1011 West Grace Street - Residence of Herman Hertzberg

Wars often times bring people together from all kinds of places - geographically, politically, and spiritually. Richmond, as the capital of Virginia, a state so involved in World War I, was no exception to this. At this site, where large, artistic murals are on display, was once the residence of World War I veteran Herman Hertzman. His story was a complicated one of identity and belonging.

Herman Hertzberg was born in 1888 in Mlawa, not far from Warsaw, in a city that had been passed between Prussia and Russia in the past, along a contested borderland. By the time he was writing his war questionnaire in 1921, though, Mlawa just became a part of the newly founded Republic of Poland, meaning that his listing of his birth country as 'Poland' was indeed accurate. Later on that same year, Hertzberg would move to Washington, D.C., working as a professor of anatomy at Georgetown University Medical School. In 1927, his work moved to private practice, where he worked until retirement.

But Herman Hertzberg's forays into medicine went back to his days in the US Navy, and well before that. He first went to college in Vilna, or modern day Vilnius in Lithuania, trained as a teacher. He attended the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond, having came to the United States in 1905, when he would have been 17. Considering there was tremendous social upheaval in the Russian Empire at the turn of the century and particularly during the Revolution of 1905 and in the Polish parts of the empire, and given that Hertzberg's family was Jewish, it seems likely that they left for America to escape the pogroms which had spread across the countryside.

As a surgeon in the Navy, he worked aboard the USS Tiger, tending to those who were wounded in France, both while overseas and here in the United States. Despite seeming to have never been to a battlefield during his time in the war, he had strong convictions about US involvement abroad - in answering a question on his overseas experience, he responded "Became more strongly convinced that we need not take part in European affairs." His origins in Europe did not weigh heavy on him, as he also noted on his enlistment that "I felt it was my duty to offer my professional services to my adopted country, which had given me equal rights liberty and opportunities-things that were [not permitted] by my native country."

Herman Hertzberg is buried in Washington Hebrew Congregation Cemetery, which is still an active synagogue in the Jewish community around the Washington DC area. Yet, at the time he was writing his questionnaire, he did not list his faith as 'Jewish' - next to the entry labelled 'Church' he wrote 'no affiliation in particular denomination.' When asked if his experience had changed his religious beliefs, he simply wrote a line through the answer section, as he had others he did not elect to answer.

What exactly did Hertzberg feel about faith and religion at the time? The answer may be impossible to truly know, though considering his remaining in the Jewish community at his time of death, it seems he may have reconciled after a period of skepticism or may have been the wishes of relatives. Judging from his own circumstances and answers on his questionnaire, it certainly seems possible that, having come to America as a refugee of religious persecution and now having witnessed the horrors of war up close as a surgeon, he was undergoing a personal struggle with his own faith.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/201263993/herman-hertzberg

Hertzberg, Herman. War History Commission State of Virginia Military Service Record. Library of Virginia, Virginia War History Commission.