John Sack

Softcover book, 276 pages
ISBN: 0465042147
Stock Number: 0333


In 1945 Poland's new Soviet-dominated government was actively recruiting Jews for its Office of State Security to carry out a brutal "de-Nazification." The Of­fice's agents raided German homes, rounding up some 200,000 men, women, children and infants -- 99 percent of them non-combatant, innocent civilians. Incarcerated in cellars, pris­ons, and 1,255 concentration camps where typhus was rampant and torture was commonplace, the inmates subsisted on starva­tion rations. In this brief period, between 60,000 and 80,000 Germans perished at the hands of the Office.

This book tells the little-known story of how Jewish victims of the Third Reich inflicted equally terrible suffering on innocent Germans. To unearth it, the author, a veteran journalist and war correspondent, spent seven years conducting research and interviews in Poland, Germany, Israel and the United States.

Author John Sack focuses on such figures as Shlomo Morel, a commandant who bragged: "What the Germans couldn't do in five years at Auschwitz, I've done in five months at Schwientochlo­witz."

When An Eye for an Eye was finally published by Basic Books, it "sparked a furious controversy" (Newsweek). And while it became a bestseller in Europe, it was so shunned in America that it also became, in the words of New York magazine, "The Book They Dare Not Review."

Both "60 Minutes" and The New York Times corroborated Sack's riveting expose of atrocities by vengeful Jews against German civilians in Communist-ruled Poland. The New York Daily News review commented: "The events are vivid, the language is powerful, the conclusions appear just. The book should be read and become part of the all too gruesome document the world calls history."

Completely re­vised and updated, this quality softcover edition includes 74 pages of reference citations and other source notes, photos and an index.