Prf. Sidney Rapeport, 28, of Cleveland, has been posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross “for extraordinary heroism in wiping out five German machine-gun nests in Tunisia,” it is reported today by the Jewish Welfare Board. The action in which the infantryman gave his life took place on May 6, at the culmination of the successful Allied drive in Northern Tunisia.
“The fighting was grim and intensive,” the J.W.B. reports, “with hand-to-hand and bayonet combat interspersing heavy machine gun fire. Private Rapeport, his company on the steep slopes of Djebel-Ed-Deba suffering terrific enemy fire, charged with a group of men on one machine gun nest after another. Armed with a carbine, he took the lead in wiping out four of them. Then, his ammunition gone, he took to wielding his carbine as a club, broke it on a Nazi’s helmeted skull, but drove on, flinging himself on the crew of a fifth machine gun. It was in this last gallant action, in which he silenced the foe’s gun, that he was killed.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
