The book by Brian Mark Rigg (Israeli citizen), arguing, on the basis of documentary evidence, that 150 thousand Jewish soldiers and officers fought in the Nazi army.
Rigg’s research was based on 400 interviews with Wehrmacht veterans, 500 hours of video shows, 3 thousands of photos and 30 thousands of pages of memories from nazi soldiers and officers - those people whose Jewish roots allow them to repatriate to Israel even tomorrow.
Werner GoldbergThe term "mishlinge" in the Reich called people born from mixed marriages of Aryans with non-Aryans. The racial laws of 1935 were distinguished between “mishlinge” of the first degree (one of the parents is Jewish) and the second degree (grandmother or grandfather are Jews). Despite the legal "spoiling" of people with Jewish genes and despite the bitter propaganda, tens of thousands of "mishlinge" quietly lived under the Nazis. They were routinely called in Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine, becoming not only soldiers, but also part of the generals at the level of regiment commanders, divisions and armies.
Hundreds of "mishlinge" were awarded for bravery Iron Crosses. Twenty soldiers and officers of Jewish origin were awarded the highest military award of the Third Reich - Knight's Cross. However, many veterans of the Wehrmacht complained that the authorities were reluctant to submit to orders and were promoted to rank, bearing in mind their Jewish ancestors.
For a long time, the Nazi press put a photo of a blue-eyed blond in a helmet. Under the picture was: "The perfect German soldier." This Aryan ideal was the Wehrmacht fighter Werner Goldberg (with the Jewish dad).
Wehrmacht Major Robert Borchardt received the Knight's Cross for tank breakthrough of the Soviet front in August 1941. Then it was sent to the African Corps of Rommel. Under El Alamein was captured by the British. In 1944, he was allowed to come to England to reunite with his Jewish father. In 1946, Borchardt returned to Germany, declaring to his Jewish dad: "Someone must rebuild our country." In 1983, shortly before his death, he told German schoolchildren: "Many Jews and semi-Jews who fought for Germany in World War II believed that they should honestly defend their Vaterland while serving in the army."
Colonel Walter Hollander, whose mother was Jewish, received Hitler's personal certificate in which the Führer certified the Aryanism of this Halachic Jew (Halacha - traditional Jewish law, according to which a Jew is considered born from a Jewish mother. - KK). The same certificates of “German blood” were signed by Hitler for dozens of high-ranking officers of Jewish origin.
During the war years, Hollander was awarded the Iron Crosses of both degrees and a rare distinction - the German Gold Cross. In 1943, he received a Knight's Cross, when his anti-tank brigade in one battle destroyed a Soviet tank on the Kursk Bullet 21.
When he was given leave, he went to the Reich through Warsaw. It was there that he was shocked by the sight of the Jewish ghetto being destroyed. Hollander returned to the front broken. The personnel officers wrote in his personal file: “too independent and not very manageable”, having hacked up his promotion to the rank of general.
Who were the Wehrmacht's “Mishling”: victims of anti-Semitic persecution or accomplices of the executioners?
Life often put them in absurd situations. One soldier with an iron cross on his chest came from the front to the concentration camp Sachsenhausen to? visit your Jewish father there. The SS officer was shocked by this guest: "If it were not for the reward on your uniform, you would have quickly turned up where my father was."
But the story 76-year-old resident of Germany, one hundred percent Jew. In 1940, he managed to escape from occupied France with forged documents. Under the new German name he was called to "Waffen-SS" - selected combat units. “If I served in the German army, and my mother died at Auschwitz, then who am I - the victim or one of the persecutors?” He often asks himself. “Germans who are guilty of their deeds don’t want to hear about us. The Jewish community also turns away from such as I. After all, our stories contradict everything that is used to be considered the Holocaust. "
In 1940, all officers who had two Jewish grandparents were ordered to leave military service. Those who were tainted by Judaism only by one of the grandfathers, could remain in the army in rank and file.
But the reality was different: these orders were not executed. Therefore, they were unsuccessfully repeated once a year. There were frequent cases when German soldiers, driven by the laws of the "front brotherhood", concealed "their Jews" without giving them away to party and punitive bodies.
Known 1200 examples of service "mishlinge" in the Wehrmacht - soldiers and officers with the nearest Jewish ancestors. Thousands of these front-line soldiers destroyed 2300 Jewish relatives - nephews, aunts, uncles, grandfathers, grandmothers, mothers and fathers.
In January, the Wehrmacht personnel department of 1944 prepared a secret list of 77 high-ranking officers and generals "mixed with a Jewish race or married to Jews." All 77 had Hitler’s personal identification of “German blood”. Among those listed in the list are 23 colonel, 5 major generals, 8 lieutenant generals and two full generals.
This list could be supplemented by one of the sinister figures of the Nazi regime - Reinhard Heydrich, the favorite of the Fuhrer and the head of the RSHA, who controlled the Gestapo, the criminal police, intelligence and counterintelligence. Throughout his life (fortunately, briefly), he fought with rumors of Jewish origins.
Heydrich was born in 1904 in Leipzig in the family of the director of the conservatory. Family history says that his grandmother married a Jew shortly after the birth of the father of the future RSHA chief. As a child, the older boys beat Reinhard, calling him a Jew.
It was Heydrich who held the Wannsee Conference on 1942 in January to discuss the "final solution to the Jewish question." His report said that the grandsons of a Jew are considered as Germans and are not subject to repression. It is said that once, returning home drunk to smithereens at night, he turned on the light, saw his image in the mirror and fired a pistol at him twice with the words: "Vile Jew!"Field Marshal can be considered a classic example of a "hidden Jew" in the elite of the Third Reich aviation Erhard Milch. His father was a Jewish pharmacist.
Because of his Jewish origin, he was not accepted into Kaiser military schools, but the outbreak of the First World War opened him access to aviation. Milch fell into the division of the famous Richthoffen, met the young Goering and distinguished himself at the headquarters, although he himself did not fly on airplanes. In 1929, he became CEO of Lufthansa, the national airline. The wind was already blowing towards the Nazis, and Milch provided free planes for the leaders of the Nazi Party.
This service is not forgotten. Having come to power, the Nazis say that Milch’s mother did not have sex with her Jewish husband, and Erhard’s true father was Baron von Beer. Goering laughed for a long time about this: "Yes, we made Milch a bastard, but an aristocratic bastard." Another Goering's aphorism about Milch: "In my headquarters, I myself will decide who is Jewish and who is not!"
After the war, Milch spent nine years in prison. Then, up to 80, he worked as a consultant for Fiat and Thyssen concerns.
The vast majority of Wehrmacht veterans say that when they joined the army, they did not consider themselves Jews. These soldiers tried their courage to refute the Nazi racial chatter. The Hitlerite soldiers with triple zeal at the front argued that Jewish ancestors did not prevent them from being good German patriots and steadfast warriors.