Would it surprise anyone to learn that there were upwards of 150, 000 soldiers of partial Jewish descent serving in the German army during World War II?  I had no idea until I attended a lecture by Bryan Mark Rigg discussing his book entitled Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers.  What is even more startling is that Adolf Hitler was aware of this and for a while allowed them to serve.  In most cases these soldiers had no knowledge of the Holocaust killing machine.  From their point of view they were simple German patriots fighting for their country. Many did not even consider themselves Jewish. Some were unaware of their “Jewish blood”.  According to his book, at least 20 soldiers of “Jewish blood” were awarded The Knights Cross.  Included in the ranks were two field marshals and fifteen generals. The most prominently known of these commanders of Jewish descent was General Erhard Milch who had one Jewish parent.  He was deputy to Herman Goring, the head of the Luftwaffe(German Air Force).

When I look back at my own Jewish Immigrant background, the “specter” of Jews fighting for the Nazis in the traditional sense sickens stomach. My ancestry is much like other Jewish immigrants. Both sides of my family immigrated to the Unites States from Czarist Russia in the early 1900′s. They came to escape the brutal exterminating pogroms of the Russian authorities much like the extermination of Jews by the Nazis. Czarist officials not only promoted pogroms to blame Jews for government failures and economic depressions but also to isolate jews and keep them fearful. They forced the “Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion,” a documents used the to justify persecuting Jews ans stil in circulation now in Middle Eastern Countries to “prove” that Jews controlled World Finance. Moreover, the Czars conscripted Jewish youth as young as 12 to serve 25 years in the army. Some Russian Jews immigrated to Poland only to be ultimately persecuted by both the Hitler regime and their very own. German born Jews treated Eastern Jews as inferior calling them “Ghetto Jews”. Jews of this background constituted the majority of the Jews massacred pursuant to “The Final Solution“.

The common public notion is that no one of Jewish descent would have ever been allowed to serve in the Nazi regime and, if discovered, would be immediately deported to a forced labor or extermination/concentration camp. This was not the case. The Nazi racial classification or “Nuremberg Laws” were complex and bizarre as to who was classified as a “Jew”. (see Nazi classification chart) This classification dispute is responsible for some controversy. Some scholars have complained that the title of Rigg’s book is sensational and misleading because it implies that these Nazi soldiers were Jewish when, in fact, many of them would not be classified as Jews under Jewish law (Young men were considered Jewish if their mothers were Jewish.). Many of the soldiers interviewed did not consider themselves Jewish at all and had been baptized into a Christian tradition. I view this as a simplistic criticism since the overall issue of how Hitler bent and twisted the racial laws of his regime to serve his own bizarre purposes in the face of the Nuremberg laws is a fascinating idea that Riggs explains from a unique perspective. Riggs demonstrates 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. Riggs also explores the historical, religious and cultural individual personal conflicts of “The Jewish Identity”.

While most of Jewish descent were ordinary Wehrmacht soldiers, some rose to very high ranking positions of authority in the Nazi Regime. Some either directly or indirectly participated in the Jewish killing machine. Germans of Jewish descent were fighting for a country whose official policy was that they were regarded as second-class citizens and, in most cases, not even human. Germans of Jewish descent were fighting for a country that was deporting their relatives to concentrations camps for eventual extermination. Germans of Jewish descent were fighting for a country who, some say, planned to ultimately exterminate them also when Germany won the war.  How could these “Jews” fight for a country that planned their extinction?  Why did Hitler allow this to take place?  We know it is not due to the common misconception that Hitler was part Jewish.  Scholars universally agree that there is no evidence of this.  Rigg’s thesis certainly goes against everything I believed about my identity as a Jew and what it means to be Jewish.  Does having “Jewish blood” in itself make you Jewish?  While the simple answer seems to be no, it was quite complicated in Nazi Germany.

A fascinating aspect of the lecture and the book is the method by which the Nazis determined who was Jewish and who was not. For racial and military purposes, the Nazi Party classified Jewish people as full Jews, half Jews, and quarter Jews. Each classification was treated differently with regards to whether they could serve in the German military and what rights, if any, they had under German law. As previously mentioned, according to Jewish law, a person is determined to be a Jew if the person’s mother is Jewish.

I would have been a full Jew under Nazi laws. All four of my grandparents on both sides were Jewish. I am also of Russian descent. Not only would I have been prohibited from serving in the German military, I would have in all likelihood been on the first train out to to Auschwitz or some other extermination camp. Jews of Eastern descent or “Ghetto Jews” were also looked down upon and discriminated against by German born Jews as well as the Germans. It was a double whammy. (it was an upper vs lower class type discrimination as compared to the totalitarian discrimination of the Nazis)

Many of those of partial Jewish descent while Jewish by both Jewish law and Nazi racial classification had become so assimilated into the German-Christian society through mixed marriages that they did not consider themselves Jewish. Some were practicing Christians. This was only changed through Hitler’s racial classification system and the Nuremberg Laws which officially made the majority of people of full and partial Jewish descent second-class citizens called “Mischling“, meaning they came from a mixed marriage and had partial Jewish ancestry. Germans of partial Jewish descent who had practiced Christianity all of their lives, were suddenly classified as a “Mischling,” Jews under Hitler’s racial classification laws. They were suddenly stripped of most rights under German law.

Interestingly, the situation was not just a German/Jewish phenomenon. In 1941, Finland joined the war as a “co-belligerent” of Germany. (Finland refused to call itself an ally.) There were 250-300 Finnish-Jews fighting alongside Germany on the eastern front against Russia, and some of the Finnish-Jews were even awarded German battle decorations. Soldiers with Jewish heritage also fought along side the Nazis when Romania was aligned against the Soviet Union as well as for Italy.

There was a huge ideology gap between what occurred in Finland and Nazi Germany. Finland was not under Nazi rule. Finland, from its perspective, was fighting for its independence from Russia rather than to support any anti-Semitic ideology or German persecution. Finland as a nation refused to endorse the Nazi anti-Semitic policies and refused to deport, persecute or discriminate against its Jewish population. It is quite the paradox that despite this policy their fighting alongside Germany certainly helped Germany achieve military goals and indirectly aided in the Jewish persecutions. The Finnish-Jewish soldiers were not blind to what was going on. It caused quite a bit of internal conflict and tension with the German soldiers. This was also not a racial classification issue. Finland did not discriminate against or classify their Jews. In this situation, full, practicing Jews were fighting alongside the Nazis against the Allies, fighting predominately at Leningrad.

The German racial classification system for Jews and the resulting disparate treatment with regards to military service in the Nazi army highlights some of the fundamental issues of Jewish Identify that exist even today. What does it mean to be Jewish? What qualities and beliefs make someone Jewish? If your mother is Jewish you are certainly a Jews by definition of Jewish Law but that may not be how you may look at yourself if you were not raised in the Jewish tradition. Are we as Jews defined by our culture, our religious practices or how other view us? As an example, several years ago I got into a heated argument when a person who was close to me told me in her opinion I was not Jewish because I did not adhere to Jewish religious practices. I was infuriated. It was and is my belief that my bond to Judaism is through culture, common history and suffering. The bond that all Jews share. That is what defines me as a Jew. She could not grasp this concept. This was the dilemma faced by many of the Mischling in Nazi Germany. This is a historical and religious conflict faced by Jews today as mixed marriages have become much more common and accepted in the United States. Jews argue among themselves over this issue. It is a conflict that transcends time.

Would it surprise anyone to learn that there were upwards of 150, 000 soldiers of partial Jewish descent serving in the German army during World War II?  I had no idea until I attended a lecture by Bryan Mark Rigg discussing his book entitled Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers.  What is even more startling is that Adolf Hitler was aware of this and for a while allowed them to serve.  In most cases these soldiers had no knowledge of the Holocaust killing machine.  From their point of view they were simple German patriots fighting for their country. Many did not even consider themselves Jewish. Some were unaware of their “Jewish blood”.  According to his book, at least 20 soldiers of “Jewish blood” were awarded The Knights Cross.  Included in the ranks were two field marshals and fifteen generals. The most prominently known of these commanders of Jewish descent was General Erhard Milch who had one Jewish parent.  He was deputy to Herman Goring, the head of the Luftwaffe(German Air Force).

When I look back at my own Jewish Immigrant background, the “specter” of Jews fighting for the Nazis in the traditional sense sickens stomach. My ancestry is much like other Jewish immigrants. Both sides of my family immigrated to the Unites States from Czarist Russia in the early 1900′s. They came to escape the brutal exterminating pogroms of the Russian authorities much like the extermination of Jews by the Nazis. Czarist officials not only promoted pogroms to blame Jews for government failures and economic depressions but also to isolate jews and keep them fearful. They forced the “Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion,” a documents used the to justify persecuting Jews ans stil in circulation now in Middle Eastern Countries to “prove” that Jews controlled World Finance. Moreover, the Czars conscripted Jewish youth as young as 12 to serve 25 years in the army. Some Russian Jews immigrated to Poland only to be ultimately persecuted by both the Hitler regime and their very own. German born Jews treated Eastern Jews as inferior calling them “Ghetto Jews”. Jews of this background constituted the majority of the Jews massacred pursuant to “The Final Solution“.

The common public notion is that no one of Jewish descent would have ever been allowed to serve in the Nazi regime and, if discovered, would be immediately deported to a forced labor or extermination/concentration camp. This was not the case. The Nazi racial classification or “Nuremberg Laws” were complex and bizarre as to who was classified as a “Jew”. (see Nazi classification chart) This classification dispute is responsible for some controversy. Some scholars have complained that the title of Rigg’s book is sensational and misleading because it implies that these Nazi soldiers were Jewish when, in fact, many of them would not be classified as Jews under Jewish law (Young men were considered Jewish if their mothers were Jewish.). Many of the soldiers interviewed did not consider themselves Jewish at all and had been baptized into a Christian tradition. I view this as a simplistic criticism since the overall issue of how Hitler bent and twisted the racial laws of his regime to serve his own bizarre purposes in the face of the Nuremberg laws is a fascinating idea that Riggs explains from a unique perspective. Riggs demonstrates 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. Riggs also explores the historical, religious and cultural individual personal conflicts of “The Jewish Identity”.

While most of Jewish descent were ordinary Wehrmacht soldiers, some rose to very high ranking positions of authority in the Nazi Regime. Some either directly or indirectly participated in the Jewish killing machine. Germans of Jewish descent were fighting for a country whose official policy was that they were regarded as second-class citizens and, in most cases, not even human. Germans of Jewish descent were fighting for a country that was deporting their relatives to concentrations camps for eventual extermination. Germans of Jewish descent were fighting for a country who, some say, planned to ultimately exterminate them also when Germany won the war.  How could these “Jews” fight for a country that planned their extinction?  Why did Hitler allow this to take place?  We know it is not due to the common misconception that Hitler was part Jewish.  Scholars universally agree that there is no evidence of this.  Rigg’s thesis certainly goes against everything I believed about my identity as a Jew and what it means to be Jewish.  Does having “Jewish blood” in itself make you Jewish?  While the simple answer seems to be no, it was quite complicated in Nazi Germany.

A fascinating aspect of the lecture and the book is the method by which the Nazis determined who was Jewish and who was not. For racial and military purposes, the Nazi Party classified Jewish people as full Jews, half Jews, and quarter Jews. Each classification was treated differently with regards to whether they could serve in the German military and what rights, if any, they had under German law. As previously mentioned, according to Jewish law, a person is determined to be a Jew if the person’s mother is Jewish.

I would have been a full Jew under Nazi laws. All four of my grandparents on both sides were Jewish. I am also of Russian descent. Not only would I have been prohibited from serving in the German military, I would have in all likelihood been on the first train out to to Auschwitz or some other extermination camp. Jews of Eastern descent or “Ghetto Jews” were also looked down upon and discriminated against by German born Jews as well as the Germans. It was a double whammy. (it was an upper vs lower class type discrimination as compared to the totalitarian discrimination of the Nazis)

Many of those of partial Jewish descent while Jewish by both Jewish law and Nazi racial classification had become so assimilated into the German-Christian society through mixed marriages that they did not consider themselves Jewish. Some were practicing Christians. This was only changed through Hitler’s racial classification system and the Nuremberg Laws which officially made the majority of people of full and partial Jewish descent second-class citizens called “Mischling“, meaning they came from a mixed marriage and had partial Jewish ancestry. Germans of partial Jewish descent who had practiced Christianity all of their lives, were suddenly classified as a “Mischling,” Jews under Hitler’s racial classification laws. They were suddenly stripped of most rights under German law.

Interestingly, the situation was not just a German/Jewish phenomenon. In 1941, Finland joined the war as a “co-belligerent” of Germany. (Finland refused to call itself an ally.) There were 250-300 Finnish-Jews fighting alongside Germany on the eastern front against Russia, and some of the Finnish-Jews were even awarded German battle decorations. Soldiers with Jewish heritage also fought along side the Nazis when Romania was aligned against the Soviet Union as well as for Italy.

There was a huge ideology gap between what occurred in Finland and Nazi Germany. Finland was not under Nazi rule. Finland, from its perspective, was fighting for its independence from Russia rather than to support any anti-Semitic ideology or German persecution. Finland as a nation refused to endorse the Nazi anti-Semitic policies and refused to deport, persecute or discriminate against its Jewish population. It is quite the paradox that despite this policy their fighting alongside Germany certainly helped Germany achieve military goals and indirectly aided in the Jewish persecutions. The Finnish-Jewish soldiers were not blind to what was going on. It caused quite a bit of internal conflict and tension with the German soldiers. This was also not a racial classification issue. Finland did not discriminate against or classify their Jews. In this situation, full, practicing Jews were fighting alongside the Nazis against the Allies, fighting predominately at Leningrad.

The German racial classification system for Jews and the resulting disparate treatment with regards to military service in the Nazi army highlights some of the fundamental issues of Jewish Identify that exist even today. What does it mean to be Jewish? What qualities and beliefs make someone Jewish? If your mother is Jewish you are certainly a Jews by definition of Jewish Law but that may not be how you may look at yourself if you were not raised in the Jewish tradition. Are we as Jews defined by our culture, our religious practices or how other view us? As an example, several years ago I got into a heated argument when a person who was close to me told me in her opinion I was not Jewish because I did not adhere to Jewish religious practices. I was infuriated. It was and is my belief that my bond to Judaism is through culture, common history and suffering. The bond that all Jews share. That is what defines me as a Jew. She could not grasp this concept. This was the dilemma faced by many of the Mischling in Nazi Germany. This is a historical and religious conflict faced by Jews today as mixed marriages have become much more common and accepted in the United States. Jews argue among themselves over this issue. It is a conflict that transcends time.

While I can not take the time to name all of the men in the State Department who have been named as members of the Communist Party and members of a spy ring, I have here in my hand a list of 205 that were known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party”-Senator Joseph McCarthy

Where have you been on the Internet lately?  What petitions have you signed on the Internet?  What Facebook Groups or Twitter lists name you?  The days of the Red Scare and McCarthyism are here again in the form of the endless and timeless bounds of the Internet and the mainstream media’s ability to Google your name.   In the 50’s, the organizations you belonged to and the people with whom you associated could get you labeled “a Red.” In the 21^st Century, you can get tagged for associating with the wrong people or from the web sites you visit, or the Facebook groups you join.  The new McCarthyism is upon us.

When I think about every petition I have signed via the internet,  or every blog I have commented upon, I sometimes worry that somewhere in the dark corner of the Internet, an opinion lurks in internet infamy  that will someday come back to haunt me.  I only have to Google my own name to get hundreds of pages of references to Brian Cuban. Will signing a PETA petition label me a left wing radical? Fortunately, I have no plans to run for elected office, so only so much damage can be done.  If I did have such plans, the mainstream media would have a gold mine of all the mentions of my name, or of my family name, on the Web.  I’m sure that there is something out there to label me a socialist, a Hamas sympathizer, or someone who is soft on terrorism because I have written on Islamophobia. I don’t even consider myself to be on the left whatever that means.  I even voted for John McCain in the 2008 presidential election.

The concept behind McCarthyism was around long before Fox’s Glenn Beck labeled the 2010 head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the White House, Cass Sunstein “the most dangerous man in America” but it has been taken to a new level by cable media and internet pundits to be heard above the screaming.

With regard to Senator McCarthy and his infamous Wheeling, West Virginia “I have a list” speech, we know now no such list existed. The piece of paper Senator McCarthy held in his hand had nothing to do with spies or Communists. He might as well have held up a restaurant menu. Was that piece of paper all he held in his hand?  He held so much more in intangibles that won the day to justify fear of our neighbor. He held the trust of an elected official. He played the specter of “I know something you don’t know,” which is a statement that even when simply implied but left unstated, captivates the human desire to know.  His outrageous statements had the sheen of credibility because no one in his position would say such a thing unless it was true.  In other words, coming from a demagogue like McCarthy, his statements had the credibility of the unbelievable. The desire to want to believe those we are supposed to trust overwhelms the logical senses, and we say “there must be something to it”

How many times have we listened to a claim and said “That has to be true, no one would say it if it wasn’t.”  Such a reaction is not confined to the days of the Red Scare simply because it is a natural and normal human response.  How many readers believed Glenn Beck when he said he had evidence that President Barrack Obama was “ building “concentration camps”?  Beck claimed  he had conducted “research on” the so-called concentration camps being built by the Obama White House as part of a conspiracy to establish totalitarian rule in America. He claimed that he could not “debunk them.” He stated, “If you have any fear that we might be heading toward a totalitarian state, look out.  There is something happening in our country and it ain’t good.”

How different is the above from simply stating, “I have here in my hand a list of 200 Muslims I suspect of engaging in terrorism.”  What sort of reaction would that trigger today?  Would anyone in the mainstream media be so irresponsible as Senator McCarthy to make such a statement if no such list existed or the list had not been value checked?  Make the comparison. Beck holds a trusted position as a news commentator.  When Fox News pundit Glenn Beck makes an outrageous claim, we think that outrageous claim must have some truth to it, or why else would someone trusted make it?  How does this differentiate Beck’s tactics from the tactics of Joseph McCarthy?  Like the fraud of McCarthy’s list, it turned out that Beck completely lacked evidence or common sense to support his claims.  That did not stop his allegations from being picked up by bloggers and tweeters spreading the news with an air of conspiracy credibility until Beck was forced to retract as the ridiculous nature of the statement became clear.

When Beck called Sunstein the most dangerous man in the world, he went on to further employ “McCarthyesque” tactics and also sounding eerily like hate radio priest Charles Coughlin when he implored viewers who were ‘watching the capitol” to tune into his program because he had done his homework and they had not, further alleging that Sunstein represented history that we did not want to repeat.  Another instance of a symbolic red baiting claim that Beck “had a list” and information that only Beck was privy to so he should be trusted to the exclusion of those without the information.  Beck went even further with Sunstein by incorporating Nazi Germany imagery when he compared Sunstein’s office to the Reichstag and referring to his beliefs “awfully Nazi.”

The final quote from McCarthy’s speech has become a microcosm of the battles fought in the media and fought between left and right wing loyalties in the 21^st Century:

“Today we are engaged in an all out battle between Communistic atheism and Christianity.  The modern champions of Communism have selected this as the time, and ladies and gentlemen the chips are down, they truly are”

Today, Joseph McCarthy would have simply tweeted his allegations.  Lives are easily ruined and conspiracies are born in 140 characters or less.

In 1978, a Jewish lawyer named David Goldberger defended the rights of American Nazis to march through the streets of Skokie, Ill.  Skokie was and is home to thousands of Holocaust survivors.

A Jew defending Nazis?  Why?  Not only did he and the ACLU defend the Nazis, he won.  The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the right of the National Socialist Party of America to march . The Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal, validating the developing national policy that even the most unpopular of speech in the most unpopular of circumstances merited First Amendment protection.

What Professor Goldberg knew and defended is what many in this country do not realize, which is that the United States of America stands alone in its unbridled protection of free speech which includes the most unpopular and the vilest hate speech.  You would be hard pressed to find any other country that does not criminalize hate speech in some form, including countries we would consider “free” by our standards.

How a particular country views hate speech depends on its history and social norms that are each distinct and unique.  The United States is no exception.   Each country also defines hate speech according to its own values. What might get you a slap on the wrist in one country may result in stiff prison sentences in another.  On that note it has been interesting to follow what has been going on in Kenya.  They have been engaged in massive crackdown under their hate speech laws.  Many there view  hate speech as an affront to all social norms and values.  The view was stated succinctly in an article entitled: “Purveyors Of Hate Speech Are Kenya’s Enemies”

“So, why is it so hard for some media houses to spot the phenomenon, recognise(sic) it for the malignancy and threat to civilised(sic) society that it is, isolate it and only report or comment on it in the most circumspect manner, the way profanities are rendered in print in polite society?”

It goes on to state:

“Hate speech is the precursor of hate action and the herald of attempts at, or actual, genocide”.

How do these opinions and philosophies translate to the almost absolute freedom we have in the United States to spew hatred including racial epitaphs and general intolerance of those we do not agree with, pray with or look like.  Not very well.  We can try to regulate violent actions but we simply can not universalize a moral compass where speech is concerned.  It is an impossibility where the ability to engage in unpopular speech is so tightly interwoven into the inception and growth of the United States as a nation.  It is not that we have not sporadically tried to do so.   The Supreme Court has not always been sympathetic to free speech.

What is unfortunate is that the freedoms we enjoy today to belly up to extremes has resulted in a lack of meaning to the rhetoric. Hate speech with meaning is not always hate speech. It is the backbone of government accountability.  In the 21st Century however ,hate speech as a term of battle has been thrown around so freely that we simply shrug it off as pundit putridity.  Words like Sedition, Insurrection, Treason and Terrorism have become watered down to the extent that they no longer emotionally register.  They have become nothing more than terms of art expected and shrugged off.  What we are left with is a lot of doggies barking about nothing in-particular, trying to see who can bark the loudest.  The cure is not to muzzle the dogs.  It is to teach our children not to feed the animals. That is where the freedom for the thought that we hate is unleashed.  That is where  battle against hate speech begins.