SAN DIEGO — Xenon Pictures presents a new documentary, About Face: Jewish Refugees in the Allied Forces. The promo reads: “When they were kids, they got the hell out of Germany. When they grew up, they returned… heavily armed and ready to kick Nazi tuchas.”
I’m in.
Speaking to historians and the vets who lived through it, About Face paints the complex and detailed picture of what it was like for the young men and women who fled Nazi oppression to return as fighters on the winning side of a brutal war. These people, now in their 80s and 90s, include former Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger.
Officially, World War II began in 1939 with the invasion of Poland. But for the Jews, it began in 1933 with the passage of the Nuremberg Laws. Largely assimilated, the Jews of Germany had considered themselves patriotic citizens, making great contributions to the arts, sciences and commerce. Many of them had fought for Germany in World War I only to find themselves stripped of their citizenship and treated as enemy aliens.
Between 1933 and 1938, 177,000 Jews managed to get out of Germany and Austria to safety in the UK, North America and then British Palestine. The number isn’t higher not for lack of effort, but because of strict immigration quotas.
As news got worse and worse, these Jewish refugees prayed for war. That may sound strange, but how else was the Third Reich going to be stopped? It took the Japanese’ attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec 7, 1941 to get the United States into the action. Young people all over the nation stepped up to enlist. But for the Jewish refugees, this fight was far more personal.
“Are you willing to fight against the country of your birth?”
This was a serious question put to the cadets of European birth. One of them recalled laughing out loud. Fighting for the families they had left behind, they carried the hope of seeing them alive again.
Speaking fluent German, these soldiers were invaluable for gathering intel. And they understood their enemy better than anyone else, knowing just what buttons to push. Peter Masters described his transformation from a frightened refugee child to an elite commando as being “like a butterfly from a cocoon.” (Peter Masters is the author of an autobiography, Striking back: A Jewish Commando’s War Against the Nazis.)
When the Nazis surrendered, these GIs made a point of saying „Ich bin Jude,” I am a Jew. One recalled a general turning ashen and another officer soiling his trousers on the spot.
And out of the horrors came a love story. Gerda Klein was a survivor of the camps, traumatized, emaciated and barely alive. Kurt Klein was the strong, handsome, sun tanned American soldier who rescued her.
Well, there’s a lot more to the story, but it’s better to let them tell it. About Face is available via this website.