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  • Nazi Hunters: How a Team of Spies and Survivors Captured the World's Most Notorious Nazi

Nazi Hunters: How a Team of Spies and Survivors Captured the World's Most Notorious Nazi

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Nazi Hunters: How a Team of Spies and Survivors Captured the World's Most Notorious Nazi

Book Information

Category
Non-Fiction
Reader Personality Type
Publisher
Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic September 2013
Curriculum
  • Social Emotional Learning
  • Social Studies Curriculum

"But if you only have love for your own race 
Then you only leave space to discriminate 
And to discriminate only generates hate 
And when you hate you're bound to get irate, yeah 
Madness is what you demonstrate 
And that's exactly how anger works and operates 
Man you gotta have love just to set it straight 
Take control of your mind and meditate 
Let your soul gravitate to the love y'all" 
-- will.i.am, et al. "Where is the Love?" 


Approximately six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. 
"The long-term after-effects of Holocaust traumatization are far-reaching. 
More than half a century after the war, the Holocaust continues to make 
its presence felt on survivor families and others in a variety of ways. 
Like an atom bomb that disperses its radioactive fallout in distant places, 
often a long time after the actual explosion, the Holocaust continues to 
contaminate everyone who was exposed to it in one way or another.

When retiring from work or experiencing deteriorating health, terrifying nightmares 
and flashbacks reappear in aging survivors who over the years had kept 
themselves excessively busy in order to repress their painful memories. 
Survivors who were children during the war continue to struggle with their basic 
insecurities and prolonged mourning for parents they hardly or ever knew." 
-- from "The Long-term Psychological Effects and Treatment of Holocaust 
Trauma" (2001) by clinical psychologist Natan P.F. Kellermann, PhD. 


Growing up in Commack, on Long Island, I had a lot of friends who were 
Jewish. So many had lost -- a decade before we were born -- distant- or 
not-so-distant relatives in the Nazi death camps. Our community was also home 
to Jews who were among the survivors of the Holocaust. 


Adolf Eichmann organized and oversaw the movement of millions of Jews to 
the death camps where they were systematically murdered. He was very good 
at organizing and overseeing these tasks. Clearly, he did not learn that 
one must not to do to someone that which you wouldn't want done to you...or 
your mother...or your daughter. If there is a lesson for the world in the 
life of Adolf Eichmann, it is that one cannot justify morally unjustifiable 
behavior through claims of having merely been following orders. 


"The agents had mentally prepared themselves for the risks of holing up at 
the house -- possibly even having to face an assault from the police or 
from Eichmann's sons and associates if they were located. But not one of 
them had anticipated the soul-hollowing effect of inhabiting the same space as 
Adolf Eichmann." 


THE NAZI HUNTERS by Neal Bascomb is an adaptation for young people ofBascomb's book about the locating, surveillance, capture, and bringing to 
justice of Adolf Eichmann, who had succeeded in changing his identity and 
escaping to Argentina at the end of WWII. It is an oft-tense spy thriller of a 
true story. Pretty much all of those involved in tracking him down, 
capturing him, and getting him from Argentina to Israel for trial, had deep 
emotional involvement in the mission, having lost distant- or not-so-distant 
relatives in the Holocaust thanks, in large part, to Eichmann. 


Six million Jews murdered remains a difficult number to get my head 
around. That is the equivalent of 15 Woodstock audiences. Or, out here in 
California where I live now, it is the number of people who collectively live 
in San Francisco plus Oakland plus San Jose plus San Mateo County plus the 
rest of Alameda County plus Contra Costa County plus Marin County plus Sonoma 
County (my county). 


It took a lot of organizing to kill that many people. Eichmann got it 
done. It took a lot of work to catch up with Eichmann. Fifteen years after 
the war, the people we meet in this book got it done. The capture and 
trial of Adolf Eichmann helped educate the modern world about what had taken 
place under Hitler. 


Now, two-thirds of a century after the end of that war, I continue to hope 
for the discovery of an avenue to lasting peace and harmony in the Middle 
East. I'm hoping that, someday soon, someone can get it done, and I can 
write about those people, too. 


"If you never know truth 
Then you never know love 
Where's the love y'all?" 

256 pages  Ages 10 and up  9780545-43099-9 


Recommended by:  Richie Partington, MLIS
See more of his recommendations:  Richie's Picks _https://richiespicks.com

*******

World War II will always be remembered as the war that carved death and destruction throughout Europe. The Jewish people were the main target of this "Final Solution" and weren't safe in any country Germany overcame.

The men that played pivotal parts in the "Final Solution" were a group of high-ranked Nazis, given the task to eradicate the Jews.   Adolf Eichmann was one of those faces burned into survivors' memories. As head of operations for the "Final Solution, he showed no emotion as he lied to Jews and sent them to be killed

At the end of the war, Eichmann went into hiding and was never seen again...until thirteen years later...

Once Eichmann was identified, Israel began an incredibly detailed plot to find, capture and bring him to justice on Israeli soil. This is their story.

 This is one of those non-fiction books that will reach out to YA readers and keep them riveted until the last page. And when they're done reading, this story will take them online to find out more.   HIGHLY recommended.

Full review on YA Books and More ( www.naomibates.blogspot.com<https://www.naomibates.blogspot.com> )

Recommended by:  Naomi Bates, Librarian, Texas USA

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