Into the Inferno
Subtitle: The Memoir of a Jewish Paratrooper Behind Nazi Lines
Contributors: David Engel (Introduction)
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Published: January 2003
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 320
ISBN-13: 9780813531496
Subjects: Biography: general; Essays, journals, letters & other prose works; European history: Second World War; Jewish studies; The Holocaust; Rescue; Second World War, 1939-1945; History; World War, 1939-1945; Biography; Palestine; History - General History; Jewish - General; Biography/Autobiography; Europe; General; Palgi, Yoel; 1918-; Military - World War II; Palgi, Yoel,; Holocaust; Personal narratives, Jewish; Hungary; Jews
Description: "In the spring of 1944, a group of thirty-two young Palestinian Jews parachuted into Nazi-held Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Their goal was to encourage Jewish resistance where possible and to organize rescue schemes thwarting deportations to the death camps. Linking up in Yugoslavia and impelled by the hope that the Jews trapped in Hungary were still capable of fighting back, some of the volunteers set out for Budapest.

Tragically, they were betrayed by their local guides, who turned out to be double agents also working for the Hungarian Fascists. The volunteers reached Budapest where the young woman volunteer, Hannah Szenes, was executed and another deported to a death camp.".

"Into the Inferno is the firsthand account of this mission by the only member of the group who survived. He endured imprisonment and torture both by the Gestapo and the Hungarian Fascists, escaped from a deportation train, and joined the Zionist youth rescue underground in Budapest. This book, however, is more than a gripping true-adventure story. It tells of people who willingly sacrificed themselves for a cause."--BOOK JACKET.