HHhH - Book Review

Written by Laurent Binet
Translated from French by Sam Taylor

327 pages


An account of the bold assignation of arch-Nazi villain Reinhard Heydrich by Jozef Gabcek and Jan Kubis, a Slovak and a Czech respectively, in 1942. Heydrich aka the “Blond Beast of Prague” reported directly to Himmler, who in turn reported directly to Hitler. Heydrich has the distinction of being the psychopath who devised the “Final Solution to the Jewish Problem" the solution being total annihilation.

The telling is unique. Binet chronicles the biography of the assignation interspersed with a narrative of his research and his determined effort not to fictionalize history but stick to the facts in a sort of stream-of-consciousness (for lack of a better description on my part.) I found his technique fascinating.

Shades of an espionage novel, Gabcek and Kubis escaped to England from their Hitler-occupied countries to fight in the resistance, and were eventually selected for the assignation mission. They parachuted into war-torn Czechoslovakia and went underground while formulating a plan of attack. Betrayed after Heydrich’s death they held off the SS for 28 days fortressed in a church crypt before martyring themselves with their last rounds of ammunition.

Well worth the read.

Comments

Janice said…
Hmmm...this book sounds quite interesting.
Tue Feb 19, 10:16:00 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tastes like Chicken

Image
  Jim visited brother Dan in Palau mid 70s and came back with some wild stories of these gloriously beautiful tropical islands.  The ones that stuck with me are pretty much food related, go figure.  There was an open-air movie theatre in Peleliu filled with wooden benches for seating.  Rats were bold enough to scavenge food whenever, so movie viewers kept their feet up on the forward bench.   Hamburgers were served with a cabbage leaf for greenery, there being no iceberg lettuce on the island.  He met our friend Virginia there, she was maybe 13.  That girl took down fruit bats with a sling shot, a treat for her grandmother. They are a large bat species with a two-foot wingspan. She’d spot a roosting fruit bat hanging upside down from a tree branch, pop a small rock into the slingshot, eyeball the angle and let loose.  She had incredible aim.  She’d  nonchalantly balance in a squat to  husk a coconut wit...
Read more

Ethel strikes back

Image
  Grandma was a teacher and she drove the 18 miles from Powers to Myrtle Point every school day.  It’s a pretty drive on a narrow road that hugs the hillside high above the snaking south fork of the Coquille River, past high pastures and a few scattered houses. One day there went Ethel on her morning commute when she noticed “Howard Post” boldly painted on a large rock embedded in the hillside.  She kept going and there was another one.  Then another one. For a stretch of several miles young master Howard took it into his adolescent brain to spray paint his name on many, many exposed boulders in the hillside.   My grandmother’s solution to this embarrassment was to buy her own can of spray paint and on the way home that day, wearing a dress, (she wore only dresses then,) she stopped the car and over-painted every “Howard Post” she could reach.   It took many years for that paint to fade.  
Read more

Pasta ala Norcina from America's Test Kitchen

Image
I’m a fan of America’s Test Kitchen on PBS.   Any recipe from their site that I’ve cooked has turned out beautifully.   The great thing is they do all the testing and tweaking so all I have to do is follow the recipe.   At least the first time. A recipe for sausage and pasta recently aired.   I limit pasta in my diet these days, but every once in a while I’ll indulge.   And this recipe looked so good I made a mental note to cook if for Terry, being certain he’d love it. Then a friend who’d suffered a serious illness was released from the hospital, and here was my opportunity to give this a try.    I doubled the recipe, filled a large casserole for my friend, then one for Terry, and had enough left just for me, me, me.   And it is superb! Four fork review from all who were treated to this dish. It's not real pretty but the rosemary spiced sausage makes me forget that. Serves 6 White mushrooms may be substituted f...
Read more