What was the safest place for a Jew in Hitler’s Germany? A cellar or an attic? A forest? At home with a well-connected Aryan spouse? The answer was in Hitler’s military—in the Wehrmacht, the Kriegsmarine, or the Luftwaffe—at least until the tide of war turned and all three began to suffer staggering losses. Some said the Luftwaffe was the best bet because Goering protected his own. Whichever branch, wearing a uniform was like slipping into a coat of armor, or invisibility.
I made this astonishing discovery while delving into the literature of the war and the Nazi occupation of France for my novel, Paris Never Leaves You. According to Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers by Bryan Mark Rigg, thousands of full Jews and more than a hundred-thousand part-Jews joined the military of the Third Reich. The stories of these men and of the psychological as well as the physical hazards they endured altered the book I had originally set out to write.
