Lieutenant Colonel Martin I. Selling, USA (ret.), is the author of With Rancor and Compassion: The Memoirs of a Jew who Thought He Was a German. According to the Jewish News of Greater Phoenix, “the morning after Kristallnacht (night of the broken glass), Nov. 9, 1938, when he was 20, Selling was arrested. He spent six weeks in a Nuremberg prison and then was transferred to Dachau concentration camp. He was released on Jan. 27, 1939.  A few months later he immigrated to England and then onto the United States; and, “In 1942, he was drafted into the U.S. Army and returned to Germany as a POW interrogator with the 35th Infantry Division. His job was to obtain information on German troop strength and positions.”

The MOAA said of With Rancor and Compassion: The Memoirs of a Jew who Thought He Was a German, “This is the true-life story of a Jew who grew up in Germany before World War II and the Holocaust. Arrested during Kristallnacht, Selling spent six weeks each in Nuremberg prison and Dachau concentration camp. Released, he emigrated to England and soon after, to the United States. In a bizarre turn of events, he wound up in the U.S. Army Intelligence Services as an interrogator and met with some of the very same Germans who harassed him in his youth. Here is a fascinating and enlightening twist on the traditional World War II services story told in an imaginative and captivating format.”

With Rancor and Compassion: The Memoirs of a Jew Who Thought He Was a German Martin I. Selling  More Info

One reader of With Rancor and Compassion: The Memoirs of a Jew who Thought He Was a German said, “How many men of the World War II era do you suppose started out as a concentration camp victim of the Nazis and ended up as intelligence officer with the US Army, interrogating as prisoners the same men who had tormented him at the camp? Martin Selling is one of those rare individuals, and he tells his story, from his earliest childhood days in Germany to his return to his same native village as one of the victorious American troops. His words are those of someone who has had a unique experience, lived through it and survived without nearly the hate and malice you would expect. It's a short read but an impressive one.”