1. Short title This Act may be cited as the Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds Congressional Gold Medal Act . 2. Findings Congress finds the following: (1) Rodrick W. Edmonds (in this Act referred to as Roddie Edmonds or Edmonds ) was born in 1919 in South Knoxville, Tennessee, and graduated from Knoxville High School in 1938. (2) Roddie Edmonds was a Master Sergeant in the United States Army and a member of the 422nd Infantry Regiment while serving during World War II. (3) Roddie Edmonds landed in Europe in 1944 and fought to the border between Belgium and Germany. In December of 1944, while fighting in the Battle of the Bulge, Edmonds was captured by Nazi forces and detained in Stalag IX–A, a prisoner of war camp in Ziegenhain, Germany. (4) Stalag IX–A was a site used to identify, segregate, and remove Jewish soldiers from the general population of prisoners of war and many of the Jewish soldiers who were so removed were sent to labor camps or murdered. Members of the Armed Forces were warned of this policy and aware that their fellow servicemen could be at risk. (5) As the senior noncommissioned officer in Stalag IX–A, Master Sergeant Edmonds was responsible for 1,275 members of the Armed Forces at the camp. Approximately 1 month after the date on which Edmonds was detained, Edmonds was directed to order the Jewish-American soldiers under his command to fall out in order to separate the Jewish-American soldiers from their fellow prisoners. (6) Disregarding the orders of the Nazis, Roddie Edmonds commanded all of his men to fall out and, the following morning, all of the 1,275 members of the Armed Forces under the command of Edmonds stood outside of their prison barracks. (7) Upon seeing the soldiers, a German officer angrily shouted, They cannot all be Jews! , to which Edmonds replied, We are all Jews here . (8) The German officer took out his pistol and pointed the gun at the head of Edmonds, but Edmonds refused to identify the Jewish soldiers. Instead, Edmonds responded, According to the Geneva Convention, we