The List

by Stephen Robert Stein

Overview

The story of the Jewish Brigade as it evolves into a daring band of Jews hunting down Nazi war criminals

The List is an exceptional work of historical fiction that brings to life the untold story of the Holocaust and slaughter of not just Jews, but over 150,000 Serbs and Gypsies who were executed while Croatia was under fascist rule during World War II.

Martin Brosky escapes from Auschwitz and joins up with the British Jewish Brigade toward the end of the war and meets Sylvia Harvitz, a veteran of Tito's Partisans and survivor of a Croatian concentration camp, Start Gradiska. Martin's cries for revenge parallel with Sylvia's need to avenge the deaths of her parents as they travel together carrying out reprisals in Europe, and later in South America. Along with Mordecai, an Iranian Jew who also joins the Jewish Brigade, Martin and Sylvia become Mossad intelligence officers for Israel carrying out their vengeful missions together.

The List brings together the names and activities of nazis and Croatian war criminals, including Josef Mengele, who avoided prosecution for their war crimes and travelled to South America under the direction and help of the Vatican. Protected by dictators in Argentina, Chile, and Brazil, these men became targets for Martin and his Mossad agents. Readers will discover that vengeance is not without pain.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781644283356
Publisher:	Rare Bird Books
Publication date:	10/11/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

The List is Stephen Stein’s second novel. He is a retired orthopedic surgeon and he and his wife Becky presently share their time between homes in Phoenix, Arizona and Batesville, Indiana. They have traveled extensively throughout Europe laying a solid historical foundation for his first novel, The Oath while delving deeper into the reasons behind the Holocaust. His passions include Scuba diving, flying, and exploring new environments.

Read an Excerpt

Croatia

June 12, 1945

The smell of death permeated everything—the trucks, the homes, the people. A train of vehicles passing through Herzegovina wound along the road between Korita and the Koritzka Jama Gorge—a line that never seemed to end. Beat-up Russian and German trucks were intermixed and filled with smiling, victorious Partisans waving flags at the scores of thin, unwashed people perfectly matching the debris strewn alongside the unpaved road. This untamed traffic of vehicles came to a halt at a sharp bend, where a foul, familiar odor percolated through the crowd standing at the edge of a cliff, silently looking down. Hundreds of bodies of men shot in the head had been flung over the edge of this gorge to die among the sharp outcroppings of granite, corpses piled three to four high, many of whose eyes stared vacantly up at the sky in wonder at how the Heavenly Father had let them die so violently. Forever marking the cruelty fostered throughout the Serbian villages of Croatia, these dead souls were the embodiment of religious hatred between two major Christian denominations: the Orthodox and the Catholics. 

Holding a rag over her nose, Sylvia Harvitz stepped down from the aging Russian vehicle and peered at the mass of decomposing flesh below but pulled back up quickly and bent over to vomit. Her retching was drowned out by the continual wailing of relatives who had been searching for their families taken away by the Ustashe. Scattered among the decaying bodies were clusters of black vultures feasting on the rotting flesh, unconcerned by the groups of humans peering over the side of the cliff. A closer look at the dead revealed gunshot wounds traversing front to back on most of the skulls. 

Amid mixed sentiments of relief that the Fascists had been defeated and anger at the horrific killings that had taken place, the villagers welcomed the trucks full of Partisans and other forces assisting the Communists, not yet understanding what their future would hold. 

But Sylvia had other thoughts on her mind as this war wound down.

Next stop: vengeance.