Selected Recordings & Source Material

Media Archive

A curated collection of self-hosted videos, interviews, lectures, audio, images and documents selected for public viewing.

7Published archive items

video

C-Span Presentation on the Rescue of Rebbe Schneersohn

In this C-SPAN Book TV presentation, historian Bryan Mark Rigg discusses the remarkable World War II rescue of Rabbi Joseph Isaac Schneersohn, the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, from Nazi-occupied Poland. Rigg first explains his own path into Jewish and German military history before introducing the origins and beliefs of the Lubavitch movement and the Rebbe’s importance to his followers. He then reconstructs the German invasion and bombardment of Poland, the Rebbe’s entrapment in Warsaw, and the unlikely international effort that brought American officials, German military intelligence, and officers of Jewish ancestry into the effort to save him. The presentation is based on extensive archival research, interviews, photographs, and documents gathered for Rigg’s book Rescued from the Reich.

1,022.2 MBFull record ↗

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BBC Production of Hitler's Jewish Soldiers

This BBC documentary investigates the thousands of German soldiers whom Nazi racial law classified as having Jewish ancestry, despite many identifying culturally and religiously as Christian and German. Beginning with the rise of Nazi antisemitism and the Nuremberg Laws, the program traces how “Mischlinge”—people classified as half- or quarter-Jewish—were simultaneously persecuted by the regime and drafted into its armed forces. Through testimony and Bryan Mark Rigg’s research, the film examines soldiers such as Werner Goldberg, Fritz Steinwasser, Rolf von Suda and others, as well as senior officers who received special exemptions or declarations of “German blood.” It follows their experiences through combat, deportations of relatives, forced labor, concealment, the Holocaust, and the aftermath of the war, asking how individuals navigated patriotism, coercion, survival, and identity under an inherently contradictory racial system.

694.9 MBFull record ↗

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C-Span Hitler's Jewish Soldiers

In this C-SPAN Book TV lecture, Bryan Mark Rigg presents the research behind Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers, his study of men of Jewish descent who served in the German armed forces during the Third Reich. Rigg explains how he discovered the subject, located hundreds of veterans, and assembled thousands of documents, photographs, and hours of recorded testimony. He discusses Nazi racial categories, Hitler’s exemptions and “German blood” declarations, prominent military figures such as Erhard Milch, the experiences of ordinary half- and quarter-Jewish soldiers, and the ways military service sometimes helped protect relatives from persecution. The lecture concludes with a detailed audience question-and-answer session addressing motivation, identity, the Holocaust, disputed ancestry claims, military service as survival, and Rigg’s subsequent research into the rescue of Lubavitcher Rebbe Joseph Isaac Schneersohn.

2.7 GBFull record ↗

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Die Soldaten Mit Dem Halben Stern Wdr

This German-language documentary tells the largely overlooked stories of men classified by the Nazi regime as Jewish “Mischlinge” who nevertheless served in the Wehrmacht during World War II. The film follows Bryan Mark Rigg’s research across Germany as he locates aging veterans, family records, military documents, photographs, and personal testimony that reveal lives divided between German identity and Nazi racial persecution. Veterans describe discovering their Jewish ancestry, concealing it from authorities, receiving military decorations, seeking exemptions, attempting to protect Jewish parents, witnessing persecution and mass killing, and struggling with their identities after the war. The documentary also places their experiences in the longer history of German-Jewish patriotism, including Jewish military service in World War I, while examining the contradictions between Nazi racial ideology and the realities of the German military.

1.5 GBFull record ↗

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Die Soldater Mit Halben Strn

This WDR documentary, Die Soldaten mit dem halben Stern (“The Soldiers with the Half Star”), examines German soldiers with Jewish ancestry who lived under the racial contradictions of the Third Reich. It follows Bryan Mark Rigg’s effort to recover their stories through hundreds of interviews and thousands of surviving records, beginning with the chance encounter that led him to investigate the subject. Former soldiers describe hiding their ancestry, serving at the front, receiving decorations, seeking Hitler’s special exemptions, witnessing persecution, and hoping that military service might protect themselves or their Jewish relatives. The film combines these personal accounts with the history of the Nuremberg Laws, German-Jewish military tradition, World War I service, antisemitism, deportation, forced labor, and the Holocaust to explore how questions of identity and survival persisted long after the war ended.

726.3 MBFull record ↗

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Hide In Plain Sight

This Dateline NBC report, presented by Josh Mankiewicz, explores the remarkable experiences of Germans and other Europeans of Jewish descent who survived Nazi persecution while serving or working inside the German military. Drawing heavily on Bryan Mark Rigg’s research for Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers, the segment examines Nazi classifications of half- and quarter-Jews, Rigg’s estimate of their presence in the armed forces, Hitler’s special racial exemptions, and the different reasons men remained in uniform—from compulsory service and German patriotism to concealment and sheer survival. Interviews with veterans including Hansgert Falkenberg, Arno Spitz, Friedemann Lichtwitz and Nehemia Verma illustrate the fear of discovery, attempts to protect family members, military service, forced labor, imprisonment, and the moral complexities these survivors confronted afterward.

3.8 GBFull record ↗

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Hitler's Jewish Soldiers Price Documentary

This documentary examines the extraordinary and deeply contradictory experiences of Germans with Jewish ancestry who served in Hitler’s armed forces during World War II. Through archival material, historical analysis by Bryan Mark Rigg, and firsthand testimony from veterans including Werner Goldberg, Hansgert Falkenberg, Arno Spitz, and Helmut Kopp, the film explores Nazi racial classifications, the Nuremberg Laws, military exemptions, concealment of Jewish ancestry, and the difficult choices these men faced between military service, persecution, and survival. It also follows soldiers who attempted to protect Jewish relatives, witnessed aspects of Nazi persecution, or survived by remaining inside the very military system that threatened their families. The documentary ultimately explores questions of identity, loyalty, survival, complicity, and the contradictions within Nazi racial policy.

891.5 MBFull record ↗