Rabbi Louis Werfel of New York, a 27-year-old chaplain serving with the Twelfth Air Force Service Command, was killed on December 24 in an airplane crash in Algiers, according to information from the War Department released today. Chaplain Werfel, whose visits by planes to all areas of the North Africa war theater had caused him to become known as “the flying rabbi,” was the fourth chaplain of the Jewish faith to lose his life in the line of duty in this war.
Chaplain Werfel was commissioned in August, 1942, and was assigned to overseas duty the following June. The National Jewish Welfare Board is complying with his most recent request, which was for 10,000 copies, in French translation, for men of Jewish faith in the Free French forces, of the board’s prayer book.
Before entering the service he served as rabbi of the Knesseth Israel Synagogue, Birmingham, Ala., and from 1940 through 1941 he occupied the pulpit of the Mount Kisco Hebrew congregation at Mount Kisco, N.Y. He was a graduate of Yeshiva College, New York, and was a member of the board of directors of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association, Birmingham, where he also served on the National Jewish Welfare Board’s Army and Navy committee.
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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.
