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Citizen 865: The Hunt for Hitler's Hidden Soldiers in America
The gripping story of a team of Nazi hunters at the U.S. Department of Justice as they raced against time to expose members of a brutal SS killing force who disappeared in America after World War Two.
In 1990, in a drafty basement archive in Prague, two American historians made a startling a Nazi roster from 1945 that no Western investigator had ever seen. The long-forgotten document, containing more than 700 names, helped unravel the details behind the most lethal killing operation in World War Two.
In the tiny Polish village of Trawniki, the SS set up a school for mass murder and then recruited a roving army of foot soldiers, 5,000 men strong, to help annihilate the Jewish population of occupied Poland. After the war, some of these men vanished, making their way to the U.S. and blending into communities across America. Though they participated in some of the most unspeakable crimes of the Holocaust, "Trawniki Men" spent years hiding in plain sight, their terrible secrets intact.
In a story spanning seven decades, Citizen 865 chronicles the harrowing wartime journeys of two Jewish orphans from occupied Poland who outran the men of Trawniki and settled in the United States, only to learn that some of their one-time captors had followed. A tenacious team of prosecutors and historians pursued these men and, up against the forces of time and political opposition, battled to the present day to remove them from U.S. soil.
Through insider accounts and research in four countries, this urgent and powerful narrative provides a front row seat to the dramatic turn of events that allowed a small group of American Nazi hunters to hold murderous men accountable for their crimes decades after the war's end.
In 1990, in a drafty basement archive in Prague, two American historians made a startling a Nazi roster from 1945 that no Western investigator had ever seen. The long-forgotten document, containing more than 700 names, helped unravel the details behind the most lethal killing operation in World War Two.
In the tiny Polish village of Trawniki, the SS set up a school for mass murder and then recruited a roving army of foot soldiers, 5,000 men strong, to help annihilate the Jewish population of occupied Poland. After the war, some of these men vanished, making their way to the U.S. and blending into communities across America. Though they participated in some of the most unspeakable crimes of the Holocaust, "Trawniki Men" spent years hiding in plain sight, their terrible secrets intact.
In a story spanning seven decades, Citizen 865 chronicles the harrowing wartime journeys of two Jewish orphans from occupied Poland who outran the men of Trawniki and settled in the United States, only to learn that some of their one-time captors had followed. A tenacious team of prosecutors and historians pursued these men and, up against the forces of time and political opposition, battled to the present day to remove them from U.S. soil.
Through insider accounts and research in four countries, this urgent and powerful narrative provides a front row seat to the dramatic turn of events that allowed a small group of American Nazi hunters to hold murderous men accountable for their crimes decades after the war's end.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published November 12, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 126 reviews
October 29, 2019
Written in third person narrative, this might not be everyone’s preferred nonfiction writing style. It extends beyond the facts that cling to the title to explain the weather that day, what the person looked like, and other details that some nonfiction readers might not find pertinent to the main content. Before the book begins, the author explains in the Author’s Note that most of the dialogue and wartime journeys have been “reconstructed” by her through documents and interviews; the reconstructed dialogue and scenes could cause speculation if used for research purposes.
It starts off with a young Jewish man, Feliks, running. His story comes back much later in the book. However, he has no connection to Citizen 865 or the other men that were on trial in the book, so I was a little confused about the correlation with his story in the book. The only connection I could make is that he was running from the Nazi’s, so the connection is very loosely done.
Most of the first half of the book focuses on OSI members, lawyers, and historians searching for information regarding the men at Trawniki. It specifies the historians and OSI travels, how they found the documents, and the conflicts they had to overcome in order to obtain information for a considerable amount of time in the book. Their research goes through documents and archives that detail the Warsaw ghetto, Polish Home Army, and the Polish Underground. A lot of information concerning Lublin is disclosed including the Lublin ghetto and the Jews of Lublin. The focus on Citizen 865 is not a point of concentration until the second half of the book, specifically during Part 4. Notably, as stated in the title, it is about various Nazi’s in America that a group of OIS agents and lawyers attempt to find and put on trial. They only Nazi’s they look for are “Trawniki Men”.
Organization: Part 1 Occupied Poland 1941-1943 (3-13%), Part 2 United States 1978-1992 (13-49%), Part 3 Poland and the United States 1941-1951 (49-63%), Part 4 United States 1996-2013 (63-88%), Epilogue 88-89%, Notes/Prologue (Bibliography organized by chapters) 91-100%
3.5 stars rounded up because I really enjoyed the court room scene against Citizen 865 at 66-81%. Thank you to NetGalley and Hatchette Books for an advanced copy. Opinions are my own.
More on this:
HISTORIAN PETER BLACK DESCRIBES RESEARCHING EVIDENCE FOR AN OSI CASE
‘Get the Nazi out of New York.’ The secret operation to deport the last living Nazi defendant in the U.S. was a rare success.
How the Nazis Got to New York: Immigration Fraud
Eli RosenBaum, former Director of the U.S. DOJ Office of Special Investigations
Peter Black, Senior Historian at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum who worked on the Citizen 865 case
In 2001, Jakiw Palij confessed to U.S. Department of Justice officials that he was a guard at Trawniki. Click here to read the full article.
It starts off with a young Jewish man, Feliks, running. His story comes back much later in the book. However, he has no connection to Citizen 865 or the other men that were on trial in the book, so I was a little confused about the correlation with his story in the book. The only connection I could make is that he was running from the Nazi’s, so the connection is very loosely done.
Most of the first half of the book focuses on OSI members, lawyers, and historians searching for information regarding the men at Trawniki. It specifies the historians and OSI travels, how they found the documents, and the conflicts they had to overcome in order to obtain information for a considerable amount of time in the book. Their research goes through documents and archives that detail the Warsaw ghetto, Polish Home Army, and the Polish Underground. A lot of information concerning Lublin is disclosed including the Lublin ghetto and the Jews of Lublin. The focus on Citizen 865 is not a point of concentration until the second half of the book, specifically during Part 4. Notably, as stated in the title, it is about various Nazi’s in America that a group of OIS agents and lawyers attempt to find and put on trial. They only Nazi’s they look for are “Trawniki Men”.
Organization: Part 1 Occupied Poland 1941-1943 (3-13%), Part 2 United States 1978-1992 (13-49%), Part 3 Poland and the United States 1941-1951 (49-63%), Part 4 United States 1996-2013 (63-88%), Epilogue 88-89%, Notes/Prologue (Bibliography organized by chapters) 91-100%
3.5 stars rounded up because I really enjoyed the court room scene against Citizen 865 at 66-81%. Thank you to NetGalley and Hatchette Books for an advanced copy. Opinions are my own.
HISTORIAN PETER BLACK DESCRIBES RESEARCHING EVIDENCE FOR AN OSI CASE
‘Get the Nazi out of New York.’ The secret operation to deport the last living Nazi defendant in the U.S. was a rare success.
How the Nazis Got to New York: Immigration Fraud
Eli RosenBaum, former Director of the U.S. DOJ Office of Special Investigations
Peter Black, Senior Historian at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum who worked on the Citizen 865 case
In 2001, Jakiw Palij confessed to U.S. Department of Justice officials that he was a guard at Trawniki. Click here to read the full article.
September 25, 2020
Solid, straightforward, and well-researched accounting of the Nazis living under assumed names in the U.S. Somehow, they managed to slip through after WW II, and the U.S. gov't. went after them. I liked reading about the investigations undertaken by the dedicated historians (I was a history major) in building their criminal cases. It was slow going that required lots of their patience and persistence. The war crimes were so vicious and brutal I often had to skim/skip over those parts. Some of the survivors eventually came to live and raise families in the U.S. which I also liked reading. So, I learned a lot of history that I knew little about.
November 8, 2019
I was a history major in college and have always been interested particularly in both American and WWII history. But I had never heard of the subject of this book: the Trawniki men, and the decades-later quest of the Department of Justice to deport Trawniki men living on U.S. soil. The Trawniki men were a (purposefully) little-known group of Eastern European prisoners of war who the Nazis identified as perfect candidates to be the "foot soldiers of the Final Solution." They were trained at a camp in the small city of Trawniki, then deployed to various locations in Poland to ruthlessly and without question support SS guards in the murder of the two million Jews living in the country. Most notably, the Trawniki men actively participated in the largest single killing of Jews in the war's history in Lublin. Their other deplorable activities include shooting hundreds and hundreds of bodies into killing pits in Polish forests, as well as moving humans in and out of gas chambers at the killing centers of Treblinka, Sobibor, and Majdanek.
The book focuses particularly on "Citizen 865" - a Ukrainian man named Jakob Reimer - who was enrolled in the Trawniki training camp and quickly rose in the ranks due to his ruthless devotion to the "cause" - so much so that he was granted German citizenship just before war's end. However, he was able to gain U.S. citizenship in 1950, lying about his service for Nazi Germany and saying he was merely an interpreter and paymaster for Trawniki.
After WWII, the U.S. Department of Justice created the Office of Special Investigations (OSI), tasked solely with rooting out the estimated hundreds of Nazis living in the U.S. unknown and deport them back to their home countries. They couldn't charge them with criminal offenses, but they could certainly make it known that they were not welcome in this country. OSI employed both historians and prosecutors to find these individuals, but the lack of evidence available was a barrier. In OSI's early years, the public supported their work. However, a huge wave of evidence became available after the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1988, held by the Soviets, giving OSI unprecedented vision into identities and crimes. Paradoxically, by this time, many of these Nazis were older, seemingly gentle and sweet old men, and at the exact moment when OSI had the evidence to deport, the public wanted them to be left alone. In the eyes of many officials in the U.S. government, including infamous Holocaust denier Pat Buchanan, there should be damn good evidence to deport citizens living "peacefully" in the U.S. for decades. But for staff at OSI, these crimes could not go unnoticed. Every day, historians and prosecutors learned of the atrocities committed by men like Jakob Reimer - and could not bear the thought of him living another day in the land of the free.
This book is immaculately written and researched, giving readers the perspective of OSI historians as well as two survivors from Lublin. It provides such a deluge of horrifying, unimaginable crimes that it simultaneously desensitizes you to the level of barbarism displayed by the Trawniki men and paralyzes you with such sadness and horror that you can almost not bear to go on. However, these stories are important and deserve to be read and recognized, particularly for a killing force that is so little known among WWII history. I highly, highly recommend this book for history lovers, both WWII and U.S., even for those who think they've read everything about the subject. If you're not interested in reading the book, there's a documentary series that just came out on Netflix called The Devil Next Door, about almost the same situation, but focusing on another man in the U.S. accused of being the notorious "Ivan the Terrible" at Treblinka, John Demjanjuk, and the saga of his deportation as a "sweet old man," criminal trials, and the rest of his life.
Thank you to Hachette and Netgalley for the ARC.
The book focuses particularly on "Citizen 865" - a Ukrainian man named Jakob Reimer - who was enrolled in the Trawniki training camp and quickly rose in the ranks due to his ruthless devotion to the "cause" - so much so that he was granted German citizenship just before war's end. However, he was able to gain U.S. citizenship in 1950, lying about his service for Nazi Germany and saying he was merely an interpreter and paymaster for Trawniki.
After WWII, the U.S. Department of Justice created the Office of Special Investigations (OSI), tasked solely with rooting out the estimated hundreds of Nazis living in the U.S. unknown and deport them back to their home countries. They couldn't charge them with criminal offenses, but they could certainly make it known that they were not welcome in this country. OSI employed both historians and prosecutors to find these individuals, but the lack of evidence available was a barrier. In OSI's early years, the public supported their work. However, a huge wave of evidence became available after the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1988, held by the Soviets, giving OSI unprecedented vision into identities and crimes. Paradoxically, by this time, many of these Nazis were older, seemingly gentle and sweet old men, and at the exact moment when OSI had the evidence to deport, the public wanted them to be left alone. In the eyes of many officials in the U.S. government, including infamous Holocaust denier Pat Buchanan, there should be damn good evidence to deport citizens living "peacefully" in the U.S. for decades. But for staff at OSI, these crimes could not go unnoticed. Every day, historians and prosecutors learned of the atrocities committed by men like Jakob Reimer - and could not bear the thought of him living another day in the land of the free.
This book is immaculately written and researched, giving readers the perspective of OSI historians as well as two survivors from Lublin. It provides such a deluge of horrifying, unimaginable crimes that it simultaneously desensitizes you to the level of barbarism displayed by the Trawniki men and paralyzes you with such sadness and horror that you can almost not bear to go on. However, these stories are important and deserve to be read and recognized, particularly for a killing force that is so little known among WWII history. I highly, highly recommend this book for history lovers, both WWII and U.S., even for those who think they've read everything about the subject. If you're not interested in reading the book, there's a documentary series that just came out on Netflix called The Devil Next Door, about almost the same situation, but focusing on another man in the U.S. accused of being the notorious "Ivan the Terrible" at Treblinka, John Demjanjuk, and the saga of his deportation as a "sweet old man," criminal trials, and the rest of his life.
Thank you to Hachette and Netgalley for the ARC.
September 25, 2020
Solid, straightforward, and well-researched accounting of the Nazis living under assumed names in the U.S. Somehow, they managed to slip through after WW II, and the U.S. gov't. went after them. I liked reading about the investigations undertaken by the dedicated historians (I was a history major) in building their criminal cases. It was slow going that required lots of their patience and persistence. The war crimes were so vicious and brutal I often had to skim/skip over those parts. Some of the survivors eventually came to live and raise families in the U.S. which I also liked reading. So, I learned a lot of history that I knew little about.
July 2, 2020
http://www.bookwormblues.net/2020/07/...
What first pulled me in about this book, was the fact that it’s about a group of individuals in World War II that operated largely in Eastern Europe, whom I have never heard of. This is no small thing, because I’ve spent just a ridiculous chunk of the past (mumble-mumble) years researching all things Eastern Europe, and the less known aspects of World War II that impacted regions like Poland and Ukraine so dramatically.
I’m not saying I know everything, but generally if it’s weird and less known, either I or one of my readers have probably hunted it out and sent it to me.
So, I’ve never heard of the Trawniki men, nor have I heard of their training facility in an old sugar factory in Trawniki, Poland. Nor did I know what they have done. I will say, tangentially, I have watched a Netflix Documentary The Devil Next Door on one of the men who was actually trained at this facility, and was thought to perhaps be Ivan the Terrible, but was then proven not to be (though he did work at such camps as Sobibor and the like). He is mentioned in this book, so there was a thread of familiarity there, for me.
Citizen 865 is kind of an odd book. In one way, it had a target, and it hit it. It told the story of the Trawniki Men. How they came to be, and what their purpose is, and the overwhelming effort and determination it took to discover the truth of that organization, what they had done, who they were, and how they functioned.
The book is written in a third person narrative style, so it does read more like a novel than anything else. This will benefit readers who aren’t fans of dry nonfiction books. It does make the reading of it feel less like work. That being said, the author is very clear that the dialogue has been pieced together by years of research and interviews, or at times, assumed based on the research she had available to her. However, there’s still guesswork going on there, and that should be noted. This, perhaps, is a good jumping off point for further research on the Trawniki men, but if you’re using it as the foundation upon which your research rests, perhaps take into consideration that there has been some guesswork done on some of the dialogue, specifically portions that are told more like a story, such as the story of Feliks at the start of the book.
That small point aside, Citizen 865 is really an eye-opening tale about a really dark, horrible corner of World War II that I never had encountered before. Most Trawniki men were Soviet prisoners of war. They could speak the languages in Eastern Europe, which is something that the German soldiers could not do. They understood the lay of the land, the local culture and the like, which made them invaluable. Furthermore, the trade was generally a good one on their part. In exchange for working for the Reich, they went to a training camp to learn how to do what they needed to do, and were given German citizenship and payment, complete with vacation time in exchange. Scooping up ex-POWs who had nothing to lose and everything to gain, was a stroke of genius that seems to pepper various parts of the Nazi plan throughout World War II. Here were men who had all the anger and disillusionment a person could ask for, all they needed was a gun.
Anyway.
The Trawniki men were, in my mind, the guys who did all the stuff no one else really wanted to do. Foot soldiers of the Final Solution, they were part and party to some of the most gruesome parts of the Eastern Front of the war, like the uprising the Warsaw Ghetto, and spent time in numerous kill sites, as well as being assigned to kill the Jews that were rounded up and brought to forests to be murdered. They were often rough, brutal, angry, and dangerous to be around, disenfranchised men who had nothing to hold on to outside of this organization that seemed to, in a way, give them some semblance of life back. A lot of this book centers around the town of Lublin, Poland, which was the site of one of the largest mass killings of Jews in the entire war, and it was the Trawniki men who were party to that brutality.
Citizen 865 is a Ukrainian man named Jakob Reimer, who lied about his wartime activities and ended up gaining US citizenship in the 1950s. He lived and worked in the states, got married, had a family, settled down. It wasn’t until the Iron Curtain fell, and a bevy of evidence was made available to the west (at which point the US Department of Justice created the OSI) that he, and others like him, were eventually discovered. It took a lot of work and diligent effort on the part of those assigned to hunt down Nazi collaborators in the US to find the eventual truth of the secretive Trawniki men, and one Jakob Reimer. It’s an ugly story, and perhaps it is made even uglier because of the sheer brutality of the work these individuals were part and party to.
On a personal level, I have a very hard time understanding how anyone could be part of something like that, and then how they could ever imagine living a “normal life” afterwards would be possible. It is horrifying to think that so many Nazi collaborators have hidden themselves all over the world. They got to pick themselves up, dust themselves off, move somewhere different, and create entirely new people and life stories for themselves, while behind them, they leave nothing but a trail of bodies, unanswered questions, and blood. The brevity of it steals the breath from my lungs.
And often, while justice is a long time coming, it comes due to a diligent group of individuals who refuse to give up the search for answers, for truth, for the men like Jakob Reimer, who were party to unbelievable crimes against humanity. The heroes of this dark tale are the paper pushers. The clue hunters. The office workers. The diligent. The dedicated.
This book is told in a few chunks. It opens up with the story of two survivors of Lublin, and then moves into the eventual creation of OSI, and the trials that were involved with hunting down Nazis hidden in America. Interviews are covered, where the dialogue is verbatim from what was given at that interview, and then it moves back to World War II, Lublin, and the like. The story of Feliks is probably the part of the book that stood out to me the most, likely because I don’t really feel like it fit in with anything else. It’s interesting, and I’m glad I read it, but I think I was expecting it to be the thread that the narrative curled around, and it really wasn’t. While the human impact given through that particular story hit me pretty hard, I’m not honestly sure if it added anything to the overarching story of the Trawniki men as a whole.
The truth is, there is a whole lot of World War II that we will likely never really know. Lots of evidence was buried. People who lived through it have, in all likelihood, died of old age, or nearly are there. Lots of things were destroyed when the Reich fell. It’s through the hard, painstaking work of survivors, descendants, dedicated historians and justice workers that stories of men such as these, and the training camps and methodology behind their organization can come to light.
Citizen 865 is one of those books that is hard to read, but necessary, and it likely touches on a part of World War II that even a whole lot of World War II buffs don’t know much about. It is important that we understand not just what happened, but why it happened. It’s important that we act as a witness, so stories continue being told. So people remain unforgotten. So we can examine the dark underbelly of humanity, and refuse to ever go back.
What first pulled me in about this book, was the fact that it’s about a group of individuals in World War II that operated largely in Eastern Europe, whom I have never heard of. This is no small thing, because I’ve spent just a ridiculous chunk of the past (mumble-mumble) years researching all things Eastern Europe, and the less known aspects of World War II that impacted regions like Poland and Ukraine so dramatically.
I’m not saying I know everything, but generally if it’s weird and less known, either I or one of my readers have probably hunted it out and sent it to me.
So, I’ve never heard of the Trawniki men, nor have I heard of their training facility in an old sugar factory in Trawniki, Poland. Nor did I know what they have done. I will say, tangentially, I have watched a Netflix Documentary The Devil Next Door on one of the men who was actually trained at this facility, and was thought to perhaps be Ivan the Terrible, but was then proven not to be (though he did work at such camps as Sobibor and the like). He is mentioned in this book, so there was a thread of familiarity there, for me.
Citizen 865 is kind of an odd book. In one way, it had a target, and it hit it. It told the story of the Trawniki Men. How they came to be, and what their purpose is, and the overwhelming effort and determination it took to discover the truth of that organization, what they had done, who they were, and how they functioned.
The book is written in a third person narrative style, so it does read more like a novel than anything else. This will benefit readers who aren’t fans of dry nonfiction books. It does make the reading of it feel less like work. That being said, the author is very clear that the dialogue has been pieced together by years of research and interviews, or at times, assumed based on the research she had available to her. However, there’s still guesswork going on there, and that should be noted. This, perhaps, is a good jumping off point for further research on the Trawniki men, but if you’re using it as the foundation upon which your research rests, perhaps take into consideration that there has been some guesswork done on some of the dialogue, specifically portions that are told more like a story, such as the story of Feliks at the start of the book.
That small point aside, Citizen 865 is really an eye-opening tale about a really dark, horrible corner of World War II that I never had encountered before. Most Trawniki men were Soviet prisoners of war. They could speak the languages in Eastern Europe, which is something that the German soldiers could not do. They understood the lay of the land, the local culture and the like, which made them invaluable. Furthermore, the trade was generally a good one on their part. In exchange for working for the Reich, they went to a training camp to learn how to do what they needed to do, and were given German citizenship and payment, complete with vacation time in exchange. Scooping up ex-POWs who had nothing to lose and everything to gain, was a stroke of genius that seems to pepper various parts of the Nazi plan throughout World War II. Here were men who had all the anger and disillusionment a person could ask for, all they needed was a gun.
Anyway.
The Trawniki men were, in my mind, the guys who did all the stuff no one else really wanted to do. Foot soldiers of the Final Solution, they were part and party to some of the most gruesome parts of the Eastern Front of the war, like the uprising the Warsaw Ghetto, and spent time in numerous kill sites, as well as being assigned to kill the Jews that were rounded up and brought to forests to be murdered. They were often rough, brutal, angry, and dangerous to be around, disenfranchised men who had nothing to hold on to outside of this organization that seemed to, in a way, give them some semblance of life back. A lot of this book centers around the town of Lublin, Poland, which was the site of one of the largest mass killings of Jews in the entire war, and it was the Trawniki men who were party to that brutality.
Citizen 865 is a Ukrainian man named Jakob Reimer, who lied about his wartime activities and ended up gaining US citizenship in the 1950s. He lived and worked in the states, got married, had a family, settled down. It wasn’t until the Iron Curtain fell, and a bevy of evidence was made available to the west (at which point the US Department of Justice created the OSI) that he, and others like him, were eventually discovered. It took a lot of work and diligent effort on the part of those assigned to hunt down Nazi collaborators in the US to find the eventual truth of the secretive Trawniki men, and one Jakob Reimer. It’s an ugly story, and perhaps it is made even uglier because of the sheer brutality of the work these individuals were part and party to.
On a personal level, I have a very hard time understanding how anyone could be part of something like that, and then how they could ever imagine living a “normal life” afterwards would be possible. It is horrifying to think that so many Nazi collaborators have hidden themselves all over the world. They got to pick themselves up, dust themselves off, move somewhere different, and create entirely new people and life stories for themselves, while behind them, they leave nothing but a trail of bodies, unanswered questions, and blood. The brevity of it steals the breath from my lungs.
And often, while justice is a long time coming, it comes due to a diligent group of individuals who refuse to give up the search for answers, for truth, for the men like Jakob Reimer, who were party to unbelievable crimes against humanity. The heroes of this dark tale are the paper pushers. The clue hunters. The office workers. The diligent. The dedicated.
This book is told in a few chunks. It opens up with the story of two survivors of Lublin, and then moves into the eventual creation of OSI, and the trials that were involved with hunting down Nazis hidden in America. Interviews are covered, where the dialogue is verbatim from what was given at that interview, and then it moves back to World War II, Lublin, and the like. The story of Feliks is probably the part of the book that stood out to me the most, likely because I don’t really feel like it fit in with anything else. It’s interesting, and I’m glad I read it, but I think I was expecting it to be the thread that the narrative curled around, and it really wasn’t. While the human impact given through that particular story hit me pretty hard, I’m not honestly sure if it added anything to the overarching story of the Trawniki men as a whole.
The truth is, there is a whole lot of World War II that we will likely never really know. Lots of evidence was buried. People who lived through it have, in all likelihood, died of old age, or nearly are there. Lots of things were destroyed when the Reich fell. It’s through the hard, painstaking work of survivors, descendants, dedicated historians and justice workers that stories of men such as these, and the training camps and methodology behind their organization can come to light.
Citizen 865 is one of those books that is hard to read, but necessary, and it likely touches on a part of World War II that even a whole lot of World War II buffs don’t know much about. It is important that we understand not just what happened, but why it happened. It’s important that we act as a witness, so stories continue being told. So people remain unforgotten. So we can examine the dark underbelly of humanity, and refuse to ever go back.
September 13, 2019
I consider myself well read and knowledgeable about world events and government affairs. I never knew there was a branch of the government that their sole goal was to hunt down Nazi's that lied their way into the US.
After the war our Congress passed the Displaced Persons Act to allow in refugees from WW2. (Side note-can you imagine our current Senate having the guts to do this now?). Nazi's falsified their backgrounds to become US Citizens.
The OSI in their research found a training camp for the SS that had never really been known. The men in this camp were instrumental in the forced round up of Jews in occupied Poland. The camp was Trawniki.
Interspersed with the story of the Trawniki investigation is the story of a young couple from Lublin who fled Nazi's and eventually made their way to America.
Very well researched and I learned things I never knew. Such as the fact the Pat Buchanan was essentially a Nazi apologist and George Will has moral character.
Highly recommended.
After the war our Congress passed the Displaced Persons Act to allow in refugees from WW2. (Side note-can you imagine our current Senate having the guts to do this now?). Nazi's falsified their backgrounds to become US Citizens.
The OSI in their research found a training camp for the SS that had never really been known. The men in this camp were instrumental in the forced round up of Jews in occupied Poland. The camp was Trawniki.
Interspersed with the story of the Trawniki investigation is the story of a young couple from Lublin who fled Nazi's and eventually made their way to America.
Very well researched and I learned things I never knew. Such as the fact the Pat Buchanan was essentially a Nazi apologist and George Will has moral character.
Highly recommended.
June 25, 2020
This is a fascinating and important book. Sadly, some former Nazis fleeing their crumbled regime after WWII took advantage of American immigration policies and misrepresented themselves as victims and refugees. In reality, they were perpetrators, monstrous prison guards and SS men. In the 1970s and 1980s, some in the US government finally said enough is enough, these individuals have to atone for the murder and torture they engaged in. Tracking them down was incredibly time-consuming and intricate, but it was worth it to finally see these men face trial.
It was thought-provoking to learn about politicians who fought the Nazi hunters. Some of them were especially vocal in their belief that attempting to collar these men was a waste of time and no longer mattered decades after the fact. However, crimes against humanity can't exactly be excused as youthful indiscretion. Thankfully those in the Office of Special Investigations did not waver in their dedication to ferreting out these agents of evil.
It was thought-provoking to learn about politicians who fought the Nazi hunters. Some of them were especially vocal in their belief that attempting to collar these men was a waste of time and no longer mattered decades after the fact. However, crimes against humanity can't exactly be excused as youthful indiscretion. Thankfully those in the Office of Special Investigations did not waver in their dedication to ferreting out these agents of evil.
June 20, 2022
Listened to the audiobook.
I had trouble following along with the book.
I had trouble following along with the book.
May 1, 2020
Great book
Great research and excellent writing make this a compelling and fascinating read. I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in what happened to Nazi war criminals after the war.
Great research and excellent writing make this a compelling and fascinating read. I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in what happened to Nazi war criminals after the war.
May 3, 2025
Great informational book of how long the process can take on getting Justice for all those murdered in the Holocaust, and all the people needed to provide records and proof and research for persecution of those who participated in harming and killing during this time in history.
December 23, 2020
Finally a post-Holocaust book that provides a 'happy' ending. I had heard about Eli Rosenbaum and his Nazi hunting in years past. Glad that Debbie researched and wrote this book. These folks in the Justice Dept are heroes to go after these perpetrators and bring some semblance of justice.
Very interesting about the Office of Special Investigations has morphed into Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section within the Justice Department.
And someone in our own community - Ellen C - participated as a prosecutor!
Very interesting about the Office of Special Investigations has morphed into Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section within the Justice Department.
And someone in our own community - Ellen C - participated as a prosecutor!
January 4, 2020
Compelling background story, but the writing was very disjointed - stories that never intersect, lead to no end.
March 20, 2022
3.5 - interesting but rather disjointed and the story line of the Jewish couple was never integrated into the main storyline.
January 15, 2020
Imagine this — you’re sitting in church on Sunday and you look over at the man next to you in the pew. He’s elderly and in his twilight years. You are friends with his grandchildren and he may have sold you some potato chips from his store. He may have taught your Sunday School class. His wife bakes a mean casserole for the church picnic and you’ve been meaning to get the recipe for a while now. He and his wife have a beautiful house and enjoy taking trips in their peaceful retirement. But what if that man is harboring one of the worst secrets in recent history?
Citizen 865 provides insight into an extremely important chapter in Holocaust history. It’s easy to put the Holocaust into a box - yes, it was awful beyond comprehension. Eleven million people murdered — a number so big on paper it’s hard to comprehend. But then liberation happened and…poof…all those perpetrators of mass murder just disappeared, right? Sure, the super baddies (ie. those at the top of the murder machine) went on trial at Nuremburg. But have you ever taken a moment and wondered what happened to all the rest?
Some of them — a lot of them — just went back to their regular lives. Some even emigrated to the US under the guise of Europeans escaping Communism. They buried their pasts so deep that they started to believe the lies they constructed about their false identities. Cenziper makes us ask important questions in her book. Should there be a statute of limitations on Nazi warcrimes? Is it excessive to drag that nice, old man out of the church pew next to you and make him spend his twilight years in a courtroom and be held accountable for the actions of his youth? I’ve been alarmed by the number of people who say “Who cares? It’s been so long now and they are near death…let them die in peace.” Cenziper reminds us that justice for the murder of 11 million people is worth more than allowing an old man to enjoy the retirement he earned on the back of a lie.
Chronicling the OSI (Office of Special Investigation) as it hunts down Nazi criminals living in the US, Cenziper uses a fascinating storytelling device. Interspersed around OSI’s investigation (largely centered in the 1990s) we follow a young Jewish couple as they escape Poland in the 1940s. The men the OSI were seeking - specifically the Trawniki men - were those same men who hunted this young Jewish couple…a personalized face on so many anonymous victims. It’s a compelling approach.
One can always pick apart these type of historical narratives. Whether or not you like that some liberties were taken as far as reconstruction of dialogue or that we bounce between the mid-century past and the modern past, the fact remains that this is a good historical account easily digestible for the academic and the non-academic alike. It tells an important chapter in the Holocaust story that is often overlooked -- the Nazi war criminals didn't disappear post-liberation. They went somewhere . So where did they go? Some went to America...became citizens...married...joined a church and taught Sunday School...sold you potato chips. Citizen 865 reminds us that murder has no statute of limitations and there are those out there dedicated to seeking out the perpetrators and demanding justice until the last one is dead.
Citizen 865 provides insight into an extremely important chapter in Holocaust history. It’s easy to put the Holocaust into a box - yes, it was awful beyond comprehension. Eleven million people murdered — a number so big on paper it’s hard to comprehend. But then liberation happened and…poof…all those perpetrators of mass murder just disappeared, right? Sure, the super baddies (ie. those at the top of the murder machine) went on trial at Nuremburg. But have you ever taken a moment and wondered what happened to all the rest?
Some of them — a lot of them — just went back to their regular lives. Some even emigrated to the US under the guise of Europeans escaping Communism. They buried their pasts so deep that they started to believe the lies they constructed about their false identities. Cenziper makes us ask important questions in her book. Should there be a statute of limitations on Nazi warcrimes? Is it excessive to drag that nice, old man out of the church pew next to you and make him spend his twilight years in a courtroom and be held accountable for the actions of his youth? I’ve been alarmed by the number of people who say “Who cares? It’s been so long now and they are near death…let them die in peace.” Cenziper reminds us that justice for the murder of 11 million people is worth more than allowing an old man to enjoy the retirement he earned on the back of a lie.
Chronicling the OSI (Office of Special Investigation) as it hunts down Nazi criminals living in the US, Cenziper uses a fascinating storytelling device. Interspersed around OSI’s investigation (largely centered in the 1990s) we follow a young Jewish couple as they escape Poland in the 1940s. The men the OSI were seeking - specifically the Trawniki men - were those same men who hunted this young Jewish couple…a personalized face on so many anonymous victims. It’s a compelling approach.
One can always pick apart these type of historical narratives. Whether or not you like that some liberties were taken as far as reconstruction of dialogue or that we bounce between the mid-century past and the modern past, the fact remains that this is a good historical account easily digestible for the academic and the non-academic alike. It tells an important chapter in the Holocaust story that is often overlooked -- the Nazi war criminals didn't disappear post-liberation. They went somewhere . So where did they go? Some went to America...became citizens...married...joined a church and taught Sunday School...sold you potato chips. Citizen 865 reminds us that murder has no statute of limitations and there are those out there dedicated to seeking out the perpetrators and demanding justice until the last one is dead.
December 29, 2021
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ A really interesting look at the pursuit of Hitler’s soldiers who managed to immigrate to the United States after WWII. The book includes accounts of Jewish survivors/victims, historians, and the lawyers who fought to convict those guilty of atrocities during WWII.
February 8, 2021
This was a good retelling of the hunt for people who assisted in the Holocaust but melted into society after WWII. I remember several of the cases from when they were happening.
June 21, 2020
About Nazi hunters in the 1980s. Very readable, this account is written in the form of a story. But it is all true and well written. The writer is good, factual and eschews all adornments of fictional writing. What is left is a cold, gripping account of the hunt in America of a group of people who thought they had gotten away with it all.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 28, 2020
Cenziper focuses her book on two main groups. First, she tells the story of Polish Jews who, during World War II, become Hitler’s pawns. Hitler is looking to expand Germany’s borders so that his people have more space in which to live, so he annexes Poland. After the war, some of these displaced persons flee to the US, for they have no one or nothing left at home. The other group Cenziper develops is the people who work for the Office of Special Investigations (OSI), one of whom is a fresh new historian, Peter Black. Historians are relentless researchers, so they make a good team along with others, lawyers, in particular.
Their work is to ferret out particular ex-Nazi’s, particularly “Citizen 856,” who, after the war, minimize their involvement with killing Jews to US Immigration officials, and thus gain illegal entry into the country—a frightening idea to the legal immigrants living nearly side-by-side their torturers in some cases. The OSI spends decades building cases against this group of Ukrainians and Russians who are recruited and rewarded by the Nazis for carrying out their orders to exterminate about 1.7 people. The OSI’s work is arduous and their results are mixed. Because most of the accused Nazis appeal the decision to be returned to their native countries to face trial there (except in Germany, where officials do NOT want these people back), some of them die before deportation, but a few do have to face justice in their home countries.
Some Americans, like Pat Buchanan, oppose the OSI’s work, want to dispose of the OSI. They believe those mass murderers should be forgiven and forgotten. It is difficult to see how these usually conservative people, can form such a free-and-easy view of what should happen to war criminals—when otherwise they are usually such hawks. Is that really a Christian posture? Maybe someone will write a book about them to figure out why they would hold such a position.
Their work is to ferret out particular ex-Nazi’s, particularly “Citizen 856,” who, after the war, minimize their involvement with killing Jews to US Immigration officials, and thus gain illegal entry into the country—a frightening idea to the legal immigrants living nearly side-by-side their torturers in some cases. The OSI spends decades building cases against this group of Ukrainians and Russians who are recruited and rewarded by the Nazis for carrying out their orders to exterminate about 1.7 people. The OSI’s work is arduous and their results are mixed. Because most of the accused Nazis appeal the decision to be returned to their native countries to face trial there (except in Germany, where officials do NOT want these people back), some of them die before deportation, but a few do have to face justice in their home countries.
Some Americans, like Pat Buchanan, oppose the OSI’s work, want to dispose of the OSI. They believe those mass murderers should be forgiven and forgotten. It is difficult to see how these usually conservative people, can form such a free-and-easy view of what should happen to war criminals—when otherwise they are usually such hawks. Is that really a Christian posture? Maybe someone will write a book about them to figure out why they would hold such a position.
January 19, 2020
This book presents an interesting account of the complexity of finding, proving immigration violations and deporting Nazis from the United States. However, the presentation was completely disjointed, and the decision to put the chapters out of chronological order seemed more designed to create cliffhanger moments than to actually present the events in a logical manner. Constant digressions into the personal lives of the people researching the war criminals (which seemed to shift the focus away from the Jewish victims and onto the fact that every researcher had some sort of terminal illness/family medical crisis going on) were, at best, distracting. Key parts of the trial/legal proceedings seemed left out for reasons that were never explained, with the action jumping from dramatic deposition to dramatic hearing with none of the process fleshed out (I'm aware it doesn't 'make for good TV' but it's important, and this happens to be a book). Also, while the book helpfully starts by telling you how well researched it was (and it was well researched), that seemed as much a cover for the constant descriptions of how people felt, or sat, or gazed out the window, or noticed this or that thing, which were clearly invented and completely unnecessary. This whole book was muddled and read more like a bad thriller 'based on a true story' than a book on an important and underappreciated aspect of the aftermath of World War II.
February 1, 2020
A well written, but only cursorily researched reporting of the trial, conviction, and deportation of Jakob Reimer, a guard or functionary at Trawnicki, a training camp for Ukrainian and ethnic German concentration camp guards who had accepted the unconscionable job of murdering jews who had not been sent to the death camps. The story of the OSI (special investigations) is told, but I thought that a lot of the vast history of genocide was left out as were some of the details of the investigations undertaken by OSI. The book reminded us of the importance of history (true academically researched history) in the prosecutions of those cases which come to trial long after the crime or crimes were committed. I also kept getting the sense (without proof) that some of the emotional experiences attributed to the lawyers and some others had been constructed without real proof and, as often happens, dramatized needlessly. I thought a lot more could have been done with this effort, and some of the notes showed it, although the horrors of Hitler's genocide of Polish and German jews live in these pages.
June 15, 2021
Started 6-11-21. Finished 6-14-21. Well-researched book. Some of it is disjointed as the author would jump from one thread to another in the middle of a chapter but the story ultimately gets told to completion. I am wondering why she did not use any of the many, many articles from The Cleveland Plain Dealer as reference since Demjanjuk's initial trials were held in that city. There was extensive writing about it in detail for years. Obviously more books need to be written about other Nazis that still need to be captured in the U.S. and other countries.
May 5, 2021
This book is about a group of Nazi hunters employed by the United States Justice Department. They are on the trail of some Nazis who were supposed to be hiding out in the United States. These were members of the SS. I thought this was a very interesting book, and was very interested in how they went about finding them, scattered to the wind.
July 16, 2020
The book tells a story that needs to be told, but has some major flaws.
However, I see the many enthusiastic reviews from others and can only be happy that this accessible account reached people who might have ignored more scholarly treatments.
But I also hope that an historian with better writing skills will use this book as source material for the book that still needs to be written.
Here are some of the issues.
1
—
The book is larded with irrelevant side stories. I don’t need to know how Barry White met her husband, or Peter Black’s college trip to Germany, or how Black communicates with his autistic son. These are details Cenziper learned during her research, but they distract from the story I was led to expect.
2
—
The history is fictionalized. The author presents conversations, with direct quotes, that she wasn’t there to hear. She is recreating conversations that her sources described, but her book purports to be history, though popularized history. Imagined conversations are fiction.
3
—
Although there are some statistics buried in the epilogue, the book lacks basic information: how many Nazis, for example, moved to the US? What did they do here? How many did OSI return to their home countries? How many were tried on return? How many convicted? How many died peacefully at home?
There is no comprehensive list of Nazis investigated or returned.
4
—
She gets many small things wrong. A few examples, I could cite many more.
On page 88: “...lights from the national Christmas Tree twinkled along Pennsylvania Avenue..”
But the tree is on the Ellipse, behind the White House and some distance from Pennsylvania Avenue.
On page 92: “taking Black by the scruff of his collar...”
But collars don’t have scruffs.
5
—
The book lacks helpful reader aids, such as a list of characters and a timeline. The one map is subpar— it lacks a scale of miles, region names are printed in a light gray tone that is hard to read.
6
—
Cenziper is at best an adequate prose stylist, with a tendency towards cliches, odd word choices, and awkward sentence structures.
Cliche examples: read a few pages and you will find them.
Awkward sentence structure example, page 91: “It had been 500 Deutschmark cheaper to fly out of the airport in East Berlin in 1971 when 20-year-old Peter Black and two friends studying at the University in Bonn decided to travel to the Middle East on a winter break.”
Odd word choice example, page 146: “...a five story Talmudic building, the largest in the world...” She is referring to the Lublin Yeshiva, a school for the study of Talmud. The term “Talmudic building” is nonsense.
7
—
She did not proofread the final manuscript. If she had, many small errors would have been corrected. One example: it’s “land mines” not “land minds” (page 252).
However, I see the many enthusiastic reviews from others and can only be happy that this accessible account reached people who might have ignored more scholarly treatments.
But I also hope that an historian with better writing skills will use this book as source material for the book that still needs to be written.
Here are some of the issues.
1
—
The book is larded with irrelevant side stories. I don’t need to know how Barry White met her husband, or Peter Black’s college trip to Germany, or how Black communicates with his autistic son. These are details Cenziper learned during her research, but they distract from the story I was led to expect.
2
—
The history is fictionalized. The author presents conversations, with direct quotes, that she wasn’t there to hear. She is recreating conversations that her sources described, but her book purports to be history, though popularized history. Imagined conversations are fiction.
3
—
Although there are some statistics buried in the epilogue, the book lacks basic information: how many Nazis, for example, moved to the US? What did they do here? How many did OSI return to their home countries? How many were tried on return? How many convicted? How many died peacefully at home?
There is no comprehensive list of Nazis investigated or returned.
4
—
She gets many small things wrong. A few examples, I could cite many more.
On page 88: “...lights from the national Christmas Tree twinkled along Pennsylvania Avenue..”
But the tree is on the Ellipse, behind the White House and some distance from Pennsylvania Avenue.
On page 92: “taking Black by the scruff of his collar...”
But collars don’t have scruffs.
5
—
The book lacks helpful reader aids, such as a list of characters and a timeline. The one map is subpar— it lacks a scale of miles, region names are printed in a light gray tone that is hard to read.
6
—
Cenziper is at best an adequate prose stylist, with a tendency towards cliches, odd word choices, and awkward sentence structures.
Cliche examples: read a few pages and you will find them.
Awkward sentence structure example, page 91: “It had been 500 Deutschmark cheaper to fly out of the airport in East Berlin in 1971 when 20-year-old Peter Black and two friends studying at the University in Bonn decided to travel to the Middle East on a winter break.”
Odd word choice example, page 146: “...a five story Talmudic building, the largest in the world...” She is referring to the Lublin Yeshiva, a school for the study of Talmud. The term “Talmudic building” is nonsense.
7
—
She did not proofread the final manuscript. If she had, many small errors would have been corrected. One example: it’s “land mines” not “land minds” (page 252).
February 14, 2020
Citizen 865, Deborah Cenziper, author; Robert Fass, narrator
The book is interesting, but it doesn’t shed much more light on the Holocaust for me. However, it does examine a subject of which I was not knowledgeable, as it also explored the lives of the people who continued to hunt down Hitler’s hidden war criminals for years after the war had ended. These investigators searched for evidence about the Nazis of a small town, Trawniki, in Poland.
In Trawniki, there was a school to train men to kill, to annihilate, to rid the world of Jews. The investigators involved in the search for these Nazi criminals, who escaped into the US, did not have the profile of Simon Wiesenthal, but they believed that all those who slipped through the net should be brought to justice before they died. They believed that none should be allowed to live out the rest of their lives in comfort, in the USA, after the reprehensible things they had done and the murders they had either committed or witnessed silently.
The investigations began decades ago, but they didn’t get resolved until the 21st century began. The process was way too slow and accomplished too little because these despicable murderers had hidden their tracks very well for decades, without ever being caught or questioned. When finally there were investigations, and they were apprehended, there was difficulty getting proof of their complicit actions with Hitler’s regime, because the countries involved were unwilling to share information, and the lies they had told, so often, were now believed.
Some of the names of the investigators and the accused, will be recognized by the reader; there were both prominent lawyers and prominent war criminals. However, some will be more obscure, as well. To be sure, though, all of the accused were homicidal maniacs who hated Jews and participated in their extermination. They were guilty and many were ultimately deported. Others, however, died before justice could be done and remained in America until their deaths. The wheels of justice turned too slowly.
The book is informative and worth reading, however, it is a bit repetitive and disorganized. The audio narrator does a good job without taking over, which he could have, because it is an emotionally charged story, more so because it is true!
The book is interesting, but it doesn’t shed much more light on the Holocaust for me. However, it does examine a subject of which I was not knowledgeable, as it also explored the lives of the people who continued to hunt down Hitler’s hidden war criminals for years after the war had ended. These investigators searched for evidence about the Nazis of a small town, Trawniki, in Poland.
In Trawniki, there was a school to train men to kill, to annihilate, to rid the world of Jews. The investigators involved in the search for these Nazi criminals, who escaped into the US, did not have the profile of Simon Wiesenthal, but they believed that all those who slipped through the net should be brought to justice before they died. They believed that none should be allowed to live out the rest of their lives in comfort, in the USA, after the reprehensible things they had done and the murders they had either committed or witnessed silently.
The investigations began decades ago, but they didn’t get resolved until the 21st century began. The process was way too slow and accomplished too little because these despicable murderers had hidden their tracks very well for decades, without ever being caught or questioned. When finally there were investigations, and they were apprehended, there was difficulty getting proof of their complicit actions with Hitler’s regime, because the countries involved were unwilling to share information, and the lies they had told, so often, were now believed.
Some of the names of the investigators and the accused, will be recognized by the reader; there were both prominent lawyers and prominent war criminals. However, some will be more obscure, as well. To be sure, though, all of the accused were homicidal maniacs who hated Jews and participated in their extermination. They were guilty and many were ultimately deported. Others, however, died before justice could be done and remained in America until their deaths. The wheels of justice turned too slowly.
The book is informative and worth reading, however, it is a bit repetitive and disorganized. The audio narrator does a good job without taking over, which he could have, because it is an emotionally charged story, more so because it is true!
November 22, 2019
Puntaje: 3.2 Estrellas.
Primero que todo, muchas gracias a Hachette por la copia digital de este libro!
Citizen 865 es un libro de no ficcion en el que la autora nos relata la historia de un grupo de investigadores estadounidenses que tienen como mision desenmascarar a antiguos miembros del movimiento Nazi que llegaron a Estados Unidos despues de la guerra con una nueva identidad para no pagar por los crimenes y las atrocidades que cometieron.
La verdad este libro me abrio los ojos a una realidad de la cual nunca habia pensado: Nazis que se hicieron pasar por victimas de la guerra y que, al llegar a los Estados Unidos, crean una vida completamente nueva y dejan su pasado atras. Personas cuya familia no tiene la mas minima idea del pasado de su padre y abuelo! Es una locura y lo peor de todo es que es real.
Siento que Citizen 865 me hizo ver los sucesos de la Segunda Guerra Mundial de una forma muy diferente, pues tambien relata escenas del holocausto que hacen que yo, como lector, sienta el temor de aquellos quienes sufrieron durante este tiempo de guerra.
Me gusto el libro, mas de lo que esperaba. Le doy 3.2 estrellas porque luego de la primera mitad del libro, la historia fue muy repetitiva. Practicamente las historias de las personas que capturaban era similares. Lo que me mantuvo interesado fue como Debbie relataba las escenas de los personajes judios que intentaban escapar de la crueldad Nazi.
Recomiendo este libro para quienes estan interesados en las guerras mundiales y en conocer de una forma mas detallada los sucesos que aqui se desarrollaron.
Primero que todo, muchas gracias a Hachette por la copia digital de este libro!
Citizen 865 es un libro de no ficcion en el que la autora nos relata la historia de un grupo de investigadores estadounidenses que tienen como mision desenmascarar a antiguos miembros del movimiento Nazi que llegaron a Estados Unidos despues de la guerra con una nueva identidad para no pagar por los crimenes y las atrocidades que cometieron.
La verdad este libro me abrio los ojos a una realidad de la cual nunca habia pensado: Nazis que se hicieron pasar por victimas de la guerra y que, al llegar a los Estados Unidos, crean una vida completamente nueva y dejan su pasado atras. Personas cuya familia no tiene la mas minima idea del pasado de su padre y abuelo! Es una locura y lo peor de todo es que es real.
Siento que Citizen 865 me hizo ver los sucesos de la Segunda Guerra Mundial de una forma muy diferente, pues tambien relata escenas del holocausto que hacen que yo, como lector, sienta el temor de aquellos quienes sufrieron durante este tiempo de guerra.
Me gusto el libro, mas de lo que esperaba. Le doy 3.2 estrellas porque luego de la primera mitad del libro, la historia fue muy repetitiva. Practicamente las historias de las personas que capturaban era similares. Lo que me mantuvo interesado fue como Debbie relataba las escenas de los personajes judios que intentaban escapar de la crueldad Nazi.
Recomiendo este libro para quienes estan interesados en las guerras mundiales y en conocer de una forma mas detallada los sucesos que aqui se desarrollaron.
January 24, 2023
I’ve long been drawn to WWII stories because they represent the best and worst of human nature. But this was a new angle for me; the United States’ attempts during the 1990s through early 2000s to de-naturalize and deport former Nazis who had managed to lie about their activities after the war and become Americans.
By the time they were brought to court, they were old and feeble and had been model citizens. It reminded me of another book I’d read on habits (of all things) that talked about the Vietnam War. Something like 15% of American soldiers were addicted to heroin in Vietnam. But after they came back, their environment was so shockingly different that 88% never touched heroin again.
All that to say - the hells of war make ordinary people do things they wouldn’t normally do. And that’s one of the key arguments against prosecuting Nazis after so many years. Their defense teams claim they were under duress, that they only did administrative work, that they’ve not done anything wrong since, and we shouldn’t we just all move on. And yet through the efforts of a small team of intrepid government historians, who we get to know in the book, we found the paper trail to rebut all those arguments and prove that no, there were no innocent Nazi guards.
Accountability matters, so that the horrors of the Holocaust (perpetuated by regular people!) don’t happen again.
This book is well-written in a narrative style, and it exposed a little-known (to me) part of our post-war history. 4.5 stars.
By the time they were brought to court, they were old and feeble and had been model citizens. It reminded me of another book I’d read on habits (of all things) that talked about the Vietnam War. Something like 15% of American soldiers were addicted to heroin in Vietnam. But after they came back, their environment was so shockingly different that 88% never touched heroin again.
All that to say - the hells of war make ordinary people do things they wouldn’t normally do. And that’s one of the key arguments against prosecuting Nazis after so many years. Their defense teams claim they were under duress, that they only did administrative work, that they’ve not done anything wrong since, and we shouldn’t we just all move on. And yet through the efforts of a small team of intrepid government historians, who we get to know in the book, we found the paper trail to rebut all those arguments and prove that no, there were no innocent Nazi guards.
Accountability matters, so that the horrors of the Holocaust (perpetuated by regular people!) don’t happen again.
This book is well-written in a narrative style, and it exposed a little-known (to me) part of our post-war history. 4.5 stars.
July 2, 2022
So just up front...this book is depressing ...but also hopeful...and important
As we near a time when there will be no surviving Holocaust victims...and no surviving perpetrators ...it is important to document every possible line of evil for history. It is hard to believe that there are those that will accuse others of lying about this ...and not sure why...but important to document every step of the way...
The Trawniki men...is a line I had never heard of ...and they played a HUGE part of the story. To think ...after reading this book...that this had really been unexplored...well...I can only say that it must have been due to so many more people involved.
If you are a student of history...WW2...the Holocaust... or just looking for truth....this book is full of details and centers really on one man...who had stayed hidden in the United States for decades...and while there will be those that will argue that his involvement was limited...it showed that there were thousands of men who were trained in Trawniki that played huge parts including the slaughtering of thousand upon thousands of Jews...the nazi movement ...could not have been as "efficient" as it was without these trained men...
A very detailed book that shows again...the underlying layers that went on to murder millions of innocent people.
As we near a time when there will be no surviving Holocaust victims...and no surviving perpetrators ...it is important to document every possible line of evil for history. It is hard to believe that there are those that will accuse others of lying about this ...and not sure why...but important to document every step of the way...
The Trawniki men...is a line I had never heard of ...and they played a HUGE part of the story. To think ...after reading this book...that this had really been unexplored...well...I can only say that it must have been due to so many more people involved.
If you are a student of history...WW2...the Holocaust... or just looking for truth....this book is full of details and centers really on one man...who had stayed hidden in the United States for decades...and while there will be those that will argue that his involvement was limited...it showed that there were thousands of men who were trained in Trawniki that played huge parts including the slaughtering of thousand upon thousands of Jews...the nazi movement ...could not have been as "efficient" as it was without these trained men...
A very detailed book that shows again...the underlying layers that went on to murder millions of innocent people.
April 21, 2023
I was looking forward to a well-researched, well-written book about an interesting subject - the discovery of former Nazi's in the U.S. and the trials stripping them of their U.S. citizenship and subsequent deportation. On a personal level, I have a very hard time understanding how anyone could be part of something like that, and then how they could ever imagine living a “normal life” afterwards would be possible. It is horrifying to think that so many Nazi collaborators have hidden themselves all over the world. They got to pick themselves up, dust themselves off, move somewhere different, and create entirely new people and life stories for themselves, while behind them, they leave nothing but a trail of bodies, unanswered questions, and blood. Having said that I was hoping that this book would shed light on how, where, and when these Nazi agents were caught in the United States. What I got is more a legal treatise of this subject of removing the citizenship of 80-year-old Nazi collaborators. Boring! Also, I am left wondering why ANYONE who worked the camps ever allowed in the U. S.? Secondly, since they were here, was it really worth the expense of prosecuting them if they were only to be deported? I needed more answers! This is not the book I thought it should have been. Lots of questions left unanswered.
August 25, 2019
Absolutely worth the time to read. Even if you are not a history buff or interested in WWII, this book will likely be interesting enough to hold your attention for the duration.
There have been many news stories in recent memory and even a few documentaries about Nazi participants being found in the US, but this was the first time that I really felt like I could understand how they were searched out and why, after so many years, they were still able to be confronted with the past and tried at all. I guess we, as Americans, get used to hearing the words, "Statute of limitations," so often, that we forget that some crimes do not have an average lifespan.
I thought this book was highly interesting and well-researched and written. It was amazing to realize that Germany often refused to take their own war criminals back, even after an agreement had been put in place. I learned a lot of dismaying things from this book, things that I hadn't learned anywhere else. If you are also fascinated by the idea of war criminals finally getting caught and prosecuted for their crimes, then this book might be one you should add to your list.
This review is based on a complimentary copy from the publisher, provided through Netgalley. All opinions are my own.
There have been many news stories in recent memory and even a few documentaries about Nazi participants being found in the US, but this was the first time that I really felt like I could understand how they were searched out and why, after so many years, they were still able to be confronted with the past and tried at all. I guess we, as Americans, get used to hearing the words, "Statute of limitations," so often, that we forget that some crimes do not have an average lifespan.
I thought this book was highly interesting and well-researched and written. It was amazing to realize that Germany often refused to take their own war criminals back, even after an agreement had been put in place. I learned a lot of dismaying things from this book, things that I hadn't learned anywhere else. If you are also fascinated by the idea of war criminals finally getting caught and prosecuted for their crimes, then this book might be one you should add to your list.
This review is based on a complimentary copy from the publisher, provided through Netgalley. All opinions are my own.
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January 13, 2020Starting back in the 1960s, the United States Justice Department began realizing that there were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of war criminals that had ended up settling in the United States. After the war, numerous individuals, mostly non-Germans, (specifically Ukrainians, but also Estonians, Latvians, etc.) who had usually been recruited into the SS from among the hundreds of thousands of Soviet prisoners, were able to gain entry to the U.S. by simply lying on their immigration applications. Most claimed to be Soviet POWs during the war, (which was true) and said they were laborers for the Germans during the war. Thousands were trained at a secret facility in the Polish city of Trawniki, and ended up being vital cogs in the Final Solution. Most of the death camp guards were Ukrainians, for example.
A dedicated group of OSI (Office of Special Investigations) lawyers, historians and researchers spent decades trying to find the war criminals, most of whom lived comfortable, unremarkable, blue collar, middle class lives, hiding in the American Midwest. Not content to let the killers go free, they deserve incredible credit.
A dedicated group of OSI (Office of Special Investigations) lawyers, historians and researchers spent decades trying to find the war criminals, most of whom lived comfortable, unremarkable, blue collar, middle class lives, hiding in the American Midwest. Not content to let the killers go free, they deserve incredible credit.
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