The Secret Alliance: The Extraordinary Story of the Rescue of the Jews Since World War II

Szulc tells the engrossing story of the furtive role played by American Jewry in the rescue of two million Jews in Eastern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, and also chronicles the saga of illegal immigration to Palestine from 1943 to the birth of Israel in '48. While the author considers famliar figures--Mossad chief Shaul Avigur and his American counterpart Joseph Schwartz, head of the Joint Distribution Committee--he introduces many other heroes, e.g., New York department store executive Ira A. Hirschman, who carried out a one-man refugee-saving mission in Nazi-occupied Vienna. Szulc ( Fidel ) also details the bizarre relationship between Mossad and Adolf Eichmann, who traded Jewish lives for cash, and a similar arrangement with Romanian despot Nicolae Ceausescu, who in effect paroled 300,000 Romanian Jews to Mossad for an average of $1000 per head. Equally important, Szulc offers new material about the rescue of Jews from Muslim countries and the mass migration of Soviet Jews to Israel. The former New York Times reporter argues that the birth of Israel was made possible by the immense pressure created by migrations that were set in motion by underground Palestinian operatives and their American partners. (Dec.)