Citizen 865, Debbie Cenziper
Citizen 865, Debbie Cenziper
6 Rating(s)
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Citizen 865
The Hunt for Hitler's Hidden Soldiers in America

Author: Debbie Cenziper

Narrator: Robert Fass

Unabridged: 8 hr 46 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/12/2019

Includes: Bonus Material Bonus Material Included


Synopsis

**Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) Book Award Finalist**

The gripping story of a team of Nazi hunters at the U.S. Department of Justice as they raced against time to expose members of a brutal SS killing force who disappeared in America after World War Two.
In 1990, in a drafty basement archive in Prague, two American historians made a startling discovery: a Nazi roster from 1945 that no Western investigator had ever seen. The long-forgotten document, containing more than 700 names, helped unravel the details behind the most lethal killing operation in World War Two.

In the tiny Polish village of Trawniki, the SS set up a school for mass murder and then recruited a roving army of foot soldiers, 5,000 men strong, to help annihilate the Jewish population of occupied Poland. After the war, some of these men vanished, making their way to the U.S. and blending into communities across America. Though they participated in some of the most unspeakable crimes of the Holocaust, "Trawniki Men" spent years hiding in plain sight, their terrible secrets intact.

In a story spanning seven decades, Citizen 865 chronicles the harrowing wartime journeys of two Jewish orphans from occupied Poland who outran the men of Trawniki and settled in the United States, only to learn that some of their one-time captors had followed. A tenacious team of prosecutors and historians pursued these men and, up against the forces of time and political opposition, battled to the present day to remove them from U.S. soil.

Through insider accounts and research in four countries, this urgent and powerful narrative provides a front row seat to the dramatic turn of events that allowed a small group of American Nazi hunters to hold murderous men accountable for their crimes decades after the war's end.

About Debbie Cenziper

Debbie Cenziper is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter and nonfiction author who writes for The Washington Post. She is also the Director of Investigative Reporting at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Over 20 years, Debbie's stories have sent people to prison, changed laws, prompted FBI and Congressional investigations and produced more funding for affordable housing, mental health care and public schools. She has won dozens of awards in American print journalism, including the Robert F. Kennedy Award, given by Ethel Kennedy and the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights, the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting from Harvard University, and the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting. She is the author of two nonfiction books, ""Love Wins: The Lovers and Lawyers Who Fought the Landmark Case for Marriage Equality,"" (William Morrow, 2016) and ""Citizen 865: The Hunt for Hitler's Hidden Soldiers in America,"" (Hachette, 2019). Debbie graduated from the University of Florida and lives with her family near Washington, D.C. See also www.debbiecenziper.com.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Paige on October 29, 2019

Written in third person narrative, this might not be everyone’s preferred nonfiction writing style. It extends beyond the facts that cling to the title to explain the weather that day, what the person looked like, and other details that some nonfiction readers might not find pertinent to the main co......more

Goodreads review by Ed on September 25, 2020

Solid, straightforward, and well-researched accounting of the Nazis living under assumed names in the U.S. Somehow, they managed to slip through after WW II, and the U.S. gov't. went after them. I liked reading about the investigations undertaken by the dedicated historians (I was a history major) i......more

Goodreads review by Lauren on November 08, 2019

I was a history major in college and have always been interested particularly in both American and WWII history. But I had never heard of the subject of this book: the Trawniki men, and the decades-later quest of the Department of Justice to deport Trawniki men living on U.S. soil. The Trawniki men......more

Goodreads review by Lea on September 25, 2020

Solid, straightforward, and well-researched accounting of the Nazis living under assumed names in the U.S. Somehow, they managed to slip through after WW II, and the U.S. gov't. went after them. I liked reading about the investigations undertaken by the dedicated historians (I was a history major) i......more

Goodreads review by Sarah on July 02, 2020

[URL not allowed] What first pulled me in about this book, was the fact that it’s about a group of individuals in World War II that operated largely in Eastern Europe, whom I have never heard of. This is no small thing, because I’ve spent just a ridiculous chunk of the past (mu......more


Quotes

"This riveting saga, replete with heroes and villains, is the true story of a few good men and women who worked tenaciously to expunge an evil in our midst."—George F. Will, author of The Conservative Sensibility

"Enriched by Debbie Cenziper's world-class investigative skills, Citizen 865 is a powerful piece of history that washes over you in waves of horror and beauty."—David Maraniss, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Good American Family

"Debbie Cenziper has written a page-turning detective story about the hunt for Nazi killers living openly in neighborhoods across the United States....This is a book that anybody interested in the quest for international justice should read."
Michael Isikoff, New York Times bestselling co-author of Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald Trump

"This is a gripping tale, which reads at times like a novel. Just when you thought you knew everything about the Holocaust, we learn about the uniquely devastating role of the Trawniki training center. At a time of rising anti-Semitism, Debbie Cenziper's Citizen 865 offers a harrowing reminder of the consequences of unchecked racism and anti-Semitism. And it serves as a repository of hope-that the leadership of good men and women could bring a measure of justice to the world in the face of such overwhelming evil."
Jonathan A. Greenblatt, CEO and National Director, Anti-Defamation League

"Citizen 865 is a great book that couldn't come at a more crucial time. In telling the story of a little-known Holocaust site called Trawniki and the people who dedicated themselves to bringing some of modern history's worst monsters to justice, Debbie Cenziper has honored the vanishing plea to never forget, first by breaking my heart with the worst of humanity, and then, with the best of us, stitching it back together."—Pulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist David Finkel, author of Thank You for Your Service and The Good Soldiers

"Citizen 865 is a fantastic piece of detective work.... A compulsively readable story of mass murder and an epic quest by Nazi hunters to bring evil men to justice."—Alex Kershaw, New York Times bestselling author of The Bedford Boys and The Longest Winter

"Citizen 865 reads like a thriller, but it is so much more... [It] tells an essential and unknown tale of post-war justice and the search for truth, linking the events of the Holocaust to the familiar, more recent past. Telling this story of a decades-long quest for justice is itself an act of justice. "—Ariel Burger, author of Witness: Lessons from Elie Wiesel's Classroom and winner of the National Jewish Book Award in Biography

"Anchored in painstaking research and reporting, Citizen 865 chronicles the efforts of the lawyers and historians of the Office of Special Investigations to rid the United States of the Third Reich's mass murderers who had been hiding in plain sight. Debbie Cenziper's account vividly-and movingly-captures both the frustrations and triumphs of this extraordinary group of dedicated men and women who refused to abandon the quest for a measure of long overdue justice."
Andrew Nagorski, author of 1941: The Year Germany Lost the War and The Nazi Hunters

"Cenziper brought her investigative skills to bear on the challenge of retrieving the hard facts, but she also possesses the gift of a storyteller....[Citizen 865 is] a highly significant work of investigation that is eye-opening and heartbreaking. She compels us to confront the crimes of the Trawniki men in a way that burns itself into both memory and history."—Washington Post

"Skillfully written and reported....Riveting....Cenziper's account moves cinematically around in time and place."—The Forward