Olga

In 1936 Brazil bestowed a ``gift'' on Adolf Hitler by deporting imprisoned Olga Benario, a German-born Jewish Communist, then seven months pregnant. Wife of Brazil's guerrilla hero Luis Carlo Prestes, she suffered the hell of Ravensbruck concentration camp. She was gassed to death in 1942; earlier, the Prestes family rescued her newborn daughter. Brazilian journalist Morais's heartbreaking biography is filled with high drama. In 1928 Olga had led a raid on a Berlin courtroom to free her lover, Otto Braun; they fled to Moscow, where she became the bodyguard of Prestes, who was visiting the Soviet capital. She and Prestes married and went to Brazil, where they helped organize the popular uprising of 1935, crushed in one day. Assisted by the Gestapo and U.S. intelligence, the police closed in on Olga, sealing her fate. Prestes remained imprisoned in Brazil when his wife was extradited. Photos. (Nov.)