The Forgers: The Forgotten Story of the Holocaust’s Most Audacious Rescue Operation by Roger Moorehouse
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This is the untold story of The Lados Group, a group of Polish diplomats and Jewish activists based in Switzerland during the Second World War who conceived an extraordinary operation to produce false identity documents and passports, often to Latin American countries. These were smuggled into occupied Europe and would end up saving the lives of an estimated eight to ten thousand Jews – more, as he points out, than the famous efforts of Oskar Schindler. The Holocaust was made possible by the creation of lawless spaces and stateless individuals, so a passport to a non-European country was for many the difference between being sent to the camps and retained as a potential bargaining counter.
Roger is an excellent historian of Nazi Germany and Poland. Where FIRST TO FIGHT, Roger’s most recent book, was the first history for 50 years of the mostly overlooked brutal 1939 war in Poland that western Europe took no part in, RIGHTEOUS has the potential to speak to a more general readership. Beyond what’s in the proposal, we’ve already had useful exchange about the sources it draws on and how he plans to shape the narrative. Roger fully intends to put the human story at the heart of this book and is confident about how much first-hand material there is to draw on; he is also actively tracking down more accounts from those their passports saved.
RIGHTEOUS has as its focal point a small group of characters who achieved something truly remarkable. Their story has not been told in a book in any language and cries out to be turned into a film. FIRST TO FIGHT had excellent reviews and has sold very well across trade pbk, audio and ebook.
Year first published: 2023
