By Harriet Jackson

Holocaust survivor Guy Bishop passed away on Holocaust Remembrance Day, April 21, 2008. Few people know that he arrested Heinrich Himmler, the Nazi responsible for the mass murder of 6 million Jews.

Guy Bishop was born Günther Brüg on April 9, 1926, in Germany. Twelve years later on November 9, 1938, the Nazis launched a pogrom against the Jews of Germany. In addition to destroying Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues, the Nazis arrested thousands of German-Jewish men, including Günther’s father, Ernst Brüg. The event became known as Kristallnacht, marking the beginning of the Holocaust. Günther’s father was interned in Buchenwald, a concentration camp already infamous for its brutality. Every day, Günther would listen to the radio, waiting for foreign countries to protest the anti-Jewish terror campaign. But no government protested. Günther also waited each evening at the train station for his father to return. Mr. Brüg returned home three weeks after his arrest. His father was so emaciated and sickly that Günther did not recognize him. A few days later, Günther’s father died of pneumonia.

For months Günther’s mother wore the black mourning clothes and veil that was customary for widows. But to shame her fellow Germans, she also pinned to her chest the German military medal awarded to her for the outstanding espionage work she performed during WWI. For Frau Gertrude (Gellis) Brüg, Kristallnacht signaled the need to leave Germany immediately. She sent Günther to England as part of a program to get Jewish children out of Germany, called Kindertransport, in July 1939. With no one to greet him in England, Günther was sent to a refugee camp.

By the summer of 1942, all correspondence from Günther’s sister and mother ceased. Günther could not wait to turn 17, enroll in the British Army, and return to Germany to fight with the British troops. He enrolled in the army in 1943 and trained with the elite Black Watch in Scotland. He now called himself Guy Bishop.