By Justin Golec
There is no “us vs. them,” according to a German actor who visited Towson University Thursday night.
Roger Grunwald spoke on the history of the “Mischlinge,” the German half-Jews who served under Hitler’s army during World War II. Grunwald compared the tension between the Mischlinge and full-blooded Jews to that of the current racial issues going on in Baltimore.
“Throughout history, we’ve been taught this notion of ‘us vs. them,’” Grunwald said. “What’s going on today is no different. It’s a fabric of our society.”
Many assimilated German-Jews, Grunwald said, looked at their full-blood Jewish brethren in a negative light.
“The ones who had already assimilated into German culture did not want to give up everything they felt they worked so hard for,” Grunwald said. “They were so afraid of being cast out by Germany that they had no choice but to show hate and vitriol.”
According to Grunwald, there were over 150,000 German-Jews that served under Hitler during World War II, with several thousand full-blooded Jews that enlisted as well. Although not all of these soldiers served on the battlefield, Grunwald said the ones who did were accepted by their German comrades.
“German soldiers respected the Mischlinge because they knew those soldiers had their backs,” Grunwald said. “They looked past the fact that those soldiers were Jewish and respected them as good and loyal soldiers.”
Most of the Mischlinge who fought and killed their fellow Jews, Grunwald said, often did express remorse once the war was over and even tried to escape what they did. However, most of these soldiers were not aware of the extent of the killings until it was too late.
“A lot of these people had no idea how bad things really were during the war,” Grunwald said. “Some of them moved to Israel and others went into hiding in Germany.”
Grunwald also performed his one-man play “The Mitzvah,” which gives a detailed look at the character of Christoph Rosenberg, a German half-Jew who served as an officer in Hitler’s army.
Grunwald plays two additional characters: Schmuel, a Polish Jew whose family was murdered by the Nazis, and The Chorus, a Jewish-American comedian who provides commentary on the events of the play. Grunwald drew inspiration for the play from his late mother, who was an Auschwitz survivor.
His mother, Grunwald said, was an assimilated German-Jew who considered herself German first and Jewish second. Despite being sent to Auschwitz and enduring extreme prejudice during the Holocaust, Grunwald said his mother kept a bias against those of color for the remainder of her life, for reasons he has yet to figure out.
“I used to wonder how someone who went through Auschwitz could ever be prejudiced against any type of person,” Grunwald said. “I’ve learned to stop questioning it and accept that I’ll never quite know the answer.”
Grunwald ended the evening by saying that because humans all have some sort of mixed ancestry, we should all be considered a Mischling.
“There is no ‘us’ and ‘them,’” Grunwald said. “There never was.”