Bernd Stevens

Bernd Karl Stevens , formerly Bernd Karl Steinitz , (born November 20, 1920 in Munich ) is a former officer of the US intelligence service Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and a German skier .

Bernd Steinitz has been skiing since he was five years old . In 1935, at the age of 16, he qualified as a substitute for participation in the 1936 Olympic Games in Garmisch-Partenkirchen . However, because he was of Jewish descent, he was not accepted into the national team. In 1938, after the November pogroms , he managed to leave for the United States with false papers via Austria, Italy and North Africa . There he joined the United States Army to, according to his statement, "save whatever Jews could still be saved". His father and brother were murdered in the Holocaust . He was a member of the Office of Strategic Services , a predecessor of the CIA , and trained as a parachutist .

Stevens was part of a group of friends at the OSS called the Jewish Five. These included the American and German-born Frederick Mayer , the Hungarian George Gerbner , the German Alfred Rosenthal and the Dutch Hans Wynberg . On April 16, 1945, as part of the “Dillon mission” in Austria, he and another man jumped from behind enemy lines near Klagenfurt , but was arrested by the Gestapo a little later . When the Allied troops approached , he was released. He then negotiated the surrender of the Wehrmacht in Upper Carinthia with the local Gauleiter under the pseudonym Lieutenant Peter Hartley .

In 1946, Stevens married Rose Dollinger in New York . He later changed his name to Bernd (K.) Stevens . After his discharge from the army, he trained as a chartered accountant and settled in Los Angeles , where he had numerous contacts in the film industry. He started his own company with a friend who had also fled the Holocaust from Germany. His dream - a film about his life - never came true; The parallel running Operation Greenup by Mayer, Wynberg and the Austrian defector Franz Weber, however, served as a model for the film Inglourious Basterds . Stevens also wrote his memoirs entitled The Silver Circle , which have not yet been published. Stevens gave his documents and memorabilia to the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust . He competed in skiing until he was 74 and worked until he was 81. Stevens still lives in California (as of 2014).

Web links

• Bernd Stevens (Steinitz) Collection, 1920-1960 | Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust. Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, accessed April 26, 2014 . 
• Rachel Brand: Almost Olympian. Jewish Journal, February 28, 2002, accessed April 26, 2014 . 

Individual evidence

1. ^ Patrick K. O'Donnell: They Dared Return. The True Story of the Jewish Spies behind the Lines in Nazi Germany . Da Capo Press 2009. p. 14 ff.
2. ↑ Aaron Leibel: Book looks back at daring soldier behind enemy lines. Jweekly.com, November 19, 2009, accessed April 26, 2014 . 
3. ↑ Wedding announcements. Structure , August 23, 1946, accessed April 27, 2014 . 
4. ↑ Rachel Brand: Almost Olympian. (No longer available online.) Jewish Journal, February 28, 2002, archived from the original on May 12, 2014 ; Retrieved April 26, 2014 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.