gravestone that authorities believe is unique in U.S. military cemeteries: The cross is for Bartoszewicz, a Catholic from Pittsburgh; the Star of David is for Bernstein, a Jew from Miami Beach.

"I am not aware of any other grave marker with both religious symbols on it," said Dee Blake, the Beverly cemetery's director, who has worked at four national cemeteries for the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Until this year, the two airmen had a weathered gravestone bearing only a cross. Officials ordered a new stone at the behest of Bernstein's sister, Mary Bernstein Stout, who felt that her brother's religion should be reflected just as it is on the headstones of other Jewish servicemen buried at Beverly.

"I thought that because they died together and their bodies were entwined together, so to speak, each in each other's coffin, that this was for eternity," Stout, 64, said yesterday by phone from her home near Orlando, Fla.

"I'm sure Jesus wouldn't mind. And I felt it would be a comfort to each of them. I felt very bad seeing the old headstone. "

She still has one of her big brother's last letters: Sol Bernstein wrote on July 25, 1944, that the crew had named the plane "Just Wolfin'. "

"We have a picture of a comical wolf, Walt Disney style," he wrote. "So watch us make headlines. "

During the war, their father, Julius Bernstein, managed hotels in Miami Beach. Sol had played French horn in his high school band. He was stationed in Tampa before going overseas – but Mary was at a friend's house when Sol stopped briefly at home in May 1943, his last visit.

Drawing upon a lifetime of guilt over missing that visit, Stout told me, she has been on a crusade to learn as much as possible about his death. She was 14 when the plane went down.

"I was devastated," she said. "I had been very close with my brother when we were growing up. I was the baby. He was the oldest, and he always stood up for me. And I never got to say goodbye to my brother. "

And so Stout has obtained declassified Air Force records detailing the ill- fated bombing mission. She has spoken with two of the five survivors. And she has tried without much success to learn about the man whose remains are buried with her brother's.

Records at the Beverly cemetery do not show when Chester Bartoszewicz was born. His mother's file at the Veterans Administration was "retired" in 1973, indicating that she had died. No one in Pittsburgh or Philadelphia with the same last name seemed to know anything about Chester, Stout said.

Meanwhile, Stout hopes to scrape together funds to have her brother and Bartoszewicz listed together on a memorial in Normandy, France.

"I want both their names to be on there together," said Mary Bernstein Stout. "They died together. Why shouldn't they be honored like that? "

Even though Veterans Day was Friday, my visit to Beverly National Cemetery was yesterday.

Besides learning of the two airmen buried together, I was able to avoid the crowds and pay a more personal visit with more than 45,000 folks who gave their lives so that a columnist like me could say whatever I want without being killed or tortured or imprisoned.

I appreciate their sacrifice.

I also appreciate Jay Boswick Giberson of Medford, who is buried in that impeccably maintained cemetery, but who did not die in battle.

Handsome and personable, Giberson was a veteran of World War II, having served in an artillery division in Italy. He came home with shrapnel in his knees. Tragically, his death came at age 31 in May 1953 when he was working on a Burlington County road crew.

"They were repairing bridges, and the crane operator didn't realize the crane was hitting high-power electric wires," recalled Giberson's sister, Elva Giberson Will, 76, of Northeast Philadelphia. "When my brother took hold of the chain wrapped around the pylons, he was electrocuted. "

The pain was heavy for Elva Will. Although she has always lived within a short car ride of her brother's grave, for many years she could not bring herself to see his grave.

She paid her first visit yesterday.

Beside a desk in the main office at Beverly National Cemetery, a tiny sign serves as a reminder for personnel on how to treat the public.

I think we might all benefit from its wisdom:

"Resolve to be tender with the young . . . compassionate with the aged . . . sympathetic with the striving . . . and tolerant of the weak and the wrong. Sometime in life you will have been all of these yourself."