5 Mischlinge and Uncommon Rescue Stories

Mischlinge often helped family members in need, but many regret what they didn’t or couldn’t do. Most do not feel guilty for serving but wish they had done more for their persecuted relatives. Several thought that by performing their military duties well, they could protect their families. A few actually secured the release of a relative from a Gestapo office or deportation station, but most were away in combat and unable to take such action or simply did not dare to do so.

Nonetheless, most claim today that had they known what lay beyond deportation, they would have done more to find a hiding place for their loved ones or help them emigrate. Many justify their position by claiming they were also mistreated and did not have the means to resist.

In this chapter of the Holocaust, there were a few Mischlinge who helped Jews survive. Quarter-Jewish Oberbaurat (naval engineering captain) Franz Mendelssohn and half-Jewish Colonel Ernst Bloch were part of a small group who helped save Jewish lives. The story of Bloch goes into much detail about the larger moral issues these rescue stories from the Holocaust raise, including inquiries into whether the people saved even deserved it. Both Mendelssohn’s and Bloch’s stories give a better understanding of what it was like to live not only as Mischlinge in the Third Reich, but as individuals who took the rare action to rescue lives even when doing so meant compromising themselves.

Quarter-Jewish Oberbaurat Franz Mendelssohn

Franz Mendelssohn was born 25 July 1887 in Potsdam to a half-Jewish father and a gentile mother. He was the great-great-great grandson of the eminent German Jewish philosopher and leader of the Haskala (Jewish Enlightenment) Moses Mendelssohn and took great pride in his ancestor.

He was educated in a strict Prussian school and learned to repress his feelings. His father believed in this philosophy of self-control and was tough on his son. If Mendelssohn did not perform well in school, his father punished him.

In 1906, when Mendelssohn turned nineteen, he entered the navy, studied shipbuilding, and became an engineer. After the outbreak of World War I, he built submarines and zeppelins. Numerous cousins of his lost their lives during the Great War, and he felt lucky to have survived.

After Germany’s defeat in 1918, Mendelssohn stayed in the navy for two more years. In 1920, the military placed him on leave in the course of the personnel reduction under the Versailles Treaty. He then lived in Danzig and started a business importing American cars. He also arranged several race car events. After 1933, when Hitler came to power, Mendelssohn encountered problems, mainly because of his name. Local Nazis called him a “dirty Jew.” Although he felt proud of his ancestry, he had limited contact with German Jewry except for his Jewish relatives who were converted Christians and knew little about Judaism. Yet, many of his colleagues thought Mendelssohn was Jewish and denounced him. Soon after Hitler came to power, the Nazis pressured the German automobile organization ADAC (Allgemeiner Deutscher Automobil-Club) in Königsberg to dismiss Mendelssohn as racially inferior. Mendelssohn was deeply upset by this event.

Either out of conviction or the mere desire to be accepted by his society or both, Mendelssohn joined the Nazi Party in 1934. It is unclear why the party accepted him, but his move later helped him keep his job in the military. At the same time, Mendelssohn, who had married a gentile woman, cautioned his two daughters against disclosing their Jewish past.

Demoralized and without a job or money, Mendelssohn left for Berlin in March 1935. A few navy comrades got in touch with the authorities at the navy’s Supreme Headquarters, who reactivated him. According to his daughters, an admiral in Hamburg told Mendelssohn, “We [his navy buddies] will protect you.” He became a Marine-Baurat and later Oberbaurat (an engineering rank equivalent of a navy captain).

images — Quarter-Jewish Oberbaurat Franz Mendelssohn (far right), who joined the Nazi Party in 1934, at the wedding of his daughter Eva-Irene Mendelssohn and Werner Müller-Thode. At far left is Marine-Baurat Müller-Thode, the groom’s father.

In spite of his name, the authorities could not prove Mendelssohn’s Jewish ancestry. Also, Commodore Ernst Wolf and Admiral Eugen Lindau staved off Nazi officials and protected the unemployed engineer. They assigned him to building torpedo-boats and submarines and transforming luxury liners into supply and hospital ships.

But the name “Mendelssohn” continued to cause problems for his two daughters. For one daughter, Eva-Irene Eder-Mendelssohn, it proved hard to explain to people that she “wasn’t as Jewish” as they thought. “I’m proud of the name,” Eva-Irene said, “but I always had to explain our situation to the authorities. It was crazy. I often would get asked, ‘Do you descend from that horrible Jew?’”

Many encouraged Mendelssohn to change his name, but he refused, though his brothers, Alexander and Ernst, did. Their lives were made easier after changing their name from Mendelssohn to Leyden. Mendelssohn did not want to abandon the name of his ancestors and viewed such a move as something he could not do. His brothers not only changed their name, but that of their entire families. Three of Mendels sohn’s nephews, one of whom died fighting in Russia, served in the Wehrmacht.

One can understand the actions of Mendelssohn’s brothers. Having the name “Mendelssohn” in the Third Reich was like wearing a sign on your forehead that read, “I’m a Jew.” One wonders why Mendelssohn also did not change his name instead of joining the Nazi Party—one would think that would have been easier. This is especially the case since Mendelssohn continued to encounter problems because of his name.

One evening, when Mendelssohn attended a party, he entered the foyer with a nobleman who was short, fat, and unkempt but, nonetheless, Aryan. Without even thinking to ask, the maître d’hôtel introduced the fat man as Mendelssohn, and Mendelssohn, who was 6 feet 3 inches tall, slender, and handsome, as the nobleman. When the men clarified who they were, not only did it embarrass all parties concerned, but it also deeply troubled Mendelssohn. He felt he could never escape the constant cloud of oppression and discrimination.

When Mendelssohn rejoined the navy in 1935, he felt secure that he could support his family and pursue a career he had trained for and liked. Furthermore, the navy offered a place of security, and he felt comfortable in its surroundings. He continued to experience problems but carefully falsified his ancestral records. His thick personnel file testifies to what lengths he went in order to “prove” his “Aryan” ancestry. He signed a document in April 1935 in which he said that careful research did not disclose any Jewish ancestry. He knew that if he admitted he was a quarter-Jew, he would not be allowed to serve and unable to support his family. After the initial trauma of 1933–1935, life for the Mendelssohn family settled down.

Mendelssohn was probably left alone because the navy needed experienced engineers to build the navy Hitler had ordered Raeder to create. Hitler, having done away with the Versailles Treaty, now allowed the navy to make as many ships and submarines as possible. Mendelssohn, as an excellent engineer, had plenty of work to do. The shipbuilding program called for eight new battleships, three aircraft carriers, eighteen cruisers, forty-eight destroyers, and seventy-two submarines to be completed in fifteen years.¹

Mendelssohn believed the military provided his only chance for a normal existence. He did not have many other options. Some asked why he did not sabotage any naval projects he worked on. But this was something he would have never done. According to his daughter Eva-Irene, her father “was too Prussian and his dedication to duty and country would have prevented him from doing anything against Germany.” As a result, both serving the navy and living in Germany required that he obey the law. Although he had to disobey the law in falsifying his ancestry, he could not falsify his duty. He had to perform not only in the military, but also in society, even if he did not believe in its institutions. Consequently, it was not surprising that in 1937, he signed a document like other officers swearing that he would be “true and obedient to . . . Hitler.” Most officers at this time had to sign similar documents and the procedure was quite routine.

In light of the Holocaust, one may find Mendelssohn’s actions shocking. However, he simply “didn’t think it would get as bad as it did.” Yet Mendelssohn tentatively tried to get out of Germany, especially after his wife mentally collapsed following Reichskristallnacht in November 1938. He thought of emigrating but did not have the necessary funds. He spoke fluent English, but receiving permission from the U.S. or British emigration authorities was difficult. His whole life had been dedicated to building ships, and in Germany particularly, the only shipbuilding done from 1935 until 1945 was for the navy.

In 1941, Mendelssohn used his position to save a few Jews. In January of that year, while stationed in Paris, he learned that the Gestapo had arrested Mr. René Fould, a French Jew who had built ships and supported de Gaulle. After Fould’s family pleaded for Mendelssohn to help them, he decided to do so, even though Fould’s reputation was one of a tough, greedy businessman. Mendelssohn hesitated but did intervene on Fould’s behalf, though it could have jeopardized his position. On 30 January 1941, Mendelssohn secured the release of Fould from prison. Fould then hid in southern France with his family and survived the war.

Mendelssohn probably helped Fould for many reasons. He had worked with Fould for years and had developed a friendship with him. Perhaps he felt a need to rescue Fould not because of their relationship, but because of his own Jewish past. Maybe he sympathized with Fould and recognized that what happened to Fould could happen to him. Like Fould, Mendelssohn felt persecuted, and if a few officers had not helped him, he too would have suffered under the Nazis. He would have been jobless, labeled a Mischling, and stripped of his military status and benefits. Before he left the Fould family, Mendelssohn claimed he had done what he thought was possible and right and nothing more. He then explained to them that it would be too dangerous for them if they asked for help again. In other words, this was their only opportunity to escape the Nazis.

Toward war’s end, especially after the Normandy invasion, Mendelssohn’s work seemed to deteriorate and the admiral for St. Nazaire wrote in July 1944 that Mendelssohn was incompetent, weak, and lazy. Mendelssohn said this negative report was motivated by his superior’s feelings of inferiority. Mendelssohn was better educated and better looking than his commander and refused to take part in his superior’s drinking parties. Consequently, his superior resented him and expressed his anger in his reports.

Later in the summer of 1944, Mendelssohn refused to destroy the shipyards in Bordeaux before the Allies overtook them. He left with the army, marching at night and hiding during the day to avoid Allied planes. In late August 1944, the Allies took him prisoner. In September 1944, the Allies first shipped him to England, and then on to America to a POW camp.

Unlike many Jewish families, the Mendelssohn family survived the Third Reich and World War II intact. After Mendelssohn’s imprisonment, he returned to Germany and resumed building ships, this time for a British ship-building branch in Hamburg.

His daughters said that neither they nor their father knew about the Holocaust. After the war, they were horrified to learn what had happened to the Jews. Asked what she thought Moses Mendelssohn might have thought about the situation, Eva-Irene Eder-Mendelssohn said, “On the one hand, he probably wouldn’t have promoted Jewish emancipation as much as he did had he known what would’ve happened to his family during the Third Reich. On the other hand, his efforts to emancipate the Jews allowed most of his descendants to become Christians and marry gentiles and thus, they survived the war because most weren’t Jewish enough to be sent to the camps. It was a strange paradox.” His daughter Eleonore Barz-Mendelssohn said that her father’s actions might prove difficult to understand today but asked, “Can you understand how a person feels who’s trapped and yet has to do something to protect his family?” She believes that her father was forced to make a Faustian bargain that he never would have made had Hitler not threatened his family’s livelihood. He did not want to support Hitler’s navy, but felt he had to do so.

Mendelssohn displayed amazing courage in keeping his name during the Third Reich even though he did everything else to hide his Jewish background. Luckily for him, he got away with it. Often Mischlinge with Jewish-sounding names like Levin, Cohn, or Mendelssohn had a harder time blending into German society than those with names like Geitner, Krüger, or Meissinger. As historian James Tent wrote, “Mischlinge who had the misfortune to carry a name that the Nazis could immediately stereotype as sounding ‘Jewish,’ often faced severe persecution.”²

Mendelssohn’s case also shows that people could help rescue others during the Third Reich, but most of those in positions to do so often failed to act. Mendelssohn’s rescue efforts, though limited, are noteworthy.

Rebbe Schneersohn and Major Bloch: Moral Issues of Holocaust Rescues

In 1939, a half-Jewish Wehrmacht officer, Major Ernst Bloch, rescued the ultra-Orthodox Jewish leader, the Lubavitcher Rebbe Joseph Isaac Schneersohn, a true but seemingly incredible story.³ A narrative as much about Bloch as about the Rebbe, it raises several troubling issues surrounding religion, identity, and moral decisions during the Holocaust.

Germany’s quick defeat of Poland prevented most of the 3.3 million Polish Jews from fleeing.⁴ The SS immediately started committing crimes against humanity. To end a situation he felt disgraced Germany, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of the Abwehr, tried to have SS formations removed from Poland. But Hitler asserted, “Our struggle cannot be measured in terms of legality or illegality. Our methods must conform to our principles. We must prevent a new Polish intelligentsia taking power and cleanse the Greater Reich of Jewish and Polish riffraff.” He told his generals the SS would not only continue but intensify its work.⁵

The Nazis killed nearly all the Jews in Poland, but a few managed to escape. One of the most spectacular escapes of World War II was assisted by Abwehr officers, who enabled the fervently Orthodox Jewish leader the Rebbe Schneersohn to leave Poland in 1940.

The Rebbe served as high priest of the Lubavitcher movement, an ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Jewish sect, a kind of Jewish “pontifex maximus.” What makes this story amazing is that Wehrmacht officers played a central role in rescuing the Rebbe.

Schneersohn, the leader of the Chabad sect of Hasidism until his death in 1950, was born in Lubavitch, Russia, in 1880. He was a scion of the founder of this Hasidic sect, Rebbe Schneur Zalman, whose five generations of descendants had guided the movement.

In 1920, on his father’s death, the Rebbe, a rather portly man standing 5 feet 8 inches, took over the movement. Light blue eyes peered out above his red and silver beard. Many Lubavitchers believed him to be endowed with mystical powers, without sin, and blessed with the holy spirit.

After the October Revolution in 1917 when Russia sank into chaos, the Rebbe devoted himself to restoring religious life in Russia. Communist hostility toward religion, Schneersohn felt, would make Russia inimical to his movement. Throughout the 1920s the Soviet authorities often arrested the Rebbe and in 1927 even sentenced him to death, but thanks to the intervention of people such as U.S. senator William Borah, the Soviets released him.⁶ Later that year, Russia exiled him, and he set up his new headquarters in Poland.

In 1929 the Rebbe traveled to the United States to campaign for funds. He met many dignitaries, including President Herbert Hoover. On his return to Europe, he continued his work to invigorate Orthodox Judaism.⁷

When Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, the Rebbe’s followers tried to convince him to escape. He agreed, but not with the timing. He would not desert his followers in a time of danger.⁸ But finally, on 4 September, Schneersohn, realizing the futility of staying, left by car for Warsaw with his family in hopes of traveling from there to Riga. Dead horses and the charred remains of buildings lined the road to Warsaw as the Luftwaffe continued to rain explosives on the roads leading to the capital. Yet, the Rebbe survived.

On reaching Warsaw, Schneersohn helped his students escape to neutral countries and save his yeshiva’s documents. When he finally wanted to leave in late September, it was too late. The Wehrmacht had encircled the city.⁹

Nazi bombing raids forced the Rebbe to move around. When news of Russia’s invasion of Poland reached the Lubavitchers on 17 September, they panicked. They knew if the Soviets got their hands on the Rebbe again, they could not rely on international support to save him. Yet staying in Warsaw was perilous as the Nazis tightened their coil around the city.

On 25 September, Hitler ordered Warsaw leveled to the ground. More than 500 tons of high explosives and 72 tons of incendiary bombs accompanied by heavy artillery fire fell on the city. Yet, the Rebbe escaped death again. On 27 September, Warsaw capitulated to the Nazis. After visiting Warsaw, which had been nearly half-destroyed, Hitler told a foreign correspondent, “Take a good look around Warsaw. That is how I can deal with any European city.”¹⁰

During that grievous time, Lubavitchers and prominent New Yorkers urged Senator Robert Wagner to ask Secretary of State Cordell Hull to request information from the Germans about the Rebbe’s whereabouts and his safe passage out of Poland.¹¹

Wagner wrote Hull again three days later to ask the U.S. foreign minister in Riga to locate Schneersohn, emphasizing that many U.S. Jewish organizations were concerned about him. Hull acted and received a reply from the American Legation in Riga on 30 September that the Rebbe was in Warsaw.¹²

After receiving inquiries about the Rebbe, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis asked Benjamin Cohen, Roosevelt’s advisor, for help. Cohen informed Robert T. Pell, the assistant chief of European Affairs in the State Department, who had cultivated important contacts with influential German officials.¹³

Pell agreed that it would be a tragedy “if any harm befell one of the leading Jewish scholars in the world.” Pell knew Helmut Wohlthat, chief administrator of Göring’s Four-Year Plan, an expert on international industry and economics and a Nazi Party member, whom he met after the Evian Conference in 1938, at which Germany had insisted that the world take its Jews, a demand the world, including the United States, rejected. After this conference, Wohlthat assured Pell that in a special case in which American Jewry was “particularly interested, he would do what he could to facilitate a solution.” Pell forwarded Cohen’s request to Wohlthat, who kept his promise. “In every instance,” Pell wrote, “Wohlthat acted quickly and favorably.”¹⁴

Pleas to save the Rebbe continued to pile up on Hull’s desk. The Lubavitchers had informed the U.S. authorities that their community was in part made up of 160,000 Jews in North America. This was a lie intended to influence the government. Hull then told the U.S. Postmaster on 2 October 1939 that the State Department would ask the U.S. Vice Consul in Riga to ascertain the Rebbe’s situation at the expense of interested citizens.¹⁵

On 3 October 1939, Hull approved a telegram from Pell to Raymond Geist, the U.S. Consul General in Berlin, asking to rescue Schneersohn.¹⁶ On behalf of the White House, Geist therefore asked Wohlthat to help Schneersohn leave Poland. “I turn to you,” Geist wrote Wohlthat, “because I know you, and you may be assured of the absolute discretion of the . . . State Department. I am aware of the considerable risk to any German persons intervening in this matter.” Geist then telegraphed Hull and Pell to report that he had met Wohlthat, “who promised to take the matter up” with the authorities.¹⁷ Wohlthat agreed that pressure from such influential sources to save a well-respected international figure warranted action. Once again Hull made sure that the rescue’s cost would not be supplied by the government, but by the Lubavitchers. The mission’s success now depended on Wohlthat, a Nazi. Whom he contacted and how he conducted the plans would decide the rescue.

Though Wohlthat believed the Rebbe’s rescue would serve Germany’s interests, he knew that Nazi authorities would not allow it.¹⁸ The situation looked grim. Hitler had taken Poland and the SS had started the ghettoization and murder of Jews.

Wohlthat knew one man he could turn to: Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, chief of the Abwehr. They were friends, cognizant of one another’s views. In 1939, Canaris, like Wohlthat, did not approve of all of Hitler’s policies and employed Mischlinge in his department.¹⁹ Canaris also disapproved of the plan to exterminate Polish Jewry.

The day after his conversation with Geist, Wohlthat met with Canaris and told him about the case. Canaris agreed to help and promised to send some of his officers to Warsaw to rescue Schneersohn.²⁰

In so doing, he risked not only his own position and life, but also those of the soldiers he assigned to this task. But he knew the murderous danger the Rebbe faced and acted quickly.²¹

He entrusted the mission to Major Ernst Bloch, who knew Wohlthat and had often dined with him and Canaris.²² He shared their animosity to the Nazis’ anti-Semitic policies. Perhaps Canaris had ordered Bloch to save the Rebbe not only because he was an excellent soldier but also because his father was Jewish.

A contemporary photograph reveals a man of strong build and dark eyes exuding self-assurance. Bloch knew his place and his duty. Yet his most striking feature was his scarred face. During the battle of Ypres in 1915, an enemy bayoneted Bloch through his lower jaw into his skull, removing large portions of his chin and several teeth. The next thing Bloch remembered was waking up in a hospital. Although his family feared he would never function normally again, he did not suffer any brain damage and returned to war a few months later to fight in the battles of Verdun and the Somme in 1916, Champagne in 1917, and Flanders in 1918. Known as a competent officer, he ended the war with both Iron Crosses and the Wound Badge and remained in the army from World War I through the Weimar Republic into the Nazi Reich.²³

The Nazi rise to power did not immediately affect Bloch. In 1935 Canaris recruited Bloch for the Abwehr and placed him in charge of the economic division, which gathered data on the industrial capacity of foreign countries.²⁴

The half-Jewish Bloch could remain and was promoted in the army because Hitler had declared him deutschblütig. Canaris had brought Bloch’s case to Hitler late in 1939, and had Hitler personally sign papers declaring him of “German blood.”²⁵ Bloch and his family were therefore generally protected. Under Canaris, Bloch had nothing to fear and was even picked to rescue Jews—all under the nose of the SS.

Back in America the Chabad’s U.S. office telegraphed the Rebbe’s secretary in Riga that the German authorities in Warsaw were “desirous of cooperating” and had sent an officer to locate the Rebbe and accompany him to Riga. Two days later, Pell, who also received this information, told the U.S. chargé d’affaires in Germany where they might find Schneersohn. Wohlthat then notified Washington on 4 November 1939 that Bloch had been given the responsibility of helping the Rebbe escape.²⁶

Daily, Bloch combed the Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods and asked for the Rebbe. Most faced the German major with fear and told him nothing.

At that time, Max Rhoade, a Jewish lawyer in Washington, D.C., had taken charge of the legal aspects of this rescue and handled the relations between the Lubavitcher community and the government.

Rhoade encouraged Cohen to ask the State Department to have the consulate in Warsaw urge Schneersohn to cooperate with Bloch.²⁷ Rhoade believed that, if the consulate could communicate with the Rebbe, he would then follow Bloch.

Meanwhile, Bloch and his group discovered that Schneersohn had registered with the police, but his address had been destroyed during the siege of Warsaw. Bloch and his men now walked from house to house asking scared and hungry Lubavitchers about the Rebbe, yet no one wanted to talk. But Schneersohn was still in Warsaw, having escaped from his building seconds before airplanes destroyed it.

On 25 November 1939, the Germans found the house where the Rebbe lived.²⁸ They knocked on the door and an old man answered. His red, bloodshot eyes stared at Bloch and his group with fear. Bloch explained that, despite their uniforms, they truly wanted to help the Rebbe get out of occupied Poland.

Chaim Liebermann, the Rebbe’s secretary, later reported that when the soldiers came, the Rebbe was “living in the house of Rabbi Hirsch Gurary. Suddenly there came uniformed Nazis to the door and asked about the Rebbe. The owner of the house feared the worst from these soldiers and told them that none by the name of Schneersohn lived there.” After Bloch left, the Rebbe instructed his followers that should the officer return, they should give him “truthful information.”²⁹

Soon someone informed Bloch that he had in fact located the Rebbe’s house. Bloch returned and forced his way inside. Eventually, after Bloch explained his mission, the Rebbe accepted his help.

Meanwhile, in America, Pell informed Rhoade on 27 November that the Germans had found the Rebbe. He pointed out that Wohlthat had done an extraordinary thing in arranging a military escort for foreign “Jewish” citizens.³⁰

Wohlthat and the Abwehr had agreed on an escape route from Warsaw to Stockholm via Berlin and Riga, and on to the United States. But visas were still needed for the Rebbe’s group.³¹

While Rhoade struggled with the visa division and the State Department, the German officials involved had made a great deal of progress. Bloch procured a truck and a wagon to take the group outside of Warsaw to a train so they could leave from there for Berlin and then for Riga. This rescue operation required arranging for automobiles and the coupons for refueling them, as well as railroad tickets and passes. More importantly, Bloch needed security clearances, especially for passing through newly conquered Poland, where no one could travel without being checked by military police and the SS.

After many months of planning, the American embassy in Berlin reported on 22 December 1939 that a week earlier, not only Schneersohn but also his family and some of his followers had left Warsaw for Riga via Berlin.³²

A Lubavitcher described the journey: “Even the chief of intelligence [Bloch] had difficulty in conveying the Rebbe and his family to Berlin. There were many roadblocks manned by German military police . . . Whenever they saw the car with bearded religious Jews in it, they stopped it. [Bloch] pretended that they were his prisoners and that he had orders to take them to Berlin. Finally, they made it to Berlin, the very heart of the evil Nazi kingdom.”³³

Bloch succeeded in bringing the Rebbe and his group into Berlin, where they stayed at the Jewish Federation. The next day delegates from the Latvian embassy came and accompanied them to Riga.³⁴

On 13 January 1940, the State Department finally approved the issuance of visas for the group.³⁵ While the group waited in Riga for the U.S. visas, the Swedish ocean liner Drottingholm was chosen to carry the Rebbe and his group to their new home.

The Rebbe and his entourage left Riga on 6 March 1940, traveled to Stockholm, and from there by train to Göteborg, where they boarded the Drottingholm to New York. It crossed the Atlantic at a time when German U-boats sank many Allied ships. The group arrived in New York City on 19 March and was greeted by over 1,000 of Rebbe Schneersohn’s followers singing and dancing on the pier. After Schneersohn’s arrival, he tried to rescue some of his followers abroad, but unfortunately failed in saving most throughout 1940–1941.³⁶

The Rebbe never mentioned Bloch or the other Germans who helped him, but did thank Hull: “You can imagine how happy . . . we were to walk again on the friendly soil of [America] . . . especially after all the terrible experiences . . . under the Nazi regime.”³⁷

But giving thanks for his rescue did not save others. Instead, the Rebbe approached the politicians who rescued him only to ask to save his library of 40,000 books. One might understand this somewhat if the books were spiritual, but many were about the Communists and there was even Dante’s Inferno in the mix. In 1941, he succeeded in getting, with much time, effort, and expenditure, all 40,000 books out of Europe.

Most troubling were the Rebbe’s reasons why Hitler was murdering the Jews. He explained in 1941 that the persecution was God’s punishment for Jews’ “transgressions” of not observing religious laws. When asked why European Jews, who were by and large “more Torah-observant and God fearing” than American Jews, had been chosen to bear the brunt of God’s retribution, the Rebbe replied that the “pious” suffered “on account of the others.” The Rebbe added that this “bloodbath” would force Jews to return to the Torah, and thus clear the path for the Messiah. He claimed that the “suffering of world Jewry today is a voice from heaven calling” upon Jews to repent for straying from Yiddishkeit. All they could do for those suffering was to be more religious. He said, “do not be deluded into thinking that we Jews can be helped only by mortals and politics. The ‘wise and understanding people’ must not be influenced by such foolishness. We Jews will be helped by repentance, Torah and mitzvos [good deeds].”³⁸

Even though “mortals” like Bloch, Canaris, Pell, Rhoade, and many others had rescued the Rebbe by working through a maze of “politics,” the Rebbe simply saw it largely as an act of God. Mortals were merely instruments of divine will.

Religious leaders have often espoused the view that God orders catastrophes to punish “sinners” for not accepting God’s commandments. The Rebbe of the Satmar Hasidic sect claimed that Zionists brought on the Holocaust. And more recently, after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Reverend Jerry Falwell declared to religious television host Pat Robertson that God was punishing Americans because of abortionists, pagans, feminists, gays, and lesbians, saying, “I point the finger in their face and say ‘You helped this happen.’”³⁹ Both Falwell and the Rebbe understand God as both omnipotent and intimately involved in human affairs.

Ironically, the Rebbe’s view of the Holocaust turns men like Hitler into instruments of divine will, a horrifying proposition. Distinguished rabbi Ken Roseman differs: “That one believes the Holocaust comes because the victims merit it is obscene.”⁴⁰

The Rebbe’s thoughts about the Holocaust raise several troubling issues about God. As Karen Armstrong, a teacher at Leo Baeck College for the Study of Judaism, wrote, “If God is omnipotent, he could have prevented the Holocaust. If he was unable to stop it, he is impotent and useless; if he could have stopped it and chose not to, he is a monster.”⁴¹

The Rebbe’s opinion of why God allowed Hitler to perpetrate evil creates more problems than it solves. As renowned author Rabbi Harold Kushner said, “The idea that God gives people what they deserve, that our misdeeds cause our misfortune, is a neat and attractive solution to the problem of evil . . . but it has a number of serious limitations . . . it teaches people to blame themselves. It creates guilt even where there is no basis for guilt. It makes people hate God, even as it makes them hate themselves. And most disturbing of all, it does not even fit the facts.” Prominent rabbi Chaskel Besser chose to believe that to truly understand God and why He allows bad things to occur is beyond human comprehension: “I’m not in Heaven and I’m not a prophet so I cannot comment on why God did what he did . . . I only know that the Holocaust makes me want to be a better person every day.”⁴²

Rabbi Norman Lamm, chancellor of Yeshiva University, blamed the Rebbe outright for committing blasphemy. What the Rebbe said “is repugnant to me and bespeaks an insufferable insensitivity.” And he adds that to point the finger at others as the Rebbe did “is an unparalleled instance of criminal arrogance and brutal insensitivity . . . How dare anyone, sitting in the American or British or Israeli Paradise, indict the martyrs who were consumed in the European Hell?” He fails to see why God would order the Nazis to kill anyone to punish the Jews for their transgressions—he speaks from a position of pain since the Nazis murdered his grandmother. Saying such a thing is “unforgivable,” Lamm explains that one should not forget that Moses was punished by God for “making offensive statements” against His people. In the end, Lamm concludes, “small-minded people blame others, not themselves.”⁴³

It is difficult for Lubavitchers to accept the Rebbe’s limitations, yet history shows that Schneersohn made mistakes. Focusing on a theology of condemnation, the Rebbe missed out on opportunities to save lives and offended many. Consequently, according to well-known rabbi Alex Weisfogel, the Rebbe was a “moral failure.”⁴⁴

Ultimately, the Rebbe considered his coming to the United States “a mission to make the country into a . . . dwelling place for Torah.” Until his death in 1950, he dedicated himself to leading the Chabad’s world headquarters in New York and never spoke publicly about his escape from Warsaw.⁴⁵

Bloch did not talk about it either. Working in the secret service, he had been trained never to discuss his work, even with his wife. Had he survived the war, perhaps he would have told her. After rescuing Schneersohn, Bloch returned to his espionage work and was promoted to lieutenant colonel in 1940. He continued to provide the military with information on the industrial capabilities of other countries, utilizing German companies to place spies under cover abroad.⁴⁶

Bloch worked in the Abwehr until the army granted his request on 1 May 1943 to serve on the Russian front.⁴⁷ In the spring of 1943, the Wehrmacht urgently needed his experience in the field preparing for the battle of Kursk.

Both Bloch’s son and his secretary said he left the Abwehr because his only opportunity for promotion lay on the eastern front. He commanded a battalion and later a regiment and fought in many battles around Kiev. For exemplary service, Bloch was promoted to colonel and awarded the Iron Cross. By 1945 Bloch’s regiment had been decimated, leaving only a handful of men alive. But Bloch was by then no longer in the army.⁴⁸

In September 1944, Heinrich Himmler, the Reichsführer of the SS, demanded that Bloch be discharged because of his ancestry. In the middle of that month, an SS officer in Himmler’s office wrote General Wilhelm Burgdorf requesting Bloch’s dismissal and deportation to a forced labor camp. Bloch had to leave on 27 October 1944, and on 15 February 1945, he was discharged.⁴⁹ Stunned and disappointed, he returned home a retired officer. A few months later the Volkssturm (a paramilitary organization for civilian fighters formed at war’s end) drafted Bloch to train civilians.

In late April 1945, when the Russians closed in on Berlin, Bloch continued to fight. After repelling several attacks, he reportedly led a counterattack, throwing grenades at the Soviet lines and firing his submachine gun as he advanced. Then a mortar shell landed behind Bloch, killing him. A few days later the war ended.⁵⁰

It is easy to look at Nazi Germany in black and white categories of good and evil, victims and perpetrators. However, such a two-dimensional view of Nazi Germany fails to account for the complexity of human society demonstrated by the story of Bloch’s rescue of Schneersohn.

American officials failed to respond not only to thousands of desperate pleas from Jews who wished to escape the Nazis, but also to Germany’s own self-serving request at the Evian Conference in 1938 to let them immigrate. Extremely influential politicians, such as Secretary of State Hull and Pell of the State Department, along with a supporting cast of several senators and Justice Brandeis, banded together to push Schneersohn’s case successfully through the bureaucratic Bermuda triangle. Yet, without such a powerful lobby in Washington, what chance had the average European Jew to come to America?

The motives of the U.S. politicians, whose support was essential for the approval of Schneersohn’s visa, also deserve a searching look before we hold them up as heroes.

Rhoade constantly emphasized the Rebbe’s spiritual significance for Jews all over the world, and often compared him to the Pope to convince officials of the tangible results their intervention in this case would have for them. They could proudly prove their humanitarian concern for European Jews under Hitler and leave a favorable impression with a large block of voting American Lubavitchers, whose numbers Rhoade (with false information from Chabad) exaggerated.

U.S. officials knew how much the Jews suffered under Hitler. However, their inaction, even after acting favorably with the Rebbe, confirmed to some Nazis the apathetic attitude with which the Western powers approached the persecution.⁵¹

On the other side of the two-dimensional view stand the Germans. Even Hitler made a distinction between the army and the SS. In August 1939, he informed Himmler that “Poland will be wiped off the map of nations. What will happen behind the Wehrmacht front may not meet with the approbation of the generals. The army is not to take part in the elimination of the Polish cadres and the Jews. This will be the task of the SS.”⁵² Hitler did not expect all high-ranking officers in the military to support the extermination of Jews; but it was surprising that Wohlthat, chief administrator of Göring’s Four-Year Plan; Canaris, head of the Abwehr; and Bloch and others risked their careers and perhaps their lives to rescue a group of ultra-Orthodox Jews.

Admittedly, Wohlthat and Canaris did not act on their own initiative. Wohlthat saw an opportunity to foster goodwill in Washington. At that time, Germany, not at war with the United States, hoped to have Britain ignore Germany’s actions in Poland and join it as an ally. Canaris, too, had expressed reservations about Hitler’s regime to Wohlthat and others for a while before the Rebbe’s case landed on his desk. He had used his office to protect several “half-Jewish” officers, including Bloch, and promote them.

Had Bloch known about the Holocaust, would he have continued to fight? As a high-ranking Abwehr and combat officer, he must have known more than the average soldier. However, most soldiers do not spend their days engaging in political thought or moral consideration during a war. But the question of what Bloch and others could have done to stop the Holocaust if they had known about it is compelling.

Unavailable documentation makes it difficult to reconstruct exactly what Bloch thought or believed. Mischlinge express the entire spectrum of motivations for serving. Why Bloch did what he did will never be known, but after a decade of researching his case, I can make an educated guess.

Bloch was a professional soldier and learned at an early age to obey orders. He would have found the systematic extermination of the entire Jewish population of Europe unbelievable. If he saw any evidence of it, he must have ignored it to survive. Still, the paradox that Bloch fought to support a regime that may have killed half-Jews had Germany won the war is itself tragic.

Almost all Mischlinge were Christians who came from assimilated families and served because they were drafted. Some enlisted because they wanted to have a military career; they trained themselves for war, and when it came, they did their duty.

Bloch wore the German uniform, swore an oath of allegiance to Hitler, gathered valuable wartime data on enemy countries for Hitler’s war machine, and fought on the Russian front against one of Germany’s archenemies, the Soviets. The real question is why Bloch was unable or unwilling to fight the Hitler regime. The answer is buried in the battlefield, where Bloch gave his life defending his country—a country ruled by the Nazis.

The rescue of Schneersohn represents the complexity of life in Germany, not just a curious anomaly. It shows that America should and could have done more to help rescue Jews. But it also demonstrates how many U.S. Jewish leaders, even those who were aware of Hitler’s extermination policies like the Rebbe, did not push the American government enough to help those Jews still stranded in Europe.

What could or should have been done now seems so obvious, as hindsight always is, but one must realize that, as historian Walter Laqueur notes, “Nothing is easier than to apportion praise and blame, writing many years after the events . . . It is very easy to claim that everyone should have known what would happen once Fascism came to power. But such an approach is ahistorical.” Laqueur explains the world’s inaction during the Holocaust as follows: “Few come out of the story unblemished. It was a story of failure to comprehend, among Jewish leaders and communities inside Europe and outside, a story of failure among non-Jews in high positions in neutral and Allied countries who did not care, or did not want to know or even suppressed the information.”⁵³ The Rebbe’s followers worked hard to put a name, a face, a great reputation, and a large following in front of powerful politicians. Although politicians might ignore the faceless masses without a surfeit of guilt, leaving a person they had come to know well and valued as a great leader in Hitler’s clutches was simply unthinkable. Thus they worked tirelessly to rescue the Rebbe, while those unnamed Jews under Hitler were left to suffer and die. Hopefully, civilized humanity can learn to be quicker in the future to recognize the signs of genocide and stop it.

This story shows how much good can be achieved when a small group stands together to do the right thing. The Talmud says, “If you save a life you save the world.”⁵⁴ This remarkable rescue saved over a dozen lives, and all it took was initiative and imagination—letter writing, a few thousand dollars, and the courage to speak up. How sad that the 6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust were not afforded the treatment the Lubavitcher Rebbe met with in 1939.

Conclusion

Rescue stories such as the two in this chapter were rare during the Third Reich. Yet, they both show that some lived by a moral code to save lives when they could. Moreover, they illustrate that opportunities did exist to successfully get people out from under the dark cloud of Nazism even after war erupted in 1939. Of course, Mendelssohn, Bloch, and Canaris operated from differing motivations, but ultimately, they all found ways to help people in mortal danger.

Due to a personal relationship and after recognizing the threat, Mendelssohn went out of his way to rescue and then facilitate the escape of René Fould. One only wishes more men during the Third Reich who thought about helping would have been as courageous as Mendelssohn.

Although Canaris ordered Bloch to rescue Schneersohn, he seemed to have no problem carrying out this order and even sympathized somewhat, it seems, with the Rebbe’s plight and persecution. Either due to the successful job he did or letting Canaris know he would take similar assignments or both, Canaris allowed or ordered him to conduct other missions that rescued other Jews.⁵⁵

Some may find puzzling Bloch’s decision to continue active military service, ultimately losing his life only days before war’s end. Yet, Bloch may have fought at war’s end because he regarded the Soviets as “no better than the Nazi loser,” as historian James Tent said. Perhaps he had become so apathetic with life and with the uncertain future he faced that he actually looked forward to dying “with the last bullet in the last battle of the war and be done with it.”⁵⁶ While Bloch fought in this battle, Schneersohn busied himself building up his Hasidic movement, which today probably numbers over 200,000.

What is remarkable about the Rebbe’s rescue is that it was accomplished by men who, had they known the Rebbe’s true personality, probably would not have tried to save him. In this respect, the Rebbe’s followers and lawyer skillfully put on the Rebbe’s best face to convince people to save him. There is little to admire about Schneersohn unless you are a devout Lubavitcher, since Schneersohn obviously had little use, love, or respect for the very ones rescuing him. From the fact that he thought secular and reform Jews, just like Brandeis, Cohen, and even Bloch, caused the Holocaust, one realizes he did not admire much if anything about these men. The people he felt caused the Holocaust were the very ones who saved his life, yet the Rebbe failed to see this irony.

Since Schneersohn felt God stood behind the operation, he dismissed the incredible risks many undertook to rescue him, especially Bloch and Canaris. Neither during nor after the war did the Rebbe thank the families of his rescuers. The Chabad organization has failed to acknowledge them as well, nor has it ever criticized the Rebbe for condemning others from the safety of the United States and for focusing on his books when he should have focused on saving lives. Most who learn about the Rebbe feel confused about why anyone would want to rescue him.

So these rescue stories are complicated on many levels. Whether it was a “Nazi” naval captain saving a rich, secular businessman or secret service German agents rescuing a prominent rabbi, these stories present the reader with difficult questions about moral responsibility. The only reason why men decided to help these Jews is that they saw that their lives were in peril. There was no discussion about whether the person was worthy or unworthy of such a rescue. As Holocaust survivor Victor Frankl said, the best of humanity did not survive the Holocaust, and one could argue that both Fould and Schneersohn were not the best of humanity.