Unlikely Warrior: A Jewish Soldier in Hitler's Army

Young Adult/Adult Non-Fiction

G/A  Rauch, Georg.  Unlikely Warrior: A Jewish Soldier in Hitler’s Army. FSG, 2015. 352p. 978-0-3743-0142-2.  17.99.

Georg Rauch was 19 in 1943 when he was drafted into the German Army. Even though his mother was anti-Hitler (and actively hiding Jews in the family attic) and the government knew he was a ¼ quarter Jewish, he had no choice but to join. Good with electronics, he was assigned to be on a communications squad on the Russian front. After 9 months on the front in Russia and Romania, Georg was captured. He spent the next almost year of his life, moving between POW camps and hospitals, before finally making his way back to Vienna. His memoir gives harrowing detail of all the suffering he went through and includes letters that he wrote to his family from Russia during the war. It provides an interesting and little known perspective from a German soldier not invested in the war, but forced to participate and the horrors of the battle in Russia. Loren Spector, LAPL, Memorial Branch