Bryan Mark Rigg, author of Hitler's Jewish Soldiers and Rescued From The Reich: How One Of Hitler's Soldiers Rescued The Lubavitcher Rebbe has been profiled in the Jerusalem Post:
"Shutting up about it" was what Rigg's great-grandparents had done when they moved to America from Germany. His paternal grandmother was Jewish, but told no one. Rigg discovered the family secret during his research in Germany. It would lead him to a brief period of study at the Ohr Somayach yeshiva in Jerusalem, as well as a later experience in the military-style Marva program.
Part of his research led him to the extraordinary story of how an "Aryanized" Jewish soldier smuggled Lubavitcher Rebbe Joseph Schneerson to America, a tale which Rigg relates in his latest book, Rescued from the Reich: How One of Hitler's Soldiers Saved the Lubavitcher Rebbe.
One of the books recommended to Rigg during his period of self-discovery was As a Driven Leaf by Milton Steinberg – so when he later studied under Steinberg's son Jonathan at Cambridge, Rigg took it as a sign that his research was meant to be.
It wasn't easy, however. Rigg had so little money to spend on his work in Germany that he often slept in train stations and public parks so he could afford his treks across the country. In some cases, he succeeded in finding and interviewing subjects only weeks before their deaths.
Ultimately, though, Rigg recorded about 400 interviews and documented some 1,700 half- or quarter-Jewish soldiers still living in Germany. His extensive findings, which earned him a PhD from Cambridge, are housed in Germany's national military archive.
Read it all here.