Non­fic­tion

The Ene­my I Knew: Ger­man Jews in the Allied Mil­i­tary in World War II

Steven Kar­ras
  • Review
By – August 25, 2011
The Ene­my I Knew tells the sto­ry of Ger­man Jews who escaped from Nazi Ger­many and were then draft­ed into the Allied forces. It describes how these men and women served their new coun­tries and the unique skills that made them use­ful sol­diers in their new army.
The book is com­posed of 27 bio­graph­i­cal sketch­es, includ­ing that of Heinz Kissinger, known today as Hen­ry Kissinger. When Kissinger escaped from Ger­many with his fam­i­ly in 1938 they lived in Wash­ing­ton Heights in Upper Man­hat­tan. In 1943 Kissinger was draft­ed into the U.S. army as a rifle­man. It didn’t take long before his genius was detect­ed and he was brought into the Counter Intel­li­gence Corps (CIC). By the end of the war he was actu­al­ly the mil­i­tary gov­er­nor of Krefeld, Ger­many. The rest, as they say, is his­to­ry.
The Ene­my I Knew is a fas­ci­nat­ing read about the trans­for­ma­tion of Ger­man Jews from poten­tial vic­tims of Nazi per­se­cu­tion into pur­suers of Nazi tyran­ny and into U.S. mil­i­tary heroes.
Mic­ah D. Halpern is a colum­nist and a social and polit­i­cal com­men­ta­tor. He is the author of What You Need To Know About: Ter­ror, and main­tains The Mic­ah Report at www​.mic​ah​halpern​.com.

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