‘We Are All Jews Here’: Master Sgt. Roddie Edmonds to Receive the Medal of Honor
In 2015, Edmonds became the first American serviceman to be recognized with Israel’s highest honor for non-Jews, “Righteous Among Nations.”
Back in 2015, Professor Jacobson reported that Master Sgt. Roddie Edmonds became the first American serviceman to be recognized with Israel’s highest honor for non-Jews, “Righteous Among Nations.” The title bestowed upon non-Jewish persons who risked their lives in order to save Jews.
The Nazi soldiers made their orders very clear: Jewish American prisoners of war were to be separated from their fellow brothers in arms and sent to an uncertain fate.
But Master Sgt. Roddie Edmonds would have none of that. As the highest-ranking noncommissioned officer held in the German POW camp, he ordered more than 1,000 Americans captives to step forward with him and brazenly pronounced: “We are all Jews here.”
He would not waver, even with a pistol to his head, and his captors eventually backed down.
Edmonds’ moral stand in a Nazi prison camp is finally being marked with the United States’ highest military honor, the Medal of Honor, more than eight decades after he calmly faced down a German officer’s pistol.
Tomorrow is Holocaust Remembrance Day.
And if you’ve never heard of Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds, it’s time you did.
Captured during WWII. Thrown into a Nazi POW camp with over 1,200 fellow Americans, 200 of them Jewish.
One day, the Nazis gave an order:
“All Jewish… pic.twitter.com/0KVfUnfKax— Jews Fight Back 🇺🇸🇮🇱 (@JewsFightBack) January 26, 2026
His Medal of Honor is not just a decoration for valor in war; it is a national acknowledgment that in humanity’s darkest hours, one ordinary American sergeant chose conscience over survival and, in doing so, saved nearly 200 lives. Edmond’s son discovered the incident while seeking more information about his father.
The path led to the discovery of another incident of bravery in 1945, as the German defeat was imminent.
In March 1945, as the last gasps of the bloody war were drawing to a close, the Nazis of Stalag IX-A ordered the forced march of the entire camp.
Weakened by months of captivity, Roddie Edmonds knew the march would be a death sentence for many.
While the British, French and Russians began to evacuate the camp, the Americans stayed put.
On the day of the evacuation, the master sergeant ordered his men break ranks and run back into the barracks. Back and forth they went. Ordered out. Running back in.
After several hours of this the Nazis miraculously relented, leaving the Americans as the sole inhabitants of Stalag IX-A.
An American soldier who is credited with saving the lives of 200 Jewish comrades in a prisoner of war camp in Germany during World War II will receive the U.S. military’s highest decoration, the Medal of Honor.
The award to Roddie Edmonds, who died in 1985, was announced last… pic.twitter.com/Lj0OabY55U
— Rita Rosenfeld (@rheytah) February 23, 2026
The Medal of Honor is traditionally associated with visible acts of battlefield gallantry—charging enemy positions, rescuing wounded comrades under fire, or holding a line against overwhelming odds. Edmonds’ award is different: it honors a moment when the only weapon he carried was moral authority, and the only “attack” he launched was a refusal to cooperate with evil.
The award will be presented during a ceremony on March 2, and three other servicemembers will also be honored.
Edmonds will be one of four service members to receive the Medal of Honor at a White House ceremony on March 2, his son said.
Army Staff Sgt. Michael Ollis and retired Navy Capt. Royce Williams will also receive the nation’s highest award for courage under fire. Ollis died saving the life of a Polish counterpart in Afghanistan in 2013, and Williams was involved in a secretive dogfight with seven Soviet fighter planes more than 70 years ago.
The White House did not respond to questions about the ceremony and the fourth person to receive the Medal of Honor.
Edmonds joins about a dozen others honored for their courage in prisoner-of-war camps.
Edmonds joins roughly a dozen Medal of Honor recipients recognized for resistance in prison camps. In the Korean War, Army medic Tibor Rubin, a Holocaust survivor, kept at least 40 POWs alive while in captivity. In Vietnam, Army Captain Humbert “Rocky” Versace, Air Force Captain Lance Sijan and Navy Admiral James Stockdale all received the Medal for fierce resistance and escape attempts.
In honoring Master Sgt. Roddie Edmonds with the Medal of Honor, America is finally placing its highest recognition where it has long belonged: on a man who, with true moral courage. His powerful words….“We are all Jews here”…spoke louder than any weapon, asserting the equal worth of every life in the face of a regime built on dehumanization.
As his story joins those of other American heroes who resisted even behind barbed wire, Edmonds reminds us that the measure of character is found not in the power we hold, but in the people we refuse to abandon.
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Comments
What a richly-deserved honor, for a true hero.
Contrast Edmonds’ courage — defying the Nazi thugs, while being threatened with a pistol — with the feckless and evil collaboration of contemporary leftists and Dhimmi-crats in Australia, Canada, Europe and the U.S., who gleefully ally with, whitewash, fete and enable goose-stepping, genocidal Islamofascists and Muslim terrorists — the Nazis’ ideological predecessors and successors.
Yes, how far we have fallen
Some have fallen; not all. As long as there is one Patriot left, we have not fallen.
Not sure why this is only brought up now as I have read of Roddie Edemonds expoits years ago. It is the first time I have read HOW they resisted a death march though.
Of course it is long past the time he was recognized with medals. That was always the issue when a non-commissioned officer was in charge as well as the subject. Washington was very jealous of the medals in WWII and one could not toot their own horn in those days.
Contrast that with the frankly dubious and weird John Kerry, who may have found a use for ketchup other than as a condiment…faking blood on a wound.
Clearly, he liked ketchup enough to put a ring on it.
Kerry dipped his wick in ketchup.
And the left would, upon hearing that MSgt Edmonds had once uttered the n-word or held a belief at odds with the hedonistic and transhumanist creed, smear him and demand to have his medal forsworn and his name stricken from any rolls of honor.
Rather than say “This man did an honorable thing right here and we hold that up as an example for all” they would obliterate anything good in order to spite that which might lessen their power.
The Years of War 1941-1945 by Vasily Grossman
On another walkout.
“The day after our invasion of Germany we met a crowd of some eight hundred Soviet children bound for the East; the column stretched for many kilometers along the road which was lined with Soviet men and officers silently and tensely scanning the children’s faces, those were fathers searching for children who had been carried off to Germany. One Colonel stood thus for several hours, his shoulders erect, his face grim and dark, and when evening came he gave up his fruitless vigil and returned to his car.”
a true stud
well deserved honor and a lesson in life that when the bullies are fought back against,,the good guys win
Leslie, your words were well said. Thank you for posting this. I honor such courage.
Yes, Edmonds is a true hero. Reading this story, not the first time, brings tears to my eyes. This is what it means to be a mensch. May his memory be for a blessing and for an inspiration. Full Stop.
I am confident that MSGT Edmonfs felt that held that honor in trust for a thousand of his soldiers. As he will with the MoH..
M/Sgt. Roddie Edmonds, a great American and a great man.
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