Advancing into Germany with the American First Infantry in October 1944, Chaplain Sidney Lefkowitz wrote to his wife, Dorothy: “A bit of excitement—an NBC reporter…wants to broadcast part of my service this Sunday afternoon. Therefore, unless atmospheric conditions interfere, you’ll be hearing me on Sunday.” The weather held, and Americans from coast to coast heard on their radio: “The National Broadcasting Company, in cooperation with the American Jewish Committee, brings you now a broadcast of historic significance with the first Jewish religious service broadcast from Germany since the advent of Hitler.”

Today, 65 years later, hundreds of thousands of YouTube viewers have watched Live From Germany: The Jewish Service Heard Around the World, a short film which tells this story.

Lefkowitz, a 1933 graduate of Hebrew Union College and former assistant rabbi at Richmond’s Congregation Beth Ahaba, was one of approximately 208 Jewish chaplains in the US Army. He was stationed at Omaha Beach, the most costly engagement of the Normandy invasion, and only a month later in St. Lo, where again victory came with a heavy cost.

How different the world looked in October 1944, when the first German city fell to the Allies, and with it, the gateway to the Rhineland. On the 29th of the month, the grateful Corps Chaplain Sidney Lefkowitz; PFC Max Fuchs, acting as cantor; NBC war correspondent James Cassidy; and fifty Jewish soldiers gathered on a site near the destroyed Aachen synagogue to deliver a message of hope and renewal to the world.

While Cassidy warned listeners, “We hear the sound of artillery guns, because the front line is not far from where we are,” Rabbi Lefkowitz declared: “The light of religious freedom has pierced through the darkness of Nazi persecution.” And amidst the explosion of artillery shells, Max Fuchs led the Jewish GIs in singing Ayn Kaylohaynu and Yigdal.

In a show of brotherhood, the broadcast ended with comments by Catholic and Protestant chaplains. “One of the great fruits born of this war,” Father Edward J. Waters stated, “is religious freedom for all men.” Protestant chaplain Bernard Henry expressed confidence that “the Jews everywhere in Europe shall soon again have the opportunity to enter their houses of worship…. That is definitely one of the things we are fighting for and are resolved to preserve.”

The broadcast was a success in the States, with many repeated airings. Among the congratulations was a letter from Philip S. Bernstein, director of Jewish chaplains for the Committee on Army and Navy Religious Activities. “The Ayn Kaylohaynu will never have the same meaning for me again. I will never be able to sing it without remembering the American boys singing it from Aachen.” He added, “You have made history, Sidney…. In this phase of the war our chaplains have become the symbols of liberation.”

One of Lefkowitz’s relatives, Merrill Lifton of the Bronx, NY, reported: “We heard you....Boy it was good!!...Now we are waiting for [your] broadcast from Berlin.”

In time, Lefkowitz had first-hand knowledge of Nazi atrocities. Letters home detailed horrors of the camps and touching encounters with survivors. Recounting the three Polish Jewish boys he discovered in the Nordhausen hospital, he wrote: “The Chaplain’s insignia with its Tablets of the Law and Mogen David attracted their attention. Bewildered, they asked if I wore the Star of David because of desire or through compulsion; whether it was a sign of disgrace or pride. A bit incredulous they were when I described our position in the army and America. Rarely have I witnessed such emotion as when they were given mezzuzahs.”

Chaplain Lefkowitz ministered to hundreds of survivors, conducting services and burials; visiting the ill; distributing food, medical supplies, prayer books, and mezzuzot; and occasionally welcoming a new Jewish life into the world.

After the war, Rabbi Lefkowitz settled with his family in Jacksonville, Florida, where his daughter and grandchildren live today. In 1946, the very year he assumed the pulpit at Jacksonville’s Congregation Ahavath Chesed, he initiated the Institute of Judaism, an outreach program to educate non-Jews about Judaism. During his twenty-seven-year tenure at the congregation, he became one of the city’s most prominent builders of interfaith bridges. He died in 1997 at the age of 88.

In perhaps a different way than anticipated, Rabbi Lefkowitz finally did broadcast from Berlin. On March 12, 2008 at the Berlin Jewish Museum, the American Jewish Committee presented the first Sidney Lefkowitz Award for International Jewish Renewal to Charlotte Knobloch, the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany. Knobloch then declared: “We are currently experiencing a new cultural flowering of Jewish life and growing Jewish self-confidence such as we hardly dared hope for after 1945.”

Rabbi Chaplain Lefkowitz’s influence continues to this day.

Charlotte Bonelli is the director of the American Jewish Committee archives.