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00:00Thank you for listening.
00:30Thank you for listening.
01:01This is what happened to the Jews in 1930s Germany, thanks to the racial policies of one man, Adolf Hitler.
01:10For you, it's not enough to give up the recognition of my faith. I believe, but I will kill you.
01:20But this terrible situation was faced not only by Germany's practicing Jews, but also by Germans who didn't even think they were Jewish.
01:29Most were Christians who just happened to have distant Jewish relatives.
01:38It was ridiculous. Suddenly I heard that I'm a quarter Jew.
01:44The Nazis had a name for them. The Mischlinger, or half-breeds.
01:52Mischling, singular, Mischlinger, plural are horrible terms. They mean bastard, hybrid, mutt.
01:57It just shows you what the Nazis thought of these individuals.
01:58But amazingly, many Mischlinger and even some fool Jews not only tolerated Hitler, they actively supported him.
02:10Many would fight for him.
02:11Some even joined the murderous SS.
02:23It begged the question. Why?
02:31How could they have fought for someone hell-bent on their destruction?
02:35Were these Mischlinger traitors to their own people?
02:40Or were they simply doing their best to survive in an impossible situation?
02:45This is the strange story of the Jews who fought for Hitler.
03:11Berlin, 1933.
03:15On the streets and in the cafes, there was a new wave of optimism.
03:24After decades of political instability, economic depression and joblessness,
03:29things at last seemed to be on the up.
03:38And many put it down to their new leader, Adolf Hitler.
03:45Hitler had offered the Germans hope.
03:48Whilst many people knew of his hatred for the Jews,
03:51many German Jews simply didn't think he would carry out his anti-Semitic threats on taking office.
03:56When Hitler came into power, for all his exterminationist vocabulary, especially in Mein Kampf and then also in his speeches,
04:05most Jews did not see the writing on the wall.
04:11Neither did those Germans married to Jews or with distant Jewish relatives.
04:15They knew it was not good to be Jewish, they knew that, you know, having partial Jewish descent was also something that could be problematic.
04:26But they didn't equate themselves as being Jewish and didn't think that they were in the crosshairs of Hitler's holocaust.
04:37Immediately after taking power, Hitler did exactly as he promised.
04:40Anti-Semitism became government policy.
04:50The Nazis set about removing Germany's half a million Jews from public life.
04:54It started slowly, at first.
05:01Jewish-owned shops and businesses were boycotted.
05:06They were daubed with graffiti.
05:10A Nazi Party militia turned customers away.
05:14Books were burned to cleanse German literature of Jewish writers.
05:31Then, anti-Semitism was enshrined in law, with Aryans and non-Aryans legally segregated.
05:38They were made to sit in separate compartments in trams,
05:45or specially designated rows in the cinema.
05:51And Jews were banned from the civil service in April 1933.
05:59Rolf von Suda was then just nine years old.
06:02He had a Jewish grandfather, Alexander.
06:05Rolf quickly witnessed the effects of Hitler's racial policy on his grandfather's life.
06:16He was a very famous doctor and he had to quit his practice.
06:21He was a doctor for the railway and so on.
06:25He was an officer in the First World War.
06:28But that doesn't make any difference.
06:30He was so.
06:31And for him, it was a disaster.
06:35But for all their loathing of the Jews, the Nazis quickly hit a problem.
06:42Legally, who actually was a Jew?
06:45How do you define Jewishness?
06:47It was easy to tell the so-called Ostjuden immigrants from Eastern Europe.
06:55They wore the readily identifiable garb of Orthodoxy and spoke Yiddish.
07:00They had their own culture and ethnic identity.
07:03And crucially, they practiced Judaism.
07:08But very few German Jews did the same.
07:13They had lived in the country for centuries.
07:17These German Jews were fully integrated into German society.
07:28Going to the same social events as Nazis.
07:31They wore the same clothes.
07:33Ran businesses supplying the state.
07:35They were indistinguishable in appearance or practice from so-called Aryan Germans.
07:46In fact, they were Germans.
07:49For centuries, they had assimilated, intermarried, contributed to the culture, had served in the armies.
07:58And so they were very intertwined with German-Gentile society.
08:04Many of them weren't even Jewish by religion, but by descent.
08:14Crucially, they were Christians.
08:21By the mid-1930s, 80% of German Jews had converted to Christianity.
08:25One such example was Rolf von Sudau's grandfather, Alexander.
08:36Despite having a Jewish mother, he had been raised in the Christian faith.
08:44He was not Jewish at all.
08:46He was Christian and all his parents have married in the Christian way.
08:51Sometimes, German Jews integrated society simply for love.
09:00This is exactly what happened to Fritz Steinwasser's grandparents.
09:03My grandfather was a Jewish.
09:04My grandfather was a Jewish.
09:09He was a Jewish.
09:10He learned to meet my grandmother.
09:14He was a Jewish.
09:16He was married to young people.
09:18They were married and married.
09:21He went on to the Catholic faith.
09:27He was married to the Catholic faith.
09:30either way the last thing many of these germans or their descendants considered themselves was
09:46jewish i've never had to do with the judenism in the same time and i was confronted with the nazis
09:58on the war in 1933. until then i didn't know that.
10:11september 1935. nuremberg
10:14the annual nazi party rally
10:20it was an impressive showcase and thousands saluted the furo
10:35and it was here that adolf hitler announced the next stage in his racial policy towards the jews of
10:40germany and their descendants in what became known as the nuremberg laws
10:45the idea was to define who was a jew and who was not once and for all
10:58hitler bringing out the nuremberg laws was his attempt to bring order to his racial policies to
11:06organize four groups of people the arians the jews and then two new racial categories half jews and
11:13quarter jews
11:16hitler's nuremberg laws to find any practicing jew or anyone with three or more jewish grandparents
11:23as being fully jewish whether they practiced judaism or not
11:27these full jews were deprived of their citizenship denied the right to vote and excluded from public office
11:41but that wasn't the end of it hitler didn't just target full jews
11:53germans who had one or two jewish grandparents were targeted too
11:57these people were labeled michelinger michelin singular michelin a plural are horrible terms
12:08the nazis used these terms to describe what they called half jews and quarter jews half breeds
12:14the literal definition of michelin is mutt you know they use it for dogs of mixed breeds but the
12:22connotation back then was that you were subhuman you were inferior
12:31two jewish grandparents made you a first degree michelin or half jew
12:40one made you a second degree michelin or quarter jew
12:44and when i was 11 years old in 35
13:10suddenly i heard that i'm a quarter jew because my grandfather was jewish it was ridiculous definitely
13:19yeah i didn't i didn't like it and i felt very very bad
13:29according to a reich census from the late 1930s there were over half a million full jews in germany
13:36about 72 000 half jews and 39 000 quarter jews
13:45initially persecution of these part jews was less severe than for full jews
13:52they were restricted on who they could marry and had to obtain a certificate of fitness for marriage
13:58in the race laws uh half jews could only marry other half jews quarter jews were allowed to marry gentiles
14:09but they had to get special permission so it was all regulation of sexual behavior you know and you
14:15and if you deviated from uh the group that you were supposed to interact with you can be brought up on the
14:21charge of lawson shanda a racial defilement so if you were a half jew and you slept with a gentile
14:27you could be brought up on trial and sent to jail
14:32nearly 2 000 people would be charged with racial defilement
14:35meanwhile half and quarter jews instantly witnessed how their new status affected their lives
14:50the thing i never forgot why i was playing football with a boy just opposite my the the house of my
14:56grandfather suddenly at the end of the play the mother of him she says do you do you have to play with
15:03a jewish boy and was the first time that i know that people knew about me now and it was terrible
15:14fritz steinwasser and his brother willy were labeled quarter jews they saw how a family could be torn apart
15:21so we were 15 16 years old so we dass dann die mutter gesagt hat die tante gegrüßt wenn wir sie getroffen
15:32haben und dann hat sie eines tages gesagt ihr braucht mich nicht zu grüßen ihr bengel ihr juden bengel
15:40ich will mit euch nicht zu tun haben this sudden hardening in their day-to-day lives now left all
15:47categories of german jews with a stark choice whether to stay or quietly leave
16:02then in november 1938 there was an event that would raise the stakes for all germans of jewish descent
16:07an orgy of nazi-sponsored anti-semitic violence erupted on germany's streets
16:26synagogues were burnt
16:27thirty thousand full jews were arrested and a hundred were killed it became known as kristallnacht
16:40the night of broken glass
16:49thousands of full jews and some michlinger chose to leave
16:54but for many this was simply out of the question these people were patriots through and through
17:01and so it was very hard to ask these people who were german to leave germany when that's all they
17:07knew and all they loved one example of a full jew who opted to stay was edgar jacoby
17:14jacoby had volunteered for service in world war one where he won the iron cross
17:25he then worked as a film director in hollywood in the 1930s before returning to germany and meeting
17:31his aryan wife to marry her he had to falsify his papers
17:37he remained in germany under this new false identity
17:47jacoby was a german patriot and despite the frightening violence against jews
17:52he was determined to fight for the fatherland if he got the chance
17:56he put himself forward for the army reserves
18:06jacoby was a willing volunteer but as a full jew he should never have been allowed in the army
18:17at this stage half jews and quarter jews on the other hand
18:21were still allowed to serve the fatherland in the military
18:28as a result they were safe from persecution for the time being especially as adolf hitler needed them
18:44september the 1st 1939 the germans attacked poland
18:51the german army rolled across the border
18:58in its ranks were thousands of half jews and quarter jews the so-called michlinger
19:08many of them saw fighting for the reich as a way of gaining favor and a way to protect their families
19:14one side i have to take an oath to hitler who i hate
19:17but on the other side i'm serving a nation that i love and says i have to be here anyway i might as
19:24well make the best of it because if i have a good record and i get some respect for my superiors
19:29it's going to help my family and quite often a lot of these soldiers would show up in public places with
19:34their jewish relatives in uniform to show hey this is a respectable family they have sons and grandsons in
19:42the military and they should be respected one example of a patriotic michelin was half jew werner goldberg
19:56an article in a german newspaper in 1939 talked of the victory in poland and showed a heroic image of a
20:03young warrior the archetypal german soldier it was goldberg he was blonde very clear blue eyes for
20:14three months he was in a lot of german military propaganda newspapers and magazines as the typical
20:20aryan looking soldier until they found out that his father was a jew
20:26an estimated 100 000 other soldiers with jewish heritage fought alongside werner goldberg in hitler's
20:33conquering army it showed just how flawed the nuremberg laws were
20:48it wasn't just lesser ranks who were compromised by the nuremberg laws
20:56some of hitler's most senior generals fell into the same dangerous categories
21:07three of herman goering's top luftwaffe officers were mischlinger
21:14including his most senior and capable air force commander field marshal milch
21:26milch had overseen the development and re-equipping of the luftwaffe and built it into the modern and
21:35powerful force that spearheaded hitler's blitzkrieg
21:44he reported directly to goering but many people have asked how in the world does a half jew
21:51milch become a field marshal in hitler's military he was a brilliant mind no question about it ran
21:59luftans in the 20s hitler called a man to help run the luftwaffe he was the most prominent personality
22:07per personnel planning and production hitler had said in 1936 that there are two names linked with the
22:15birth of our luftwaffe milks and grains even though he was essential to the war effort milk was investigated
22:24by the gestapo under the nuremberg laws his father anton milk was a jew
22:35goering would have none of it in his book he decided who was a jew and not the nuremberg laws
22:41when rumors were flying around about his jewish background his mother went to the officials and
22:49said my jewish husband anton milk is actually not the father of my six children it's my aryan lover
22:57who happens to be my uncle and by the way he's dead
23:03goering encouraged milk's mother to sign an affidavit confirming that her aryan uncle had fathered her
23:09children he personally took it to hitler and milk was declared of pure aryan assent
23:19and with a stroke of hitler's pen he was quote-unquote aryanized so we see in this case that
23:24during the third reich you know jewish ancestry was horrible but incest was okay
23:33goering had lied and reinvented the past to save milk
23:39but to ensure more valuable men were not investigated by the authorities
23:43hitler created various ways around the nuremberg laws
23:49there was different classifications of exemptions that hitler would give to
23:54half jews and quarter jews to remain in the service or be promoted
23:59the first types were just geneemigungen or special permissions that allowed a person to remain in the
24:04military the second types were also geneemigungen sometimes called sonda geneemigungen special
24:10exemptions that allowed somebody to remain in the military and be promoted and then there were other
24:15guys that immediately just got the straight out deutsch politik heitzeklerungen and these were the
24:19german blood declarations
24:24these exemptions like the german blood declarations let hitler have the pick of those men with jewish
24:30ancestry and arianized them if he deemed them worthy
24:39he often personally oversaw individual cases
24:42and only a small proportion were ever successful
24:50in all 22 generals and seven admirals were arianized
24:54they included admiral bernhard roger a quarter jew who received a german blood declaration in 1939
25:12he was a tragic figure his uh mother's mother was jewish he lost his wife and mother-in-law to
25:19suicide because of the nazi persecution he was persecuted he was a deeply religious man he hated
25:25the nazis but on the other side he had this duty that he felt obligated to to his fatherland
25:36roger served in command of the atlantis
25:38the merchant ship converted to carry guns and which harried allied convoys
25:56roger sank or captured almost two dozen allied ships for a combined total of over 150 000 tons of shipping
26:03he went on to win the coveted knight's cross with oak leaves
26:14though much harder any common soldier stood a small chance of being arianized too
26:19if they won similar prestigious bravery awards
26:21in may 1940 hitler's armies invaded france in another devastating blitzkrieg attack
26:44france and her allies were crushed in just over a month
26:47it was another stunning victory
26:55once again half jewish and quarter jewish soldiers fought in the ranks
27:03among them quarter jew fritz steinwasser
27:07and amazingly edgar jacoby the full jew who'd falsified his marriage papers
27:12he'd been called up just before the invasion
27:19he led a company of combat cameramen and photographers
27:29jacoby's newsreels captured the lightning advance of the german panzers
27:40jacoby and many other soldiers of jewish descent fought with distinction
27:53they hoped their loyal service would be rewarded and get them acceptance in mainstream german society
27:59but they were wrong
28:07because when they returned to germany half jews first degree michlinger were expelled from the army
28:15instead they could only take up low-grade work
28:18you had to pence the Ahora in the army of europe
28:29in the army was one of them
28:32in the army was one of them
28:34it was a callous way to treat men who had risked their lives for their fatherland
28:37When Hitler's army stormed into Russia in the summer of 1941, there were tens of thousands
28:52of quarter Jews in the ranks of the Wehrmacht, the German army. Fritz Steinwasser was one
29:00of them.
29:01His racial status was known to his superiors. However, other men feared that if they came
29:17clean about their Jewish ancestry, their treatment could get worse. So they decided to keep quiet.
29:28Wolf von Suda had been called up for military service and was fighting in Russia as a panzer
29:34gunner. Von Suda had never felt Jewish, so he decided to lie rather than admit he was
29:43a quarter Jew.
29:44I lie because I want to prove them that I was a brave man and that I'm okay for being
29:52an officer. It's quite clear. Any other people would have done the same. They didn't want
29:59to do it. It's quite, yeah, I want to show them that all the mixture things, all these bad
30:07things which are told about the Richtmenschlinge, that's not correct.
30:13However, on the eve of promotion, Wolf von Suda would pay for his deception. He was summoned
30:21by his commanding officer.
30:23Wolf von Suda.
30:25There came the major and says, Herr von Suda, we have to speak and you can't be that. And
30:30he knew about now about of my documents that I'm quarter Jew. And then the whole thing was
30:38up and I was going to prison.
30:39He was imprisoned for 21 days as a punishment for his actions.
30:45Von Suda was demoted, but he would eventually rejoin his unit and continue to fight for Hitler.
30:55Another man who had lied and was found out was propaganda officer Edgar Jacoby.
31:05His true identity as a full Jew had been revealed.
31:12Jacoby was sent back to Germany and imprisoned. As a full Jew, he and countless others were
31:18now in grave danger.
31:27Because in the autumn of 1941, Germany's full Jews started to be deported, initially to
31:33ghettos in Eastern Europe, and then to extermination camps.
31:42The first deportations of the German Jews to the ghettos began in October of that year.
31:51These evacuations invariably meant death.
31:57The Jews were even made to pay the cost of the journey to the east.
32:0020,000 German Jews were sent to the Łódź ghetto in Poland.
32:0925,000 were sent to Riga in Latvia.
32:18In November 1941, many of those German Jews arriving in Riga were massacred as soon as the train arrived.
32:24In Minsk, Bielorussia, German Jews suffered a similar fate.
32:33Yet surprisingly, very few of Hitler's quarter-Jewish soldiers were aware what Nazi Germany had reserved for their relatives.
32:40But Fritz Steinwasser, the quarter-Jewish soldier, did chance upon a horrifying spectacle
32:49whilst serving on the front line at Düneburg in Latvia.
32:57He was stuck in a traffic jam of advancing German vehicles when he saw the reality of the Nazi policy of genocide towards the Jews.
33:05I was on the bridge and could then look into this prison.
33:13And then there was a block of the prison.
33:18And then there was a group of SS-people with guns and guns.
33:23And then there were the poor people in the middle of the army.
33:29They were nackt, old or young, and through these guys with gunshots.
33:35And then they had to be knitted.
33:40And then they got a shot.
33:43And then some sprang into the quarrel and sorted them the same way, so they didn't cross and cross and cross.
33:59That was for me a terrible look.
34:03and a young man with a beard and a young man from maybe five or five years
34:11and the young man was crying and then the old man was crying and said
34:19what I don't know, I don't understand but then he spoke to him and then
34:24the young man laughing his father, his father, his father was crying and he
34:29left. My heart was broken.
34:34Did you think that it could be your father or your father?
34:40Of course, of course. In that moment I saw my father in front of me,
34:45who was not even deported.
34:52Fritz Steinwasser's grandfather, along with 43,000 other German Jews,
34:57was later sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in Czechoslovakia.
35:06His grandfather died there in 1943.
35:09Fritz would not find this out until after the war.
35:12Another man who was caught up in this policy was Rolf von Sudau's grandfather.
35:25This photo is the last known picture of his grandfather alive.
35:35It shows him being led away with other Germans for evacuation.
35:42He died in a hospital a few days later.
35:44Many thousands more like them were murdered in the death camps.
35:56Despite what was happening to the Jews and what some like Fritz Steinwasser had witnessed,
36:01they still chose to carry on fighting.
36:04No one could hold on a rolling train alone.
36:11I would have gone on and then cried,
36:13You bandits! You killers!
36:14And so on.
36:15And then someone would have come and hit the bomb,
36:17and then I would have been dead.
36:20And nobody would have helped.
36:21Hitler had wanted to go even further and reserve the same treatment for the half Jews.
36:29But then he changed his mind.
36:31He granted them a last minute reprieve.
36:37Rather than be killed in the extermination camps,
36:40many half Jews found themselves forced to work instead for another organ of the Nazi state.
36:45The organization TOT was a civil and military engineering group that built whatever Hitler needed.
37:01From prison camps to arms manufacture,
37:04and massive engineering projects like the Atlantic War.
37:09Overseeing it all from 1942 was Albert Speer,
37:12Hitler's minister for armaments.
37:18The organization TOT numbered over a million men.
37:23From 1943 onwards,
37:25between 10 and 20,000 half Jews were drafted into it.
37:33But by a strange twist of fate,
37:35the fact that they had been expelled from the army and ended up in TOT
37:39actually spared many of them from death.
37:43As a result, they were spared combat.
37:52Especially the killing fields of the Eastern Front,
37:57where more and more Germans were being slaughtered by 1943.
38:03And where both Fritz Steinwasser and Rolf von Sudau found themselves.
38:08But a rare handful of German Jews didn't just fight.
38:15They actively embraced the most extreme expression of Nazi ideology.
38:20They joined the Waffen SS.
38:22The SS were Hitler's political soldiers.
38:32They had their own special insignia and privileges,
38:35and swore blind allegiance to Hitler.
38:38They took the Führer's ideology as their own.
38:40The SS had a reputation as ruthless fighters who murdered prisoners and civilians in cold blood.
38:55Some death camps were guarded by the SS.
39:00So the idea that a German Jew would sign up to serve and get away with it was unthinkable.
39:07Nevertheless, that is exactly what one full Jew ended up doing.
39:16Karl Heinz Lervie was raised as a religious Jew.
39:26He was born in 1920 in Munich, and both his parents were ardent German patriots.
39:31To avoid the Nuremberg laws, he assumed the name Werner Grenacker, and created an Aryan ancestry for himself.
39:42At the start of the war, he escaped to France.
39:47But then the Nazis caught up with him.
39:50When the Nazis came in, he felt the walls of Nazi Germany falling in on him.
40:00So he thought if he was proactive, he would be able maybe to protect himself.
40:05So with his false name, he went to a German recruiting station and said,
40:09I want to join the Wehrmacht.
40:11And the Wehrmacht said, you know, we don't have recruiting ability in foreign areas.
40:17But the Waffen SS does.
40:18He was sent down to the Waffen SS office, and then he was recruited into the Waffen SS.
40:25When he faced the medical examination, he simply lied.
40:29He claimed that his circumcision was the result of an infection,
40:33leading his comrades to jokingly call him the Jew.
40:42Lervie fought with the SS on the Finnish front.
40:48Despite the daily risk of discovery, he showed exceptional bravery,
40:55and was awarded the Iron Cross and prestigious close combat clasp
40:59for soldiers who had fought the enemy at close quarters.
41:01Lervie always maintained his SS colleagues had their hands full fighting the Russians,
41:18and knew nothing of the Nazi death camps or the reality of the Holocaust.
41:22In fact, he counted them as friends.
41:32He was able to acclimate into an elite military unit that was extremely anti-Semitic and survive.
41:38And he said, you know, it's the craziest thing, Brian.
41:42On one side, I love these guys.
41:43They would do anything for me.
41:45They were elite warriors.
41:47They fought hard.
41:48But had they known I was Jewish, they would have changed on me in a second,
41:52and they would have hung me up on the first tree.
41:54So Lervie kept quiet and did what he needed to do to survive in the SS.
42:07However, by 1944, the war was coming to a close.
42:11As the Allies landed in Normandy and the Russians pushed ever deeper towards the heart of Germany from the east,
42:21the end was in sight for Hitler's German Jews and his Jewish soldiers.
42:28On May the 8th, 1945, the war in Europe finally ended.
42:32Fritz Steinwasser survived the Russian front.
42:48Rolf von Suda fought the Allies in Normandy and was also still alive.
42:53And so remarkably was full Jew, Edgar Jacobi, who had languished in prison in Germany.
43:06He had only been saved when a bombing raid destroyed his prison records.
43:14By a mixture of fate, official pardons or the choice of remaining silent,
43:18many half and quarter Jews and even some full Jews survived the war
43:25and avoided the fate of their relatives.
43:35Of those who fought for Hitler, the most high profile was Field Marshal Milch,
43:39the Luftwaffe General whom Hitler had arianized in 1935.
43:44Germany came 1939 into a war.
43:51Eventually, Milch stood trial at Nuremberg for his complicity in the Nazis' crimes against humanity and war crimes.
44:01He was sentenced to life at Landsberg Prison, but was released after seven years.
44:08Milch never spoke publicly about these crimes against the Jews
44:11and his own Jewish heritage.
44:18You could say he was a willing collaborator with Hitler and everything Hitler was doing.
44:22He was a criminal.
44:24He knew about forced labor going to Auschwitz.
44:27He knew about the experiments going on in Dachau, even sanctioned them.
44:31He was a horrible individual.
44:32Half-Jew Werner Goldberg, the so-called archetypal soldier who was expelled from the army in 1940, survived the war.
44:43He would save his father's life after repeated attempts to send him to Auschwitz.
44:48He's an example of many men who went to bat for their family members by going to the actual prison areas and so on to try to get their family members out.
45:02Most were unsuccessful. Werner Goldberg was successful in his case.
45:08The fact that he could demonstrate against his father's treatment in his army uniform did his case no harm.
45:18Thanks to this brave action, his father avoided the infamous death camp.
45:22After the war, Werner Goldberg settled back into life in Berlin and had three children.
45:38Admiral Bernhard Rogar, the highly decorated naval commander, also survived the war.
45:44He went on to be a high-ranking officer in the post-war West German Navy and NATO.
45:49Full Jew Karl-Heinz Loewe, who had served in the Waffen-SS, deserted German lines and surrendered to the French.
46:00He remained in Munich and died in 2001.
46:07Another man to head to Allied lines at the first opportunity was Rolf von Suda,
46:12who had surrendered to the Canadians in Normandy in 1944.
46:19Rolf von Suda has always maintained the prejudice he experienced has made him a stronger person.
46:30He went on to have a successful career in television and movies.
46:33For his part, Fritz Steinwasser lost his brother in the war and was captured by the Russians.
46:47He spent several years in a prisoner of war camp before quietly returning to his life in Berlin.
46:52Today, those who survive are coming to terms with what they experienced.
47:03They faced the curious reality of fighting for the very nation that wanted to destroy them and their relatives.
47:11Is that a person that means that different people who live in the world would like to protect them?
47:16Any other people?
47:19As a result of their crimes, I should admit that I was guilty.
47:24But I had to say that there was just one thing to say,
47:27that I had done something on the one,
47:30maybe at least I have done something...
47:32that they were killed, that they were killed, and so on.
47:36But the old old Nunbergers went along with it,
47:39said that they were killed.
47:45To those who think he should have done something
47:47when he saw Jews being killed in 1941,
47:50Fritz Steinwasser has this to say.
47:54If a Jew asks me,
47:57why did you have taken nothing?
48:00And why did you look at how you went with your people
48:05and I'm a little bit of it?
48:08Then I would ask him what he would have done in this situation.
48:16These men have also had to wrestle with many awkward questions
48:19of collaboration and belonging.
48:22Their relationship with Judaism
48:24and their place in German society.
48:28Today, Fritz Steinwasser has reconciled
48:31both the past and his mixed Jewish heritage.
48:36I am neither the one nor the other.
48:39I am a human.
48:41And as a human, I am interested and motivated
48:45with all the other people on earth,
48:47whether they are white or black or white,
48:49or else we are,
48:51to live together in good peace.
48:54That's my definition.
48:57So where does this leave the Jews who fought for Nazi Germany?
49:05Undoubtedly, they were faced with an impossible situation
49:08created by Hitler and his policy of racial hatred.
49:12This, in turn, led to impossible choices made just to live.
49:20Fighting for Germany was more often than not
49:22an attempt to save loved ones and relatives.
49:29Often, for these men, staying alive was a struggle.
49:33But they did survive.
49:35And this simple fact
49:36was a small victory
49:38for Hitler's Jewish soldiers.
49:40museum.
49:41Flugel Louise
49:50Oh, you can song by Roosevelt.
49:53You can think of the millions of people.
49:57You can think of a Familie.
49:59Transcription by CastingWords