Named state commander

By Randi Weiner

THE JOURNAL NEWS.COM
July 3, 2004

Polish Army veteran and longtime local resident has been named the state commander of the Jewish War Veterans.

Bernhard Storch, 81, of South Nyack was elected to the one-year position late last month and will represent more than 25,000 Jewish New Yorkers who have served in wars from World War II to the current war in Iraq.

"Each commander has his own ideas to fulfill. I think the most important thing is membership," Storch said. He plans to campaign to increase membership among Jewish veterans who have served and may belong to other veterans organizations, but have never joined the JWV.

Storch is a member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, in addition to belonging to the Jewish War Veterans.

He said he also planned to concentrate on building stronger ties with other veterans organization and to fight for veterans' rights.

"We can accomplish a lot as a group," Storch said.

Because he never served in the American armed forces, he gets no veterans benefits, "but I still fight to get everything on our side to get the proper care for veterans."

"I do it to benefit the others," he said. "I know what we're missing. As a group, we can really come to have better results."

Storch was born and raised in Bochnia, Poland, the oldest of four sons. His father was a Polish army World War I veteran who was seriously wounded fighting the Russians. Storch's uncle - his father's twin brother - left Poland during the war to avoid fighting and settled in Brooklyn in 1920.

Poland was home to many Christian veterans organizations after World War I, but none for Jews, Storch said. His father had always wanted to join a veterans group and passed on his respect for those groups to his son. His father died when Storch was a young man.

Storch was 17 when he and other young men from his area were sent to work camps in Siberia in 1940. That was the last time he saw his mother and brothers, who remained behind in Bochnia.

When the Russians released all of the Polish citizens from the Siberian camps in 1941 so they could form an army, Storch became a soldier.

His unit liberated four concentration camps during World War II, including one in the Polish city of Lublin, a camp called Majdanek that was intact when troops arrived. The liberation was completed July 23, 1944.

Bochnia had been captured and occupied by German troops, and its Jewish citizens were sent to camps in the area. When Storch returned to Bochnia in 1945, he learned that his mother had died in a local camp and his brothers in Auschwitz.

He and his childhood sweetheart married in 1945 and fled Poland for Germany while they waited for immigration approval from the United States. They came to New York in 1947.

In 1987, Storch said, he joined the Jewish War Veterans.

A friend, Max Erlanger, introduced him to the organization in New City, and he joined it that year. Erlanger died about a year later, and the post - No. 756 - was named in his honor.

Storch remains a member of the Max Erlanger Post 765 and the Veterans of Foreign Wars. In both organizations, he has held leadership positions over the years, including a stint as commander of the Rockland and Orange counties council of the JWV and member of the district council, the executive committee and the group's national executive committee.

He is one of the finalists for Rockland Veteran of the Year. Results will be announced in September. He is active on behalf of the Jewish Chapel at West Point.

Storch was elected state commander of the JWV at the organization's convention in South Falls Park, N.Y., in June. Sen. Hillary Clinton was the guest speaker, he said.

Storch said he was the sixth Rockland resident to be elected state commander of the JWV.

Three of those veterans have gone on to become national commanders.

Reach Randi Weiner at rweiner@thejournalnews.com or 845-578-2468..