"X Troop" by Leah Garrett (2021)

This is a book which should be read by all who wish to study the Second World War more completely. It is at once a story of sadness and the subjugation of the Jewish people, and then becomes the story of a group of young Jewish men from Germany and Eastern Europe who are fortunate enough to escape the Nazis, albeit with no clear future before them.

From there it becomes the story of a group of men who have lost everything. Their homes, their futures, their families and even their names. They are strangers in a strange land; Britain. There they find themselves refugees, moved around from one refugee camp to another. Some are even shipped to Austrailia along with German POW's, who, as combatants have more rights via the Geneva Convention than the victims they sought to annihilate.

The POW's have the required living space and food specified by law. The refugees are packed, like cattle, into the hold of the ship, fed only scraps of food and only allowed on deck 15 minutes per day. They are harassed by the POW's as well as the Britush crew members. Their meager belongings are confiscated and, when not stolen, are thrown over the side, into the sea, lost seemingly forever, just as with their identities.

Once in Australia they are kept in Concentration camps, little better off than the labor camps they sought to escape in Europe. After a time there they are returned to England and things become a bit better. Some are placed in the country side and grow food which the British need to feed their troops. But some, not many, have a different fate before them. These are the men who become Commando fighters, serving as "X Troop".

The book is replete with characters, who, if not real, would be unbelievable in a novel. Take for instance "Fighting Jack Churchill" aka "Mad Jack", no relation to Sir Winston, who fought in the war with a longbow, a hilted Scottish broadsword, and a bagpipe. He would help train, and lead, these mostly intellectual half starved refugees into a fighting force no writer could invent.

It took more than two years, much of the time spent in Wales and Scotland, climbing sheer rockfaced mountains, running 53 miles with full packs before swimming back to base in freezing waters to mold them. And they met every obstacle fueled by hatred and revenge for the Nazis, not knowing if their families back home were still alive.

Forced to virtually abandon their own religion, they had to learn to speak English with no trace of an accent. Then, to perfect this, they were quartered in private homes with families who hardly recognized them as refugees.

Interwoven in all this is also the story of the Rothschilds, particularly Miriam, who was self educated by virtue of her grandfather and father. She spent 16 hour days at Bletchley Park, cracking the German's Enigma Code. And along the way she fell in love with Captain George Lane, one of the refugees and a member of X Troop.

They married in secret, and she was carrying his child when he was captured in France. It was there he faced the greatest danger. He was interrogated by Feld Marshal Rommel, in the country mansion which was his secret headquarters. They even shared a cup of tea as Rommel tried to figure out when and where the invasion of France would take place.

From there, rather than being executed, as he expected, Captain Lane was sent to a prison camp in an abandoned castle. There was no food, but there was an extensive library, from which he was able to identify Rommel's headquarters. And with the aid of a secret radio transmitter constructed by the prisoners he was able to get that information back to Britain, resulting in a bombing raid which would have  killed Rommel had he not committed suicide after being implicated in a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler in October 1944.

In this same transmission he was also able to alert Miriam that he was still alive.
Reunited after his escape, the two remained married until 1957 when they seperated. They had two sons and four daughters. Rothschild was a leading world authority on fleas, butterflies, and pyrazines and chemical communication, all self educated. But that story is another book altogether.

Even today, in Wales, there is a monument, erected to these extraordinary men, whom the town fully embraced as their own. When not on duty they were feted at town dances, and some romances and unlikely marriages resulted from this.

These men were trained in counterintelligence and advanced combat, the result being a highly trained suicide squad. They would literally stop at nothing to defeat the Nazis.

The author avails herself of declassified records, and interviews with the last surviving members, to follow this extraordinary group to the beaches of Normandy,  battlefields of Italy and Holland, and finally to Terezin concentration camp, where some came face to face with the skeletal, living remains of their own parents.

And after all the battles, the deprivations, the re-inventions of themselves, they faced an even bigger battle after the war was over. These men, without whom D-Day could have gone on as scheduled, are forced to fight Parliment to become citizens of the country they so honorably served. Of all the challenges they faced, and all the odds against them, this was perhaps the most despicable of all.

"The Pawnbroker" with Rod Steiger (1965)

Very few actors ever hone their craft to the knife’s edge the way Rod Steiger did. Bogart, DeNiro, even Denzel Washington are all recognizable as themselves in most films. Steiger was on a par with Frederic March, another actor with that chameleon like quality which enabled the viewer to suddenly go, “Hey, isn’t that (insert name here)?” half way through a film, and still not be sure it was until the final credits rolled. Walter Huston had that same magic. He was tall, about 6’2”, yet he is always remembered as the wizened little miner in “Treasure of the Sierra Madres.” A giant of an actor, he just played it small.

Rod Steiger’s credits include the corrupt union boss in “On the Waterfront”, the Police Chief in “In the Heat of the Night” (it took him a year to stop chewing gum after that film), the disgruntled juror forced to face his own prejudice in “Twelve Angry Men” and a score of other roles. But more than any other role, his performance in “The Pawnbroker” was possibly his most searing as he portrays a man who has lost his wife and children to the the Nazi’s, along with the ability to love or even feel.

His assistant in the shop wants to learn to be a businessman, just like his boss. He even asks the Pawnbroker to teach him how to be a Jew- to make money- to share his secrets. The Pawnbrokers scathing reply is in the clip below.

There is always a steady succession of people who are down on their luck who come to the shop to pawn the most trivial of their possessions in order to survive. The Pawnbroker dispassionately serves their needs, all the while cursing his own past and the misery of the world about him. He has a partnership with the local crime boss, who used the pawnshop to “launder” the profits he makes from dealing drugs and pimping prostitutes. The Pawnbroker seems indifferent to the misey which supplies the money he lives upon.

Constantly plagued by memories of the concentration camp, he inhabits a world filled with flashbacks to the most horrifying moments of his wartime ordeal. One of those memories involves being forced to look into the building where the female prisoners are forced to work as sex slaves. One of the women he sees is his own wife. When one of the local working girls comes to him with something to pawn she offers him sex in addition to the trade as a way of getting more money.

The Pawnbroker finds himself in a moral dilemma; haunted by the memory of his wife’s ordeal and at the same time facilitating the misery of others in his present day world. He goes to see the crime boss, stating that he did not know where the money came from. The boss just laughs at him and asks him the same question Jews the world over posed to the German people at the end of the war. “How could you not have known?”

In the meantime his assistant has taken the Pawnbroker at his word that money is all that matters if you want to get ahead in the world. You must have it at any cost. So, he decides to help some local hoods rob the pawnshop, where the Pawnbroker keeps some of the laundered money from the crime boss. There is to be no killing. That’s the plan.

But in the end there is always killing. Nobody gets out alive, even if they sometimes are still walking and breathing. This is an intense and moving drama about the human condition and the lines we draw to identify ourselves; and others; as good or evil. And, sometimes we find that they are both just different sides of the same coin.

With a great script from a great book, directed by Sidney Pollack and filmed in a gritty New York City, this film makes good use of the soundtrack by Quincy Jones as it navigates the question of morality which we all must face at one time or another; “Am I a good person; or a bad one?”

"You Nazty Spy" with The Three Stooges (1940)

Charlie Chaplin always gets the credit for satirizing Adolph Hitler in his film “The Great Dictator”, particularly the scene in which he does a ballet with a globe. We were on the verge of war with Germany when his film was released, but before the war even began, there were others who saw the insanity unfolding in Europe, and lampooned it for what it represented. There were very few who were willing to tackle the “elephant in the room” before the war began. Even the Marx Brothers; who were Jewish; didn’t tackle Hitler with “Duck Soup” until after the war began. No one did; except for the Three Stooges.

In this, one of the most outrageously funny anti-Nazi films, the 3 Stooges, who; just like the Marx Brothers, were Jewish; fight the battle for freedom with one of the best weapons known to mankind; ridicule. When seen in the light of humor, all bullies look small and foolish. When the spotlight of humanity is cast upon them, they shrink from the large ogres which they would have us believe them to be, becoming objects of mirth instead.

This is great political satire from the legendary Kings of Slapstick.

____________________________________________________________

New York City Police Officer Helps Homeless Man

Any words here would be superfluous.

Follow Up - The Nazi Manhole Mystery

Following up on yesterday's post concerning the Nazi Manhole Mystery, the sewer lid seems to have originated here in the United States. Apparently there was a Concord Foundry which cast iron in the county years ago. These lids were made in the late 1930's and have been discovered before in Concord as well as Kannapolis. .

I spoke with Mr. Slough at the Department of Public Works in Kannapolis. He was aware of these covers from some of his co-workers who had been working in the Department long before he arrived. As they are found, they are removed.

Now, a little background. In the 1930's the United States was reeling from the effects of the Great Depression. Even in New York there was a Nazi Party that gathered at Madison Square Garden to exercise their Right of Freedom of Speech in an effort to muzzle the rest of us. Apparently this effort was not confined to New York.

Obviously, someone in Concord was sympathetic enough to the National Socialist Movement (remember Nazi is an acronym for this) to stamp the Nazi logo on the cast iron sewer lids being produced under their name. Again, this is free speech. Sometime after 1940 installation of these lids seems to have come to a halt. This makes me think that,and I am only surmising this, that the owners probably had a change of heart after the beginning of the Second World War in December of 1941. Perhaps they had a child who was drafted...

I could go on and try to find out who these people were etc. But what would be the point? I doubt that this was the work of a serious Aryan Nation style group. Just some working class people, caught up in hard times, who bought into a strategy that turned out to be a Hell on Earth.