Gefreiter Helmut Krüger: The War Hero Sent to a Forced Labor Camp

Helmut Krüger was a wonderful friend. Throughout 1994-1996, when I was studying German in Berlin and conducting my research that led to my book, “Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers,” I often met with Krüger to discuss my findings and to review my documents. He was one of the first so-called “half-Jews” I met and documented in my research since he had just written a book called “The Half-Star: Life as a German-Jewish Mischling in the Third Reich” (Der Halbe Stern. Leben als deutsch-jüdischer Mischling im Dritten Reich). It was an autobiographical book documenting his trials and tribulations under Adolf Hitler as a man with a Jewish mother. Luckily for me, more than ten other “Mischlinge” had read his book and written him, giving me a great start to documenting more of “Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers.” 

Krüger loved life. He was witty, full of passion and not afraid to call a spade a spade. People loved being around him. Saddened that people throughout Germany, and the world for that matter, did not recognized the plight of Jewish “Mischlinge,” he blames Jewish organizations for failing to give adequate attention to people who were persecuted by Hitler during the Holocaust for being of partial Jewish descent. He wanted people to learn from the past, but feared they rarely listen unless they are directly affected. Putting his money where his mouth is, he petitioned the city of Berlin to put up a plaque up at the Train Station in Berlin near Charlottenburg castle where Mischlinge were deported to Organization Todt camps in 1944 to commemorate their pain and suffering. He knew first-hand about this place because it was where the Nazis deported him and his brother in 1944. 

Krüger was born on 20 January 1913 in Mannheim to a Jewish mother, Camilla Davidson, and an “Aryan” father, Max Krüger. He had a normal upbringing, going to school and playing with neighborhood friends. He was basically raised as an atheist because his parents viewed their respective religions, Christianity and Judaism, as full of myths and inhumane beliefs (i.e., women are “unclean,” unbelievers go to Hell, Jews are the Chosen People, Jesus’ human sacrifice was the answer for humanity, etc.) His father, Max, ran a theatre in Freiburg and enjoyed the performing arts. 

As the Nazis rose in power, Krüger joined the Communist Party in 1930 at the age of 17 to fight Hitler’s thugs who roamed the streets spouting anti-Semitism. Krüger often engaged in street brawls with the Brownshirts as he felt they were one of the biggest dangers to Germany’s future. Also, during this time Krüger’s mother dropped her membership at the local Jewish Community Center, thinking this would prevent some of the rising anti-Semitism from affecting her family. 

As the Nazis continued to rise to prominence in Germany, Krüger was often called a “dirty Jew” in the streets and threatened with violence. His mother was often spat on and ridiculed as a “Jewish slut” who had married a good “Aryan” man and produced “bastardized mongrel” children.

Even with this harassment, Krüger continued to go to school, where he excelled in mathematics and enjoyed engineering (later he would become an engineer and built many of the bridges throughout Berlin). However, when Hitler came to power in 1933, his studies were limited due to his Jewish heritage. Also, during this time, the Nazis raided Krüger’s home due to his anti-Nazi activities, broke windows, vandalized furniture and arrested him and his brother, Answald. They were released because they had left the Communist Party by then. Nonetheless, Krüger’s father lost his job because he had married a Jew and the family fell on hard times. Krüger’s mother took a further step and converted to Protestantism, hoping that it might protect her family.

In 1935, thinking that military service might help the family, Krüger volunteered for the army. “People would see that the family had a son in the Wehrmacht and leave us alone,” Krüger said explaining why he joined the German army. When he gave his oath to Hitler and the Third Reich, as all German soldiers did, he put his right hand up, and then crossed the fingers of his left hand down by his waist nullifying the oath, at least in his own mind. He joined Reserve Battalion 15 in Berlin and grew to enjoy military life and his comrades. Even though his army buddies knew about his Jewish heritage, they treated him with respect as an equal. His superiors felt this ancestry was unfortunate because he showed strength as a military leader and they wanted to promote him but were prohibited because of his Jewish mother. After boot camp, he continued his university studies as best he could and fulfilled his obligations as a reservist on weekends, during school breaks and in the summer. 

As the family hardships continued, Camilla Krüger continued her quest to help the family and filed for divorce, thinking this would help her family if the breadwinner was not strapped down by a Jewish wife. Her husband felt that this might be a wise tactic, since leaving the Jewish Community Center and converting to Christianity had not helped them much. Camilla and Max Krüger’s parents continued to live together after the divorce, but Max could honestly tell people he no longer had a Jewish wife.

On November 9-10, 1938, Krüger witnessed the Reichskristallnacht pogrom, watching Nazis run through the streets of Berlin beating up Jews and destroying Jewish stores. His future turned black. 

Even though the Nazis prohibited “Mischlinge” from dating “Aryans,” Krüger did so anyway and was quite a hit with the ladies. In late 1938, he and Hertha Eckhardt became engaged. Her family did not seem to care that she was dating a “Mischlinge,” although her brother was in the SS and a personal bodyguard for the head of the German Labor Front, Robert Ley. The family also learned that Krüger’s uncle, Hermann Krüger, was a high-ranking Nazi Party member. So, in 1939, Krüger applied to the government to get special permission to marry Hertha. It was quickly denied.

In August 1939, Krüger and his comrades were mobilized with the 7th Infantry Regiment and sent to the border with Poland. Unbeknownst to them, they were headed to war and going to fight the Poles. When the invasion started on 1 September 1939, Krüger’s unit marched toward Warsaw pursuing the fleeing Polish army. He witnessed bombed-out Polish towns and villages and dead Polish soldiers and civilians, but he did not engage in much combat on this drive towards the Polish capital. One day, he did witness several fellow soldiers vandalizing a synagogue, but then he reminded them that they were in a house of God, and surprisingly, they stopped their dishonorable actions and left. 

Throughout the campaign, there was great excitement amongst his comrades about the reunification of Germany. Poland had split Germany in two at the end of WWI with the Versailles treaty with the Danzig Corregidor. And winning battles and glory was something Krüger and his comrades took much joy in. For Krüger’s outstanding service and leadership, his commanders promoted him to Gefretier (lance corporal). Krüger joked that he had then reached the same rank as the “great warrior” of the “German Reich Adolf Hitler, had during World War I.” Krüger now became a squad leader in charge of a dozen men.

After the Polish campaign, his unit was sent to the border with France in January 1940, expecting to be attacked by the British and French. It was called the Phony War because they were just there “holding” their lines across the border for months. However, with the buildup of forces going on all around them, Krüger knew they would soon invade. When Krüger turned 27, all the men in his unit threw him a surprise birthday party and declared he was the most popular guy in the unit—he was strong, funny, fair, and overall, a great leader. 

However, it was not all fun and games, and in May, Krüger’s outfit crossed the French border and attacked. As a soldier, he always had Nazi expressions ringing in his ears, such as Jews are “flat-footed cowards.” “By some dumb logic, I felt I had to prove them wrong.” So, Krüger volunteered for dangerous missions. He did so well during combat that his officers decorated him with the Iron Cross Second Class for bravery beyond the call of duty. Krüger hoped this decoration might protect his mother.

In the lull of battle, after fighting bravely against the French, Krüger often wondered if he could escape to the Allies and leave the Third Reich behind. However, he did not want to endanger his siblings and mother, so he didn’t desert. One man in his unit actually did run over to the French. After Germany defeated France, Nazi authorities found this man and executed him for desertion, making Krüger and his comrades watch as he was shot by a firing squad. Krüger felt lucky he had not tried to do the same thing.

After the fall of France, a few comrades started disappearing from Krüger’s unit. He later discovered that they were “Mischlinge” and that Hitler had issued a decree that “half-Jewish” soldiers were no longer allowed to serve the German Reich. Due to this revelation, Krüger ascertained that his commander did not know about his ancestry, because no one called him to the duty hut and discharged him—so, he kept his mouth shut. His silence was doubly warranted because he had learned that when the Gestapo had come to arrest his mother, they saw a photo of him with his Iron Cross prominently displayed in the living room. They left in embarrassment after his courageous mother asked the SS-men, “How can you arrest a mother of a brave soldier?” 

However, right before the invasion of Russia in June 1941, Krüger’s secret was discovered by his company commander. Lieutenant Teuke, a SA-man and Nazi Party member, did all he could to retain Krüger because he liked him and valued him as a soldier, but the racial laws were the racial laws and Krüger was discharged. Krüger did not want to leave the military because he loved his buddies and felt secure in the ranks. 

Then Krüger received an odd bit of luck. His unit was at the spearhead of units fighting toward Moscow in the winter of 1941, and almost his entire outfit, including Teuke, died trying to capture Russia’s capital. “All my comrades are now fertilizer in the battlefields that surround that great Soviet city,” Krüger said shaking his head. Germany suffered 3,250,000 combat deaths during WWII. Out of this number, 2,300,000 of these KIAs happened in Russia. 

His brother, Answald, was also discharged from the Wehrmacht, although a little later than Helmut, and ended up serving a few months in Russia during the time of amazing victories in the summer of 1941. He, too, had received the Iron Cross Second Class and was disappointed to leave his comrades from the 800th Brandenburg Regiment. He returned home in September 1941. By this time, Mama Krüger had two large photographs of sons wearing German uniforms adorned with the large, black and silver Iron Cross. She was the mother of two war heroes. 

After his discharge, Krüger returned to his studies and was able to become an engineer. The German authorities then sent him to Brest, France, where he actually constructed U-Boat bunkers. Sadly, many of his construction workers were Jewish forced laborers and Krüger felt horrible having to use them to complete his projects. One day, when he went to work, the discovered they had disappeared, having been deported to some unknown designation. 

Krüger tried again to marry Hertha, citing his Iron Cross as proof of his Germanness. The authorities once again refused to grant permission and he continued to live with Hertha “in sin.” In November 1942, Hertha gave birth to their first child, a baby girl. Krüger said, “It was such a happy moment in my life because everything else had been so shitty, but, I still felt the walls coming in on me because we could not claim in the papers I was the father because I was Jewish. I could not go to the hospital and my fiancée had to claim the child had resulted with her sleeping with an SS-man during a one-night-stand.” One of the most difficult things Krüger ever had to do was walk away from the hospital unable to claim his daughter. After his fiancée was discharged from the hospital, Krüger took her and their “quarter-Jewish” daughter to the village of Deutsch Evern outside of Berlin to live with his Nazi Party uncle, Hermann Krüger. 

Krüger and his brother Answald also took their Jewish mother away from Berlin and secretly moved her to an apartment at Wannsee so the authorities would not be able to track her down. The effort proved to be futile. In February 1944, the Gestapo eventually found her and picked her up for deportation. When Krüger and his brother found out, they rushed to Grosse Hamburger Stra?e where the Gestapo had incarcerated her with many other Jews awaiting trains to take them to the East. The Krüger brothers waited outside the building in protest. They could see their mother through one of the windows with tears streaming down her face. While waiting, Krüger, his brother Answald, and their sister Brigitte brought their mother some extra cloth and food, which they were able to get the guards to deliver before her “journey.” One of the guards was not going to help until Krüger and Answald both showed him their Iron Crosses and asked, “Where is your Iron Cross?” When the man admitted he did not have one, they insisted he take the items to a mother of two warrior sons. Shamed, he complied with their request. Sadly, the Krüger children did not know where their mother was being deported and nobody told them anything at the Gestapo office. In a few days, Camilla Krüger would find herself offloaded at the concentration camp, Theresienstadt. 

After her deportation, Krüger and his brother went to the SS headquarters in Berlin to see if they could obtain the release of their mother. They wore their Iron Crosses and tried to talk to as many of the bureaucrats as they could. Strangely, while there they met Adolf Eichmann’s deputy, SS-Major Rolf Günther. When they explained their situation and said they were willing to return to the Wehrmacht to protect their mother, Günther replied in a hateful manner, “Every criminal is courageous,” and left them standing there. Even so, Helmut and Answald Krüger tried to re-enlist at several Wehrmacht offices, but were categorically declined. 

“We both were traumatized that our military service didn’t protect her. We felt alone. We just wanted to survive with our family intact,” Krüger said. 

Since the Brandenbug unit in which Answald had served had become an SS outfit, Answald decided to go with his brother to visit former comrades to see if they could help. Many of them, now SS-men, were horrified by how Answald’s mother had been treated and offered to help them. This unit was stationed near the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, and on their trip Krüger and his brother witnessed the inmates there. Krüger was shocked seeing prisoners working in striped clothes doing horrendous labor. Many of Answald’s comrades, now all SS-men, were actually sympathetic, but few were willing or able to help them. They left demoralized.

In the fall of 1944, Krüger’s uncle, Hermann, finally kicked him, Hertha, and their daughter out of his house. He no longer wanted to house Jewish people. Krüger returned to Berlin and found a pastor who secretly married him and Hertha in the Swedish Lutheran church. They thought the marriage might protect Krüger.

It was not to be so. In January 1945, the Nazis captured Krüger and his brother Answald and deported them to an Organization Todt forced labor camp. Krüger and his brother traveled in normal passenger trains with a few hundred other “Jewish Mischlinge,” almost all Wehrmacht veterans, to the Miltitz-Roitschen encampment near Meissen/Saxony. A large barbed-wire fence enclosed the camp and Ukrainian guards roamed the area with menacing German shepherd dogs. The Nazis immediately put them on work details constructing buildings for processing synthetic gasoline. In February, the camp authorities transferred Krüger and the other inmates to Coswig, near Dresden, where they worked alongside Russian and Polish POWs. From February 13-15, Krüger witnessed the fire-bombing of Dresden which killed 35,000 civilians. After the bombing, he and his fellow workers had to clear the city streets and bury the charbroiled bodies. The corpses looked like blackened figures from Pompeii and fell apart as the inmates placed them in mass graves. He never forgot picking up a small boy, and the head falling off the body and rolling down the curved cobblestone street into a sewage drain. Krüger thought, “What did this innocent boy do to deserve this? This fucking sucks.” Another time, they had to clean out a bunker and approximately ten bodies had boiled and somewhat melted together. “It was like a soup of bodies that had mixed their flesh together like jelly.” He hated the fact that the Allies bombed German cities, but accepted it knowing this strategy would help end the war sooner. 

Laboring away in the Organization Todt camps, Krüger noticed the guards were getting progressively more brutal and realized that time was running out. Consequently, he and several other army veterans planned to break out, and in March, they did so successfully. Krüger returned to Berlin by foot, finding several people along the roads back to the capital willing to give him food and assistance. He said he was a refugee from the bombing of Dresden, and people didn’t ask too many questions. Once in Berlin, he obtained false documents from an anti-Nazi doctor whom he knew, claiming he was an injured soldier. A few days later, he returned to the pastor who had married him and his wife, and the minister prepared documents that detailed Krüger’s plight as a “Mischling” and a Nazi victim in case he fell into Russian or American hands. 

Eventually, Krüger made it back to Deutsch Evern with his wife and daughter. His Nazi relatives, realizing they were going to lose the war, were only too happy to bring Krüger back into their home knowing they would need his support when the war ended. As the Allies took over the town, one of Krüger’s first acts was to go to the outskirts of town and remove the large sign displayed there that read “Jews Not Allowed” and throw it into a ditch. He remembered saying under his breath, “Fuck you, Hitler.” 

Krüger lost at least nine relatives in the death camps, including his mother’s brothers, Nati and Julius Davidson, who perished along with their entire families. He also knew two Jewish sisters who lived in his apartment complex that committed suicide because of Nazi extermination of the Jews under Hitler. “But for me, that information was kept secret and besides, we had other worries. I think even if I’d heard anything about it [systematic extermination], I wouldn’t have believed it,” Krüger said. Even though his mother had been deported to a concentration camp, and he to a forced labor camp, Krüger still did not believe in 1945 that Hitler had decided to exterminate the entire Jewish race. That was just too fantastic to believe. He now knows that “half-Jews” would have been killed had the war continued, which he had started to feel at the end of his own time in the labor camp. 

Several months after the war ended, Krüger found out that Russian troops had liberated his mother and she had returned to Berlin. His reunion with her in late 1945 was one of the happiest days of his life. However, she was a broken woman. The Nazi era had aged her terribly and she died nine years later. Although she had converted to Christianity, the Jewish community allowed Krüger and his siblings to bury her urn with that of her mother in the Jewish cemetery in Freiburg, Germany. 

After the war, Krüger finished his education and then entered the work force as an engineer. He wanted to rebuild Germany, and there was a lot of work to be done. In 1955, he applied for compensation from the government for his persecution. The authorities denied his claim. The officials did not know how he could have served in the Wehrmacht as a “half-Jew” and did not think he suffered that much. Krüger commented that “people have little knowledge about half-Jews and their plight during the Third Reich. They don’t care about us half-breeds. We’re outcasts and will always be stuck between two chairs. For the Jews, we are traitors. For the Germans, we were just soldiers like everyone else. We were victims, but we also helped the Third Reich. We lost relatives, but we also killed enemy soldiers in Poland and France who came from democratic countries and were fighting for freedom. We served our nation bravely as heroes against our enemies, but we took an oath to Hitler while in that service. Thinking of all these situations can make you crazy.” Krüger’s frustration is common among “Mischlinge.” They feel history has excluded them.

Krüger’s story shows one how gray the history of the Third Reich was. He found support from good army comrades, sympathetic SS-men, brave anti-Nazis, and fellow “Mischlinge” Wehrmacht personnel. His survival, and the survival of his siblings and mother, happened when 6 million Jews were exterminated, nine of whom were Krüger’s uncles and cousins. And ironically, the survival of the Krüger brothers was possible because they were “half-Jewish.” Their former military units entered Russia and never came back. In other words, their “Aryan” comrades had the honor to fight the Soviet Union and die in such major battles as Demyansk, Kholm, Stalingrad, Kursk and Leningrad, just to name a few, while the Krüger brothers had the “dishonor” to go home, study and avoid battle. As a result, they survived, as most “half-Jews” did, at a higher percentage, than their “Aryan” comrades who went off to war. The era of the Third Reich was full of paradoxes.

While researching my book, Krüger’s told me, “Bryan, maybe through you, people will find out the truth about us half-breeds.” In 1994, I told him I would not forget his pain and do my best to document it. While I was at Yale in 1995 and 1996, he would call me up and get status reports on my research. While at Cambridge, he would continue and get updates on what I had discovered from 1997-1999. He called me his honorary “American-grandson,” and often told me to hurry up with my book, because he did not have long to live. 

In 2002, I completed my Ph.D. and “Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers” was being translated into German. Krüger called me and said, “Bryan, hurry up with the book already—ten years is enough. As you know, I had stomach cancer and they removed my entire stomach. Living without that organ makes life difficult and I do not have much longer. Let me know what you have found out in print, my boy.” 

I was able to get an advance copy of my German translation in 2003 and send it to him. After reading it, he called me and said, “Now my friend, I can die truly in peace. There is finally a book out there that documents what it was like for us half-Jews during the Third Reich, especially us poor schmucks who had to serve that asshole called Hitler. You are a true friend and good historian. I am proud of you, on. This is probably the last time we will talk for I am dying. I am not sacred of death since I have looked him in the eye quite often during life. There is nothing after death since there is no God. I am happy that I might live on through my children and in the few books you will write.” I thanked my friend from the bottom of my heart and told him how grateful I was for his friendship and support throughout the years. He died a few weeks later.

For more about Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers, see my books:

https://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Jewish-Soldiers-Descent-Military/dp/0700613587

https://www.amazon.com/Lives-Hitlers-Jewish-Soldiers-Descent/dp/070062340X/ref=pd_lpo_14_img_0/142-4802893-8935813?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=070062340X&pd_rd_r=369cc36a-3671-4ee1-bf4c-6a9f5a0d1da6&pd_rd_w=3GKO2&pd_rd_wg=qjCAE&pf_rd_p=7b36d496-f366-4631-94d3-61b87b52511b&pf_rd_r=678A5QZ3EPQM39AG688X&psc=1&refRID=678A5QZ3EPQM39AG688X