THE SECRET ALLIANCE: The Extraordinary Story Of The Rescue Of The Jews Since World War II

blue & white 1/2 cloth hardcover 8vo. (octavo). dustwrapper in protective plastic book jacket cover. very fine cond. mint cond. looks new. like new. as new. binding square & tight. covers clean. edges clean. contents free of markings. dustwrapper in very fine cond. not worn or torn or price clipped. nice clean copy. no library markings, store stamps, stickers, bookplates, no names, inking, underlining, remainder markings etc~. first edition so stated. first printing (nap). xvii+328p. glossy b&w photo illustrations. bibliography. index. world history. world war ii. history of israel. espionage. secret societies. covert operations. ~ The Secret Alliance is the story of the rescue of more than two million Jews from Eastern Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East since World War II. It is the dramaticand largely unknown account of the numerous "exoduses" made possible by a remarkable clandestine alliance initiated from Palestine by Shaul Avigur, the mysterious chief of the original Mossad, and Joseph J. Schwartz, the imaginative leader of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. The Secret Alliance reveals the vast covert intelligence~and~rescue network the Joint financed and the Mossad set in motion to organize immigration operations which led, argues Tad Szulc, to the birth of the State of Israel. Once a separate Jewish homeland was established in 1948, the challenge for the Joint (and later HIAS) shifted from illegal immigration to emigration ~ freeing Jews from "countries in distress." The Secret Alliance provides in~depth accounts of those missions, from Operation Magic Carpet, which extricated the Jews of Yemen, to the extensive North African Operation Framework, which assisted hundreds of thousands of Jews in emigrating from Morocco to Israel, Canada, and Latin America, to the human~smuggling network that helped Jews~with the aid of the Kurds~escape from Iran after Khomeini's Islamic revolution in 1979, to Operations Moses and Solomon, which freed one of the world's oldest Jewish communities, the Falashas, or black Jews, of Ethiopia. Here are the backroom details of the money~for~blood deals cut with Adolf Eichmann, Nicolae Ceausescu, and Saddam Hussein; the clandestine arms purchases for the Israeli Defense Force; and the heroic efforts of private American agencies to achieve~and determine~ U.S. foreign policy objectives when Washington itself abdicated responsibility. Above all, The Secret Alliance is the inspiring story of the courageous men and women~many of them largely unknown~ who used cunning and perseverance to save the Jews against all odds: the colorful and daring Mossad operatives Shaike Dan and Alex Gattmon; the dedicated Gaynor Jacobson of the Joint and the "boys and girls" of the Brichah Jewish underground; Monsignor Angelo Roncalli, the Vatican envoy to Turkey, who helped rescue thousands of Jewish lives in the Balkans and who later became Pope John XXIII; Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty of Hungary, who acted as a secret conduit for money transfers to keep Jews alive; and Zoltan Toman, the Communist chief of secret police in Czechoslovakia, whose efforts helped 200,000 Jews streaming out of Poland in their quest for freedom. Based on extensive interviews, private correspondence, and previously confidential archives, The Secret Alliance combines narrative history with investigative journalism at its best, illuminating a saga that~with the immigration of tens of thousands of Soviet Jews to Israel~ continues to this day.…