Jewish World War II POW Slams ‘Insulting’ Donald Trump in Campaign Ad
Image by Hillary Clinton for President
By Ron Kampeas September 20, 2016
WASHINGTON — A Jewish World War II prisoner of war appeared in an ad for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, saying her rival Donald Trump “insulted all of our military.”
The ad released Friday on social media shows Joel Sollender, 91, of San Diego, Calif., watching Trump, the Republican nominee, disparaging Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., last year during the lead-up to the primaries. McCain and Trump differed on immigration issues, and Trump had called McCain a “dummy.”
The ad includes a segment of a political event in Iowa in which Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster, challenges Trump for using the pejorative and says that McCain is a war hero.
Joel Sollender, WWII veteran and POW, on what it means when he hears Trump insult our vets. pic.twitter.com/3ZIezeRTl9
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) September 18, 2016
Trump replies, “He’s not a war hero. He is a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured, OK?”
“Apart from the outrage of the insult to prisoners of war,” a choked-up Sollender says in the ad, “he insulted all of our military.”
“He’s everything I would not want to be or emulate, and I would hope we would not adulate a man like him and put him into the most precious office in our country,” he says.
The ad does not mention it, but Sollender, who was captured after taking out a German bunker with a grenade during the Battle of the Bulge, feared that his captors would discover he was Jewish.
“I was apprehensive that they would find out I was Jewish,” Sollender told the Union Tribune of San Diego, where he lives and has been active in local philanthropic causes, in a 2015 interview.
In recent weeks, Trump and Clinton have each cited dozens of endorsements from top military and national security personnel.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
