Rescued From The Reich: How One Of Hitler’s Soldiers Saved The Lubavitcher Rebbe

Bryan Mark Rigg, Yale University Press, 2004

This is one of my most interesting recent lighter reads. The author, an academic at Southern Methodist University, became fascinated with what must qualify as the most unusual rescue story of the Second World War – the rescue of Rabbi I.J Schneersohn and his entourage in 1940 from the ruins of Warsaw. The book, which is extremely well sourced, reveals a plan that took shape in the USA, involving lawyers, politicians, and Lubavitch activists, which resulted in a truly astonishing sequence of events. Most amazing of all, however, is the fact that the rescue was actually conducted by a Wehrmacht officer, Ernst Bloch, who himself had a Jewish father. The final section of the study describes the attitude of the Rebbe to rescue efforts once he had arrived in the USA. The most interesting part is Rigg’s comparison of the attitude towards the Holocaust of the Rebbe and his successor, Rabbi M.M. Schneersohn. A great read.

Rescued From The Reich