Stephen Silver
Emanuel “Manny” Weinstein was born in South Philadelphia in January of 1924 and is just months away from turning 100.
Throughout In that long life, he’s done everything from starting a pair of financial institutions to serving as one of the founding members of the Pennsylvania Ballet Co. and the 21 Jewel Square Club Masonic Lodge to presiding over four generations that have attended the same Wynnewood synagogue.
But Weinstein, who lives in a retirement community in Lafayette Hill, is especially proud of his World War II service.
“I didn’t train in the infantry, but I became, on the field, a sergeant in an infantry company and I was a squad leader in Europe,” Weinstein said. “I fought in France, and I fought in the Battle of the Bulge. For my awards, I received the Combat Infantry Badge for bravery, some other stars. I was enlisted in the French Honor Legion as a member there.”
Weinstein was evacuated from the theater on Christmas of 1944 and spent seven months in an Army hospital, he said, only to be discharged in August of 1945, around the end of the war.
He easily recalls events that occurred more than 70 years ago, including during his service.
“We took a town in [France], about four o’clock in the evening, and it was dusk,” he said, sharing one of his favorite war stories. “The Germans were able to hit us with Screaming Mimis [rocket launchers used during World War II]. We couldn’t understand how they could find us because it was dark at that time. We were at a farmhouse in the town, we saw some light up in a window. I said to one of the kids in my squad, ‘Come with me and come up there and see what the hell’s going up there. They were supposed to black out everything at night there.’
“Upstairs, there was a second story of this farmhouse, we walked in and there’s a woman there, about 65 years of age, sitting at a table and she’s got a grid map. [She’s] sitting there with a radio telephone and she’s calling the coordinates to some German who’s gunning us with the Screaming Mimis.” They yanked the phone from her, threw it away and “had somebody call G2 [intelligence.]”
As is often the case with WWII veterans who lived a long life afterward, Weinstein served alongside men who gave their lives and never got to enjoy the decades of life, careers and children and grandchildren that he did.
That’s a theme of Steven Spielberg’s World War II movie “Saving Private Ryan,” which just marked its 25th anniversary, although Weinstein said he is more partial to the miniseries “Band of Brothers,” another World War II story that came from Spielberg and Tom Hanks.
World War II combat units, in the movies and in real life, often featured men from all types of backgrounds. Weinstein fondly remembers the one other Jew he remembers serving with during the war.
“My platoon leader was Jewish, Donald Cohen,” he remembered. “Fought in an artillery attack, I remember it like it was yesterday. Thanksgiving Day, and he got killed that day. About 22, 23. That’s the only Jewish guy I ran into in combat. He used to come over to me on a Friday night and talk to me about gefilte fish and traditional Friday night dinner.”
After he returned from the war, Weinstein went back to school and, after some time selling storm windows, moved into the financial world.
“I took courses at Penn at night and in the afternoon in finance and law,” he said, and wound up starting a finance company that morphed into mortgage banking.
He founded First National Fund, sold it and started another company called Central Credit Fund, retiring in 2004. In 1973, he had his photograph taken by the famed photographer Yousuf Karsh.
“I have an excellent memory,” Weinstein said of his ability to recall the war stories in detail. “If you had a mortgage with my company and you didn’t pay me, I remembered your name and address.”
As for his Jewish community involvement, he was a trustee of the now-defunct Dropsie College, which specialized in granting degrees in Jewish studies before it was absorbed by Penn. Active in the Jewish National Fund, Weinstein planted what he called a “forest” of trees in Israel in honor of his wife’s 40th birthday; he visited Israel eight times.
Weinstein, who has two children, four grandchildren and five great-grandchildren, joined Temple Beth Hillel-Beth El in Wynnewood shortly after his marriage.
“That’s my pride and joy,” Weinstein said. “My fourth generation is there: Not only am I a member there, but my daughter’s a member there, with her husband, my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren [who] are in the Hebrew school there.”
Stephen Silver is a Broomall-based freelance writer.