OPINION: Searching for Isadore Horowitz

Letter to the Editor

February 1, 2018 Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Photo courtesy of Cagle Cartoons

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Dear Brooklyn Eagle,

On the week following International Holocaust Remembrance Day as we reflect upon and mourn the 6 million Jews who were victims of genocide, my thoughts turn a special serviceman from Brooklyn who gave his life fighting the Nazis.

His name was PFC Isidore I. Horowitz, and he served with the 51st Infantry Battalion, 4th Armored Division, which fought in Normandy, Northern France, Ardennes, Rhineland and Central Europe. Less than a month before Germany signed an unconditional surrender, Isidore was killed in action. He was 32 years old.

Today, Isidore’s white marble Star of David stands on the rolling green lawn of the Netherlands American Cemetery at Margraten in perfect alignment with 8,300 of his World War II comrades. Another 1,722 Americans are commemorated nearby on the Walls of the Missing.

As a volunteer researcher in the U.S. for the cemetery, I am trying to find a photograph of Isidore to display on a silver stand next to his headstone during special commemorations. By being able to connect with a photograph as well as a name on a headstone, the hope is that visitors to Margraten (and really all of us) will gain a deeper understanding that the cost of war can only be quantified in the faces of those who were deeply loved and lost.

I realize now that after several months of research from my home on the West Coast, there were hundreds of Horowitzes living in Brooklyn during the correct time period, many with sons named Isidore (various spellings both first and last names as well as nicknames or names that were changed). I’m reaching out to see if any of your readers might have a relative or know someone who can claim this special serviceman as their own. All the information we have to go on is that Isidore I. Horowitz was born in 1913, lived in Brooklyn, and was killed in action on April 14, 1945. He was married to Frances Sherman Horowitz, his father’s name was Joseph, and both his parents probably emigrated from what was known then as Austrian Poland.

If Isidore is your family hero, please contact me at [email protected]. We would love to be able to give PFC Horowitz the full honor he deserves, and his Dutch volunteer grave adopter who has been placing flowers and flags at his gravestone for the past 16 years would like to offer their gratitude to the family for his life, his service and his sacrifice.

Best,

Lynne Hasselman, Oregon