Sculpture of hero World War II medic Bernie Friedenberg unveiled in Atlantic City

ATLANTIC CITY — Bernie Friedenberg, an army medic who served on Omaha Beach on D-Day 1944, was honored in his hometown of Atlantic City with a bronze sculpture unveiled Thursday that depicts him cradling a wounded soldier in his arms.

“I am overwhelmed,” said Susan Friedenberg, his daughter, who worked for the last six years with a committee of volunteers to raise funds and make the O’Donnell Park memorial a reality. She put her hand to her heart after she loosened the purple draping to reveal the six-foot-high monument.

She recalled how her father fought to join the military. He quit Temple University on the day of the Pearl Harbor bombing and went home to enlist, initially being turned down by all three branches of the military.

“Jews all over the United States knew what was happening in Europe, and my father wanted to fight,” she said. “He drove the recruiters crazy at the Atlantic City Post Office, and they kept turning him down because of his vision.”

Finally, the Army took him for what it said would be “limited service,” ultimately training him as a medic. He attained the rank of staff sergeant, assigned to the Medical Detachment, 1st Battalion, 16th Regiment, 1st U.S. Infantry Division.

“Limited service. Right,” Friedenberg said. “Two Purple Hearts, two silver stars and two bronze medals later.”

The event was held on the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy, France, when Allied troops from the United States, United Kingdom, France, Australia and Canada landed on five stretches of the German-occupied French coastline.

The largest amphibious invasion in history, it laid the foundations for the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II.

Friedenberg treated wounded soldiers on Omaha Beach. His daughter told how he encountered a wounded German soldier, and chose to treat him, telling him in Yiddish, “Never forget a Jew saved you.”

In Atlantic City, about a dozen World War II veterans were among the hundreds who attended the ceremony, complete with a military flyover by the New Jersey National Guard’s 177th Fighter Wing, a cannon salute by the Last Salute Military Funeral Honor Guard, and posting of the colors. Friendenberg’s rabbi, Rabbi Aaron Krauss, recited Kaddish, the Jewish prayer of mourning.

Herb Stern 97, of Longport, a Navy veteran and a friend of Friedenberg’s, called him “a true hero.”

May Brill, 100, of Cherry Hill, a member of the original WAVES, the women’s branch of the United States Naval Reserve during World War II, said the memorial was important to ensure that people remember the service of veterans. “Families remember,” she said. “People don’t remember.”

Friedenberg went on to open the Dusty Roads Bar and the Monarch Bar in Atlantic City, and two hotels, the Penn Crest and the Fiesta. He wrote a book called Of Being Numerous: World War II As I Saw It. The Philadelphia native died at age 96 in 2018.

The monument is surrounded by a circular pavement known as the “Cost of Freedom” circle, which contains granite inlays, each of which summarizes a historic moment of U.S involvement in World War II.

It is the work of Chad Fisher, of Fisher Studios, who first created a model of the memorial in his Dillburg, Pa., studio in 2020, and echoes Michelangelo’s famous Pietá sculpture.

» READ MORE: Will Atlantic City be home to a statue honoring WWII medic Bernie Friedenberg?

Back in 2020, in the Fisher Studios, the model of Bernie Friedenberg sat right next to one of Allen Iverson.

Yesterday, after more than four years in the making and lots of fits and starts — including a last infusion of cash from the city of Atlantic City — the full sculpture was revealed in its intended spot: O’Donnell Park in Atlantic City, at Atlantic and Albany Avenues.

Friedenberg recalled that her father never spoke about the war until he went to see Saving Private Ryan at the Tilton Theater in Northfield. “My father was a very humble man,” she said. “I had no idea that Daddy was a hero.”