Historical Marker for Holocaust Hero Master Sgt. Roddie Edmonds Finally Dedicated

By Jerry Klinger

KNOXVILLE, Tennessee — At-risk to his own life, Roddie Edmonds saved approximately 200 Jewish POW G.I.s during the Holocaust. He is the only American G.I. honored by Yad Vashem as a Righteous Among the Nations.

East Tennessee is part of the Republican flyover country to the coastal elitists. Images of the Beverly Hillbillies, banjo playing, bible thumpers, ignorance, bigotry, moonshiners, and worse are falsely, prejudicially, enmeshed into the shallowness of popular culture.

Tennesseans have their differences in opinions and views. They are not all saints and certainly not all sinners. There is a life philosophy that fills the air of Tennessee, the “Volunteer State,” “Do the Right Thing.”

At times mistakes are made and in time, corrected, righting the ship again, as does America as a whole. Americans and Tennesseans in particular, measure people by what they do or did not what they were supposed to be.

On Friday, August 20, after a long two-year process that nearly was crushed by the pandemic, the dedication of the Master Sgt. Roddie Edmonds historical marker finally took place.

The Roddie Edmonds marker, funded by the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation, is sited on Market Street next to the East Tennessee Historical Society and Museum. At the corner is a prominent bronze sculpture to Harry Burn, a local native son.

Without the sculpture, not many would remember Harry Burn — a member of the Tennessee House of Representatives in 1920 during the very bitter national struggle for women’s suffrage.  Today, we take for granted that women should have the right to vote. In 1920, it required an amendment to the Constitution of the United States for that to happen. The 19th Amendment was in dire trouble.

Thirty-five states had ratified the 19th Amendment. To become part of the Constitution, it required 36. Across America, the Suffrage movement, 72 years of struggling, was teetering. Many states that had ratified the 19th were entertaining rescinding their vote for it. Passage and survival of the 19th Amendment came down to one state, Tennessee.

The Tennessee House of Representatives was nearly evenly split between those who opposed suffrage wearing red roses in their lapels and those wearing yellow roses in theirs who supported the Amendment. The struggle was called the War of the Roses. The nose count was against the 19th.

The morning of the vote, Harry Burn wore a red ribbon on his lapel. He sat down at his desk for the vote and opened a letter from his mother. The vote came, and Harry voted, to the shock of the House, for Suffrage.

Harry’s mother had written to him, “Do the Right Thing.” The 19th Amendment to the Constitution passed. Tennessee had put women’s suffrage over the top.

The monument to women’s suffrage and to Harry Burn on the corner did not tell the whole story.  There were three critical legislators in the Tennessee House of Representatives who swung the vote. Harry Burn in the East, Banks Turner in middle Tennessee, and Joseph Hanover in Western Tennessee made the difference.

Each acted for the same reasons. It was the Right Thing to do.

Joseph Hanover, when he was a youngster in Memphis, read the founding documents of America, as he was instructed by his parents. Afterward, he asked a question: “Why can’t mother vote?”

Hanover explained, in his short career as a politician and long career as an attorney, societal and community leader, Democracy is a process moving towards “a more perfect union.” It is not always easy. It is not a finished product, calcified in stone.

Hanover nearly lost his life as the Floor leader in the legislature defending women and the 19th Amendment. At the height of the battle, in an elevator at the Hermitage Hotel in Nashville where he was staying, he was attacked, beaten severely, called a “kike” and a Bolshevik. Joseph Hanover was an Orthodox Jew, an immigrant from Poland.

Together, Burns, Banks, and Hanover steered the vote. The 19th became a reality.

The citizens of Knoxville are very proud of their heritage. The East Tennessee museum is gem of discovery. The confluence of Native American culture, the Smokey Mountains, small farming, the staunch pro-union, anti-slavery sentiment of East Tennessee, the TVA, industry, and music overflows with unexpected richness.

A regional Jewish history I picked up in the book shop told how East Tennessee was proposed by Sir Alexander Cuming in 1740 to become the home for more than 300,000 Jewish farmers.  His dream was to bring the despised Jews to East Tennessee, set them up as small farmers, and let them run their lives. In return, the Jews would provide the British Crown significant revenue to pay off the British debt. He would personally be enriched. Nothing happened. The scheming Cuming ended in debtors’ prison and disgrace.

One-hundred and fifty years later, Theodor Herzl proposed to the Sultan of Turkey a similar proposal. The national debt of Turkey would be paid off by the Jews seeking to live in Ottoman Palestine. The Europeans would be rid of their Jews. Ottoman Palestine, the terribly impoverished backwater Turkish province where a remnant of Jews since the Roman expulsions 2,000 years earlier still lived, would again prosper.

The first known Jews to settle in Knoxville date to the middle of the 19th century. The Jewish community grew, accepted as part of the Knoxville fabric, and in common as Americans.

When the call to serve during WWII came, Tennesseans stepped forward. Nationally, 500,000 American Jews served.

The marker dedication program was emceed by Pastor Chris Edmonds, Roddie Edmonds’ son, began at 2 p.m. A crowd of more than 150 gathered on the hot afternoon non-Jews, Jews, whites and blacks, even a bewhiskered Chabadnik.

The simple marker dedication was an event of reflection and identifying meaning to all who attended.

Mayor Glenn Jacobs stood shoulder to shoulder with me, and I was on a stage above him.  Before he was Mayor, Jacobs was the notorious bad guy of WWE professional wrestling. His persona was “Kane.” Mayor Jacobs is 7-feet tall, weighing 323 pounds. He spoke at the program, as did the president of the Knoxville Jewish Alliance, Bryan Goldberg.

The dedication opened with bagpipe music, a multi-service military uniformed presentation of the flag, a volley of salute, the pledge of Allegiance, the National Anthem, Amazing Grace, and short speeches.

Pastor Edmonds said that to the day, August 20, 2019, I first contacted him about the marker project. The offer was never a debate. It was accepted eagerly by all who came to be involved.

As with all projects in the background, a key person is needed. Chip Rayman, a past president of the Knoxville Jewish Alliance, became the man behind the curtain who saw the marker project to fruition.

Among the speakers who made the special effort to come and speak were U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee) and U.S. Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tennessee).

All spoke eloquently, with a common thread. They all spoke of Roddie Edmonds and his focus on doing “the right thing.”

My part in the presentation was small. After the unveiling, I was asked to read the marker’s text and then say a few words.

“Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds (1919-1985) of Knoxville served in the U.S. Army during World War II. He was taken prisoner by the Germans at the Battle of the Bulge. Edmonds was held prisoner at Stalag IXA POW camp near Ziegenhain, Germany. In January 1945, the Germans announced that all Jewish POWs in the camp were to report the following morning. As the highest-ranking non-commissioned officer, he ordered more than 1,275 American captives to fall out with him and fearlessly pronounced, “We are all Jews here.” He would not waver, even with a pistol to his head, to identify any prisoners by religion, preventing over 200 Jewish soldiers from being singled out for Nazi persecution and possible death. The Nazi commander backed down. For his defense of Jewish servicemen at the POW camp, Edmonds, an Evangelical Christian, was recognized as a Righteous Among the Nations, Israel’s highest award for non-Jews who risked their own lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.”

I shared there is one word in the marker text that struck me as especially important: the word sergeant.

Roddie Edmonds was not an officer, a general, an aspirant to higher office or positioning himself to future wealth and business opportunity when he acted.  He was a young man from East Tennessee confronted with evil.  He refused to let evil defeat the meaning of being an American with all who were assembled on that cold wintry morning.

Roddie Edmonds personified the best of why America is not the dark place so many neo-historical political revisionists wish to shape the minds of our young with today. Roddie Edmonds was willing to do what was right at the risk of his own life.

After the dedication, Sen. Blackburn told me she had to excuse herself. She was trying to get people out of Afghanistan.  Congressman Burchett too left for a call with the White House.

In times of darkness, do the right thing.

Jerry Klinger is the President of the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation, www.JASHP.org.