It was bravery at the highest level: William Shemin defied German machine gun fire to sprint across a World War I battlefield and pull wounded comrades to safety. And he did so no fewer than three times.
Yet Shemin never earned the nation’s highest military citation, the Medal of Honor — a result, many suspected, of the fact that he was Jewish at a time when discrimination ran rampant throughout the U.S. military.
Now, nearly four decades after his death, Shemin may finally get that medal, thanks to the tireless efforts of his daughter, whose long quest also opens the door for other overlooked Jewish veterans of the Great War.
(READ the full AP story in the NY Daily News)