Siegmund Spiegel in uniform

Siegmund Spiegel

Siegmund Spiegel who was born in Gera, Germany remembers hearing Nazi Brown-shirts walking past his home singing: "When Jewish blood spills off the knife then things will be better."

He was no exception to the Selective Service Act, and was thrilled to be drafted into the United States Army six months after arriving in New York in 1940. He was sent to Georgia for infantry training and championed by legendary First Infantry Division Generals Terry Allen and Theodore Roosevelt Jr., who arranged a last-minute naturalization hearing to make him a citizen before the division shipped off for North Africa.

After his division arrived in Casablanca, he was called on to interrogate newly-captured members of Rommel's Africa Korps who marveled at the young American soldier interrogating them in perfect German. It was a task that he delighted in performing. Nicknamed, "Citizen Spiegel", he saw combat on three continents before being seriously wounded in Normandy. Like many of the profiled veterans, he left Germany alone and lost his parents to the Nazis.