Who Knew?

by Jack Cooper

  The German war effort was significantly aided by this system supplied by IBM.1

  ________________

  1. Bryan Mark Rigg, Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers: The Untold Story of Nazi Racial Laws and Men of Jewish Descent in the German Military (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2002), 63–65.

  2. Ibid., 96.

  3. Ibid., 96

  4. Ibid., 105, 108, 114, 120, 123, 124, 129, 140.

  5. Ibid., 119.

  6. Ibid., 131–32.

  7. Ibid., 118.

  1. Ibid., 352.

  ...Germany honored Moses Mendelssohn – 200 years too late

  Anti-Semitism in Germany was prevalent in all ages and in the reigns of most rulers. In an effort to limit the numbers of Jews and their activities, Frederick II of Prussia issued a charter, which the French liberal Mirabeau referred to as “worthy of a cannibal.”1 At the time of the charter, the Jews of Prussia were divided into categories according to their value to the state. There were a very few General Privileged Jews not bound by the charter and enjoying all economic and residential rights. Next were the Regular Protected Jews. They had limited rights and residence which they could transmit to the oldest son only. Special Protected Jews could not transfer their rights to even a single child. All Jewish communal officials, the younger children of the Specials, and all domestic servants were only classified as Tolerated.2

  The charter, containing more than thirty articles, severely limited the numbers and types of Jews who could service the Jewish community. It also put harsh restrictions on the types of occupations Jews could pursue and who could buy a house. In a city as large as Berlin, only forty Jewish-owned houses were permitted. Where there were five Jewish families in a town, only one was permitted to buy a house.3 Any Jew intending to live outside these regulations had to leave his jurisdiction and reside elsewhere.

  The foremost German Jew of this time was the intellectual Moses Mendelssohn, who gained almost universal acceptance into German society. So prominent was Mendelssohn that his status was raised from a Tolerated Protected Jew to a Special Protected Jew. However, this change in status was still not high enough for him to transfer his status to any of his children, to settle a child in business, or to marry off a child.4 When Mendelssohn was elected to membership in the Prussian Royal Academy of Sciences, Frederick failed to ratify his election.5

  The severe restrictions placed upon all phases of the lives of Mendelssohn’s children proved too much for them to tolerate, and all six of them converted to Christianity.

  When World War II started, Mendelssohn’s descendents were well represented in the German armed forces by one full Jew, eleven half-Jews, six 37.5-percent Jews, fifteen quarter-Jews, and six 12.5-percent Jews.1 It was only due to Germany’s manpower needs that these Jews were able to escape the gas chambers. Had German arms prevailed, it is fairly certain that these army veterans would have joined their brethren in the toll of the Holocaust.

  It is ironic that in 1979, the 250th anniversary of Mendelssohn’s birth, the Berlin city government announced a ninety-pfennig commemorative stamp to be issued in Mendelssohn’s honor and a new twenty-thousand-deutschmark annual award (today’s equivalent of around thirty thousand dollars), the Moses Mendelssohn Prize to Promote Tolerance.2 Moses Mendelssohn’s now mostly Christian descendents lived to see their illustrious Jewish ancestor honored with a prize in his name, a prize for promoting tolerance, something he only partially enjoyed and his children even less.

  ________________

  1. Jacob R. Marcus, The Jew in the Medieval World: A Source Book, 315–1791 (New York: Atheneum, 1938), 85.

  2. Ibid., 84–85.

  3. Ibid., 94.

  4. Ibid., 87.

  5. “Moses Mendelssohn,” Encyclopedia Judaica, CD-ROM Edition (Jerusalem: Keter, 1995).

  1. Bryan Mark Rigg, Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers: The Untold Story of Nazi Racial Laws and Men of Jewish Descent in the German Military (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2002), 287.

  2. “Moses Mendelssohn,” Encyclopedia Judaica.

  ...Hitler promoted part-Jews to Aryan status

  When the Nazis ascended to power in 1933, they immediately began to single out Jews for persecution. Full Jews were not a problem, but mixed-blood Jews, Mischlinge, needed special attention. When the racial laws began to be enforced in 1933, the effects were immediately felt in the army. Some soldiers were immediately discharged, some were permitted to remain in the army but were to be denied promotion, and still others had their status changed.

  To effect these status changes, Hitler established three new categories. The first two categories were called Genehmigungen, approval or authorization. The lowest-level category simply allowed a soldier to remain in the army until the end of the war.1 The second category allowed the soldier to remain in the army and be promoted. The third category allowed the soldier to describe himself as deutschblütig, of German blood. This conferred on the soldier all the rights of an Aryan except the privilege of joining the Nazi party and owning farmland.

  Most of the soldiers fell into categories one and two. They usually had a clause written into their exemptions that after the war, Hitler himself would review their cases. If they fought well, they would be considered for elevation to deutschblütig. 2

  Another type of exemption was to declare the soldier an Aryan. This was most often accomplished by declaring that the Jewish father was not the real father. This process often entailed some conspicuous lying, but in many cases the deception was successful.3

  ________________

  1. Bryan Mark Rigg, Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers: The Untold Story of Nazi Racial Laws and Men of Jewish Descent in the German Military (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2002), 111.

  2. The permit for one such case read as follows: “I approve Private First Class Wilhelm v. Gwinner in 3rd Panzerjäger Company, Section 32, to be allowed to be promoted to ranks of authority during the war according to the exemption clause of Paragraph 15 (2) of the military law. After the war, I will decide whether to declare Wilhelm von Gwinner of German blood, according to his performance as a soldier. Führerhauptquartier, 5 March 1941. Signed: Adolf Hitler.” Ibid., 19.

  3. Ibid., 31.

  ...Mussolini’s Italians did not make very good Nazis

  When World War II began, Benito Mussolini, the Italian fascist dictator, fell into the orbit of Hitler’s anti-Semitism. Laws were passed limiting Jewish participation in a variety of professional and business endeavors. However, there were loopholes in the system. Exempt were “favored war veterans, old Fascists, their children, grandchildren, parents, and grandparents.” Moreover, lax enforcement of the laws permitted more potential victims to evade arrest.1 In general, Italians were not following Mussolini’s lead regarding persecution of Jews. With the Final Solution in full swing, the Jews of Italy were comparatively safe.

  All this was to change. Having led the Italian nation into disastrous defeats in World War II, Mussolini was forced out of power in 1943. The German army then came in to occupy the country, and the roundup of Jews began for transport to the death camps.

  It is a tragic irony that a leader who could not get his country to persecute Jews was removed from power paving the way for the Holocaust to reach Italy.

  ________________

  1. Elliot Rosenberg, But Were They Good for the Jews? Over 150 Historical Figures Viewed from a Jewish Perspective (Secaucus, NJ: Carol, 1997), 223.

  ...German soldiers rescued the Lubavitcher Rebbe

  In the fall of 1939, after the German army had occupied Poland, members of the Lubavitcher movement in the United States began a concerted effort to get the Rebbe and his entourage out of Europe to a safe haven in America. Working through members of Congress, Secretary of State Cordell Hull, the Latvian embassy, the Swedish government, and prominent Jewish citizens, they were able to appeal successfully to the German government to facilitate the rescue of the Rebbe, his family, and his close advisors.

 
; At that time, relations between the US and Germany were some-what strained and the Nazis were anxious to improve relations with the United States by cooperating with the rescue of selected people whom the government would specify.1

  Once the decision had been made to rescue the Rebbe, the task was delegated to Admiral Canaris, the head of the Abwehr, the Nazi intelligence services. Canaris then assigned a half-Jewish soldier, Major Ernst Bloch, to find the Rebbe. Also in the group were quarter-Jew Johannes Hamburger, knowledgeable in French, Russian, and Polish, half-Jew Klaus Schenk, and Major Johannes Horatzek, head of the Abwehr office in Warsaw.2

  Then ensued a most remarkable search of Jewish areas of Warsaw. Four uniformed German soldiers were attempting to explain to terrified residents that they had come to rescue their spiritual leader! When the word finally reached the Rebbe that these soldiers were telling the truth, he came out of hiding.3

  The trip out of Europe was itself fraught with danger. Several times they were stopped by SS and other soldiers demanding to know why these Jews were traveling first class and where were they headed. Using a combination of threats and bluster, Major Bloch was able to get the Jews to the Latvian border, and the group was soon on its way to America on a Swedish ship.4

  During their relationship with Major Bloch, the Lubavitchers came to believe that Bloch was either a Jew masquerading as a German or a guardian angel sent by God.5

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  1. Bryan Mark Rigg, Rescued from the Reich: How One of Hitler’s Soldiers Saved the Lubavitcher Rebbe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 59–70.

  2. Ibid., 84–85.

  3. Ibid., 123.

  4. Ibid., 123–28, 148.

  5. Ibid., 127–28.

  ...a Japanese diplomat sacrificed his career to save Jews

  Chiune Sugihara became Japan’s vice-consul general to Lithuania in September of 1939.1 With the onset of the war, Sugihara’s office was deluged with desperate people, most of them Jews, seeking transit visas out of the country. The lines literally snaked around the block.

  From his early days as a student and diplomat, Sugihara was sensitive to the contrast drawn between the East and the West. Indeed, he displayed a keen desire to compete with the Americans to demonstrate who was more civilized. Early on in his rescue efforts, Sugihara noticed that most of his “clients” did not have the necessary details required to successfully complete their applications. The Japanese government was divided on the issue, but people were in need of immediate assistance.2 Sugihara processed the applications anyway.

  For the most part, the six thousand Jews aided by Sugihara were able to reach Japan, from where they traveled on to various destinations, mainly to Shanghai. The students of the Mir Yeshiva were among those saved by Sugihara.3

  At the end of the war, the Sugiharas were held in a Russian prison camp in Romania with other Japanese members of the diplomatic corps.4 When Sugihara finally returned home, he was asked to resign from the diplomatic service. Sugihara, an expert in the Russian language and culture, spent some of his remaining years as a translator of Russian reports for a Japanese radio station and about fifteen years working in a trade mission in Moscow to revive trade between the Soviet Union and Japan.5

  In 1984 Chiune Sugihara was recognized as Righteous among the Nations by Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority, and a park in Jerusalem was named in his honor.6

  ________________

  1. Hillel Levine, In Search of Sugihara: The Elusive Japanese Diplomat Who Risked His Life to Rescue 10,000 Jews from the Holocaust (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), 3.

  2. Ibid., 259.

  3. Ibid., 37, 242, 244, 255.

  4. Ibid., 275.

  5. Ibid., 277.

  6. Yad Vashem; Mitchell Geoffrey Bard, The Complete History of the Holocaust (San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, 2001), 333.

  ...a German general court-martialed SS killers

  In 1939, German General Johannes Blaskowitz was in charge of the troops who invaded Poland. Following closely on his heels were the SS Death’s Head units assigned to liquidate undesirables, foremost among them Jews. As a member of the old school of soldiers who held to standards of decency, Blaskowitz was shocked by what he saw and ordered the court-martial of a number of members of the SS troops involved in the killings. This was an unpardonable sin in Nazi ideology, and the convicted SS men received speedy amnesties.

  Blaskowitz continued to compile dossiers on those committing atrocities. Soon it became necessary for Himmler himself to speak to high-ranking officers about what the Third Reich was attempting to accomplish. Blaskowitz, however, kept up his agitating and was soon removed from his command.1

  ________________

  1. Elliot Rosenberg, But Were They Good for the Jews: Over 150 Historical Figures Viewed from a Jewish Perspective (Secaucus, NJ: Carol, 1997), 220–21.

  ...a Jew made possible US help to Britain at the start of World War II

  At the start of World War II, President Roosevelt was morally committed to helping Great Britain. However, his efforts were severely limited by the Johnson Debt Default Act, which attempted to protect the United States by forbidding US government lending to any country that had previously defaulted on such loans. Great Britain met this criterion, having defaulted on nearly $3.5 billion in US loans made during World War I, and therefore Roosevelt could not legally extend any more credit to his ally nation.1

  At this point, Jewish business man Armand Hammer stepped forward with an idea. He met with President Roosevelt and presented a plan whereby England would lease aviation and naval bases to the United States in exchange for wiping out England’s debt. This would clear the way for England to receive additional ships, planes, and other matériel needed to stay in the war.

  The plan was adopted by the United States and Great Britain, and soon it came to include the Soviet Union. Roosevelt’s aides consulted with Hammer several times on the implementation of the plan soon to become famous as the “lend-lease” plan.2

  ________________

  1. Edward Jay Epstein, Dossier: The Secret History of Armand Hammer (New York: Carroll and Graf, 1996), 151.

  2. Ibid., 151–55.

  ...only Christians could get visas during the war

  In the early part of World War II, the stunning successes of the German army caused concern for the plight of war refugees in Europe. Eleanor Roosevelt, the president’s wife, took a special interest in their difficult situation. After trying and failing to get the immigration quotas raised, she tried getting temporary visitors’ visas for people seeking to escape. The plan worked out very well for British children, whose parents wanted them out of harm’s way should the Germans invade England.1 Later on, the program was extended to selected adults from various countries. This program didn’t work out very well for the Jews, most of whom were from Germany. It was found that the Germans had made extensive use of spies in the target countries prior to the invasion by the army, and the United States was afraid that among the German refugees would be spies.2

  While the British children brought over were mostly Christian, the ones from Germany were mostly Jewish, and Congress would not extend the visitors’ visas to this group. This attitude was not limited to Congress. In a poll that asked what kind of people you most dislike, 35 percent listed Jews. The next year another poll showed that “53 percent said Jews were different from other people and that these differences should lead to restrictions in business and social life.”3

  ________________

  1. Doris Kearns Goodwin, No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994), 100.

  2. Ibid.

  3. Ibid., 102.

  ...Adolf Eichmann helped rescue some Jews

  By early 1939, the Nazis knew that they wanted to get rid of the Jews in the areas under their control. The Final Solution, the total extermination of the Jews, had not yet been decided upon, and the task of arra
nging the emigration of the Jews fell to Adolf Eichmann. At the same time, the Jewish secret service, the Mossad, was busy trying to affect the rescue of Jews from Nazi-dominated areas of Europe.

  It was Eichmann’s plan to move Jews out of Austria through the Slovak Republic. At one point, the Mossad agent Ehud Avriel was driven from Bratislava, the new capital of the Slovak Republic, to Vienna in a luxurious limousine driven by a uniformed SS chauffeur. Avriel was there to negotiate a transfer of Jews out of Europe.

  In late 1939, Eichmann issued 1,100 visas to Jews who were to travel down the Danube River to Bratislava and on to Yugoslavia. There they were to meet a Mossad ship to transport the Jews to Palestine. Unfortunately, nobody was willing to sell a ship to the Jews, and nine months later, these same passport-carrying Jews were caught by the Nazi death squads. Tragically, it turned out that the Jews did have a ship, but the Haganah, the Jewish military forces, had sold the ship to the British for intelligence missions.

  The Mossad-Eichmann relationship continued, and several small shipments of Jews were successfully taken out of Europe. This also marked the beginning of active participation of the Joint Distribution Committee in the illegal smuggling of Jews from Europe.

  The Eichmann-Mossad relationship could have been a much greater success had it not been for the active interference of the British government. The British would not permit any Jewish refugees to enter areas under their control.1