The Odessa File

Előszó

FOREWORD
The ODESSA of the title is neither the city in southern Russia nor the small town in America. It is a word composed of six initial letters, which in Germán stand for 'Organisation Der Ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen\ In English this means 'Organisation of Former Members of the SS\
The SS, as most readers will know, was the army within an army, the state within a state, devised by Adolf Hitler, com-manded by Heinrich Himmler, and charged with special tasks under the Nazis who ruled Germany from 1933 to 1945. These tasks were supposedly concerned with the security of the Third Reich; in eíiect they included the carrying out of Hitler's ambition to rid Germany and Europe of all elements he con-sidered to be 'unworthy of life', to enslave in perpetuity the 'subhuman races of the Slavic lands', and to exterminate every Jew, man, woman and child, on the face of the continent.
In carrying out these tasks the SS organised and executed the murder of somé fourteen millión humán beings, comprising roughly six millión Jews, five millión Russians, two millión Poles, half a millión gypsies and half a millión mixed others, including, though it is seldom mentioned, close to two hundred thousand non-Jewish Germans and Austrians. These were either mentally or physically handicapped unfortunates or so-called enemies of the Reich, like Communists, Social Democrats, Liberals, editors, reporters and priests who spoke out too inconveniently, men of conscience and courage, and later army officers suspected of lack of loyalty to Hitler.
Before it had been destroyed the SS had made the two initials of its name, and the twin-lightning symbol of its standard, Vissza

Fülszöveg

The life-and-death hunt for a notorious Nazi criminal unfolds against a back-ground of international espionage and clandestine arms deals, involving rockets designed in Germany, built in Eqypt, and equipped with warheads of nuclear waste and bubonic plague. Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, is locked in struggle with Odessa, the organisation of former SS men in Germany. As the story leads to its final dramatic confron-tation on a bleak winter's hill-top, the question that every reader asked at the end of THE DAY OF THE JACKAL wili inevitably be asked again: CAN this be fiction?
In the hands of Frederick Forsyth the documentary thriller achieves its most sophisticated form-Mr. Forsyth has produced both a brilliant entertainment and a disquieting book! The Guardian
THE ODE A
is a carefully thought out, meticulously researched, documented, instructive and eventually highly suspenseful work of fiction-the whole is rich with information, observ-ations and controversy.' Chicago Tribüné
-liké a bomb, the story works we begin to turn the pages with mounting anxiety and to jump from scene to scene with increasing willingness !
New York Times Vissza