‘Inglourious’ Wijnberg

The ‘Inglourious Basterds’ of Tarantino’s motion picture really existed. And one of them was the late Hans Wijnberg, a former RUG professor of organic chemistry.

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Okay, so maybe they did not actually walk around with bludgeons or Nazi scalps in tow. And no, they did not, in fact, blow up a Parisian cinema, nor did they have the death of Hitler on their conscience. The real ‘Inglourious Basterds’ were not even in France at all: they were dropped in the Austrian Alps, just outside of the Tyrol capital of Innsbruck.

But it is absolutely true that the experiences of Franz Weber, Frederick (‘Freddy’) Mayer and Hans Wijnberg were the model for Tarantino’s movie about a squad of Jewish soldiers fighting under the American flag whose singular goal – ‘killing Nazis’ – eventually brought the entirety of the Nazi leadership and the Third Reich to its knees.

Secret agent

The reality is considerably less preposterous than the fantasies of the famed American filmmaker, but it is no less gripping.

Moreover, 15 years later, one of the three protagonists in the true story, Hans Wijnberg, became a professor and director of the Organic Chemistry Laboratory at the RUG. He saw to it that the laboratory gained international notoriety, especially in the United States where he had lived for 20 years, starting in 1939.

Several months before World War II broke out, his father, Leo Wijnberg – frightened by the anti-Semitic climate and the growing threat of Germany – sent his twin sons Hans and Leo, who were Jewish, away from the Netherlands to the United States. They attended school there and in 1943, Hans enlisted for military service. Within the space of one year, he was trained as a parachutist and a secret agent. In 1944, together with the German-born Mayer, he arrived at the southern European headquarters of the American military’s secret service in the Italian city of Bari.

There, the plans were laid for Operation Greenup, and in February 1945, it was go time: Mayer, Weber (a Wehrmacht lieutenant from Austria who had defected) and Wijnberg parachuted from a plane above the Ötztal Alps, landed on a glacier and fought their way through waist-deep snow toward Innsbruck.

From there, they spied on the German train transports in the Brenner Pass, the troop build up in the region and even the production of Messerschmitt fighter planes. Weber provided local contacts, Mayer conducted surveillance and Wijnberg transmitted the intelligence from the loft of a nearby barn back to headquarters in Bari. ‘It worked!’, Wijnberg said of the operation years later. ‘The radio signal bounced across the Alps and eventually made it to Bari, Italy. Unbelievable!’

‘Je ne sais pas’

The trio remained out of enemy hands for a few months, but in the second half of April, Mayer was betrayed by someone who took him to be a high-ranking American officer. The Germans captured and tortured him in the hopes that he would give up his cover. But the spy, claiming to be a French electrician, only gave his tormentors one answer: ‘Je ne sais pas.’

As the allies continued their advance, Mayer narrowly escaped being tortured to death, initially thanks to a German military doctor with whom Mayer maintained a friendship after the war, and subsequently thanks to Franz Hofer, the highest ranking Nazi in Tyrol. He saw the supposed big shot officer as his last chance to escape a criminal tribunal.

When the allies eventually reached the proverbial gates of Innsbruck, Hofer surrendered himself to Mayer in exchange for immunity. ‘I was absolutely not authorised to do that’, Mayer later recalled. ‘But it sounded like a good deal to me.’ And so, the American-German spy greeted the arriving American troops, waving the white flag of surrender and handing over the most powerful Nazi in Innsbruck.

The real ‘Basterds’

The story seems to lend itself easily to the silver screen, even without Tarantino’s unbridled imagination. And the story was eventually presented in film form, but only in 2012. It was not made into a feature film, but rather a documentary which cleverly capitalises on Tarantino’s blockbuster hit, as the title ‘The Real Inglorious Bastards’ attests.

In the documentary, Wijnberg and Mayer (Weber passed away in 2001) revealed the true story. For Wijnberg, it was the last time he would speak of his experiences: the day after the interview – on May 25, 2011 – the 88-year-old professor emeritus died due to complications from heart problems.

While the documentary has already been aired on The History Channel several times, the film will have its Groningen debut in the synagogue on the Folkingestraat on 3 May. The timing is fitting, and not only in light of Remembrance Day and Liberation Day. On 15 April, Mayer, the last surviving member of the real ‘Basterds’ trio, passed away. Frederick Mayer was one of Wijnberg’s biggest role models. ‘He always spoke about Freddy with such pride’, says professor Ben Feringa, who was a PhD candidate of Wijnberg’s once upon a time, of his old mentor.

Academic father at the RUG

He calls Wijnberg his ‘academic father’. ‘I have so much to thank him for. He was a fascinating and exceptionally inspirational man’, according to Feringa, who praised his former teacher in an obituary in 2011. Although Feringa and Wijnberg had a close professional relationship, it was only after Wijnberg entered retirement that he inducted his pupil into the club of those who knew about his experiences during the war. ‘He didn’t speak very much about it before, it only really came out in his final years’, Feringa says.

That seems to be something of a pattern among Wijnberg’s RUG colleagues. Jan Engberts, who has been a professor of organic chemistry since 1978, also recalls that Wijnberg never made a big deal of his military history. ‘I can’t really remember him ever bringing it up at work’, says Engberts. ‘But Hans was also very selective about whom he told.’

Even at the UK, where Wijnberg was a columnist for years, no one seemed to be aware of Wijnberg’s role in World War II. ‘As far as I know, it was virtually unknown at the UK’, says Luuk Hajema, editor-in-chief of the newspaper – which was still on paper and was called Universiteitskrant back then – until 1989. ‘In the five years that I was there, I cannot remember it ever being discussed.’

Biography

Hajema is currently working on a biography about the ‘Inglourious Basterd’ of yesteryear. Through conversations with Wijnberg’s family members, friends, acquaintances and colleagues, he has come to know a bit more about his activities toward the end of World War II and how he talked about that time.

‘It wasn’t totally taboo’, Hajema says. ‘There was an inner circle of people who were aware of it, but he certainly wasn’t flaunting it. His son Anthony also told me that in their home, Wijnberg kept quiet about the war for a long time. The subject was broached later on, but he never, ever spoke about his feelings. That was really taboo.’

An in-depth radio interview in 1998 where Wijnberg tells his life story seems to confirm that assessment. In this episode of ‘Een leven lang’ (‘Lifelong’) (which is available online (audio in Dutch)), he speaks at length about their adventures in Tyrol. But when the interviewer tries to probe a bit deeper about Wijnberg’s emotions when he talks about his memories of his parents and his younger brother, all three of whom died at Auschwitz, he tersely says that he does not want to talk about it.

Regret

That sounds pretty typical of the person that Wijnberg was, according to his old friends and acquaintances at the RUG. Wijnberg was proud and prone to bragging every now and again, Engberts says. And that pride seemed to be at odds with a sense of shame that some of those close to him observed when he thought back on the persecution of the Jews in Europe and especially the deaths of his family members.

‘He said to me once that he had a sense of regret about going to America in 1939’, Engberts says. ‘’I should have stayed here to help the Jews’, he used to say.’

That is an alternative that Feringa cannot imagine. ‘When I watched ‘The Real Inglorious Bastards’, I actually realised how differently everything could have turned out. By the same token, I may not have had Wijnberg as my supervisor. If that had happened, would I have even become a professor? You just never know!’