Jewish Soldiers in Nazi Captivity

Jewish Soldiers in Nazi Captivity PDF Author: Yorai Linenberg
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198892780
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
This book explores the extraordinary story of Jewish POWs in German captivity during the Second World War - extraordinary because of the contrast between Germany's genocidal policy towards Jews on one hand, and its relatively non-discriminatory treatment of Jewish POWs from western countries on the other. The radicalisation of Germany's anti-Semitic policies entered its last phase in June 1941 with the invasion of the Soviet Union; during the following four years, nearly six million Jews were murdered. In parallel, Germany's POW policies had gone through a radicalisation process of their own, resulting in the murder of millions of Soviet POWs, of Allied commando soldiers, and of POW escapees, with Adolf Hitler eventually transferring in July 1944 the responsibility for POWs from the Wehrmacht to Heinrich Himmler, in his role as head of the Replacement Army. And yet, despite all this, Jewish POWs from western countries were usually not discriminated against and were treated, in most cases, according to the 1929 Geneva Convention. Jewish Soldiers in Nazi Captivity combines memoirs, letters, and oral histories with Red Cross camp visit reports and other archival material to challenge the accepted view of the Holocaust as an indiscriminate murder of all Jews in Europe and will help to reshape our understanding of the Holocaust and of Nazi Germany.

Jewish Soldiers in Nazi Captivity

Jewish Soldiers in Nazi Captivity PDF Author: Yorai Linenberg
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198892780
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 285

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book explores the extraordinary story of Jewish POWs in German captivity during the Second World War - extraordinary because of the contrast between Germany's genocidal policy towards Jews on one hand, and its relatively non-discriminatory treatment of Jewish POWs from western countries on the other. The radicalisation of Germany's anti-Semitic policies entered its last phase in June 1941 with the invasion of the Soviet Union; during the following four years, nearly six million Jews were murdered. In parallel, Germany's POW policies had gone through a radicalisation process of their own, resulting in the murder of millions of Soviet POWs, of Allied commando soldiers, and of POW escapees, with Adolf Hitler eventually transferring in July 1944 the responsibility for POWs from the Wehrmacht to Heinrich Himmler, in his role as head of the Replacement Army. And yet, despite all this, Jewish POWs from western countries were usually not discriminated against and were treated, in most cases, according to the 1929 Geneva Convention. Jewish Soldiers in Nazi Captivity combines memoirs, letters, and oral histories with Red Cross camp visit reports and other archival material to challenge the accepted view of the Holocaust as an indiscriminate murder of all Jews in Europe and will help to reshape our understanding of the Holocaust and of Nazi Germany.

Jewish Soldiers, Nazi Captors

Jewish Soldiers, Nazi Captors PDF Author: Yorai Linenberg
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


X Troop

X Troop PDF Author: Leah Garrett
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0358177421
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 373

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Book Description
WALL STREET JOURNAL BOOK OF THE MONTH "This is the incredible World War II saga of the German-Jewish commandos who fought in Britain’s most secretive special-forces unit—but whose story has gone untold until now." —Wall Street Journal “Brilliantly researched, utterly gripping history: the first full account of a remarkable group of Jewish refugees—a top-secret band of brothers—who waged war on Hitler.”—Alex Kershaw, New York Times best-selling author of The Longest Winter and The Liberator The incredible World War II saga of the German-Jewish commandos who fought in Britain’s most secretive special-forces unit—but whose story has gone untold until now June 1942. The shadow of the Third Reich has fallen across the European continent. In desperation, Winston Churchill and his chief of staff form an unusual plan: a new commando unit made up of Jewish refugees who have escaped to Britain. The resulting volunteers are a motley group of intellectuals, artists, and athletes, most from Germany and Austria. Many have been interned as enemy aliens, and have lost their families, their homes—their whole worlds. They will stop at nothing to defeat the Nazis. Trained in counterintelligence and advanced combat, this top secret unit becomes known as X Troop. Some simply call them a suicide squad. Drawing on extensive original research, including interviews with the last surviving members, Leah Garrett follows this unique band of brothers from Germany to England and back again, with stops at British internment camps, the beaches of Normandy, the battlefields of Italy and Holland, and the hellscape of Terezin concentration camp—the scene of one of the most dramatic, untold rescues of the war. For the first time, X Troop tells the astonishing story of these secret shock troops and their devastating blows against the Nazis. “Garrett’s detective work is stunning, and her storytelling is masterful. This is an original account of Jewish rescue, resistance, and revenge.”—Wendy Lower, author of The Ravine and National Book Award finalist Hitler’s Furies

Forgotten Victims

Forgotten Victims PDF Author: Mitchel G Bard
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429720459
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
The outbreak of war in Europe in 1939 put tens of thousands of American civilians, especially Jews, in deadly peril, and yet the US State Department failed to help them. Consequently many suffered and some died. Later, when the United States joined the war against Hitler, many American and, in particular, Jewish American soldiers were captured and

Jews and the Military

Jews and the Military PDF Author: Derek J. Penslar
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400848571
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 375

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Book Description
A historical reevaluation of the relationship between Jews, miltary service, and war Jews and the Military is the first comprehensive and comparative look at Jews' involvement in the military and their attitudes toward war from the 1600s until the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Derek Penslar shows that although Jews have often been described as people who shun the army, in fact they have frequently been willing, even eager, to do military service, and only a minuscule minority have been pacifists. Penslar demonstrates that Israel's military ethos did not emerge from a vacuum and that long before the state's establishment, Jews had a vested interest in military affairs. Spanning Europe, North America, and the Middle East, Penslar discusses the myths and realities of Jewish draft dodging, how Jews reacted to facing their coreligionists in battle, the careers of Jewish officers and their reception in the Jewish community, the effects of World War I on Jewish veterans, and Jewish participation in the Spanish Civil War and World War II. Penslar culminates with a study of Israel's War of Independence as a Jewish world war, which drew on the military expertise and financial support of a mobilized, global Jewish community. He considers how military service was a central issue in debates about Jewish emancipation and a primary indicator of the position of Jews in any given society. Deconstructing old stereotypes, Jews and the Military radically transforms our understanding of Jews' historic relationship to war and military power.

Journey Out of Darkness

Journey Out of Darkness PDF Author: Hal LaCroix
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0275997456
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
Journey Out of Darkness is a poignant collection of portraits, in words and photographs, of 19 former prisoners of war who bravely endured captivity in Nazi Germany in World War II. Through these men, one can learn essential truths about the POW experience during that war—truths that counter many popular myths and misconceptions. The men featured here gather every week in offices of the Veterans Administration in Boston and Brockton, Mass. to talk about their experiences and find comfort in each other. In their eighties and nineties, they are unique individuals with unique wartime experiences, but also representative of the more than 120,000 American POWs held in Nazi Germany. They are men who fought a double war, in combat and then as POWs. Using both oral histories and photographs to tell their stories, LaCroix and Meyer humanize a terrifying aspect of war, redefining how we think about these men as POWs, survivors, patriots, and members of the Greatest Generation. Journey Out of Darkness is a poignant collection of portraits, in words and photographs, of 19 former prisoners of war who bravely endured captivity in Nazi Germany during World War II. Through these men, one can learn essential truths about the POW experience during that war—truths that counter many popular myths and misconceptions. The 19 men featured here gather every week in offices of the Veterans Administration in Boston and Brockton, Mass., to talk about their experiences and find comfort in each other. In their eighties and nineties, they are unique individuals with unique wartime experiences, but also representative of the more than 120,000 American POWs held in Nazi Germany. They are men who fought a double war, in combat and then as POWs. Together, their photos and their stories go beyond typical first-person accounts. Until the men in this book began meeting in VA support groups, few had spoken of their POW experiences. Some were told by the military not to talk; others were coerced by military intelligence into signing non-disclosure papers called security certificates. With little exception, they received no recognition for enduring as POWs, even as they struggled with traumatic memories and shame for having been held captive, for losing power over their fate, and for surviving combat when friends died. These portraits also illuminate another little-known story: the plight of Jewish-American POWs. Two of the men featured in the book were Jews who concealed their religious identities from the SS. LaCroix and Meyer have crafted a powerful exploration of the struggles of these brave veterans. Using both oral histories and photographs, Journey Out of Darkness humanizes a terrifying aspect of war, redefining how we think about these men as POWs, survivors, patriots, and members of the Greatest Generation.

Confronting Captivity

Confronting Captivity PDF Author: Arieh J. Kochavi
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807876402
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Book Description
How was it possible that almost all of the nearly 300,000 British and American troops who fell into German hands during World War II survived captivity in German POW camps and returned home almost as soon as the war ended? In Confronting Captivity, Arieh J. Kochavi offers a behind-the-scenes look at the living conditions in Nazi camps and traces the actions the British and American governments took--and didn't take--to ensure the safety of their captured soldiers. Concern in London and Washington about the safety of these POWs was mitigated by the recognition that the Nazi leadership tended to adhere to the Geneva Convention when it came to British and U.S. prisoners. Following the invasion of Normandy, however, Allied apprehension over the safety of POWs turned into anxiety for their very lives. Yet Britain and the United States took the calculated risk of counting on a swift conclusion to the war as the Soviets approached Germany from the east. Ultimately, Kochavi argues, it was more likely that the lives of British and American POWs were spared because of their race rather than any actions their governments took on their behalf.

Unlikely Warrior

Unlikely Warrior PDF Author: Georg Rauch
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0374301425
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
Previously published as The Jew with the Iron Cross: a record of survival in WWII Russia. New York: iUniverse, 2006.

Into the Forest

Into the Forest PDF Author: Rebecca Frankel
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 125026765X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
A 2021 National Jewish Book Award Finalist One of Smithsonian Magazine's Best History Books of 2021 "An uplifting tale, suffused with a karmic righteousness that is, at times, exhilarating." —Wall Street Journal "A gripping narrative that reads like a page turning thriller novel." —NPR In the summer of 1942, the Rabinowitz family narrowly escaped the Nazi ghetto in their Polish town by fleeing to the forbidding Bialowieza Forest. They miraculously survived two years in the woods—through brutal winters, Typhus outbreaks, and merciless Nazi raids—until they were liberated by the Red Army in 1944. After the war they trekked across the Alps into Italy where they settled as refugees before eventually immigrating to the United States. During the first ghetto massacre, Miriam Rabinowitz rescued a young boy named Philip by pretending he was her son. Nearly a decade later, a chance encounter at a wedding in Brooklyn would lead Philip to find the woman who saved him. And to discover her daughter Ruth was the love of his life. From a little-known chapter of Holocaust history, one family’s inspiring true story.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, Volume IV

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, Volume IV PDF Author: Geoffrey P. Megargee
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253060907
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 809

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Book Description
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, Volume IV aims to provide as much basic information as possible about individual camps and other detention facilities. Why were they established? Who ran them? What kinds of prisoners did they hold? What kinds of work did the prisoners do, and for whom? What were the conditions like? The entries detail the sources from which the authors drew their material, so future scholars can expand upon the work. Finally, and perhaps most important, this is a work of memorialization: it preserves the histories of places where people suffered and died. Volume IV examines an under-researched segment of the larger Nazi incarceration system: camps and other detention facilities under the direct control of the German military, the Wehrmacht. These include prisoner of war (POW) camps (including camps for enlisted men, camps for officers, camps for naval personnel and airmen, and transit camps), civilian internment and labor camps, work camps for Tunisian Jews, brothels in which women were forced to have sex with soldiers, and prisons and penal camps for Wehrmacht personnel. Most of these sites have not been described in detail in the existing historical literature, and a substantial number of them have never been documented at all. The volume also includes an introduction to the German prisoner of war camp system and its evolution, introductions to each of the various types of camps operated by the Wehrmacht, and entries devoted to each individual camp, representing the most comprehensive documentation to date of the Wehrmacht camp system. Within the entries, the volume draws upon German military documents, eyewitness and survivor testimony, and postwar investigations to describe the experiences of prisoners of war and civilian prisoners held captive by the Wehrmacht. Of particular note is the detailed documentation of the Wehrmacht's crimes against Soviet prisoners of war, which have largely been neglected in the English-language literature up to this point, despite the fact that more than three million Soviet prisoners died in German captivity. The volume also provides substantial coverage of the diverse range of conditions encountered by other Allied prisoners of war, illustrating both the substantial privations faced by all prisoners of war and the stark contrast between the Germans' treatment of Soviet prisoners and those of other nationalities. The volume also details the significant involvement of the Wehrmacht in crimes against the civilian populations of occupied Europe and North Africa. As a result, this volume not only brings to light many detention sites whose existence has been little known, but also advances the decades-old process of dismantling the myth of the "clean Wehrmacht," according to which the German military had nothing to do with the Holocaust and the Nazi regime's other crimes.