Arlington grave of Jewish soldier gets headstone with Star of David over a century after his death
Arlington, Virginia — On a cold day earlier this month at Arlington National Cemetery, 102-year-old Deborah Eiferman rose from her wheelchair and addressed the crowd.
"It's an overwhelming experience," Eiferman told them.
Her uncle, Army Pvt. David Moser, is buried here. He was a soldier in World War I who died of influenza in Germany at age 20, before Eiferman was born. He was buried at Arlington in 1920.
For generations, his grave has been marked by an erroneous headstone with a Latin cross, not a Star of David, something Eiferman learned only recently.
"He was a proud American Jew who loved his country and respected our Constitution," Eiferman told CBS News. "It was part of his essence."
More than a century after his death, the error was finally corrected with the unveiling of Moser's new headstone in an April 7 ceremony.
"It's a validation of what my baby uncle was, so it means a lot to me,' Eiferman said of the ceremony.
Rabbi Shalom Lamm and his Operation Benjamin organization have traveled the world in recent years to find mislabeled headstones.
He says the mislabeling of headstones for fallen American soldiers has occurred "hundreds of times."
"We think the total number of errors that we'll find between World War I and World War II is about 900," he estimates.
Several of them have been discovered at overseas burial sites, like France's Normandy American Cemetery above D-Day's Omaha Beach, where families gather to commemorate loved ones now lying beneath the Jewish Star.
"The question really is, why are they (the headstone mistakes) so rare? If you think about it, let's just take World War II, for example: 5,000 Americans are killed in battle every month. You have these terrible battlefields. And there's no computers."
At Arlington, Eiferman spoke of her uncle and the honor he has finally received.
"Because his true identity as a soldier was hidden," she told CBS News. "The only time he is authentically validated there as a proud American Jew. Now we know who he was."
