An estimated 6 million Jews died at the hands of the Nazis and their allies during the Holocaust. Hundreds of thousands more suffered, but somehow survived, in concentration camps. And some escaped, savoring freedom they otherwise never would have known. Then there's Ernst Hess, who was a decorated World War I soldier, former judge and, despite being raised a Protestant and marrying someone of that faith, a "full-blooded Jew" in the eyes of the Nazi regime. According to a groundbreaking report, Hess was granted a reprieve despite this designation thanks to none other than Adolf Hitler. Susanne Mauss, editor of the Jewish Voice from Germany newspaper, found the August 27, 1940, note from the Gestapo (the infamous Nazi secret police) that saved Hess -- albeit temporarily. The order was revoked the next year, and Hess spent years doing hard labor in Nazi concentration camps and work sites.
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The Jewish Voice from Germany newspaper unearths internal Nazi files on Ernst Hess
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Hess served in Hitler's infantry unit in World War I but didn't know him, then was a judge
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A 1940 order saved Hess, despite his Jewish heritage, "per the Fuhrer's wishes"
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The order was revoked the next year, and Hess ended up in Nazi concentration camps
The special order revoked, he landed soon thereafter in a concentration camp, and then began working for a timber processing company helping build barracks for @placeholder soldiers.
Ernst Hess, though, was a prisoner of a very different sort through the early 1940s when @placeholder authorities deemed him "a Jew like no other."