Skip to content

Calendar

Events in December 2019–February 2020

  • - Hanukkah Party
    Hanukkah Party

    Category: General Hanukkah Party


    December 26, 2019

    Hanukkah Party

  • - Return to the Reich - Eric Lichtblau
    Return to the Reich - Eric Lichtblau

    Category: General Return to the Reich - Eric Lichtblau


    January 16, 2020

    Eric Lichtblau joins us to discuss his new book Return to the Reich, the remarkable story of Fred Mayer, a German-born Jew who escaped Nazi Germany only to return as an American commando on a secret mission behind enemy lines.

    Growing up in Germany, Freddy Mayer witnessed the Nazis' rise to power. When he was sixteen, his family made the decision to flee to the United States—they were among the last German Jews to escape, in 1938.

    In America, Freddy tried enlisting the day after Pearl Harbor, only to be rejected as an “enemy alien” because he was German. He was soon recruited to the OSS, the country’s first spy outfit before the CIA. Freddy, joined by Dutch Jewish refugee Hans Wynberg and Nazi defector Franz Weber, parachuted into Austria as the leader of Operation Greenup, meant to deter Hitler’s last stand. He posed as a Nazi officer and a French POW for months, dispatching reports to the OSS via Hans, holed up with a radio in a nearby attic. The reports contained a goldmine of information, provided key intelligence about the Battle of the Bulge, and allowed the Allies to bomb twenty Nazi trains. On the verge of the Allied victory, Freddy was captured by the Gestapo and tortured and waterboarded for days. Remarkably, he persuaded the Nazi commander for the region to surrender, completing one of the most successful OSS missions of the war.

    Based on years of research and interviews with Mayer himself, whom the author was able to meet only months before his death at the age of ninety-four, Return to the Reich is an eye-opening, unforgettable narrative of World War II heroism.

  • - Jewish Study Center - The Jews of Harbin, Manchuria
    Jewish Study Center - The Jews of Harbin, Manchuria

Open Monday - Friday 9 - 5. Open Saturday, March 23rd, 9 - 4

X