Lives of Hitler's Jewish Soldiers by Bryan Mark Rigg

Author:Bryan Mark Rigg
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780700623419
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
Published: 2016-07-23T04:00:00+00:00

Schlesinger’s parents also felt relief. They told him, “Since you can now become a soldier nothing worse can happen to our family,” but they were mistaken.

After boot camp, the army sent Schlesinger’s company to the Ruhr region in northern Germany. While stationed there, his depressed father came to visit him. “It was a strange situation to have your Jewish father visit you while you served in an army loyal to Hitler. Back then, I hoped my service would help protect him,” Schlesinger said.

At the beginning of 1940, the Wehrmacht transferred his battery to Lower Silesia at Kotzenau (now the Polish town Chocianow) near Lubin, where it continued training. In that town, he dated a young woman and told her his situation. She did not care.

During this time Schlesinger’s father became sick. While on leave in the spring of 1940, Schlesinger visited his father in the Jewish hospital in Cologne where he had to stay. It gave him back his self-confidence to have his son, dressed in uniform, come and see him. He also hoped that his son’s service would force the Nazis to treat his son as a full German.

The conditions in the hospital were horrible. There was not much to eat and no medication for him. Schlesinger’s mother had to bring him his food from home. Schlesinger cried as he left his father at the hospital. That day would mark the last time he saw his father alive. A few months later, his father died there.

The army granted Schlesinger leave to attend his father’s funeral. After the burial, he had to take the death certificate to the courthouse. When an official, seeing that his father had died in a Jewish hospital, asked, “Is your father Jewish?” Schlesinger answered yes. Visibly dumbfounded, the official nervously filled out the paperwork.

In the summer of 1940, Schlesinger’s unit traveled to Lublin in eastern Poland, a region the Nazis called the General Government. While there, he witnessed how the Nazis mistreated the Ostjuden (eastern Jews). He felt appalled to think that some of his ancestors may have looked like the “strange” Hasidic (Orthodox) Jews dressed in their traditional garments. Even children and old people wore the Star of David, and Schlesinger heard that the SS had deported young people from the Jewish sections of town. Schlesinger did not discover where the Nazis sent them. “We didn’t want to believe the rumors we heard,” Schlesinger said. “How could one believe that people were being sent away to be killed? This was impossible to think.”

In the winter of 1940–1941, his unit returned to the German state of Silesia. Schlesinger and his comrades drank, chased women, and enjoyed life when not training. Then, in March 1941, they moved to East Prussia. There, they repeatedly practiced moving their horse-drawn cannons over difficult terrain, setting them up, and placing ordnance on a prescribed target.

One night in June 1941, Schlesinger stood watch at the radio hut. Suddenly he heard Hitler announcing war against the Jewish-Bolshevistic enemy. Soon the roar of

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