Sunday, March 15, 2009

"About face"

"About face" is the apt title of a documentary movie about German Jewish refugees who returned to Germany as soldiers in the British and American Armies. It includes interviews with surviving British and American former German Jewish refugees who enlisted in their host country's army when the war was declared and were sent back to Europe to fight as ordinary soldiers, as special commandos and as military interpreters. They faced a peculiar dilemma, they wanted to fight the Nazis and to defeat Germany, even though as former Germans they had a certain nostaligia for their country of origin.
At first, in both America and Britain, these refugees were looked on with sympathy, but were also often lumped in with non-Jewish Germans as "enemy aliens." Some of them were the "kindertransport" children, now grown up. When the war came, at first in Britain in 1939 and later in America in 1941, these Jewish refugees volunteered for active service and many were accepted, in fact up to ca. 40,000 of them fought in the two armies, not a small number.
In Britain, they were first put into the unarmed "Pioneer corps" doing scut work. The first serious attempt to utilize them was a program in which about 100 of them were formed into a German-speaking commando corps called Group X that received special training in Scotland and were sent in to do especially dangerous work in Europe. One of them, Peter Masters (not his original name) has written a book about his experiences called "Fighting back." Little is known about their actual activities, but because of the danger they were required to change their "Jewish-sounding" names and adopt British names and since they were not actual citizens they were required to sign a statement that if captured they would not expect any help from the British Government. Not a bad deal for the British, since these men were committed to the defeat of the Nazis. Most of them had seen their parents murdered or being taken away or did not know the fate of their parents and family.
In the US Army, many were incorporated into different units and it was a learning experience for them to mix with "ordinary" Americans. They mostly found them very friendly. In many cases the US Army facilitated their becoming US citizens. Some were later selected to be translators for special units assigned to intelligence work for unit commanders and Generals. As the war progressed and they entered Germany some found themselves in charge of whole towns and villages. One man from Aachen, the first German city captured, was put in charge and given the task of finding the Nazis there, and he knew them all personally. In other cases, German Jews, who had been reduced to being poor refugees by the Nazis, found themselves interrogating German Generals and Nazi Party officials. They were often asked how they knew such perfect German. One of these was Henry Kissinger, who had lived in poverty as a refugee in New York, but was to reach great heights as a US foreign policy expert.
In most cases, at the end of the war they found that their parents had been killed, but in one extraordinary case, a Czech Jewish refugee-soldier found his parents still alive in the Thereisenstadt camp. But, this was the exception. Altogether they did a great service to the Allies in helping them to obtain intelligence about the activities and structure of the German Army and the Nazi Party. They played an important role in the Allied victory, although this was not revealed for a long time.

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