“X-Troop: The Secret Jewish Commandos of WWII”
Leah Garrett (Hunter College, CUNY)
In June of 1942, Winston Churchill and his chief of staff formed an unusual plan: a new commando unit made up of Jewish refugees who had escaped to Britain. The resulting volunteers were a motley group of intellectuals, artists, and athletes, most from Germany and Austria. Trained in counterintelligence and advanced combat, this top-secret unit becomes known as X Troop.
Drawing on extensive original research, including interviews with the last surviving members, Leah Garrett follows this unique band of brothers from Germany to England and back again, with stops at British internment camps, the beaches of Normandy, the battlefields of Italy and Holland, and the hellscape of Terezin concentration camp. In a talk based on her recently published book X-Troop: The Secret Jewish Commandos of World War Two, Garrett tells the astonishing story of these secret Jewish shock troops and their devastating blows against the Nazis.
Leah Garrett is the Larry A. and Klara Silverstein Chair and Director of Jewish Studies at Hunter College, CUNY. Garrett’s most recent book, X-Troop: The Secret Jewish Commandos of World War Two (Harper Collin US and Penguin, UK), has been featured on CNN, Time Magazine, the Washington Post, the Guardian, CSPAN, and a range of other venues. The book was a bestseller in the UK and has been translated into multiple languages. Garrett is currently working on a new book entitled The Angels of Iwo Jima: The Untold Story of the American Combat Nurses in the Final Battles of World War Two.
For more information, visit cjs.wisc.edu/event/garrett
Sponsored by: UW-Madison Mosse/Weinstein Center for Jewish Studies, George L. Mosse Program in History
Please direct any event questions to UW-Madison Mosse/Weinstein Center for Jewish Studies (jewishstudies@cjs.wisc.edu) or the George L. Mosse Program in History (mosse@history.wisc.edu).