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" Not every victim was a Jew but every Jew was a victim." - Elie Wiesel speaking of World War II . Hitler’s Jewish Army. “Hitler’s Jewish Army” by Bryan Mark Rigg.
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"Not every victim was a Jew but every Jew was a victim." -Elie Wiesel speaking of World War II.
“Hitler’s Jewish Army” by Bryan Mark Rigg "The mischlinge (the half-Jews and quarter-Jews) suffered the same fate in academic life that they did in the Third Reich. Nobody wanted them. Nobody claimed them. So nobody knows about them."
A historian says thousands of Hitler's soldiers had mixed heritage. Does this matter?
For many Mischlinge, serving in the war was a matter of survival -- a way of fitting in rather than sticking out, a potential shield against extermination. They did not believe in Nazi ideology, but they felt a deep loyalty to the German nation and wanted to serve it, as Rigg argues.
According to the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, Jews or those of partial Jewish descent were unfit for military service. HOWEVER…Riggs demonstrated the willingness of the Nazis to bend their own laws of racial classification and Jewish persecution and documents Hitler’s extensive , obsessive involvement in deciding which “Jews” received a pass ,which would be discharged, and which would ultimately be deported.
Apparently many Mischlinge did not feel that half of their ancestry should be reason enough to be considered a Jew over being a German. Moreover, they were truly passionate Germans. Many joined the ranks of the Wehrmacht in order to prove their "Aryanhood," and be considered fully German.
As many as 150,000 men of Jewish descent served in the German military under Adolf Hitler, some with the Nazi leader's explicit consent. "Not everybody who wore a uniform was a Nazi and not every person of Jewish descent was persecuted," Rigg said. "Where do they belong? They served in the military but lost mum at Auschwitz."
On the murderous road to "racial purity" Hitler encountered unexpected detours, largely due to his own crazed views and inconsistent policies regarding Jewish identity.
General Erhard Milch • Officier General Erhard Milch, an aviator during peacetime was given a commission in the German air force and made deputy to Herman Gőring, the chief of the Luftwaffe (air force). • Rumors of Milch's Jewish identity circulated widely in Germany in the 1930s. • ``I decide who is a Jew and who is an Aryan.'‘
"The Ideal German Soldier." This photo of "half-Jew" Werner Goldberg, who was blond and blue-eyed, was used by a Nazi propaganda newspaper for its title page. Its caption: "The Ideal German Soldier."
Rigg is convinced that most of the soldiers of Jewish decent were not aware of the Nazis' systematic murder of Jews.
“They do not feel guilty about serving in the military, they feel guilty about what they didn't do to save their relatives," Rigg said.
All the talk about racial purity when it came to Jews vs. Aryans was merely propaganda. The proof of this is how Hitler himself declared Jews to be Aryan. When questioned about the Milch matter Goering said something like "I decide who is Aryan and who is not". If Hitler himself declared Jews to be "Aryan" then we can see that the talk of racial purity as it related to Jews vs. Aryans was just propaganda.
