Would it surprise anyone to learn that there were upwards of 150, 000 soldiers of partial Jewish descent serving in the Nazi 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”. A very interesting side-note to Rigg’s book is that his research has popped up on Holocaust Revisionist websites as support for their outrageously bizarre claim that there was substantial support for Hitler from parts of the Jewish Community.

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 a Jew. 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 Jew ish 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.

*Thank you to my uncle and distinguished author Larry Cuban for helping me with the Russian History aspect of this piece.

* My apologies for a glaring and embarrassing historical error. The Fins fought in support of the Battle for Leningrad, not Stalingrad. My apologies to anyone of Finnish descent the error may have offended

©2009 Brian Cuban

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A confrontation with Iran at some level appears to be a foregone conclusion. Presidential candidate John McCain has stated that there are scenarios that would necessitate the reinstitution of a military draft. Even with Obama and a Democratic Congress could the law of supply and demand leave them with no choice in the event of a military conflict?

Our troops continue be stretched thin all over the world. Are we one more conflict away from a draft? How big will the conflict have to be? Will we be at war with Iran over nuclear reactors? Will the “cold war” over the North Pole heat up as Russia builds up its Antarctic military defenses? The Antarctic is thought to hold 25 percent or more of the worlds untapped energy resources. Maybe North Korea will fuel up(unleaded of course) one of those Taepodong-1 missiles and lob one over the ocean at us. Wherever it comes from, my gut tells me it will be something different than we expected.

Is a military draft a political issue or a simple issue of supply and demand? Can we predict the future by looking at the politics and economics of past drafts?

The last time we saw a draft was the Vietnam War. The last soldier was drafted in 1972. The draft officially ended in 1973. Prior to that time, the draft was historically a reaction to a specific military event. President Franklin D. Roosevelt Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Selective Service And Training Act of 1940 in response to the United States entering World War II.

Prior to World War II, the last draft was in response to World War I with the establishment of the original Selective Service Act, establishing local, district, state, and territorial civilian boards to register, classify, examine, and either induct and ship out or defer men between the ages of twenty-one and thirty for service in World War I. The draft was incredibly unpopular and volatile. For the first drawing 50,000 men applied for the very broad exemptions allowed by the first act. More than one quarter million eligible males failed to register at all. There were often mass roundups and arrests of draft dodgers.

The first national “conscription draft” was the Civil War. The North began conscription in 1863 when Congress gives President Lincoln the authority to require draft registration by all able-bodied men between the ages of twenty and forty-five, regardless of their marital status or profession. You were able to pay a fee to have a “substitute” fight in your place. You were also in the clear if you could cough up 300 dollars to the government. The corruption, politics and favoritism associated with the Civil War draft in part set off the New York City Draft Riots depicted in the movie Gangs Of New York.

The Confederate Draft was such a mess that it really never achieved the needed manpower infusion. There was massive non-compliance leading the Confederate states to begin conscripting slaves.

Prior to the the Civil War, the calling up of military was primarily reserved for state militias. The was often conflict between federal authority to call up the militias and the states willingness to comply. This was a particular problem in the War of 1812.

The constitutionality of the draft has been challenged several times. The first time was the very unpopular World War I draft. The United States Supreme court held that the draft was constitutional in the case of Arver v. United States. Lower court cases have followed Arver.

The current military stance is that there is no need for a draft even with any military recruiting shortfalls that may occur. It is the position of military leaders that a draft would actually decrease the quality of the average volunteer solider in the field. All branches of the military have in fact met or exceed their quotas for whatever that is worth. Is the fulfilling of a “peacetime” quota a symbolic and meaningless statistic?

People have been opining and predicting the need for a draft since the Civil War and the riots that followed.. Without exception it has taken a precipitating military event to bring one about. In my mind it is not a right wing versus left wing, Republican versus Democrat argument. There are so many variables and external forces that any prediction bases on political alliances and agendas is futile. I prefer to look at the constant economic variable that has driven world economies since pelts were being traded for food.

It is a very simple formula of supply and demand economics. In any economy external forces/events drive up or lower demand and supply. When demand increases and you don’t have the resources to increase supply, you make adjustments, re-deploy assets, lean out the supply chain. If demand keeps increasing sooner or later the only way to deal with it is to increase your supply by renewing production. Supply chain management is critical in the military on all levels in including the resource no war can be fought without. Poor supply chain management at Sears costs jobs. Poor supply chain enlistment management in the military costs lives.

How many events can our military respond to before the demand for soldiers outstrips our ability to bring in volunteers?

Our military leaders say we are meeting and exceeding retention and recruiting quota in our all volunteer force. That is really a meaningless statement unless we know the formula they use to determine quota. For example, we know that a percentage of the retention quota is being met through the military’s controversial “stop loss” policy. Many of called this policy a “back door draft”. When this is taken into consideration, the numbers do not appear to tell the whole story. It’s like Enron telling their employees they are kicking ass. Unless you know how they came to their conclusions, it is a false and very dangerous sense of security.

The military is a business. It is a poorly managed business. Sooner or later, you will reach a point where it makes more economic sense to force people to go than entice them with all kinds of incentives and bonuses. I have no idea where that point is. When it happens, there is not going to be a vote, a referendum, a debate etc. We will be told its coming and that’s that.

Will there one day be the new “Pearl Harbor” that will cause a massive “patriotic shift” in favor of a draft? I have no idea. Is it naive and “isolationist” to bask in comfort that it will never occur?

What do you think?

©2008 Brian Cuban

The United States Congress established the Days of Remembrance as our nation’s annual commemoration of the Holocaust. This year Holocaust Remembrance Day is Sunday, April 11 2010. In honor of that, here is my list of Holocaust films worth seeing.

The Holocaust has always been sporadic material for Hollywood. Every few years a small budget independent or documentary will show up. Mainstream Hollywood rarely invests big dollars. While many Holocaust films are done very few are big budget. A great documentary on the subject of how Hollywood has addressed the Holocaust is Imaginary Witness:Hollywood and the Holocaust.

There is no denying that sentiments and views of the Holocaust have changed over the years since the end of World War II. Hollywood has changed right along with those sentiments and views and changed the types of movies and the way events are depicted. A review of the Internet Movie Database reveals that from 1945-2008 there were over 400 theatrical productions and documentaries made which addressed the Holocaust in one form or another. Of those, the majority were foreign-made documentaries.

Here is my list of Hollywood movies and television media that I feel offer the most to the viewer in the portrayal of events and figures of the Holocaust. I include foreign films if they had mainstream United States release. I am only including films whose main focus was the Holocaust as compared to the Holocaust being just one historical event in the movie. An example would be Band Of Brothers. This mini-series addresses the Holocaust but is not about the Holocaust.

Defiance is the story of the Jewish Bielski brothers. succeeded in escaping from the massacre of the German in their village where their parents were killed. They hide in the woods and sooner other runaway Jews join them. They guerrilla resistance created a makeshift village in the woods to shelter and protect more than 1,200 Jews. Five generations later, “20,000 Jewish people are alive because of the work the Bielski brothers.

“The Boy In The Striped Pajamas” and “The Reader”.

The Boy In The Striped Pajamas. Adapted from the book of the same name by John Boyne. A short, faithful adaption to the book. A movie similar to Life Is Beautiful. This time the story is told from the side of the child of a Concentration Camp Commandant who befriends a Jewish child imprisoned in the a camp. The child has been shielded by his father from the horror, brutality and the truth of the purpose of the camp.

The Reader(2009). Ralph Fiennes reminds us of his brilliant performance in Schindler’s List to once again tackle the Holocaust in a much different light. His character has an affair with his care-taker. Years later, while a law student observing a Nazi war crime trial, he is re-united in a shocking way. She is a defendant charged with war crimes. The Reader has sparked some revisionist sentiment in the Jewish community. The criticism is that the film through its central theme attempts to legitimize a notion that ordinary Germans were completely ignorant of The Final Solution until after the war. The producers were certainly more interested in producing an Oscar winning film than staying true to history. The Reader brought Holocaust sensitivities in Hollywood portrayals front and center again.

Paperclips(2004) An extraordinary documentary that I stumbled across surfing cables channels once night. Whitwell Middle School in rural Tennessee is the last place you would think would be a hot bed of Holocaust study. It however is the setting for this documentary about a unique experiment in Holocaust understanding. The students at Whitewell collect six-million paper clips to better understand the extent of Holocaust and share that understanding with Holocaust survivors.

The Diary Of Anne Frank(1959). The 1959 version appears to be Hollywood’s first mainstream attempt to bring the Holocaust to the masses although it did so by sacrificing the depth and emotion of the Holocaust to give the public a Hollywood blockbuster movie. The movie itself was a Hollywood hit by the standards of the day. It won three Oscars. An interesting side note is that Audrey Hepburn turned down the role of Anne Frank because she herself lived in occupied Holland and witnessed Nazi atrocities first-hand. To get a feel for early Hollywood treatment of the Holocaust, the Diary of Anne Frank is a must see, but be sure to view the original before viewing the remakes.

Holocaust(1978). A four-part made-for-TV mini-series. That was the first major network big time portrayal of the subject. The series was a monstrous success, drawing a 49 percent market share. So many people watched this mini-series in New York City when first broadcast, that when commercials were on, the local water pressure dropped due to the large number of people using their toilets at once. It won Golden Globe and Emmy awards. It was instrumental in rocketing the career of Meryl Streep. Michael Moriarty is brilliant as an out of work lawyer who enters the Nazi party and advances through brutality and helping implement “The Final Solution.”

Schindler’s List(1993). The Holocaust comes to Generation X with the Steven Spielberg story of Oskar Schindler, a German industrialist and Nazi party member who started out getting rich off the backs of Jewish slave labor and ended up finding his own humanity. He went on to save thousands of Jews from the gas chamber, risking both his personal wealth and his safety to save as many Jews as possible. He spent his entire fortune to bribe Germans and buy the lives of the Jews who worked for him. He kept them for the most part safe until Germany’s surrender. He ended up penniless. Today, there are more than 6000 descendants of “Schindler Jews” living around the world. The movie is done in and black and white and riveting from beginning to end. The movie itself was a huge critical and box office success winning seven Oscars

Sophie’s Choice(1982). Sophie’s Choice is a brilliant performance by Meryl Streep as a Holocaust survivor with dark secrets in her family’s past. Her performance as Sophie Zawistowska is ranked #3 on Premiere Magazine’s 100 Greatest Performances of All Time. She won an academy award for her performance. It should be noted that this film was released 11 years prior to Schindler’s list. It contains one of the most heart wrenching moments in movie history when Sophie recounts the night she arrived at Auschwitz with her children, and of how she was forced by a Nazi officer to choose life for one child and death for the other.

Life Is Beautiful(1997). Life Is Beautiful is told from the view of a man who uses the gift of humor to protect his only son from the inhumanity while in a concentration camp. The film is incredible in that it allows you to smile and laugh with Guido right up until the tragic end and not feel sad. This movie won three Academy Awards. While classified as a Holocaust film, this film is also a joyous celebration of the human spirit.

The Pianist(2002). This movie is told from the viewpoint of a very talented piano player played by Adrian Brody. He hides out in the Warsaw Ghetto throughout the Warsaw Ghetto Liquidation and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. When the German occupation begins, he simply wonders when he will be able to return to his music. When the killing begins, he is forced to hide and change his priorities to simply trying to survive. Even though he can no longer play, music is the hope and salvation that keeps him alive.

The Grey Zone(2001). The Grey Zone is gritty, dark and sometimes hard to follow. It is, however, a must-see for all those who want an understanding of the Holocaust beyond the basics. The Grey Zone deals with an issue that is very sensitive to Holocaust survivors. Jews sending other Jews to the gas chamber. These Jews were called “Sonderkommandos“. Sonderkommando members did not participate directly in the killing which was reserved for the guards. While their primary responsibility was disposing of the corpses, they often took a much more active role in getting the inmates ready to enter the gas chambers. These inmates were kept in close groups and had much better living conditions than the average inmate. They were also killed off at regular intervals to prevent any word of the inner workings of the Nazi death apparatus from leaking to the outside world. This movie is about one of several Sonderkommado revolts that took place. It features an outstanding peformance by Harvey Keitel.

Playing for Time. Playing for Time is a made-for-T.V piece that is worth seeing. It ias another movie that gives a perspective on the inner workings of Nazi concentration camps in which some inmates were forced to play music for the others as they marched to the gas chambers or life-death selection process. The purpose was to keep them calm and reduce the chances of revolt.

Europa Europa(1991). A young Jewish boy poses as a German “Aryan” orphan and joins the Hitler Youth in the early days of World War II. An interesting look at the racial, moral and religious identity struggles faced by Jews as they did what they could to prevent their extermination in Nazi Germany.

Music Box(1989). This is one of the few movies dealing with the issues of aging former Nazis and Nazi sympathizers who committed war crimes living in the United States. Jessica Lange and Armin Mueller-Stah give great performances. The movie is based on the true story of John Demjanjuk. While the premise of a daughter representing her father on trial with such high stakes is a stretch, it works well here. Jessica’s emotional opening statement is also unrealistic and inadmissible. The movie is incredibly moving on all levels. You are torn between her father as a loving grandfather and a brutal murderer guilty of terrible war crimes. In an interesting twist of life imitating art, the father of Joe Eszterhas who wrote the screenplay, was accused of writing anti-Semitic propaganda before and during World War II. Like the character in Music Box, his father denied being the person who wrote these materials. Mr. Ezterhas denies knowing anything about his father’s past at the time he wrote the screenplay.

Also of interest is that the real life John Demjanjuk has been deported to Germany. He is currently standing trial for war crimes committed at the Sobibor Concentration Camp in what will be the last major Nazi war crimes trial of our lifetime.

That is my list of Holocaust films that I feel are must sees for anyone wanting to get a good understanding of the subject through Hollywood. Is this a definitive list? Absolutely not. There are numerous foreign films and documentaries dealing with general and specific issues surrounding the Holocaust.

Please feel free to comment and add you own movies to the list with an explanation of why you feel it is an important film or simply why you enjoyed it

If CNN today reported a survey in which 1 out of every 4 Americans under 25 believed that John F. Kennedy never existed, would you be worried? What would worry you about the state of our educational system? What about the state of parenting in general? Would you even care? It would scare me shitless! Why? A youth with no sense of history is a youth with no sense of self and that is a dangerous youth…. That is a youth who walks into malls and schools not with a wallet or book but with an automatic weapon.

So what is almost as bad as 25 percent of our youth not believing J.F.K existed? 25 percent of England’s youth not believing that Winston Churchill existed! I am not kidding on this one. In a recent survey of London youth, 25 percent believed that Winston Churchill did not really exist and was a “mythical figure” Don’t they teach history over there? Are there that many children not going to school? Are London youth simply so disillusioned and disaffected about their present that they simply can not related to or believe in any strong figures in their past…..

While I am not an expert on English historical values, I would think that teaching their youth about a figure that played a large role in saving them from learning to “goose-step” would be a educational imperative

Anyway you cut it such a stat should scare the hell out of them. It sounds like the youth of London are certainly disconnected from their history. After disillusioned comes disconnected, after that comes disaffected. Then comes the most dangerous D of all to a nation (other than death), disenfranchised.

From the ranks of disenfranchised youth come home grown terrorists and those who have no qualms about turning on their own….

My children are going to live and breathe U.S. history. I’m not taking any chances……