Hitlers Pawn, Stephen Koch
Hitlers Pawn, Stephen Koch
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

Hitler's Pawn
The Boy Assassin and the Holocaust

Author: Stephen Koch

Narrator: James Anderson Foster

Unabridged: 7 hr 44 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/15/2019


Synopsis

After learning about Nazi persecution of his family, Herschel Grynszpan (pronounced "Greenspan"), an impoverished seventeen-year-old Jew living in Paris, bought a small handgun and on November 7, 1938, went to the German embassy and shot the first German diplomat he saw. When the man died two days later, Hitler and Goebbels made the shooting their pretext for the great state-sponsored wave of anti-Semitic terror known as Kristallnacht, still seen by many as an initiating event of the Holocaust.

Overnight, Grynszpan, a bright but naive teenager—and a perfect political nobody—was front-page news and a pawn in a global power struggle. When France fell, the Nazis captured Grynszpan after a wild chase and flew him to Berlin. The boy became a privileged prisoner of the Gestapo while Hitler and Goebbels plotted a massive show trial to blame "the Jews" for starting World War II. A prisoner and alone, Grynszpan grasped Hitler's intentions and waged a battle of wits to sabotage the trial, knowing that even if he succeeded, he would certainly be murdered. The battle of wits was close, but Grynszpan finally won. Based on the newest research, Hitler's Pawn is the richest telling of Grynszpan's story to date.

About Stephen Koch

Stephen Koch is the author of two novels and many books of nonfiction on subjects ranging from Andy Warhol to World War II. After serving as chairman of the Creative Writing Division in the School of the Arts at Columbia University, he wrote a classic text on writing, The Modern Library Writers' Workshop. The director of the Peter Hujar Archive, he lives with his wife in New York and has one daughter.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Angela

As a historian, it's always refreshing to read a book that teaches me something new--especially about a topic I've studied quite a bit. Koch's work recounts the tale of a Jewish male teenager living in exile in Paris, who decided to revenge the deportation of his family and 12,000 other Polish Jews......more

Goodreads review by Charlie

Received this ARC book thru Goodreads.com The author really gets into the nitty-gritty stuff on this non-fiction story. Herschel Grynszpan (pronounced "Greenspan") is a 17-year-old Jew living in Paris. His family already sent to concentration camps has Herschel on an angry spin. He's had enough and w......more

Goodreads review by Grumpus

The grumpus23 (23-Word Commentary) Jewish teenager assassinates Nazi official in Paris. Hitler attempts to make the legal case that this is the reason for Kristallnacht and Holocaust.......more

Goodreads review by Alex

This is a tighly written examination of the life a relatively minor figure who casted a large shadow on the politics surrounding the Second World War. It is well researched and written in an easy to read style, with plenty of background information for those who are not intimently familiar with the......more