Daily Alert Archives

A Jew in an SS Uniform

(Israel Hayom) Akiva Bigman - William Zeev Brickman, a professor of education and an American spy, was born in 1913 in Manhattan into an Orthodox Jewish family. His knowledge of Yiddish from home and knack for languages allowed him to develop great expertise in a number of languages. He got his doctorate in German, Latin, and education during the 1930s. In 1943, he was drafted into the air force as a historian and German-language expert. In late 1944, following the Allied invasion of northern France, Brickman was drafted to the Office of Strategic Services, the U.S. intelligence agency that would later become the CIA. Brickman's unit was to be stationed inside Germany, behind enemy lines, in the twilight of the Third Reich. Their objective: to capture senior SS officers that tried to escape and evade capture. Brickman said his unit offered Nazi officers a way out of the country, interrogated them, and then foiled their escape plans. German-speaking U.S. agents would visit bars that Nazi officers were known to frequent. After giving the appearance they had been drinking, the agents would brag about how they could help those who had the money to flee the country for South America. Those who asked for help would be sent to Brickman, who was dressed in SS fatigues with the insignia of a military rank higher than that of his visitor. Brickman would investigate the officer over his actions in the war and the places where he had served, before sending him on to a rendezvous point on the Czechoslovakian border, where OSS officers would transfer them to allied prisons.
2019-06-21 00:00:00
Full Article