Bryan Mark Rigg born 1971, is an American author and speaker who received his PhD from Cambridge University. He is based at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
Rigg discovered the large number of "Mischlinge" (part-Jews) who were members of the Nazi Party.
His work has been featured in the New York Times and on programs including NBC Dateline and Fox News. Raised up as a Baptist Christian, he discovered he was of Jewish descent, converted to the Jewish faith and served as a volunteer in the Israeli Army. He later served as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps.
His collection of documents, videotapes, and wartime memoirs, are presented at the Bryan Mark Rigg Collection, part of the Federal German Military Archives (the Bundesarchiv), in Freiburg, Germany.
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Born and raised as a Baptist Christian,[1] Rigg studied at Phillips Exeter Academy, continued on to Yale university, and received his B.A. in 1996. He received a grant from the Henry Fellowship, to continue his studies in Cambridge University. That summer he went to Germany, and met Peter Millies, an elderly man who helped Rigg understand the German in a movie they were watching, 'Europe Europe', about Shlomo Pearl, a Jew who served in the Nazi army. Millies later told Rigg that he himself was a part-Jew, and introduced him to the subject which was to become his main research topic for many years.[2]
Back at Cambridge, Rigg offered the subject as his thesis, but was rejected on the grounds that it was "dead end science". Upon insisting, he finally received a year off, and small funding from Cambridge for a research trip back to Germany, under Professor Jonathan Steinberg. Steinberg contacted the media about the future research, which caused much debate about the scientific value of the outcome.[3] During this year, traveling under harsh conditions on bicycle throughout Germany, he gathered over four hundred recorded interviews, with "Mischling"s of this sort. He also discovered that he had Jewish origins. He followed up on the trip to Sweden, Turkey, Canada, and finally Israel.
He identifies himself today as Jewish,[4] and studied in Israel at the "Ohr Sameach" Yeshiva. He also joined a short volunteer program at the Israeli army.[5]
Rigg has done humanitarian activities in Romania, Bulgaria, the Bahamas, South Africa, and France.[6]
His discoveries and writings have been used both by Holocaust researchers,[7] as well as Holocaust denial and anti-Zionist groups.
Recent activities: Bryan Mark Rigg worked in the Private Banking Division of Credit Suisse as a Private Wealth Manager from 2006 to 2008. He has set up his own firm called RIGG Wealth Management.
He was a professor at Southern Methodist University and American Military University from 2000 to 2006.[8]
David Cesarani, professor for Jewish history in Southampton, England, and Raul Hilberg, emeritus of the University of Vermont judge Rigg’s work negatively, because they believe Rigg’s thesis is presented in a sensationalistic and unbalanced way.
Some scholars also resent that Rigg tried to gain public attention when his work was still in an early stage. Other scholars, like Richard J. Evans, history professor in Cambridge, and Omer Bartov, history professor at Brown University, consider the titles of Rigg's books, such as Hitler's Jewish Soldiers, misleading, because the books are not about Jews but in most cases about "mixed Jews" as defined by the Nazi ideology, but not according to the Jewish view.