The Odessa File [antikvár]

FOREWORDThe 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 German 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, commanded 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 effect they included the carrying out of Hitler's ambition to rid Germany and Europe of all elements he considered 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 some fourteen million human beings, comprising roughly six million Jews, five million Russians, two million Poles, half a million gypsies and half a million 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, synonymous with inhumanity in a way that no other organisation before or since has been able to do.vii