Identity disc of Max Fuchs (1920-2018), a Jewish American cantor who fought in the US Army during World War II
USA, 1942
Aluminum, metal sheet, gilded metal, paper
Courtesy of the Fuchs and Victor families
In 1944, in the city of Aachen, Fuchs led the first postwar mass Friday evening prayer on Nazi German soil. The disc includes the letter H indicating hebrew, to which Fuchs added a mezuzah
Must Know
Michael (Max) Fox, an American Jew born in Poland, enlisted in the U.S. army at the age of 22, and fought as part of the 1st Infantry Division. The brigade landed on the Normandy coast of occupied France on 6th June 1944 and fought in a battle which marked the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany. During the fighting Fox was wounded with shrapnel, however he insisted that he continue to fight and remain in Europe. Four months later, he was sent with the same division to fight a battle in Aachen, a city in the west of Germany; a battle in which the Germans were defeated.
On 29th October 1944, once the battle was over, Fox and 50 other Jewish soldiers from the brigade found themselves opposite the ruins of the town’s ancient synagogue, which had been built in 1862 and completely destroyed in Kristallnacht [the Night of Broken Glass] in November 1938. Fox, who used to be a yeshiva student who studied cantor, began singing the traditional Shabbat hymns whilst explosions echoed in the background. An NBC radio network crew arrived, who broadcast live Fox’s Shabbat hymns to millions of houses in the U.S. – making it one of the symbols of victory over Nazi Germany.
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Fox became a sought-after cantor in New York’s Jewish community in the post-war years. Over the years he refused to be interviewed about the war and only confirmed that it was he who sang the Shabbat hymns in front of the ruins of the Aachen synagogue. Later, his daughter revealed that the horrific scenes of the war left him with mental scars.
In 2009, when he was 87 years old, he agreed at the request of American Jewish Committee (AJC) to go back to that day in 1944 and to tell his story. he first shared his life experiences from that historic day and what led him to sing the hymns, saying that, “the Jewish soldiers who were with me had heard about the horrors of the Nazis. Most of them had families who perished in the Holocaust. I also had many relatives who perished… I learned cantor before the war, and it was only natural for me to lead the Sabbath.”
Fox died in July 2018 at the age of 96.
