Citizen 865: The Hunt for Hitler's Hidden Soldiers in America

Citizen 865: The Hunt for Hitler's Hidden Soldiers in America

by Debbie Cenziper
Citizen 865: The Hunt for Hitler's Hidden Soldiers in America

Citizen 865: The Hunt for Hitler's Hidden Soldiers in America

by Debbie Cenziper

Hardcover

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Overview

**Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) Book Award Finalist**   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 discovery: 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780594087625
Publisher: Hachette Books
Publication date: 11/12/2019
Pages: 320
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Debbie Cenziper is an investigative journalist, professor, and author based in Washington, D.C. A contributing reporter for the investigative team at The Washington Post, she has won many major awards in print journalism, including the 2007 Pulitzer Prize. Cenziper is the co-author of the critically acclaimed Love Wins: The Lovers and Lawyers Who Fought the Landmark Case for Marriage Equality. She was recently named the director of investigative journalism at the Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism.

Table of Contents

Author's Note xiii

Prologue The Dance xvii

Part 1 Occupied Poland 1941-1943

1 The Shtetl of Zolochiv 3

2 The Color of Blood 12

3 The Wedding 22

Part 2 United States 1978-1992

4 Proper Work 35

5 Darkness Comes My Way 46

6 Light at Long Last 55

7 Breach of Power 66

8 God's Grace 79

9 Secrets and Lies 87

10 Sunrise in Prague 99

11 Code for Murder 111

12 Seven Floors Above Manhattan 126

Part 3 Poland and the United States 1941-1951

13 Health and Welfare 143

14 Courage and Devotion 155

15 Amchu? 163

16 Good Fortune 176

Part 4 United States 1996-2013

17 Long After Dark 187

18 Winter in Penza 201

19 The Work of Murder 212

20 Taken Up 221

21 Compassion 228

22 Second Chances 241

24 Credible Evidence 251

25 Trawniki 256

Epilogue Feels Like Vindication 260

Acknowledgments 267

Notes 270

Index 287

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