Trump Awards Medal of Honor to WWII Veteran Who Defied the Nazis To Save Jewish American POWs

A World War II veteran, Master Sgt. Roderick Edmonds, was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for protecting hundreds of Jewish American soldiers from certain death in a Nazi prisoner of war camp.President Trump presented the award to Edmonds’s son, Pastor Chris Edmonds, who accepted the honor on behalf of his father, who died in 1985. “Today, your father gets the honor he so courageously merited,” Mr. Trump said at a White House ceremony Monday.Edmonds received the Medal of Honor — the nation’s highest award for military valor — for his actions after he and his unit were captured by German forces and interned at a prisoner of war camp in Germany. As the senior non-commissioned officer among some 1,200 American prisoners, Edmonds was ordered by an SS officer to assemble only the Jewish Americans for roll call the following morning.“There were more than 200 Jewish American soldiers in the camp,” Mr. Trump said Monday, recounting the episode. “Roddie knew their separation from the group would mean certain death, so that night, he summoned his team and devised a plan.”Edmonds instructed the senior leaders to present all 1,200 American prisoners together at roll call. The next morning, Mr. Trump recounted, the men “fell in line together, shoulder to shoulder.” When the Nazi officer who had issued the order grew enraged and pressed the barrel of his pistol between Edmonds’s eyes, Edmonds refused to yield.“Staring right back into the raging face of evil, Sergeant Edmonds replied fearlessly: ‘We are all Jews here,'” Mr. Trump said.Edmonds further reminded the officer that under the Geneva Convention, he was required to disclose only names, ranks, and serial numbers of his men, not religious affiliation. The Nazi officer eventually lowered his weapon and withdrew. The camp was liberated two months later.The full account came to light only after Edmonds had died. His son Chris learned of the encounter from a fellow prisoner, Lester Tanner, who urged him to seek recognition for his father.“When the Nazi commander approached and threatened Dad, Lester was there,” Mr. Edmonds told Jewish News Syndicate. “He heard everything, and he shared the story with me in 2013, in New York City, and at the end of sharing the story, he looked at me and said, ‘Your father’s deserving of the Medal of Honor. You should go back and talk to your congressman and see what he thinks.’ And so we began.”In 2015, Yad Vashem honored Edmonds with the title of Righteous Among the Nations, making him the only American soldier ever to receive that distinction.During Monday’s ceremony Mr. Trump also presented the Medal of Honor to a Vietnam War veteran, Command Sgt. Maj. Terry P. Richardson, credited with saving the lives of 85 fellow service members, and an American soldier, Staff Sgt. Michael Ollis, who was killed in 2013 while shielding a Polish army officer from an Afghan suicide bomber.

Trump Awards Medal of Honor to WWII Veteran Who Defied the Nazis To Save Jewish American POWs

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