Balder Ex-Libris

Author : Rigg Bryan Mark
Title : Lives of Hitler’s jewish soldiers Untold tales of men of jewish descent who fought for the Third Reich
Year : 2009

Link download : Rigg_Bryan_Mark_-_Lives_of_Hitler_s_jewish_soldiers.zip

Preface. In 1942 a former German soldier entered SS headquarters in Berlin. He walked uneasily. His civilian jacket was adorned with medals he had earned in battle. An SS officer asked what he wanted. Hugo Fuchs wished to know where they had taken his Jewish father. The SS officer, upset, said, “I would send you straight where your father is if you didn’t have those medals!” Fuchs would never see his father again. He had been killed in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. It was winter 1942 and Walter Gross ran for his life across snow-covered tundra on the eastern front in Russia. He heard the loud explosions of mortar shells and the whizzing of bullets as the enemy took aim at him. Things had gone wrong while he led a reconnaissance patrol. The enemy had killed everyone in his unit and he was desperately trying to make it back to his lines. As he reached the edge of the defensive trench, an explosion and shrapnel slammed his body against the earth. As he rolled over at the bottom of the ditch, he looked at his lacerated belly as his entrails poured out onto his legs. The warm blood soaked into his pant legs. With unbearable pain, he started to scream. One of his closest comrades, Joachim Schmidt, who had remained behind in the defensive trench, tried to shove his guts back into his body but he did so in vain. Gross and his comrade knew he was dying. Gross gave his friend a strange smile, shook his head, and said that this was a shitty war. He was dying for a country that had persecuted him and his family. He asked Schmidt to protect his Jewish mother. Schmidt promised. He knew that Gross was a Mischling. Blood continued to pour out of Gross. When his head slumped over and his body went limp, another Jewish soldier had died for the Fatherland. His mother committed suicide before her deportation to Auschwitz two months later. Fuchs and Gross were not alone in bravely serving their country while the Nazis murdered their families. During World War II, likely thousands of Jews and tens of thousands of partial Jews (Mischlinge) served in the Wehrmacht. A few even held high positions in it. Here follow some of their stories. ...