The Brigade; An Epic Story of Vengeance, Salvation, and World War II

New York: HarperCollins, 2001. Believed to be a book club edition but marked First Edition. Second Printing. Hardcover. Very good/very good. 25 cm. x, 326 pages. Illustrations (with 16 pages of plates). Note on sources. DJ has no price information. DJ has slight wear and soiling. Howard Blum (born 1948) is an American author and journalist. In 1986, Blum began working as a reporter for the New York Times, where he earned two Pulitzer Prize nominations. Formerly a reporter for The Village Voice and The New York Times, Blum is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and the author of several non-fiction books, including the New York Times bestseller and Edgar Award winner American Lightning, and The Brigade. It has been reported that Miramax Films is in the process of making The Brigade into a major motion picture. Derived from a Kirkus review: An action-packed, real-life drama featuring the first Jewish army to go into combat for 2,000 years. In chronicling this little-known niche of WWII, the former New York Times journalist interviewed the living members of His Majesty's Jewish Brigade, a Jewish cadre from British-controlled Palestine who fought with honor in Italy at the close of the war. While many of his scenes are worthy of a blockbuster movie, the deeper story lies in the emotions these Jews felt about their relation to the Holocaust. Many of them, recalling families slaughtered in concentration camps, saw their arrival in Germany in 1945 as payback time. That sorrow quickly turns to anger, however, and once the war is over the brigade seeks vengeance. A covert group of Jews hunts down and executes former SS members, then gradually form an underground railroad that shuttles Jews out of Europe toward Palestine. Military historians, fans of war stories, and lovers of Judaica: all will all be pleased.