Transcripts For CSPAN3 The Secret Jewish Commandos Of World

CSPAN3 The Secret Jewish Commandos Of World War II October 11, 2022

Play cspan radio. Powered by cable. My name is jeremy collins. Im the director of conferences and symposia here at the National World war ii museum. It is my pleasure to have with us doctor leah garrett, who is a professor at Hunter College at City University of new york, her last book was young lions, one that i have not read but it is really of interest to me. I need to get on that next. How jewish authors reinvented the american war novel. It was shortlisted for several major literary awards. She is here to talk about her latest book, x troop the secret jewish commandoes of world war ii, which has received wide and high praise. The reviews are great from cnn, the daily mail in the uk, stars and stripes. And i think leah told me that there are a couple of other big publications that are going to have some glowing reviews soon. So, without further ado, lets get into the program and welcome dr. Leah garrett. Thank you for joining us and please tell us a little bit about the book before we get into our conversation okay, so, i will tell you, and thank you very much to the museum. Some things i wrote about the book of archival material here, i have worked closely with your librarians because i was talking to ambrose for his books as well i will just speak briefly about the x troop people now who they were. They were a secret jewish Commando Unit that churchill along with lord mountbatten created in 1942 when the war was going very poorly for the brits, and they knew that they needed to do something extreme. They decided to create something called the inter ally ten commander unit, which had been comprised of Commando Units from people who had been displaced and traumatized by the nazis. There was a polish Commando Unit, a french Commando Unit. But, they also decided they would create a german speaking unit. And, what ended up happening is this german speaking unit would end up being comprised almost entirely of german, jewish and austrian jewish refugees from europe. So, these were people who came to the United Kingdom on kinder transport that their parents sent them over to get them safe. They made their way alone, as teenagers, by themselves with parents who were in absolutely desperate situations, and i will give you more detail on different aspects of it as we discuss it. But, eventually this group was selected to be part of this Commando Unit. And the reason why it was so extraordinary was that it was quickly recognized that these were the best and the brightest. They had deep, intensive training. And they were trained both as commandoes and as intelligence officers. So, in contrast to the ritchie boys who were also German Jewish exiles who were intelligence officers, these guys were both. They would fight, capture, and kill nazism but they would also go interrogate on the battlefield to make the decisions in the next minutes for the battle to continue. So, what ended up happening was it was quickly realized how extraordinary they were, and the British Military made a very unique decision that rather than having them fight as a unit, they would parcels them out in twos and threes and fours to existing Commando Units and have them be the tip of the sphere. So, when we talk about the x troop in my book, it is not only extraordinary because these guys were a bunch of german and austrian jews who got to fight back against the nazis, but also because they were so effective. They ended up in multiple battles playing an absolutely crucial role in the war efforts. And then, after the war was over, they were also used very centrally for the denazification efforts. Not only were they killing, capturing and interrogating nazis during the war, but also after the war. And each of these stories of the men is extraordinary because they all came from a place of trauma and tragedy to, i would say, a great deal of redemption in getting arms and getting to fight back. Thank you, that is one of the areas that the museum has been, i dont want to say sensitive to, but aware of, that certainly from an american perspective, probably globally whenever we discuss the jewish experience of world war ii it is always, or almost always the holocaust. And there was a gentleman whose parents were survivors that spoke to me one day. He said, you know, we fought too. It is good to share these stories, yes, the suffering was awful and we were victims but we were part of our own liberation. And your book does a great job of that. We will get into some of those battles you referenced. But, your book does a great job of getting very micro with these individuals, and following them as people. Following them as a unit, but also putting it within the context of the broader war. Could you tell us a little bit about them, their backgrounds, you mentioned austrian or german jews primarily, but tell us a couple of examples of some of these young men that you followed and researched and included in x troop. That is a great question, i will tell you about two of them, in particular, because i think there is a chance that their kids might be in the audience as well, i will just talk very briefly about them. I focused on three but i really focused on the entire unit, and then maybe ten of them also, as well, one of them would be Peter Masters, who was from a middle class austrian jewish family, very cultured. He was a sensitive and artistic kid, he liked to ride his bike around, was into football. And, when the happened and the germans invaded austria, immediately, overnight his life went from lovely to very hellish. His mom saw the writing on the wall, but the problem at this point, which people often do not realize what the holocaust was and say, why didnt you get out . There was nowhere to go, countries were not taking these people, and so, him and most of the others, their parents often had to make a decision of, we have to leave now. In his case, he was unusual because his mother was able to leave with him, which was very unlikely. The nazis rounded up his grandfather and other family members and killed all of them. He made it as a teenager with his mom to the uk. He ended up getting a job on the farm and ended up getting interned because the british decided when the war breaks out that they are going to intern all of the german refugees, not really thinking through the fact that 80 of them are jewish. And they have no reason to be interned and the interment idea was that there must be a fifth column that was going to be an enemy within our ranks. The way they did with japanese americans here they did it with germans there, primarily german jews. He was one of the unusual ones because he gets out with his family, but other ones like colin anton was typical, who i talk about as well. He also grew up in a nice, middle class family in germany. Loves his parents very much. Is devoted to his dad, in particular, does not even realize he is jewish because his parents are hiding this in order to protect him when the nazis come to power. They also say the writing is on the wall, and he is sitting with his dad at a pub one day and the police come and arrest his dad, whos been speaking out against the rise of fascism and the nazis. And you know, a week later his dad is murdered and his mom realizes her son is going to potentially be next. And so, she puts him alone, i think he is 16 at this point, on a train, on a kinder transport. He arrives completely by himself, no family, utterly heartbroken, dad is dead. Again, to the uk, to try and make a life for himself. And, for most of them, when they get to the United Kingdom, it is actually okay for the first year or so in terms of theyre safe. They are all desperately missing their parents, they have lost family members, brothers, sisters, a number of them lost their children at this point, and their wives have been taken and exterminated. But, they are physically safe for the first year or so, until the war breaks out, and then they are all rounded up and put into internment camps. Yes, you mentioned the kinder transport and obviously those who did good, their experience in the uk was not universally bad, but, there were prejudices in the uk as well that they had to overcome, or deal with. Talk about some of this. You mentioned the fifth column. It is terrifically ironic that here they are, fleeing persecution because of their jewishness. And then, when they get to the uk they are treated as potential enemy aliens because of their germanness. Can you talk about that . Sure, in fact, one of the terrible ironies of the story is that they are all called enemy aliens through the war and even after the war, they end up taking years to get naturalized because that status does not change. What happens with internment is that the British Government decides that they are going to start interviewing these 70,000 or so german refugees. Again, not thinking that 55,000 or so are jewish, and then they make the decision that they are going to turn those who seem the most dangerous, which, of course, are single men, and of course all of the x troop are single men because they have all come here as teenagers and they have no family here. They end up getting interned in the United Kingdom and the camps are bad. One of the men i talk about a lot in the book is a man who comes from an Orthodox Jewish family in germany, again, very loving, warm, orthodox, wonderful family. Same story, his life is good, the rise of nazis and it becomes very bad very quickly. Jews are bullied and then it is horrific. His family also makes a decision to send him away on the train to safety. He ends up getting interned at one of the worst camps in the United Kingdom. There are no beds, there are no tables. Mold, rats, buckets for toilets. But, most of them end up on the isle of man, which is pretty bad but not horrific, in the uk. But then, the British Government makes a very strange decision that they are also going to send a bunch of them overseas, and they send them on ships to canada and to australia, and the internment camps in canada are terrible. Those who are unlucky enough to get on the ship to go to australia, which is quite a number of the future x troopers. Unfortunately it is manned by a completely antisemitic british crew who later will all be courtmartialed because of what they did. There are also german prisoners of war on the ship. The german prisoners of war get bunks in upper deck, all of the jews are put below in the hold, locked in with no air or water, not only that, but the ship crew decides its really fun to torture them. One of the commanders actually interviewed when he was still alive for the book talked to me about having to walk barefoot over the ship deck with broken glass because the crew thought that would be funny. And all of it is in all of the historical documents, especially with the courtmartials that happened. That group gets sent after this voyage to australia. They get put in an internment camp in the outback for a year, and what many of the men from that said was, the worst thing was not being in the outback, it was the fact that they were not given any news from home. Nobody knew what is happening to my wife . What is happening to my kids . Of course, the news is horrific but they wanted it. And, eventually, what happens is the brits decide that they are going to, after pearl harbor and the war shifting, the brits decide to stop this crazy scheme and they give all of the men in the internment camps, particularly German Jewish refugees, you can leave if you join the military. Theyre like yes, that is what i want, i want to fight the nazis who have destroyed my world. But, unfortunately the brits first decide that they are going to put them in something called the pioneer corps, which is a hard labor corps, and they are not allowed to be armed or fight. They build bridges and empty supplies and stuff like that, they start agitating their Commanding Officers, please get me in a fighting unit, and eventually signs start appearing at the different pioneer Corps Centers saying, we need volunteers for dangerous duty. And all of these men put their hands up because that is what they want to do, they want to fight. You mentioned louis mountbatten and his special command that he had. The idea behind it, was it churchills . Wasnt it an amalgamation of various individuals . Tell us about the idea behind that, and then lets switch to the men themselves. What was the criteria for them joining, volunteering, what skills did they need . But, first, lets talk top down, whose baby was x troop and what was the motivating factor . So, the grandfather of the x troop was lord mountbatten. He had this idea that they would create this interally Commando Unit that would be composed of a french troop, and a polish troop and a danish troop, people just burning to get back to their countries and fight the people who had driven them out. And then, what he said, lord mountbatten, specificallym to churchill he said, is that we need a german speaking unit as well, because if we have a german speaking unit they can do something remarkable, which has never happened before. We can train them to capture the germans as commandoes, but then we can also train them to interrogate them right in the battle, right now, where are the weapons and the mines and what are the units . And then these guys would be able to be the tip of the spear and no, that is where the minds are, lets keep going, we know what to do next. That is the decision that is made and churchill thinks this is terrific. Churchill apparently comes up with the idea of x troop because it is an unknown factor. We will see how this goes, there was never the thought, ever, in any of the written documentation of lets get jewish refugees. That was not what they were looking for. They were looking for german speakers but, in order to be somebody who wanted to have as a commando, when they did the interviews with mi5 it was very important to find out why do you want to go fight . You are german, why do you want to go fight the germans . And what ends up happening, of course, is that all of the people who want to do this. I think there were 87 in the unit and 80 who were jewish. It is because they are jewish they want to do this very much, not because they are german. That is where it originates from, it is funny because originally how the french unit, the polish unit. X troop its officially called the british unit. And that is another part of the story we have not mentioned. And the first two ends of being in charge of them, theyre Commanding Officer who is a wonderful not jewish welsh man realized that these guys are in the most danger as commandoes if they are caught. Because they will be killed as commandoes because hitler has an edict to execute all commandoes, they will be killed as jews, they will be killed as germans, and their families will probably be rounded up by the gestapo. So, they decide as what they will do is call them, officially, the british unit. But, what they will really bes german speakers, like you said almost entirely jewish, but all of them are told as part of this unit, you have to take on a new persona, so when they are selected all of them are given about five minutes to come up with a new name, a fake back story of why they still have some kind of german accent, they are all given dog tags that say fake regiments that they are attached to. And they say church of england so they will be buried under crosses. They are all going to pretend to be the british unit, but they are all really the german speakers who are German Jewish refugees. Part of the story is so remarkable is not only that they end up being so crucial to the allied success in the war, but that all of them have to utterly transform and pretend they are british through and through. The new persona elements caught me, not so much that they would need to, but the experience needed to create these new personas. I do not know what name, i would look at my bookshelf and picked a random names off of the spines of books, trying to come up with it quickly. I want to get into the training, but, on that point of the new personas, we can go into their broader training of how they went into commando. But, where they given specific or explicit instructions should their ruse not hold up, if they were captured by the germans . So, no matter what they were told their ruse better hold up, it is interesting because in order to write this book i declassified a lot of files. One of the sets of files that i declassified was about two men who served in dieppe. So, the first group to go to dieppe for that calamitous encounter which was a huge tragedy, that is a whole other story, but what it seems like they were actually trying to do was to get an enigma machine. Two of them apparently went missing in action, all of the history books for the last 50 years have said that these two guys were probably killed in battle, missing in action. I managed to declassify their intelligence files from mi5. It turns out that they were actually both captured and put into hard labor german president of war camps. I read the files, they were remarkable because mi5 was completely freaking out that they would give away their name, and they would give away that who they really were. And there was this top secret jewish Commando Unit that nobody knew about. And they didnt, they kept it close to the chest. They never said who they were. And these guys were in one of the worst camps imaginable. And they did not speak of it. And this was the only instance i had where i had intelligence files on the men who were captured, what happened. So, as far as i, know i have found no Historical Information that suggests that any of them actually admitted to this. They were told no matter what keep the secret, and as far as i can tell they actually did. Because they would have been killed for it, and more importantly for most of these men, their families would have been killed as well. One of the questions i had gotten when i was talking to somebody about the subject, were they advised or provided with the tools to commit suicide should with cyanide capsules or anything . I do not know that, i do not think that they were but i do know that there were a handful of them that i found, i did all of my research at the Nationa

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