An Eye for an Eye: The Untold Story of Jewish Revenge Against Germans in 1945

by John Sack

The worst thing that happened to some Holocaust survivors was that they became like Nazis. How and why - and why they stopped - is the subject of this book. It is a story of Jewish revenge - and Jewish redemption. An Eye for an Eye is a riveting account of the appalling events that accompanied the end of World War II. In 1945 the Soviet Union, which occupied Poland and parts of Germany, a region inhabited by ten million German civilians, established the Office of State Security and deliberately recruited survivors of the Holocaust to carry out a policy of de-Nazification. The Office entered German homes and rounded up German men, women, and children - 99 percent of them noncombatant, innocent civilians - and took them to cellars, prisons, and 1,255 concentration camps, where inmates subsisted on starvation rations, where typhus ran rampant, and where torture was common-place. In this brief period, between 60,000 and 80,000 Germans died in the Office's custody. The book tells the story of what drove people who had been through unimaginable suffering to turn around and inflict the same on others. John Sack focuses on people like Lola, a young woman who became commandant of a prison, determined to avenge the death of her mother, brother, sister, and one-year-old baby . . . Pinek, Lola's gentle childhood friend who after the war became head of security for all of Silesia but never saw what was going on in his jurisdiction and, bitter because it had ignored Auschwitz, refused to allow the Red Cross to come and look . . . and Shlomo, a commandant who bragged that "What the Germans couldn't do in five years at Auschwitz, I've done in five months at Schwientochlowitz." (In fact, his arithmetic was faulty: the Germans at Auschwitz killed just as many people in five short hours.). Nothing has ever been written about this. To unearth the story, the author spent seven years doing research and conducting interviews in Poland, Germany, Israel, and the United States. Sixty-fi

Genres: History, Holocaust, Nonfiction, World War II, Historical

Paperback

First published October 1, 1993

About the author

Jewish-American journalist, considered to be the founder of literary journalism.

He was a war correspondent in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Yugoslavia.

His book Eye for an eye about war crimes against the German population of the by Poland annexed part of East Germany has caused an uproar because Sack pointed out the crimes against humanity committed by jews.

Sack was accused of holocaust denial and anti-semitism by various fellow jews and jewish political organisations.

Reviews

[Kelly Korby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic book detailing the story of the Forgotten Holocaust the one committed against the Germans after world war 2. I truly am surprised this book was even allowed to be published or be known to the public.For its subject is absolutely forbidden to be spoken of in the academia of the United States or elsewhere in the world. It's unfortunate the Germans don't have a lobby to pressure and enlighten the world about this massacre of innocent people suffered at the hands of Jewish revenge

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

Could this be true? Is it not conceivable that, having suffered terribly in Auschwitz, a survivor would take revenge on the people from the nation that ran the concentration camp after the war? That is the story told here. Mr Sack tells a horrific story, first of the terrible tortures and crimes inflicted on Polish Jews at Auschwitz and subsequently, the alleged torture and crimes by Jewish survivors inflicted on the Germans caught in Poland after the war ends. The first half of the book is compelling. What terrible stories are told of survival in the camps and the forced marches from the camps as the Russian forces approach. The next part covers the building of camps for Germans caught in Poland or in seized German lands. Ostensibly, this was to catch and punish former masters of the concentration camps or members of the SS. Mr Sack shows many are just caught in the net, having little or no guilt or association. The main characters are cruel and inflict terrible suffering in many cases, yet many soon become horrified at what they have become.

Mr Sack tells the story of his search for this story and participants in the second half of the book. This part of the book is poorly written and jumps around. Obviously he is villified for writing anything about this. How could anyone want to hear about concentration camp victims becoming as cruel as the SS? And who would be sympathetic to Germans after the mass horror of WWII? Unfortunately, the end of the book does little to bolster Mr Sack's story with hard evidence. As he explains, few would talk about it, many denied it all and the few who would admit participation often recanted.

The end of WWII featured the biggest mass migration ever as the losers of the war were run out of ancestral lands. Many horrors were committed and perhaps this story sheds light on one. Hard to know for sure.

[V. Subhash · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was shocked when I read this book. Everyone knows that Nazis ran concentration camps for Jews but did you know that Jews ran concentration camps for Germans AFTER THE WAR? This book by noted journalist John Sack chronicles how hundreds of thousands of Germans were deliberately tortured, starved, and killed by Jews appointed by Stalin. Both sides of the Cold War cooperated in this plan to punish Germans. After the book was written, the publisher would not print it. Several big publishers did extensive fact checking but no one would touch it.

[Jakub Horbów · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nie da się nie podziwiać odwagi i szczerości autora. Ponad 20 lat temu stawiał pytania i opisywał, coś co nawet dzisiaj jest jednym z największych przemilczeń historii.

[Mela · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read it dozen years ago. It was very shocking and sad.

It is true that crimes described here were almost nothing by comparison to crimes of the Nazis. Nonetheless, they shouldn't be silent.

Fantastic book detailing the story of the Forgotten Holocaust the one committed against the Germans after world war 2. [from Kelly Korby's review]

[Stefanie Robinson · Rating 1 out of 5]

While everyone is aware of what happened to Jewish people, and every other group that was not up to Nazi standards, many are unaware of what happened to the Germans after World War II. Poland in the post war era contained a large German population, some who had lived there for ages and some who had come to move into appropriated housing. Around 200,000 Germans died in Soviet concentration camps. Germans were subjected to the slave labor they had implemented themselves. Certainly, those German who were under the watchful eye of their former Jewish targets really had a rough go of it. Many were subjected to the same beatings and starvation rations that the Jewish populations had faced themselves. Humanity should not be subjective, yet it very often is.

I am a history major that specialized in World War II, and none of this information was communicated to me in any class that I personally took. When I found this book and read the title, I was very curious about this. I read this book, and was terribly disappointed in the author's attitude. I actually learned a lot more about this situation from the Smithsonian website than I did this book, which annoyed me for having wasted the money. What happened to people under the hands of the Nazis is abhorrent. What happened to the German people in retribution is also abhorrent. Neither group is innocent of committing crimes against humanity. Neither group should be applauded for their behavior, no matter how understandable one may find revenge. Children, especially, on any side of war should never be starved, beaten, tortured, or anything else. The author takes a very celebratory tone, and while I do understand feeling that way for the genocide that was inflicted, it is really disgusting to be pleased with treating people this way period.

[Rhuff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Author John Sack's probe into the dark corners of postwar Europe was an eye-opener for many. The promotion of Jews into the ranks of "anti-fascist police" in eastern Europe, the ethnic cleansing of eastern Germans, the revenge exacted on the latter by Poles and Jews alike - all thrown down the Orwellian memory hole for years, unmentionable in "responsible" academia or journalism. Like Benny Morris, John Sack faced the music for writing anything about the postwar Jewish experience that deviated from the "consensus": all Jews were noble victims, elevated into sainthood by the evils of WW II.

The end of the cold war allowed for an opening in the West as well as the East. No subject was taboo, including the role of Jews in Poland's security police, cleansing the nation of a new-despised minority. In researching his book among the still-living witnesses and perpetrators, Sack found the iron curtain was by no means left behind in Europe. The book was refused agenting or publication, the US publishing industry acting like commissars of public information. The pitfalls of writing history of still-living persons was brought home, too, in the savage about-face of his protagonist Lola.

Yet for all the book's importance it's very sloppy writing, reading like an expanded magazine article (it was in fact adapted from two.) There is too much padding, too much personal intrusion of what Sack ate for breakfast, etc.. The narrative is rambling, sometimes incoherent, short on some vital details. I would much rather have read quotes from those alluded German prisoner reports, than family details of descendants who play no role in the subject. History is about people, true enough, but there must be relevance. Still, the book is saved by its subject, despite the author's dancing apologetics.

Groundbreaking for its time it was even featured on 60 Minutes. The hostility of the Guardians of the Official Narrative was palpable. It remains a touchy subject today. Cold War triumphalism, German reunification, rising anti-Semitism should not be excuses for ignoring all pages of the historic record. To do so mocks pretensions of a free press and a society of open inquiry.

[Vince Dorn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an account of the Real genocide in Europe that is not taught in schools or promoted endlessly through TV and movies. This is an account of the horrific torture and cruelty perpetrated by Jews (mostly) against Germans. The truly sick part of reading this book (written by a Jew) is the author's gloating, arrogance, and pride over the atrocities his people committed against White Europeans.

Everyone should read this.

[♥Xeni♥]

Found this ebook in my collection... I have NO idea where I got it from! Maybe one day I'll actually read it.

[Chad Montabon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not a great copy that I head.

The story is not really told in a linear fashion and the atrocities discussed are often given without enough corroboration even to find further reading to corroborate it.

Because of the disjointed narration there are questions unanswered and very little in the way of a path to get the answers to those questions.