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Title: Hitler's Jewish Soldiers: The Untold Story of Nazi Racial Laws and Men of Jewish Descent in the German Military by Bryan Mark Rigg ISBN: 0-7006-1178-9 Publisher: Univ Pr of Kansas Pub. Date: May, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.83 (35 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Finally Told
Comment: This is truly a landmark book and an amazing achievement both in scholarship and in humane sensitivity to an excruciatingly difficult subject. The title of the book, while seemingly gratuitously sensational, does sum up the subject of the study: those serving in the various armed forces of the Third Reich, as officers and as ordinary soldiers and sailors, who happened to be of Jewish descent. The chapter titles show how Rigg examines the various facets of the matter:
Who Is a Jew?
Who Is a "Mischling" ['partial Jew']
Assimilation and the Jewish Experience in the German Armed Forces
Racial Policy and the Nuremberg Laws, 1933-1939
The Policy toward "Mischlinge" Tightens, 1940-1943
Turning Point and Forced Labor, 1943-1944
Exemptions from the Racial Laws Granted by Hitler
The Process of Obtaining an Exemption
What Did "Mischlinge" Know about the Holocaust?
Interspersed among the chapters are four collections of (usually personal) photographs of Jewish and 'partially Jewish' officers and men of the Wehrmacht, SS, and Waffen SS, among others.
It seems to me a measure of the scrupulous, indeed rigorous fairness of Rigg's treatment of this most painful subject that the reader (well, I at any rate) was struck again and again by the unfamiliar sensation of, among other high officials of the Third Reich, even Hitler sometimes actually coming across as human, showing what seems--against that ghastly backdrop, of course--to be real decency and compassion for (partial) Jewish veterans, and indeed others whose special circumstances recommended them to his attention. The easy and in fact almost inescapable thing is to simply demonize Hitler et al. and be done with it. Rigg has given the devil his due.
Not everyone is going to be delighted with the book, but there it is. Pace Keats, Beauty is not Truth, and Truth is not Beauty.
Rigg's examination of the central question of who knew how much when about what is, again, scrupulously yet sensitively handled.
A personal note: Thirty-some years ago, I was studying at a Goethe-Institut in Germany. One of my instructors mentioned one day that his father, whose mother was Jewish, received a phone call one evening in the late '30s from a friend at the local police station, who told him his file had come through for "processing." The friend told him that in a few minutes he would go down cellar to stoke his furnace, and with permission that file--and the man--would cease to exist officially. My instructor's father thanked his friend, and the family hid him in the attic throughout the war. His father's physical and mental health were shattered by the experience.
My instructor (telling his class this in 1969) remarked that when he received his draft notice he could easily have evaded conscription, but in fact he served with Rommel in North Africa. He witnessed a ceremony in which Rommel himself decorated a subordinate who had been in charge of capturing some town and afterward had turned his men loose, allowing them to behave as they pleased for a few days. After pinning the medal on this general, he said, Rommel then made a brief speech about how atrocities reflected on the German Army, the German People, and the German Reich, then he drew the general's sidearm from his holster and executed him, just like that. My instructor remarked, "Unter Rommel gab es keine Schweinerei."
Until reading Rigg's book, I had assumed that my instructor's experience as a Jewish soldier of the Third Reich was very unusual, if not unique. As Rigg makes clear, this misperception was common, even among these soldiers themselves, even well after the war was over.
If you read only one serious nonfiction book this year, this should be the one.
Rating: 5
Summary: Ideology
Comment: For anyone wishing to understand the confusion of Nazi Germany, this book by Rigg is a must read. The work is the end of a ten year project, one that began pretty much by happenstance as Rigg was working on a Yale University grad thesis. It wasn't long before he was on the trail of some important data. To learn that many in the Nazi ranks had Jewish blood is to sense the problem of identification. Who was and who was not worthy to fight for the Reich? As Rigg points out, there were many exceptions to the rule; even Hitler allowed some Jews into the ranks, especially when these were good soldiers. In many cases men were not aware of their Jewish roots and were culled from the ranks when their background became known. Some lied to stay in the forces; some were shot! Rigg's book gives additional insights as to the thinking that ran rampant in 1930's Germany.
The book includes a chapter in which he cites comments by a few German Jews who survived the war in the Nazi forces. "Why," he asked, "didn't you stand up for the right." One 75% Jewish officer said: "Ideology had made us inhuman." In addition to the text, the book includes over 100 pages of footnotes as well as an extensive bibiliography, a valuable tool for any student of WW-II.
Rating: 4
Summary: Professional Soldiers They Were
Comment: As many of you read these reviews will note, OTHER personal reviews written here use this book to somehow VERIFY that "regular" (sic) Germans DID NOT KNOW THE HOLOCAUST was occurring; citing that the book verifies that Germany's professional soldiers of jewish ancestry (sic) DID NOT KNOW of the camps and the genocide that was occurring. It appears that many of the reviewers here are "revisionists", because the book DOES NOT support the notion that Germans and German soldiers of jewish faith background did not know of the atrocities. This book cites example after example, as well as indepth commentary, that ALL of these German Warriors of "Jewish" background all fought in order to keep their families, loved ones, wives, children, parents, grandparents, etc., OUT OF THE CONCENTRATION CAMP. Over and over the interviews revealed that these soldiers had that "extra" drive to STAY ALIVE in order to prevent the shipping of their families to the concentration camps. In the book, interviews, notes, and commentary reflect that these soldiers feared that if Germany were victorious they, along with their families, would be sent to the "ovens" and/ or labor camps to die. On another "alternative" website of book reviews this book is cited as further evidence that the German people, as well as avowed Nazis, DID NOT KNOW OF THE HOLOCAUST! They cite this book as "evidence", as do many on this review, that Germany's professional soldiers who were "jewish" (quarter to 'full' blooded, as if Jewishness were a "race", another falsity)DID NOT know of the holocaust and would not have participated in fighting for Germany.
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Title: Masters of Death: The SS-Einsatzgruppen and the Invention of the Holocaust by Richard Rhodes ISBN: 0375409009 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 07 May, 2002 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
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Title: Interrogations: The Nazi Elite in Allied Hands, 1945 by Richard Overy ISBN: 0142001589 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: October, 2002 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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Title: The Righteous: The Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust by Martin Gilbert ISBN: 0805062602 Publisher: Henry Holt & Company, Inc. Pub. Date: 04 February, 2003 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: Imperfect Justice: Looted Assets, Slave Labor, and the Unfinished Business of World War II by Stuart E. Eizenstat, Elie Wiesel ISBN: 158648110X Publisher: PublicAffairs Pub. Date: 07 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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Title: The Pity of It All: A History of the Jews in Germany, 1743-1933 by Amos Elon ISBN: 0805059644 Publisher: Metropolitan Books Pub. Date: 01 November, 2002 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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