Rescued from the Reich
How One of Hitler?s Soldiers Saved the Lubavitcher Rebbe
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
When Hitler invaded Warsaw in the fall of 1939, hundreds of thousands of civilians—many of them Jewish—were trapped in the besieged city. The Rebbe Joseph Schneersohn, the leader of the ultra-orthodox Lubavitcher Jews, was among them. Followers throughout the world were filled with anguish, unable to confirm whether he was alive or dead. Working with officials in the United States government, a group of American Jews initiated what would ultimately become one of the strangest—and most miraculous—rescues of World War II.
The escape of Rebbe Schneersohn from Warsaw has been the subject of speculation for decades. Historian Bryan Mark Rigg has now uncovered the true story of the rescue, which was propelled by a secret collaboration between American officials and leaders of German military intelligence. Amid the fog of war, a small group of dedicated German soldiers located the Rebbe and protected him from suspicious Nazis as they fled the city together. During the course of the mission, the Rebbe learned the shocking truth about the leader of the rescue operation, the decorated Wehrmacht soldier Ernst Bloch: he was himself half-Jewish, and a victim of the rising tide of German antisemitism.
A harrowing story about identity and moral responsibility, Rescued from the Reich is also a riveting narrative history of one of the most extraordinary rescue missions of World War II.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The last decade has seen many books recounting the actions of German Christians who helped Jews survive the Holocaust. While this volume fits neatly into that genre, it's also remarkably different, since it describes high-ranking Nazis who, in a complicated series of actions, helped Rabbi Joseph Schneersohn, the esteemed head of the Hasidic Lubavitcher movement, escape to American in 1940. This is great material the stuff of Hollywood films and historian Rigg (Hitler's Jewish Solders) makes the most of it. Writing in a clean, dramatic voice but with strict historical accuracy and nuanced analysis, Rigg details how, at the instigation of American Lubavitchers and some sympathetic officials in FDR's administration, highly placed German military men including Helmut Wohlthat, an anti-Semitic aide to G ring who felt saving the rebbe would be a good public relations move, and Maj. Ernst Bloch, who had a Jewish father conspired to spirit the ailing rebbe from Warsaw to Riga, and then Stockholm, where he sailed for New York. Rigg's canvas is broader than a simple "great escape," including the birth of the Hasidic movement in Europe, the entrenched anti-Semitism of many U.S. officials and the rebbe's controversial messianic theology after his U.S. arrival. This is a well-written and vital addition to the literature of Holocaust survivor studies. 50 b&w photos.
