Hunting Eichmann: How a Band of Survivors and a Young Spy Agency Chased Down the World's Most Notorious Nazi

by Neal Bascomb

For a while, the two sat in silence, and Klein was overcome by memories of the past: Nazis driving his family into a Hungarian ghetto only a couple of weeks after his parents had decided not to escape across the Slovakian border. Stepping off the freight train in Auschwitz, guards separating his father and him from his mother and younger brother and sister. His father saying that Yosef was seventeen, not fourteen, to try to keep him alive. Looking at the smokestacks that towered over the rail yard. Shuffling between labor camps, surviving only because of his father. Parting from him when put to work constructing an underground aircraft plant near the Austrian border. Turning fifteen as a prisoner; spending his days pouring concrete, cutting down trees, and loading coal; struggling to stay alive while others either died in their bunks or were shot by the guards. Nearly being killed during Allied bombings of the installation. Five days and five nights of suffering the crush of human flesh in a freight car destined for an extermination camp. Stumbling out of the train to see American tanks send his guards fleeing.