An Eye for an Eye: The Story of Jews Who Sought Revenge for the Holocaust
by John Sack
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Book Summary Information
Author: John SackEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2000-04-17
ISBN: 0967569109
Number of pages: 276
Publisher: John Sack
Book Reviews of An Eye for an Eye: The Story of Jews Who Sought Revenge for the Holocaust
Book Review: A Critical Eye Reviews This Book
Summary: 4 Stars
Full disclosure: I am an American with a German heritage. For some time now I have been trying to learn the whole truth about WWII, not just the winner's version. I am especially interested in what happened to the Germans after the war was over.
John Sack was uniquely qualified to write this book. First, he was a professional reporter and therefore had to report honestly to maintain his reputation. And, second, he was a Jew documenting horrible crimes committed by Jews. Many of the Jews he interviewed refused to talk to him, lied to him (150; numbers refer to pages in the 1993 edition), or even threatened him to stop him. (144, 157). For those reasons, he has the credibility that a gentile non-reporter would lack. For example, in the Preface he assures us that, with few exceptions, the quotes in the book are accurate (xi, also 176). Since there are hundreds of quotes throughout the book and the book was researched and published long after the quoted statements were made, I was, at first, skeptical, but, given who the author is and his sources, I now believe the statement is true.
Whether the author is entirely objective, however, is another matter. He tells us about the lives of Lola, the principal character, and her friends before the war, thereby humanizing them so that the reader empathizes with them, but tells us nothing about the pre-war lives of Germans tortured by Lola and other Jews, leaving them impersonal and usually nameless. Indeed, Germans who are about to be tortured are described as contemptible and therefore deserving of torture: "his fat and aristocratic face" (64), "the German's smart-aleck face" (67).
Before telling us of the horrible atrocities that the Jews committed against the Germans after the war, the author wants the reader to understand why the Jews did these things, so that the reader would think, "If I had been that Jew, I'd have done it myself." (xi). The Jews did it to avenge the Holocaust, of course, particularly the gassings at Auschwitz. Indeed, there is no justification for the vengeance of the Jews after the war if the Germans had not done worse to the Jews during the war, as the author believes they did. (198). While the Holocaust is the principal justification, the author makes several other charges against the Germans, such as that "the SS took some babies away to rip in two pieces or pitch at the walls or toss in the air and catch like quoits on their bayonets" (18) and that Jews were made into soap (38). He carefully documents all his quotes, but does not provide documentation for the charges he makes against the Germans.
And, while he accepts the truth of the Holocaust, (x, 3, 19, 20, 23, 31, 69, 114, 147, 198, 204) and tells us that the Holocaust deniers "are fools, maybe worse than fools" (x), he nevertheless describes a number of events that are not entirely consistent with a brutal and homicidal Holocaust:
(1) The Red Cross "sent delegates to Auschwitz in September, 1944, but the Germans restricted them." (114). (This is deceptive as it suggests that this was the only visit and, in the sentence that follows, that the delegates were kept from seeing the gas chambers. More probably, they were kept from areas where there was typhus; the Red Cross reported that they repeatedly visited Auschwitz and spoke to prisoners.) On the other hand, the Red Cross was denied visitation to the Jewish-controlled prisons. (111-112, 206).
(2) A swimming pool, hospital, (p. 36) and even a brothel (37, 81, 35, 41) at Auschwitz. (In a talk he gave in 2000, the author said, "the Germans in Lola's prison were worse off than Lola had been at Auschwitz." (See http://judicial-inc.biz/Auschwitz.htm for conditions at Auschwitz.)
(3) Strict orders to the SS not to rape. ("At Auschwitz, the Jews weren't raped (The SS men could be hanged for it)" 87), (On the other hand, at the Jewish prison, "At night, the guards went to the woman's barracks, chose half a dozen women, took them to their quarters outside the barbed wire, and gang-raped them." 202; also 107). Nor could the German guards beat the prisoners: "Himmler ordered on August 16, 1935, `Any independent individual action against the Jews by any member of the SS is strictly forbidden.' " (201). A Jewish boxer hit a German guard at Auschwitz, knocking him down, yet was not even disciplined. (36-37).
(4) The use of prison labor in factories. (2, 13)
(5) Shaving hair, showering, swabbing with disinfectant (22), and using lice powder (123) to kill lice and thereby prevent typhus. (22, 123).
(6) Tattooing numbers on arms, presumably to be able to account for each prisoner. (22).
(7) To escape the oncoming Russians (when the Russians took over, they "lined up to rape even eight-year-old and eighty-year-old nuns." (48-49), and people were indiscriminately shot.), the Auschwitz inmates were marched back to Germany, slowing down the Germans. "What worse impediment to any hell-bent retreat than the slow, stumbling feet of its sixty thousand slaves?" (2).
(8) The Polish governor who, after the war, said, "I'd thought the Germans killed all the Jews. But the Jews are taking over." (60).
(9) "In time, three-fourths of the Germans at Shlomo's camp [Shlomo Morel, the head of the Office of State Security] were dead and Shlomo announced, `What the Germans couldn't do in five years at Auschwitz, I've done in five months at Schwientochlowitz'." (107)
(10) "At various times, all but one SS man at Auschwitz had gone to Hoss, the commandant, distressed by the last dying cries of Jews." (124). An SS officer actually helped the Jews. (116; also, 125).
The author apparently does not realize that these acts imply keeping the Jews alive and make no sense if the Jews were to be killed.
The author is uncomfortable with using German wrongs to justify Jewish wrongs, however, and he tells us that the Torah does not sanction revenge (171) and even requires Jews to report the sins of others. (xi). This suggests that the behavior of these Jews is not typical of Jews. Yet every time that Jews have had absolute power over non-Jews they have tortured and killed them. This was true in the early Soviet Union, where Jews headed the secret police and ran the Gulags (e.g., "Jewish-Run Concentration Camps in the Soviet Union," by Dr. Hermann Greife). It was true of the Jewish Soviets during WWII, and even today we see this behavior by Jews against the Palestinians.
In the American camps for Germans after WWII, the Americans also mistreated and killed Germans and, again, Jews both did it and were behind the orders to do it. "George Orwell saw a Jewish interrogator at an American camp for Germans kicking an SS general, shouting `Get up, you swine!' " (190). Eisenhower and Truman, implementing the Jewish Morgenthau plan to starve the entire German people, killed at least nine million Germans by exposure and starvation (see James Bacque's "Other Losses"); American soldiers burned their leftover food to keep starving Germans from eating it from the garbage and American soldiers were punished if they gave food to the starving Germans, even to children. Americans were not as brutal and senseless in their torture, but they killed far more Germans than did the Jews in their camps and prisons. (Wikipedia, "Eisenhower and German POWs" and "Gruesome Harvest" by Ralph Franklin Keeling). Jews were also involved in seeking revenge at the Nuremburg trials. (David Irving's "Nuremburg," 61).
Even though the author cites German wrongs to justify Jewish revenge, he mentions a few items that reduce the criminality of the Germans:
(1) "[T]he Jews in the Office had acted willfully, but the Germans mostly followed orders," (198).
(2) "The Jews - who had studied the Torah - had known they were doing wrong, but the Germans had mostly thought that they were doing right." (198).
To that list I would add a few more items:
(3) The Jews put Germans into camps not because they believed those Germans were a threat to them, but to exact revenge upon them. The Germans put the Jews in camps for the same reason that the Americans put the Japanese in camps - they believed that the Jews would fight against them. This belief was based on, among other things, the betrayal by some German Jews in WWI (the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which obligated Great Britain to support a Jewish homeland in Palestine in return for the Jews getting the U.S. into the war against Germany), the heavy Jewish involvement in the efforts of Communists to overthrow the German government, and the 1933 Jewish boycott of German goods, which constituted a declaration of war against Germany. The Germans tortured and killed during the war, when they were in grave danger of being killed themselves; the Jews tortured and killed after the war, when they were in no danger from the Germans.
(4) The Jews tortured and killed for revenge. (6). Lola says, "I want revenge" (45). "[The Jews] killed German men, women, children, babies, whose `crime' was just to be Germans." (x). Catholic priests (98-100, 202) and blond Germans (102) were particularly targeted. Revenge satisfies an intense need to win. Taking revenge is proof that, in the end, the Jews did not lose. Revenge is not a rational emotion because it can have great costs, such as punishment and retaliation later, while the only benefit is the perverse psychological satisfaction it provides. (130). By placing such a high value on revenge, the Jews planted the seeds for anti-Semitism in the future. The only information the Jews obtained from torture was a confession that a prisoner was in the Nazi Party, that he was SS, at the camps, or whatever they wanted him to say. That information, the author admits, was mostly false. (80). It was of no use except to justify their lust for revenge. The Germans, on the other hand, tortured to obtain militarily-useful information.
(5) The Germans tortured and killed partisans; the Jews tortured and killed mostly innocent non-combatants. After the war, the Jews were in no danger from German partisans, as there weren't any. "Partisans" are people in occupied territory who attack troops and commit acts of sabotage without wearing uniforms, then vanish into the civilian population. To protect civilians, the Paris Convention did not give rights to partisans. It is therefore accepted practice to kill partisans and to torture them to obtain information on who they are, where they are, and what their plans are. And the author himself notes that many of the Jews in his book were partisans. (41, 44, 45, 70, 84-85, 100, 200-201, 215, 223). Even when Lola and her friends worked at Auschwitz, they sabotaged the armaments they were making so that they would detonate prematurely, killing Germans instead of the enemy. (26, 27, 29, 30).
(6) The Jews starved and died of typhus at the German camps, mostly near the end of the war, not because the Germans refused to feed them or treat them, but because they could not do so as the Allies had bombed the railroad lines, roads, and pharmaceutical factories, and had blockaded Germany to starve the Germans into surrendering. The German prisoners starved not because there was no food, but because the Jews would not feed them. (88). German mothers in the prison who gave birth were not permitted to nurse their babies because a Jewish doctor from Auschwitz wouldn't let them; the babies were given only a weak soup and, "Of the fifty babies there, forty-eight died." (128). The doctor was tried for murder but was sentenced to only two years in prison, though the author does not say how long he was actually in prison; meanwhile, innocent Germans were shot or hanged. (217, also 164, 167, 217)
Lola supervised and participated in the torture, starvation, and killing of Germans. German "volunteers" were given $200 for each "Nazi" they identified, (74, also 78), which amounted to a bounty on every German. Even a 14 year old boy was imprisoned and tortured because his Boy Scout uniform was the same color as some Nazi uniforms. (87-88). "The beater-to-death [a lead ball on a 2 foot spring] was the favorite tool at Lola's prison." (67). Lola even hit a German for making her feel guilty for hitting him! (85).
Shlomo Morel, Lola's boss, was the worst, beating Germans to death every night. (p. 103-106). "[The guards] trained their dogs to bite off the German men's genitals" (p. 107; also 108-111, 130). Outside the prison, Lola and other Jews ordered German families out of their homes and helped themselves to their possessions. (70, 72)
Tortured Germans usually confessed to anything they needed to in order to stop the torture. Adam, whose conscience bothers him for torturing the Germans, has an epiphany of sorts on how he can continue to torture and still sleep at night: he tells the prisoners that he has to torture them, but can stop the torture and send them off for a fair trail if they confess. (67-69). Of course, this is just "confess or we will continue to torture you until you do" and the trial, with the only evidence being a confession obtained by torture and possibly testimony of the guards, was hardly fair. The sentence was often death (99, 116), and "about 99.2% were presumably innocent." (212, also 135, 137). Even just being a member of the Nazi party, without ever doing anything illegal or immoral, was punishable.
Lola finally seeks "redemption" and starts treating her prisoners better. (119-121). But even then Lola does not have remorse or guilt. Instead, she says, "We must show that we are better than the Germans." This is the same as the motive for revenge - to win, to be superior. For 2¼ years Lola provides the author with help writing this book (156), though her memory is often faulty (155, 221) but, in the end, she changes her mind, decides she wants to conceal her crimes, orders the author not to publish the book, and threatens him if he does. (156-157).
The Jewish prison system eventually collapsed, as Jews targeted other Jews they suspected of sympathizing with the suffering Germans, and guards and Lola flee for their lives. Strangely, however, many of the Jews who so hated Germans and tortured and killed them, went to Germany (146) to escape Jewish-run Poland and the takeover of the country by Poles. "I was surprised, but I found lots of Jews from the Office living in Germany." (146; also, 207). Even Lola lived there for a while. (147). But after all that, the suffering still was not over for the Germans. The President of Poland ordered all ten million Germans out of Poland (138), the largest ethnic cleansing ever; 1½ million of them died, most by starvation. (139). Ethnic cleansing, by the way, is a war crime, but only losers are charged with war crimes.
Unlike the Nazis, who are hunted the world over and are dragged before courts even in their 80's, no one hunts for these Jews, and few have ever been prosecuted. (145). For thirty years, the German government knew of the crimes of Shlomo Morel, but never said a word about it. (146). A Polish prosecutor trying to charge Morel sent documents to a German to translate them into Polish. (167). The documents incriminated Morel but, to stop the cycle of revenge, the German told the prosecutor, "There's nothing important here," and told 235 survivors of Morel's prison to say nothing. (167, 173). Today, Morel lives safely in Israel, which kidnaps suspected Nazi war criminals from other countries and tries them in Israel; Israel does not, however, extradite its own war criminals. The Polish government even owes Morel a pension, but he has to go back to Poland to get it. (166).
There are no memorial museums for the German victims of this holocaust and no Jewish school children are taught what these Jews did. As I write this, there are historians sitting in European prisons for questioning the Jewish Holocaust, but no one is sitting in prison for denying the genocidal torture and murder of Germans by Jews after the war was over.
There are several lessons to be learned from this book. The most obvious one is, "Don't get caught in any territory controlled by Jews." Since "Most Jews from the Office went to America" (150) and Jews now occupy many important positions in our government, I frankly worry about my safety here, especially with Michael Chertoff, the grandson of Russian Jews, running Homeland Security. Russian Jews brutally tortured and killed millions of Russians, mostly peasants (Solzhenitsyn, "Two Hundred Years Together"), even using exhaust-fed gas chambers mounted on trucks.
All in all, despite how distressing it is to read this book, it is a book that should be read.
Despite my criticisms in this review, I nevertheless highly recommend it. It is about a subject that is historically important, but known to almost no one, and it is a compelling story that grips the reader from the beginning to the end.
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