With 2,977 flags, Cherry Hill's Jewish War Veterans remember 9/11 victims

Nelson Mellitz was working in downtown Manhattan when the first plane hit the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

An Air Force reservist working for the federal government at the time, Mellitz remembers “chaos” ensuing as smoke engulfed the city and he scrambled to find his colleagues who had scattered into the street grid.

As the dust began to settle, Mellitz got a call from his chief master sergeant in the Air Force, who said, “They just activated you and me and everybody else.”

He headed down to Virginia as troops began to mobilize. Later, he was deployed.

Mellitz, of Cherry Hill, is one of dozens of Jewish veterans who gathered at the Katz Jewish Community Center in Cherry Hill last week to place 2,977 flags in memory of the lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. At the corner of Kresson and Springdale Roads, veterans and local officials worked diligently to place the small American flags, which waved synchronously at the busy intersection.

The memorial was organized by the Jewish War Veterans of Cherry Hill and the South Jersey Men’s Club and was attended by local law enforcement officers, Cherry Hill Mayor David Fleisher, members of the township council and state assembly, and representatives from the Katz JCC and the Jewish Federation of Southern New Jersey.

Twenty-four years after Sept. 11, the terrorist attacks have faded further into the background of the American consciousness. More than a third of Americans are too young to remember Sept. 11, and the world of overseas wars and security protocols that the attacks shaped has become normalized for many.

For Cherry Hill’s Jewish veterans, the task of remembrance has fallen into their hands.

“We don’t want this to be forgotten,” Mellitz said. “I don’t want to forget it.”

The Jewish War Veterans of the USA was founded in 1896 by a group of 63 Jewish Civil War veterans. The group was formed in response to a series of antisemitic comments about the lack of Jewish service in the Civil War. The group was key in establishing the Jewish chaplaincy within the military during World War I. It fought to include the Star of David as a grave marker in veterans cemeteries, led a protest and boycott of Nazi Germany during the rise of the Third Reich, and campaigned to include religious and racial protections in the 1944 GI Bill.

Selina Kanowitz, 73, is the first woman in 129 years to serve as the national vice commander of the Jewish War Veterans.

A longtime Voorhees resident, Kanowitz said her fellow veterans are like her “second family.”

Kanowitz began her military service in 1977, the first year basic training was integrated to include both men and women. When she touched down at a Texas military base to begin her service, she was the only Jewish person at basic training.

During her two-decade-long career in the Air Force, she traveled across the globe and earned her certification to become a nuclear medicine technologist. She served on what is now Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in Burlington County during Operation Desert Storm.

Kanowitz said the flag ceremony has only become more important. Three years ago, the Jewish War Veterans’ memorial landed around the same time as Queen Elizabeth II’s death, and passersby thought the flags were for the queen.

“The generations growing up, they have no clue about 9/11,” she said. “It’s important that we bring this to light.”

“The Jewish War Veterans are such a significant part of our community,” Jennifer Dubrow Weiss, CEO of the Jewish Federation of Southern New Jersey, said. “We’re so grateful to them for having this way of memorializing 9/11.”

Stuart Wallet, 77, of Marlton, said he never felt the need to join a veterans group. That changed in 2018, when he says he was diagnosed with cancer from his time at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. He spent two years at Camp Lejeune in the 1970s as a Navy lieutenant following his graduation from dental school.

“I think people who haven’t served don’t really understand it,” he said.

When his oldest granddaughter was a child, Wallet said, they would read books about the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Wallet doesn’t take for granted the rights of protest and free speech, which he sees as intrinsically tied to his service and that of his fellow veterans.

Mellitz enlisted in the Air Force in 1970 after earning a degree in architecture from Temple University. Over the course of 32 years in the military, he was based in more than a dozen locations, serving first in a civil engineering unit and later moving into acquisitions and government contracting. His last assignment was in Iraq. He received a U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Meritorious Citation, among other awards and decorations, before retiring as a colonel.

Though his father and grandfather had both been members of the Jewish War Veterans, Mellitz didn’t join until a friend in Cherry Hill persuaded him to come to a meeting in 1990. By 2022, he had become the national commander.

Mellitz said that traveling around the world was “a fantastic opportunity,” and that he is proud to be a veteran. Yet the gravity of his service weighs on him.

“I saw a lot of people perish in battle,” he said.

“I will never forget those I served with.”