Bernie Friedenberg stood 5’6” and weighed 125 pounds.
But the new statue of him in Atlantic City’s O’Donnell Memorial Park weighs 3,500 pounds. It’s a sculpture that you can’t miss if you walk or bike or drive by. It shows a helmet-clad and uniformed soldier holding up a wounded comrade.
Friedenberg, who was Jewish, did this repeatedly on the battlefields of Europe during World War II. He was a medic and technically a noncombatant.
But during the D-Day invasion of Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944, the Philadelphia native raced through a minefield to save five wounded soldiers. His actions earned him a Silver Star and a Purple Heart. He also earned another Silver Star, another Purple Heart and two Bronze Stars for valor.
For his heroism, the late Friedenberg was honored as the inspiration for Atlantic City’s new memorial to World War II veterans. The statue was unveiled by the city, his daughter Susan Friedenberg and the Friends of Bernie Friedenberg Committee on June 6, the 80th anniversary of D-Day.
“He was an inspiration to the community,” said retired Army General Doug Satterfield, part of the Bernie Friedenberg Committee.
The statue was designed by Fisher Sculpture and cost more than $1 million to build. It included contributions from the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority and AC Mayor Marty Small’s office.
“We’re doing it to honor veterans and to educate future generations,” Satterfield said.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, Friedenberg, then a student at Temple University, tried to enlist in the Army, Navy and Marines. He was rejected due to poor vision, according to Susan Friedenberg.
But he kept reaching out to military brass. Finally, they let him serve as a medic. Friedenberg ended up seeing action in Operation Torch in Algeria in 1942, the Fighting First Campaign in Sicily in 1943 and D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge in 1944, according to an article on njcrda.com.
During one battle, he saw a building explode and waited for the dust to settle, according to his daughter. Then he heard a soldier screaming and crying inside. Friedenberg ran in thinking the man was American, but he was German.
The man held a picture of his wife and child in his hand. Friedenberg thought to himself, “Maybe he got drafted; maybe he doesn’t know about the camps; or maybe he’s just a foot soldier.”
The Jewish soldier leaned down, patched the man up and said in Yiddish, “Never forget that a Jew saved your life.”
After the war, Friedenberg joined veterans’ organizations and spoke at schools. He became well-known in South Jersey. He died in 2018 at 96.
Before Friedenberg died, Ed Colimore, a longtime writer and editor at The Philadelphia Inquirer, interviewed him for a story. Colimore then contacted Chad and Fran Fisher at Fisher Sculpture and said they should do a monument to Friedenberg. The couple reached out to Susan Friedenberg.
“I was blown away,” the daughter said.
The Friends of Bernie Friedenberg Committee found a gazebo in O’Donnell Memorial Park, according to Susan Friedenberg. It stood next to a World War I memorial. The group got a letter of approval from the city and started fundraising.
The initial cost was going to be around $300,000, according to Susan Friedenberg. But then a fellow veteran and friend of Friedenberg’s, Marco Polo Smigliani, asked the Fishers to embellish it more. It was worth the price, he said.
He told njcrda.com that, “Bernie is the face, but this is for all World War II veterans — all the 405,000 that never came home, the 760,000 that were wounded, the 120,000 MIAs and the 16 million who returned.”
