The Odessa File [antikvár]

FOREWORD The ODESSA of the title is neither the city in southern Russia nor the smaller city in Texas. It is a word com-posed of six initial letters, which in Germán stand for Organisation der ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen. In English this means "Organization 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, commanded by Heinrich Himmler, and charged with special tasks under the Nazis who ruled Germany from 1933 to 1945. These tasks were sup-posedly concerned with the security of the Third Reich; in effect they included the carrying out of Hitler's ambi-tion 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 exter-minate every Jew, man, woman, and child, on the face of the Continent. In carrying out these tasks the SS organized 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 sel-dom mentioned, close to two hundred thousand non-Jewish Germans and Austrians. These were eiíher mentally or physically handicapped unfortunates, or so-called enemies of the Reich, such as 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