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 content. Before the book begins, the author explains in the Author’s Note that most of the dialogue and wartime journeys have been “reconstructed” by her through documents and interviews; the reconstructed dialogue and scenes could cause speculation if used for research purposes.
It starts off with a young Jewish man, Feliks, running. His story comes back much later in the book. However, he has no connection to Citizen 865 or the other men that were on trial in the book, so I was a little confused about the correlation with his story in the book. The only connection I could make is that he was running from the Nazi’s, so the connection is very loosely done.
Most of the first half of the book focuses on OSI members, lawyers, and historians searching for information regarding the men at Trawniki. It specifies the historians and OSI travels, how they found the documents, and the conflicts they had to overcome in order to obtain information for a considerable amount of time in the book. Their research goes through documents and archives that detail the Warsaw ghetto, Polish Home Army, and the Polish Underground. A lot of information concerning Lublin is disclosed including the Lublin ghetto and the Jews of Lublin. The focus on Citizen 865 is not a point of concentration until the second half of the book, specifically during Part 4. Notably, as stated in the title, it is about various Nazi’s in America that a group of OIS agents and lawyers attempt to find and put on trial. They only Nazi’s they look for are “Trawniki Men”.
Organization: Part 1 Occupied Poland 1941-1943 (3-13%), Part 2 United States 1978-1992 (13-49%), Part 3 Poland and the United States 1941-1951 (49-63%), Part 4 United States 1996-2013 (63-88%), Epilogue 88-89%, Notes/Prologues (Bibliography organized by chapters) 91-100%
3.5 stars rounded up because I really enjoyed the court room scene against Citizen 865 at 66-81%. Thank you to NetGalley and Hatchette Books for an advanced copy. Opinions are my own.
More on this:
HISTORIAN PETER BLACK DESCRIBES RESEARCHING EVIDENCE FOR AN OSI CASE
How the Nazis Got to New York: Immigration Fraud
