Abraham Krotoshinsky

Abraham Krotoshinsky was born in Płock, Płock, Russian Empire (now Płock, Warszawa, Poland) on 27 or 28 December 1892 to Jetta Pszenica (?-?) and Wolf Krotoshinsky (?-?); he had at least one sibling, Joseph (1885-1982). Krotoshinsky attended public school in Poland, and immigrated to the United States on the passenger ship Bulgaria via Hamburg-America Line (Hamburg-Amerikanische Packetfahrt-Aktien-Gesellschaft) on 27 November 1912.

“As I look back at it now, it all seems strange. I ran away from Russia and came to America to escape military service. I hated Russia, its government, its people, and particularly its cruel and inhuman treatment of Jews. Such a government I refused to service. From the small town of Plozk, now Poland, I landed in 1912 in the New World with all the hopes and dreams of the average immigrant. I walked the streets of New York City somewhat in a daze, not understanding the language, and my mind awhirl with the greatness, the hustle, the brightness, the confusion, the things of beauty and the things of ugliness which all go to make up a great city”.

In the late 1910s, Krotoshinsky lived at 811 Ritter Place, New York, working as a barber.

Krotoshinsky was drafted, entering service on 30 September 1917; he was assigned to Company K, 307^th Infantry Regiment, 77^th Division, as a Private. Pvt Krotoshinsky and Co. K left New York aboard the U.S. Army Transport Ship Justicia on 7 April 1918.

Pvt Krotoshinsky received the Distinguished Service Cross for his actions in the Argonne Forest on 6 October 1918,

The President of the United States of America, authorized by Act of Congress, July 9, 1918, takes pleasure in presenting the Distinguished Service Cross to Private Abraham Krotoshinsky (ASN: 1706855), United States Army, for extraordinary heroism in action while serving with Company K, 307th Infantry Regiment, 77th Division, A.E.F., in Argonne Forest, France, 6 October 1918. Private Krotoshinsky was on liaison duty with a battalion of the 308th Infantry which was surrounded by the enemy north of the Forest De la Buinonne in the Argonne Forest. After patrols and runners had been repeatedly shot down while attempting to carry back word of the battalion’s position and condition, Private Krotoshinsky volunteered for the mission and successfully accomplished it.

Pvt Krotoshinsky was “gassed Sept. 10-1918 on the Fismes front”, and “exhausted Oct. 6 in the Argonne Forest in the place they called ‘The Pocket’. Attending hospital #32, 22, 52, 85, 100, Embarkation hosp. #1 N.Y. Fox Hill”.

In 1929, Krotoshinsky published the following recollections:

“We sailed into Great Britain without mishap, the fear of a submarine sending us under water not having materialized. When we landed, the company’s spirits revived. We were entertained, feted and dined. ‘War is not so bad after all’ we were saying. Shortly after, we were sent to relieve the gallant men of the Forty-second (Rainbow) Division, who were battling near the Lorraine sector. Now we were part of war. The first night we were in the trenches we saw a gesture made by the Germans we shall never forget. Over their trenches they shot up in leisurely fashion a balloon broadcasting this message; ‘Good-by, Forty-second! Hello, Seventy-seventh!’.

From the Lorraine sector we moved on to the Chateau Thierry front, to take part in the first real drive by an all-American army. The Americans fought courageously and ‘tigerishly’. An idea of the fierceness of combat can be had from the fact that it was necessary for our division to seek replacement three times. The sights I saw there will be better left untold. But it hurts, no matter how hardened you may be, to see your buddy right next to you bleeding in torn. It hurts to see dead men and dead animals piled up together. As for the strictly military part of the Chateau Thierry drive, which is now history, we accomplished our purpose in that we crushed the morale of the Germans and reached our objective.

But the story you want me to tell, I suppose, is my connection with the Lost Battalion in the Argonne Forest. I have told it time and time again, and yet people want to hear it again. I wonder why? What I did, it seems to me, was nothing heroic, nothing deserving of all the fuss, and a stunt which I carried out because I wanted to, and had the next one been as lucky as I, he too would have been able to do it. As a matter of record, we should begin with the drive of Nov. 2, 1917, when the Americans tried to clear out the Argonne Forest, which was infested with German machine guns. The attack our army made was a concerted and brave one, but it was ably met by the machine-gun fire of the Germans. Our battalion, under Colonel Whittlesey, followed behind the main attack, and made sure that all machine-gun nests were cleared. All of a sudden firing on the German line stopped. We thought we had the enemy running, and we followed up our advantage by crossing the German first-line trenches and settling ourselves in the second- and, by gosh, if we weren’t trapped!

The Germans, by this clever ruse, had led us into their own territory, and were now busy surrounding us and opening fire upon us from the front and the back. It should be explained that in all there are three lines of trenches. Further, the Germans had inclosed us with barbed wire, so that we could not fight our way out. Added to this, our communications with headquarters were severed, and, to make matters worse, the Americans, not knowing our plight, concentrated fire on our trenches as well as upon the German lines. We were in the analogous situation of being attacked by all armies.

Our losses, as you can imagine, were frightful. Of the 700 men in our battalion, only 180 survived. Without food or water, with ammunition greatly reduced, our only hope remained in getting in touch with the main branch of the American division. For five days and nights man after man left the shelter of our bombarded lines and crawled out into the open, only to serve as doomed targets for the deadly fire of German marksmen. Thirty-six men in all plunged into the open, but all were either killed or captured.

Our situation appeared and was desperate and hopeless. Despite that, we refused to surrender. One of our messengers, captured by the Germans, was blindfolded and given a note to take back to our commander. This note, written by a German captain, named Kaiser, who formerly lived in Milwaukee, begged our commander to ‘Surrender in the name of humanity’. Our German friend was emphatically told to ‘go to Hell’.

Again a request was made for volunteers. I stepped forward. Another soldier with whom they sent me out was forced to return soon after. I continued alone. I started out at daybreak, but it did not take me long to be aware that I was a target for the Germans. I ran across an open space, down a valley and up a valley into some bushes. I remember crawling, lying under bushes, digging myself into holds. Somehow or other- I don’t know how to this day- I found myself at nightfall in German trenches. I saw several of them smoking cigarettes. I knew that if they knew of my visit the greetings they would have extended to me would not be any too friendly. I hid under some bushes, lying prone and acting dead. A German, who, judging from the pressure, never knew anything about reducing diet, stepped on one of my fingers, but I kept myself from making any outcry. Later I crawled into another deserted German trench. You can imagine the thrill I got when I head good English words spoken. No music ever sounded better. But even now I had to face the problem of first convincing them I was a friend, and second, of entering the lines as I did not know the password. I began shouting ‘Hello! Hello!’. After several minutes of yelling, a scouting group of American soldiers found me and took me to headquarters, where I delivered my message, giving them the position and condition of our battalion. ‘We need medical assistance and food’ I told them.

Orders were immediately given to stop firing on the Americans, and I was sent ahead with a relief squad which carried medical supplies and food. When we reached our company, they were certainly surprised to see me. I have been asked, just exactly what did they do? In the first place, let me say that they didn’t cheer, despite what men may do in the movies under similar situations. In the war hardly anybody ever cheered. If they escaped death today, they figured they may not be so fortunate tomorrow. But to say that the boys weren’t happy was also not true. Their faces lit up; there was good spirit and optimism in the air. It was a revived bunch, able to smile a little once more.”

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“The place was the Argonne Forest, where death become very familiar to the American soldier. It was full of ‘bloody angels’. The organization to which Krotoshinsky belonged was the ‘Lost Battalion’. Surrounded by the enemy and cut off from the rest of the American army, it had decided to die rather than surrender. Everyone knows the story now, a deathless story. Runner after runner was sent out- they were all volunteers- to get through the enemy’s lines and bring relief. Every man was a target as soon as he went ‘over the top’. It was the valor of cold blood that made him run the risk. He would probably be the victim of a sniper if a shell did not do the work. Death by an ordinary wound is bad enough, but it has no such terrors as extinction by a shell, the shattering of the human frame into indistinguishable pieces which accounts for so many of the ‘missing’. No man had gone through, for there was not cheering of relieving troops, no signal of aid coming, when the call for a volunteer was made again Krotoshinsky spoke first, stepped up to the ordeal, went over in full view of the enemy, and was on to save the ‘Lost Battalion’.

…So you never know what your neighbor off for the war is going to do. And about the stock and names of the heroes to be you can never tell, especially when fifty nationalities leap from the melting pot at the call to arms. If the great war has proved anything, it is that men of all races and from all climes are brave to a fault, and that heroes may wear unfamiliar names”.

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“Krotoshinsky was a barber in a Park Row shop when drafted. What the army did for his spirit is attested in the citation, but according to his own testimony, he has benefitted just as much physically. In a letter to his family recently he wrote,

‘I’ll be home soon, and when I march up in the old neighborhood you’ll see that I’m still intact-nothing missing-although the boches did their best to initiate me’”.

Pvt Krotoshinsky returned to the United States on an unknown date, aboard an unknown vessel. Krotoshinsky was Honorably Discharged on 26 June 1919, potentially from Debarkation Hospital No. 2, Fox Hills, Staten Island, New York.

Upon his return home, Krotoshinsky lived on Webster Ave in the Bronx- he received his final naturalization papers in the fall of 1919. In the early 1920s, he attended the National Farm School (now Delaware Valley College) in Doylestown, Pennsylvania thanks to financial assistance from New York businessman and philanthropist Nathan Straus (1848-1931). Students had typically two years’ worth of instruction into farm machinery, management, and stock work. Some time between 1920 and 1923, Krotoshinsky moved to a region around Palestine (currently the State of Palestine) or Israel (potentially, Ekron- a modern equivalent may be Kiryat Ekron) to farm. There, he married Abigail Arkin (1903-1990); the couple had three daughters, Judith (1924-2010), Hannah (1926-2003), and Irene (1930-2002). Judith and Hannah were born in Palestine, Irene, in New York.

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“Then Nathan Straus offered to send me to Palestine. I made arrangements to get a 40-acre farm there under a scheme which gave me 40 years to pay, and left 10(?) Palestine. There I took up farming…After a while I found I was farming at a loss. Palestine is not a good country for general farming…I stayed in Palestine for four years and lost everything I had- about $6,000. Two children had been born to us and after I had sold all the furniture I had just enough money to pack the family on a boat and bring them back to New York.  

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The family returned to the United States in the late 1920s, “But I didn’t have enough capital to make a living from the farm, and so had to come back to America, where President Coolidge issued an executive order making me eligible for any Civil Service position”

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“The other day President Coolidge, by executive order, made Abraham Krotoshinsky eligible for appointment in the general executive service of the government. That means he can be appointed anywhere in the United States to a government job. And, for this crippled veteran, out of work, but too proud to ask for charity, it was little enough, after all these years. It represents the barest acknowledgement of service Abraham Krotoshinsky could receive”.

In the 1930s, the family lived on Boston Road in the Bronx, where Krotoshinsky worked for the New York Post Office- potentially the USPS on E 34^th St., New York. In the 1940s, living at 1210 Woodycrest Ave, the Bronx.

Krotoshinsky died due to an unknown cause at the Morrisania Hospital (closed in 1976), Bronx, on 4 November 1953. He is buried in Cedar Park Cemetery, Paramus, New Jersey.