Jews for Sale?: Nazi-Jewish Negotiations, 1933-1945

A handful of Jewish leaders established contacts with Heinrich Himmler, Adolf Eichmann and other Nazis in the hope of negotiating to rescue Jews living in Nazi-occupied Europe from the Holocaust. These negotiators pleaded, resorted to bluffing, offered ransoms or took other desperate measures, as in 1942 when a Jewish group in Slovakia bribed a Gestapo representative with the aim of halting further deportations of Jews. Bauer, a professor of Holocaust Studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, argues that Jews who sought negotiations with the Nazis-many of whom were reviled or attacked after the war-were courageous heroes who took the only course available to them to save lives. His revealing chronicle unfolds a complex tale featuring individuals like Czech Jew Alfred Schwarz (alias Dogwood), an OSS agent in Istanbul who tried to forge ties between conservative German anti-Nazis and the Allies; and Zionist journalist Reszoe Kasztner, who dealt with the Nazis in Hungary for the release of Jews in 1944. (Nov.)