Monday, August 31, 2009

The Odessa file-Frederick Forsyth

Odessa is an acronym for “Organisation der ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen” which translates to “Organization of Former Members of the SS”. Odessa is a group of former SS men who served Hitler in his innumerous brutal mass killing operations of Jews in the West Germany during 1940 to 1945. When the Americans and the Russians conquered Germany at the end of the Second World War in 1945, these so called patriots of Germany fled to South American countries to shelter themselves against prosecution for war crimes.

The Odessa file is a very famous book which describes the butcher-ism of Hitler and the Nazi rule in Germany and the western European countries. One Jew by name Solomon Tauber commits suicide leaving a diary behind containing the documentations of the Jew concentration camp at Riga. The diary claims that a war criminal- Eduard Roschmann who is alive under a false name and should be held and prosecuted and that is the only hope of Tauber to keep him alive. The dairy also documents killing of an army officer in particular.

A reporter by name Miller challenges himself to find Roschmann and gets in to a lot of trouble on his chase to find Roschmann. He will be approached by a group of concentration camp survivors and will be led to infiltrate in to the Odessa. When he finally finds Roschmann and gets it confirmed that the army officer who was killed by him was in fact Miller’s father, he tells Roschmann that he isn't there to avenge Roschmann's Jewish victims and doesn't care how Roschmann tries to justify what he did to them and that he is there to kill Roschmann for killing his father. By the time Miller gets hold of Roschmann, he will be hit by Roschmann’s guard and Roschmann flies away to South America and gets a new identity.

While all this is happening, Miller brings to light that the country’s top radio manufacturing company’s head is Roschmann(under the name Vulkan) and in his factory, he is secretly developing the rocket guidance system for the Egyptian army. This way Roschmann and his SS men are trying to obliterate Israel by combining the German and the Egyptian forces. Later the factory will be shut down by the German authorities upon the compulsion from the Israelis.

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