A brave man is one who is frightened to death but does what he has to do despite his fears. He fulfills his obligations to his comrades and to himself.

—Staff Sgt. Bernie Friedenberg

Atlantic City marked the 80th anniversary of D-Day with the long-anticipated unveiling of a statue honoring the service of a hometown hero.

Staff Sgt. Bernard Isadore Friedenberg was a decorated Army medic who earned the first of his six medals for saving five wounded men from a mine field on Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944.

His death May 1, 2018, at 98, sparked a labor of love from “Team Bernie,” a group of veterans intent on honoring his service and those who served in World War II.

    

When Pennsylvania-based Fisher Sculpture learned of Friedenberg’s heroism, they offered to create the statue at cost: $150,000. The full memorial’s cost exceeded $1 million, earned through the efforts of those inspired by his legacy.

Their endeavors will come to fruition at O’Donnell Park at noon Thursday, when a bronze larger-than-life sculpture of Friedenberg cradling a wounded soldier on Omaha Beach will be unveiled at a ceremony expected to draw about a thousand people.

"Bernie's legacy lives on through this monument, serving as a reminder to all that the price of freedom is never forgotten," said Marco Polo Smigliani, co-chair of the Friends of Bernie Friedenberg.

“Our freedom was bought and paid for with the blood and lives of many brave men. Many things are not worth fighting and dying for, but freedom is!”

Bernie Friedenberg’s story is ingrained in Atlantic City, where his family moved when he was 6 years old.

Bernie went through the Atlantic City school system, graduating from Atlantic City High School before heading to Temple University. Then, Pearl Harbor was bombed.

Friedenberg went to the Atlantic City Post Office the next day to enlist, but was rejected by the Marines, Navy and Army. But with a will that would later earn him two Silver Stars, two Bronze Stars and two Purple Hearts, he fought to get into the Army. Then, he fought to get on the frontlines.

When he came home, he quietly fought the demons that haunt many returning from war.

“It was just all hidden inside him, the horror of 4½ years,” his daughter, Susan Friedenberg, said in an interview with BreakingAC. 

But growing up, she never saw the darkness. 

Her parents remained lovebirds for their entire 70-year marriage. There was always laughter. 

    "He was my best friend," Susan Friedenberg says of her war hero dad.
  

“I am blessed to be the daughter of Bernie and Phyllis Friedenberg,” she said. “They were actually like a comedy act the two of them. He was hysterical. I adored him.”

For a long time, his service was visible only through the medals and citations on the walls of their home in Margate across from Lucy the Elephant.

“We just looked at them, all these things that showed what a hero he was,” she recalled. “He just never, ever, ever said a word about the war.”

"I have wondered that I was able to handle combat so well when these incidents were happening, only to have them come back to haunt me so long after they occurred. ... I suppose after sixty-some years, I was still fighting the Nazis. Perhaps I have finally declared my own personal armistice.

Then, on the 50th anniversary of D-Day, there was a celebration at Fort Dix, where his service began and ended.

“And all his memories came flooding back,” Phyllis writes in the preface to her husband’s book, “Of Being Numerous: World War II As I Saw It.”

That was followed by sleepless nights, terrors, flashbacks and separate beds so as not to injure his beloved wife. It also led to a psychiatrist at the Wilmington Veterans Hospital diagnosing him with post-traumatic stress and suggesting he keep a diary.

“The diary turned into a manuscript, which was therapy, and subsequently turned into the memoir you are about to read,” she writes.

“I stepped off the ramp and sand down into the water that was over my head. I’ll never be able to explain how I swam in with the load I was carrying, but I did. Totally exhausted, I made it to the beach and threw myself onto the sand, trying to catch my breath. Then my work began.”

“Saving Private Ryan” got the scene right, Friedenberg would tell then-Gov. Jon Corzine in August 2009, when legislation was signed establishing an Oral History Foundation to preserve veterans’ stories.

He wasn’t sure how he survived that day, or the many that followed, he says in his book. 

More than once, he would write how his comrades celebrated his return because they believed him captured or dead.

    First Lt. David Rogers
  

Another local boy would die that first day.

Bernie went all through high school with First Lt. David Rogers, who was “a natural athlete, a most personable, good-looking young man, and one of the most popular members of our class.”

The 101st Airborne platoon leader led the jump. When things didn’t go as planned, he commandeered a jeep and with seven other paratroopers set out to collect the others. 

They were overwhelmed by enemy troops led by a German officer who “was not inclined to take prisoners.”

Only one man survived to tell the story. Rogers’ body was sent home in 1948, and lay in state at Ventnor City Hall.

“Little did I dream,” Friedenberg wrote, “that after the war was over, I would come home to meet and marry David’s kid sister.”

    Bernie and Phyllis were married 70 years.
  

Phyllis Rogers Friedenberg would be the love of his life. 

But that was not the only local connection that would bridge combat with life back home.

Bernie’s father had a store a block away from what was then Atlantic City’s England General Hospital, where Resorts now stands.

The Friedenbergs would watch the patients walking the Boardwalk, always looking to spot a 1st Division patch. That’s how they met Phil Kahan and his wife, Pearl.

“My mother told Phil her son was in the 1st Division and asked if he knew Sergeant Friedenberg," he wrote. "Phil told her not only that he knew me but also I had saved his life.”

Bernie would not remember Phil when they met again many years after the war at a Jewish War Veterans.

“We’ve met before,” Phil told him. “It was during the Battle of the Bulge. You saved my life.”

He saved many people as a medic. The memory came back when Phil noted that Bernie was wounded that day as well.

It was the third time Phil Kahan had been wounded. This time, severely enough to go home.

“Only someone who had experienced combat can understand the kind of courage it takes for a man to be wounded and to return to the front lines to fight again,” Bernie wrote. “Phil Kahan did it. He was a man among men.”

Kahan passed away in 1994. At the funeral, Phil’s widow kissed Bernie’s cheek and whispered, “Thank you for 50 years.”

“Right then and there, I knew that in spite of all the pain and suffering I had gone through, it was all worthwhile," he wrote, "and if I had to, I would do it all over again.”

Then I spoke for the first time in my pidgin German, I said, 'Nicht fogessen. Ich bin a Jude, an Americanische Jude.' (Translation: I am a Jew, an American Jew.)" 

    

Friedenberg recalled walking through Aachen, Germany one day when there was suddenly a barrage of artillery fire. He took refuge in a nearby factory.

It was there that he heard the moaning of a wounded soldier. A wounded German soldier.

His first thought was to leave him there. 

The soldier grabbed his hand and pleaded with Bernie to help him. The soldier took out out his wallet and showed photos of his wife and two small sons.

He patched up the soldier who thanked him in German. In his own limited German, Bernard Friedenberg — who would look back hoping the soldier was not a Nazi — made sure the man would always know it was an American Jew who saved him. 

Photo Gallery

D-Day ceremony honors Atlantic City hero

A permanent testament to the decorated medic's service was unveiled Thursday, in a ceremony that included several surviving World War II veterans in attendance.

The 6-foot bronze Friedenberg would have towered its 5-foot-7, 126-pound real-life counterpart. But still would dwarf the legacy he left behind, and all the men that the memorial honors.

“Hitler never dreamed that we Americans would show the courage, stamina and determination that we did. We also showed initiative and ingenuity … I believe that Hitler made many mistakes but one of his greatest was when he underestimated the American G.I.”