The William E. Colby Military Writers' Symposium

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"Hitler's Jewish Soldiers" Wins 2003 Colby Award

A ground breaking work about the service of the over 150,000 men of Jewish descent in the Wehrmacht is the subject of this year's winner of the prestigious Colby Award.

Hitler's Jewish Soldiers: The Untold Story of Nazi Racial Laws and Men of Jewish Descent in the German Military (University Press of Kansas 2002) by Bryan Mark Rigg, is the result of a decade of research and interviews done while the author was a student at Yale and later Cambridge University. Riggs' work is based on over 400 interviews with Mischlinge (partial Jews as labeled under Hitler's racial laws), their relatives and friends on the extent of the Nazi policies of "racial purity" following adoption of the 1935 Nuremburg laws for the "protection" of German blood.

Warren Hoge of The New York Times wrote, "Through videotaped interviews, painstaking attention to personnel files, and banal documents not normally consulted by historians, and spurred by a keen sense of personal mission, Rigg has turned up an unexplored and confounding chapter in the history of the Holocaust. The extent of his findings has surprised scholars."

Named for the late Ambassador and CIA Director William E. Colby, the award recognizes a first work of fiction or non-fiction that has made a significant contribution to the public's understanding of intelligence operations, military history or international affairs. The Colby Award will be presented on behalf of the members of the Colby Circle by Symposium co-founders W.E.B. Griffin and Carlo D'Este on April 11, 2003 at Norwich University, the nation's oldest private military college, in Northfield, Vermont, during the 8th annual spring residency.

The William E. Colby Military Writers' Symposium is held each April at Norwich University and in February at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. Founded at Norwich in 1996, the Symposium has brought over fifty of the country's top authors, historians, journalists and filmmakers together to participate in open forums, lectures and classroom visits. Joining Rigg for the Norwich program this spring will be Griffin, D'Este, Lewis Sorley, Joseph Galloway, Rick Atkinson, Ralph Peters, Sean Naylor, Reina Pennington, Owen Parry and distinguished guest, General David Palmer, USA (Ret.). The Symposium has recently established national headquarters at the new Pritzker Military Library in Chicago, IL.

Members of the Colby Circle include such notables as Tom Clancy, Stephen Coonts, Mark Bowden, Harold Coyle, Philip Caputo, Winston Groom, Elizabeth Norman, Ralph Peters, Dale Brown, Frank Sesno, Dr. Russell Weigley, General Gordon R. Sullivan, USA (Ret.), General Al Gray USMC (Ret.), John Katzenbach, James Bradley, and Marvin Kalb.

The Colby Symposium will present "Journalists at War" on Thursday, February 6, at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. Lewis Sorley moderates a panel including Rick Atkinson, Joseph Galloway and Sean Naylor, who will discuss their experiences serving as war correspondents. The event is free and open to the public.

For more information on the William E. Colby Military Writers' Symposium or future programs, visit the website at www.colbysymposium.org.

edtracy@tawani.com, January 2003

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