In this the last story about three generations of Adelsteins in the military, today I’ll tell the story of a hospital named for a Jewish general and the story of Morris’s grandson.
In the late 1940s there was a very special kind of discrimination against Jewish doctors. Denver, which was still a relatively small town at the time, had a quota—not to be exceeded—of Jewish doctors that were allowed on staff at each hospital. A number of Jewish men really resented this limit and decided that Denver should have a hospital built by contributions from the Jewish community. A national fundraising campaign was initiated and successfully raised the funds needed to build the hospital. The hospital was named General Rose Memorial Hospital in honor of Major General Maurice Rose, the highest ranking Jewish officer in the U.S. Army during World War II. (Click here if you would like to learn more about Major General Maurice Rose.)
A point was made by recognizing Major General Maurice Rose—one of the very few Jewish officers.
Years later, I would sit in the father’s waiting room at the General Rose Memorial Hospital awaiting the arrival of my first child with my father-in-law, Leo Korn, who escaped from Poland after the start of the Holocaust. We heard the baby’s first cry at midnight between November 23rd and November 24th of 1954. As the baby cried, the “The Star-Spangled Banner” sounded on the waiting room’s TV. A prophetic sound for this tiny baby? Perhaps.
Our series of stories, which began with Morris Adelstein’s battle field commission, comes full circle sixty years later with the commissioning of Morris Adelstein’s grandson at West Point. This grandson proved the promise of the United States and retired as a Special Forces Lieutenant Colonel.
(Click here for more about the history the General Rose Memorial Hospital)
A Way to Go 