Unlikely Soldier: A Jewish Soldier in Hitler’s Army by Georg Rauch, Publisher: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2006, 2015
By Sheila Orysiek
SAN DIEGO — As a nineteen year old male living in Vienna during World War II, there was no way Georg Rauch could escape being conscripted into the Nazi military machine. At first he thought that he could avoid military service because his grandmother (a Baroness) was Jewish, and this made him one quarter Jewish according to Nazi laws. However, Germany desperately needed men and so he found himself in uniform.
Shortly after conscription he was sent to the dreaded Eastern Front facing the huge onslaught of the Russian Army. He was a talented artist and trained in radio electronics and both of these assets were put to use in the military as a map maker and a radio technician. These occupations kept him, at least in the beginning, a mile or two behind the front lines and probably helped to save his life. Rauch describes the epic battles he witnessed and in which he was an unwilling participant.
He had learned from his mother, even before the war began, that the Nazis were evil. His mother’s response was to hide and help Jews who were fleeing Vienna. While in the Nazi Army, he kept up a correspondence with his mother who saved every letter. It is from these letters as well as his own additional notes that he describes the German army’s defeat and subsequent retreat across hundreds of miles in the depths of a Russian winter. Thousands of German soldiers were captured by the Russians, including Rauch. He spent eighteen months in one of the infamous prisoner of war camps administered by the Russians where he contracted bone tuberculosis.
He was one of the very few German POW’s who managed to escape. Starving and suffering from years of illness, deprivation and injury, he walked all the way back to Austria – to find his mother. Then, literally on his hands and knees he crawled the last few miles and, finally, up the steps to his mother’s house.
This is a riveting book.
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Orysiek is a freelance writer who specializes in arts and literature. Comments may be made in the space provided below this article or sent to the author via sheila.orysiek@sdjewishworld.com