Biography
David Eichel was a Jewish socialist absolutist from New York's Lower East Side, one of three Eichel brothers who resisted the WWI draft on socialist and humanitarian grounds. Arraigned as a deserter, he was sentenced to thirty years hard labor (reduced to two and a half). He was held in the Tombs, Camp Upton, Fort Riley, Fort Leavenworth, and the Fort Douglas War Prison Barracks, where he was released on May 1, 1920.
Release-date verification: Grunzig's April 30, 1920 postcard states that he was discharged that morning together with Dave Eichel and Shotkin. The existing April 30 release date is therefore retained; the contradictory May 1 date in the sentence text has been corrected.
Source: Swarthmore College Peace Collection, Grunzig postcard, April 30, 1920, item 435 (CDGA.NYBLA-204). Both sides of the original scan were visually checked.
The former July16,1919 admission represented the Fort Douglas transfer and omitted earlier confinement. The custody start is now December1917 at month precision, based on the Tombs entry in Anne Yoder's database, David Eichel entry. The289-day total covering only the final institution has been removed.
Confirmed Camp Funston guardhouse transfer
The signed report on treatment of conscientious objectors identifies David Eichel among those received at the Camp Funston Military Police Guard House on September 27, 1918. This is a confirmed facility receipt, not an independently established new arrest or beginning of all imprisonment. The September 5 and September 27 groups explicitly came from the Fort Riley guardhouse. Eichel is individually named in the September 27 assault account, October hunger-strike and solitary-confinement entries, repeated requests to see the post commander and October 19 assault account. This author is David Eichel, not his brother Julius. The report covers events through October 21 but does not supply an individual discharge date. Existing original-admission, release, sentence and total-duration fields are not replaced by this receipt date or calculated from a military sentence.
