By Dave Lucas
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wamc/local-wamc-861339.mp3
Albany, NY – An historic recording, "lost" for years, is playing to a new generation via the Internet. Capital District Bureau Chief Dave Lucas reports
October 29th, 1944 - a battlefield prayer service for Jewish soldiers in Germany held near a destroyed synagogue, was broadcast in the United States by NBC radio - this simple offering has become HUGE on youtube - over 315-thousand people visited the website to "tune in to the past"...
Listen to the entire radio broadcast here: http://www.ajcarchives.org/main.php?GroupingId=1240
Max Fuchs, now 87 and living on New York's Upper West Side was just 22 years old when he sang as a cantor at the prayer service, which is enjoying newfund fame on youtube --- Fuchs himself is profiled in the Friday New York Times --- When his children were growing up, there was a photograph on the wall of their living room in Bayside, showing him with a prayer shawl over his Army uniform, singing while a radio reporter held a microphone in front of him. If you listen you can hear artillery fire in the background...
the recording was lost for years but was eventually located at the Library of Congress - Bruce Chilton is Professor of Religion at Bard College - he says the Times article struck him as a "moving piece."
Read the New York Times Article
A private first class in the First Infantry Division, MAx Fuchs volunteered to sing the day of the broadcast because there was no cantor available. His parents emigrated from Poland in 1934, when he was 12. Some of his aunts, uncles and cousins who remained were killed after the German invasion in 1939.