copyright 1972; The Viking Press publishers; hardbound with red and black boards and gilt and red lettering on spine; very nice condition of book; no dust jacket.
Description -
The Odessa File is a thriller by Frederick Forsyth, first published in 1972, about the adventures of a young German reporter attempting to discover the location of a former SS concentration-camp commander.
The name ODESSA is an acronym for the German phrase "Organisation der ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen", which translates as "Organisation of Former Members of the SS". The novel alleges that ODESSA is an international Nazi organisation established before the defeat of Nazi Germany for the purpose of protecting former members of the SS after the war.
Plot -
In November 1963, shortly after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Peter Miller, a German freelance crime reporter, follows an ambulance to the apartment of Salomon Tauber, a Holocaust survivor who has committed suicide. The next day, Miller is given the dead man's diary by a friend in the police. After reading Tauber's life story and learning that Tauber had been in Riga Ghetto commanded by Eduard Roschmann, "The Butcher of Riga", Miller resolves to search for Roschmann whom Tauber recognised a few days earlier, alive and prosperous, in Hamburg. Miller's attention is especially drawn to one diary passage in which Tauber describes having seen Roschmann shoot a German Army Captain who was wearing a distinctive military decoration...